Gale sees an odd loss on Elder’s face. “Wildcoast is my district. My people. Bennet Tarlow III was my friend. I’ve been shepherding Wildcoast through since it was a dream of his. I don’t believe he knew anything at all about lithium. He would have told me.”
“I’m only speculating,” says Gale.
“How much lithium, would you guess?”
“Have you been down in that pit, Mr. Elder?” asks Mendez. “It’s really something.”
“No, Daniela, I certainly... what pit?”
“The so-called percolation test pit,” says Gale. “Now it’s two hundred feet deep and a hundred feet across.”
“Courtesy of Empire Excavators and Kyle McNab of PacWest Mining,” says Mendez. “You probably remember him from the Grove.”
Gale notes again the solemnity on Elder’s face as he considers Daniela. Wonders if something has transpired between them that he has not seen.
“Sure, I know Kyle,” Elder says softly. “But I can’t see why Benny would know that a metal this valuable is under Wildcoast and not tell me. I’m kind of in shock right now.”
Elder’s young aide-de-camp, Grant Hudson, comes through the door. “Detectives!” he says. “Great to see you guys. Love the nose job, Gale. Boss, we’re on with Mayor Petrie in ten at Il Fornaio. I’ll bring the car around. Detectives, please — do you have a believable suspect by now?”
Mendez rises and slings her bag over her shoulder, turns to Hudson. “Not you again,” she says, then back to the supervisor. “Thanks for your time, Mr. Elder.”
“Anytime, Detective Mendez. And you know I mean that.”
Gale and Mendez sit in the shade outside the county building, watch the employees heading out for lunch.
“What’s between you and Elder?” asks Gale.
“He hit on me and I turned him down. Twice. He was insistent, which leaves me kind of edgy around him.”
“Sorry to pry.”
“I’m not great at hiding things.”
“Me neither,” says Gale. “Marilyn read me like a book, like, the smallest thoughts. She heard them, somehow.”
“Lew, I’ve decided to talk to Jesse myself. He’s pulling some stuff I don’t even understand. With bad people, though. So, thanks for offering to be my proxy. I may take you up on that later but I need to get some things straight with him pretty much right now.”
“I’ll be ready when you need me.”
Gale sees the quiver of a smile on Daniela’s hard, pretty face.
Then the black Lincoln Navigator with government plates pulls into the long concrete porte cochere alongside the county building entrance.
Watches Elder get into the front passenger seat.
When the Navigator swings past them, the driver’s-side window closes, erasing Grant Hudson’s profile on its way up.
Gale feels that funny, lucky bump he gets when something impossible seems to fit.
Or almost fit.
But probably not fit at all.
“Slick and gutless,” says Mendez. “Not real people like us. Although, Steve and Curtis probably don’t exist outside Vern Jeffs’s colorful imagination and his photographic memory.”
“We can’t not see what happens next,” says Gale. Ten minutes later Gale and Mendez sit in Gale’s Explorer near Il Fornaio restaurant. The black Lincoln is parked along a LOADING ONLY curb, a valet ticket on the windshield.
No old white Econoline van in sight.
No black Harley.
But there is a beautiful Harley, in Mary Kay pink, in the DISABLED ONLY space up front.
Looking at the pink bike, Mendez shakes her head.
An hour and a half later, Kevin Elder, Grant Hudson, and skinny, leather-bound Mindy Jeffs step out of the shaded restaurant entrance and into the crisp Orange County sunshine.
“No Vern,” says Mendez. “Maybe he’s home, catching up on his sleep after trying to kill you last night.”
“Letting Mindy negotiate his fee with the big boys.”
Mindy tips a valet at the booth, then climbs aboard her machine. Pulls onto the street and Gale follows, three cars back. Traffic is steady and brisk.
“We can try all we want to put Elder in that white Navigator,” says Mendez. “But I don’t think he’s got the balls to kill his friend and political ally. And he has the brains not to.”
“Agreed,” says Gale.
“Then who?”
“With Bennet Tarlow dead,” says Gale, “Wildcoast can die, too. And the Tarlow Company trades a risky utopian city for billions in lithium.”
“Hal Teller as Steve?” asks Mendez.
“Absolutely,” says Gale. “Or at least the bank.”
A pause as they follow Mindy onto Harbor, headed in the direction of home.
“No, Lew,” says Mendez. “Teller’s too old and rich to kill a business partner he once mentored. Or to bankroll a hit. Bennet was a guy who looked up to him. How much richer does Hal Teller need to be? I’m not seeing Teller in this.”
“He’s the one who said the Tarlow Company is about making money, not homes and buildings,” says Gale. “Imagine how mineral rights to a cache of lithium would light his fire?”
“No, I’m sorry but it’s not adding up, Lew. I still believe Vern was hired to kill Tarlow, and — based on last night — you, too. Who did the hiring? Let’s let this cook.”
Gale nods and smiles; Mendez gives him a prying look.
“My disbelief that Keven Elder isn’t involved has nothing to do with him trying to date me,” she says.
“I’m sure of that,” says Gale. “Just shows he’s got good taste.”
A small smile then from Mendez. “Stop. Enough.”
They follow Mindy onto Yorktown and park down the street from Jeffs’s house. Looks the same as last time, but Gale notes the mail bulging from the curbside box.
Gale watches Mindy rumble onto the driveway on her pink bike, and the garage door rises.
No white Econoline out front.
“No black Harley,” says Mendez.
“No Rivian,” says Gale.
“The mail,” says Gale. “They’re pretending nobody’s home.”
“A staycation,” says Mendez.
The garage door closes.
No Vern at the Bear Cave or the Metro Gym, either.
38
Early that evening his father’s yellow Challenger is parked in his mother’s driveway, so Gale finds a place on Los Rios Street.
He and Geronima walk the alley toward Gale’s boyhood home, Hulk on a leash, lunging at the butterflies that thrive in the profuse gardens of sage and lion’s-tail and milkweed.
Gale’s alert to the cars and pedestrians on busy Los Rios, his Colt holstered high on his hip under a light sport coat, his ankle cannon secure and uncomfortable.
Gale has activated the Vigilant tracker and left it in a big terra-cotta pot of flowering ice pink hibiscus on Geronima’s front porch, and the matte gray Rivian is nowhere to be seen.
He’s got the Capistrano Sheriff’s patrol units on a hot surveillance of Geronima’s neighborhood on Acjacheme Court.
Now sundown casts a warm orange tone on the world, and Geronima sweeps Hulk into her arms.
“I like this street,” she says. “Had a friend in school who lived near the end.”
“Our house has been in Mom’s family for a hundred and fourteen years,” says Gale.
“Acjacheme all the way,” says Geronima.
“My dad’s here. Mom didn’t tell me. He’s a challenge. Haven’t seen him in a year.”
Inside, the smell of stewed rabbit fills the tiny house.
“Thanks for this, Mom,” Gale says to Sally as she looks at his nose. “You know Geronima. Dad, Geronima Mills.”
“My genuine pleasure,” says his father, with his killer smile. “What a cute little brute you’ve got there!”