She said, "Now tell me about Rin Tin Tin."
Instead of answering I asked, "How's Susan Peterson doing?"
She laughed. "You want me to discuss someone else's bladder control with you? Are you psychotic? Tell me-who's Rin Tin Tin?"
"The woman is someone I met recently. She's a disabled police officer who trains K-9 dogs to supplement her income. She likes to take her dogs on what she calls 'field trips' as part of their training. I offered to let her use our place. She came in here by mistake."
"That's the best you can do?"
"Most of it's true."
She laughed loudly.
"The rest I can't tell you."
"Figures. Bet you want me to keep my suspicions from your wife, too, don't you?"
"How'd you guess?"
She stood and returned her attention to the boxes. I asked her if she wanted my help finding something.
She said, "You think I want you to search through my stuff? There're important things in here."
I jumped down from the workbench and started to leave the barn.
Adrienne said, "I ever tell you that being your neighbor is no picnic?"
"Yeah, you've told me. That being the case, it's probably fortunate for me that you love me."
"True. By the by, call my office and set up a time with Phyllis. I think I do want to get a nice slow feel of your prostate."
Under my breath, I said, "Fat chance."
Adrienne said, "I heard that."
CHAPTER 25
Lucy Tanner didn't go home right away after leaving Alan's office.
Shortly after she'd been old enough to drive she'd discovered that nothing she did gave her the succor and peace she felt when she was alone behind the wheel of a car. As a younger woman, she'd required open roads and speed to achieve the contentment she sought from her automobile. During the first few years after she'd graduated from college, she'd thought nothing of driving alone from Colorado to San Diego and back on a long weekend to sneak in a few hours surfing in Encinitas.
The trips were a lark. The surfing was usually a thrill. The driving was a necessity.
Now she could achieve some modicum of solace simply by driving city streets or cruising the narrow canyons that snaked into the foothills above Boulder. The speed to which she was once addicted was no longer necessary. A dirt lane up Magnolia served her purposes as well as a wide-open interstate on Floyd Hill up I-70. The turbo boost on her cherry-red Volvo was about as essential for her as a box of condoms was to a nun. She was thinking it was time to trade the car in for something else, though she couldn't decide exactly what.
When she left Alan's office, Lucy headed north on Broadway, paralleling the naked hogbacks that ridged Boulder's western rim. Her fiancé, Grant, lived in a townhouse in Niwot, a once-charming rest stop of a village that had grown into an extra bedroom for Boulder's expanding family. She weaved east until she connected with the Diagonal Highway and started the familiar route to her boyfriend's house a few miles down the road. She barely noticed the soft colors that were illuminating the clouds above the hogbacks.
Lucy knew Grant wasn't home. He was in the field, somewhere in central Wyoming, doing a wildlife survey. She'd received an e-mail from him that morning and had sent one back his way, a don't-worry-about-me-I'm-doing-fine pack of lies. Her journey to his home wasn't about seeing him; it was about driving to see him. She looped past his house twice, finally parking for a moment in the place beneath the big cottonwood where she usually left her car when she was spending the night.
Her engine running, she listened to Gloria Estefan sing something in Spanish. The backbeat was invigorating but the tone was lamenting. Gloria obviously wasn't pleased about something, but Lucy didn't remember enough of her high school Spanish to know exactly what. As the song ended and the disc jockey moved into a commercial for an herbal elixir that he promised was just as potent as Viagra, Lucy touched a button to change stations, pulled out from beneath the cottonwood, and steered her way back onto the Diagonal, this time heading toward Boulder.
She stayed on the Diagonal until it ended, and then stayed on Iris until she reached Broadway, where she turned south. She'd arrived at a decision as she was stopped at the light at Twenty-eighth Street. Her next stop was going to be the home of the Bigg family. She'd already checked their address. They lived south of Baseline in a cul-de-sac below Chautauqua.
She cruised the cul-de-sac only once. Four houses on big lots. The garage door was open on one of the houses on the corner. Somebody was working on an old motorcycle with a sidecar. A dozen lights were ablaze in the two-story Bigg home. One car-a six- or seven-year-old BMW-was parked in the driveway; two more cars were on the street nearby.
She jotted down the plates on all the vehicles, hoping that she'd happened upon an evening visit by the man named Ramp. But she didn't think so. Lucy wasn't feeling particularly lucky.
Sixth took her back toward downtown. But she didn't make it all the way downtown. All along she knew that the Peterson home would be her last stop before heading back to her place.
She cruised Jay Street twice, slowing each time in front of the Peterson house. The lawn had been mowed for the first time that spring. The crime-scene tape was down. The do-not-enter warnings were gone from the front door. The light in one of the upstairs windows was dim, not dark. The ubiquitous flicker of the television screen from Susan Peterson's bedroom, present. She's back home, Lucy thought during her first pass. She felt an urge to park around the corner where she'd always left her car during her prior visits, but resisted, settling instead for permitting herself one more loop past the house.
On her final drive by the house she wondered if she wished things were the same as they always were. As they were a couple of weeks before.
She couldn't decide. She found that interesting, still.
Although she'd promised herself that no matter what she saw in the upstairs window, she absolutely wouldn't stop, she pulled over to the curb and parked her car behind an aging Toyota pickup, killing the engine in the middle of a melancholy ballad by Sinéad O'Connor.
That's one girl, she told herself, who's more confused than I am.
Lucy reached over to the passenger seat and checked her purse to make sure she had everything she might need.
She did.
The air was heavy, the way it is in July when a thunderstorm has just passed. But the April night was dry. A chill permeated her clothing. Lucy kept her head down, counting curb sections, reading the dates imprinted on the borders of the cement work. The oldest section she found had been installed in 1958.
Nineteen fifty-eight must have been a very good year for concrete. The pour was still in good shape. By comparison, some of the newer sections, including one done in 1993, already appeared due for replacement.
She had to cross over Pleasant Street to get to the Peterson home. When she looked up from her reverie to check for traffic, she was almost hit by a bicycle riding on the wrong side of the street.
The walkway that led from the sidewalk to the Petersons' front door was constructed of brick pavers set in a herringbone pattern. The path meandered from start to finish in the elongated shape of a lazy S. Lucy cut the curves, straightening the path into a line.
She had no illusions that she'd find Susan Peterson home alone. She suspected that Susan would have convinced someone-one of her doctors, probably-that her husband's murder had left her in need of a full-time aide. Lucy knew that there was another possibility-that instead of an aide, Susan's caretaker might be one of Susan and Royal's daughters.
Either way, Lucy knew that whomever she discovered in the house would be a woman.