Car Pool (23 page)

As Shay took the envelope, Adrian said, “Erik didn’t ask what I wanted them for, not after I said he really didn’t want to know. These are copies of his printouts as well as diskettes to print more.”

Shay started to open the envelope, but Anthea said rather sharply, “After dinner, please. The salmon is not going to share the table with refinery maps.”

Shay conceded with a smile and set the envelope aside. “Is it time for those mushroom thingies to come out of the oven?”

Anthea glanced at the clock. Shay had the sudden urge to kiss her all over, she was so adorable when she took charge. “Just about. Why don’t you get the pitcher of fire extinguisher out of the lower fridge.”

“Fire extinguisher?” Adrian and Harold spoke simultaneously, then looked at each other.

Anthea laughed with an evil touch. “You’ll need it with the mushrooms.”

Shay didn’t know if it was the tingle of the wine or the sparkle of Anthea’s best china and crystal, or the soft light dancing off the small chandeliers in the dining room, but she couldn’t remember when she’d had so much fun at a meal. It was an odd but pleasant feeling. She thought of her father suddenly,

and how for most of her adult life they’d shared almost every meal, sometimes in appalling conditions. It had been just the two of them. Until recently, she’d have given almost anything to go back to that life. But not anymore. The landscape of her world had changed, and with it her perspective on herself. She felt maudlin all of a sudden, as if she should make a note of the time as something slipped away, but she couldn’t really say what was disappearing.

“You’re all going on so much, but I just love to cook,” Anthea was saying. “I just love to and it’s nice to have people to cook for.” She glanced at Shay with a smile as she brought the fruit bowl to the table, with four crystal bowls.

Shay made a moaning, appreciative sound when she tasted the sauce she’d said was fussing. She’d grown so used to the way food was served in the pizza parlor — plain everything on plain tables. And the special touch of a creamy, sweet sauce on chilled pineapple, strawberries and melon was fussing — and it was worth it.

Anthea said, slowly, “This is going to sound very strange, but this is the first time in my life that I’ve felt this comfortable in my own home. Until tonight, I felt like I was… keeping it nice until the real owner came home.”

“Maybe that’s the fire,” Adrian said.

“The fire or the shadow of my parents.” Anthea shrugged.

“Oh, no wonder,” Harold said. “I kept thinking everything seemed new. I thought you had redecorated, but you rebuilt, didn’t you?”

Anthea nodded. “It’s roughly the same floor plan, but I did make some improvements. I miss the trees.

We had these big eucalyptus trees — four of them just along the property line. They went up like torches. I watched them explode on the news.”

There was a little silence, then Shay said, “Well, on that mortal thought, let’s get to work.”

Harold said, “What happened to the ganache?” Anthea smiled wickedly. • “I plan ahead. After a couple of hours of playing with our maps we’re going to want chocolate.”

Anthea felt decidedly unscientific as Shay and Harold punched away at their HP calculators and spoke in a foreign language about velocity heads and permeability boundaries. She and Adrian waded through the invoices and devised a cataloging system to mark the soil movement on the grid as well as the more esoteric symbols for mineral content and groundwater movement. Though they were careful with the maps, they were soon wearing thin from erasing and remarking.

“We’re going to need to print out more,” Adrian said as his eraser went through the corner of the map that contained well B-B-146.

“What software do we need?”

Adrian dug in the envelope for a diskette. “Never heard of it.” He handed it to Anthea.

She grimaced. “It’s an illustration program. My computer at work doesn’t have the operating system for it, not that I want to be caught dead printing out these maps at work.” She thought for a moment, considering the alternatives. “I’ve always wanted a computer at home,” she said. She could lease

something, maybe, or just buy it. Something she could make use of after the current project. Something Shay could use, too.

Shay glanced up from the worksheet she and Harold were hunched over. “What computer?”

“We need one that’ll run Windows and has a high-resolution video card.”

Harold snorted. “Don’t look at me. Our dinosaurs at the trailers are two-eighty-sixes.”

Adrian made his very-Adrian sound of disgust. “That’s cheap. Of course, we’re still waiting for requisition approval for our upgrades for last year’s releases.”

“Andy, I can’t let you buy—” Shay began.

“If I were a client, I’d provide you with the equipment, wouldn’t I?”

“No, we’d buy the equipment and bill you for the use of it while we worked on your project.”

Anthea shrugged. “Same difference. So consider me a client for the purpose of this project. Besides, you’re going to need a word processor at a minimum.”

Shay was frowning. “I don’t like it.”

Harold said, “What’s not to like? This work needs to be done and there’s someone who’s willing to pay for it.”

Shay’s frown intensified. “But I’m sleeping with that someone.”

Adrian laughed and said, “So where’s the problem?”

Anthea met Shay’s gaze. “Let me do this. It matters to me as much as to you.”

Anthea could sense Shay’s reluctance and confusion as she sighed. “Okay, okay,” Shay said.

Anthea smiled brilliantly. Maybe she was finally

smoothing down Shay’s rough edges about money.

“And after that, maybe you could tell me when Mrs.

Giordano’s birthday is. There’s a stove I want to get

her.”

Shay winced. “I’m losing this battle, aren’t 1?” Adrian glanced at them. “Is there a war?”

Harold stretched. Anthea thought his shirt would burst as the muscles rippled along his shoulders. “So where are we,” he said around a half-concealed yawn.

“Time for cappuccino and ganache,” Anthea said. She listened to Shay’s summary as she set up the machine.

Adrian moaned and said, “I’ve died and gone to Yuppie heaven.”

“Our data is only for the last six months, and the invoices only go back slightly further than that. So the pattern we have is compressed in time. It’s hard to show any kind of constituent movement in such a short period, but here’s what we have.” Anthea glanced up to watch Shay gesture from grid map to grid map. “We start with three wells showing xylene here, here, and here six months ago, at levels approaching the hazardous line. Then, a one-third reduction of xylene in all three wells four months later. Then we use the NEM data to show spikes of xylene suddenly appearing here, here and here. Two of those wells weren’t showing xylene before and the xylene that’s there isn’t at a hazardous level. But our well, good ol’ B-B-one-forty-six, already had a xylene content. Perhaps from prior dumping, but that’s just speculation.”

“This isn’t all just speculation?” Adrian rubbed his eyes behind his glasses.

Shay shook her head. “We have data and corroborating evidence. So our well suddenly not only has xylene, it has lots of xylene. About twenty percent over hazardous. Then, three weeks and seven hauling jobs into this grid later, the xylene is back to less than what it was before. And all that soil has been moved way over here — wouldn’t we love to have a soil sample from that area?”

Adrian waved his hand like an eager six-year-old. “I’ll do it, I’ll do it.”

Shay pursed her lips. “You’ll do no such thing without adult supervision, young man.”

Harold punched the map in the vicinity of B-B-146. “I wish I could find out how much water was pumped out in that area, because the soil movement alone won’t do it. It would take a lot of water, too, because the ground is mostly clay now.”

Anthea set the ganache dish down on the table and began slicing. As she set the first piece in front of Harold, with caramel pecan sauce oozing from the center, he said, “I want to have your baby.”

Anthea laughed. “Cappuccino coming right up.”

Adrian was smiling. “Now I know the way to his heart forever.”

“Chocolate is the universal aphrodisiac,” Shay said. She eagerly took her first bite. When Anthea returned with the cappuccino, all three of them were thumping their feet on the floor and rocking back and forth in their chairs.

“Chocolate orgasm,” Adrian said.

Anthea had the same reaction when she took her own first bite. She swelled up with pleasure and euphoria — it was either the chocolate or pride at having done a good job. It was hard to concentrate on Shay, who was answering Adrian’s question about why the water pumping would be important.

“If we knew that they had flooded this area, we’d have them on two counts. First, it would be evidence of intent to hide an illegal act. That’s one regulation that the EPA can fine for. Second, the illegal act is attempting to alter the constituents in an area already under EPA scrutiny. Not only is moving the soil illegal, so is pumping water into the area. But I don’t think there’s any way the four of us can get pumping logs.” Everyone nodded in agreement. “So the logs might be mysteriously misplaced when the EPA seizes relevant records.”

Harold whistled. “This is going to get serious, isn’t it?”

“It’s a serious thing that’s been done. By diluting the xylene, they’ve spread it over a larger, unscrutinized area. Little by little, with every rainfall, the runoff into the bay is going to contain some xylene.”

“What do we do now?”

“Well,” Shay said. “I need to get into it with Scott about whether he’s going to continue to insist the well sample I took — the one that started all this — is a lab error. Maybe he’ll order a retest, but I don’t think so. So I think I’ll let him fire me when I refuse to write the report his way. Then I have cause of action on another front — wrongful termination.”

“Isn’t that a little extreme?” Anthea hated to think of Shay getting fired.

“My dad and I went through a couple of these kinds of things, usually called in after someone got fired because they wouldn’t participate in a cover-up. The important thing with the EPA is to show intent to cover up. Fines are trebled and there’s less chance of them being waived later. Even so, I could also get treble damages, which would hurt NOC-U a bit. I’d like to see them get heavy fines and take a stock beating so shareholders get angry, like they did at G.E. I’ve got no problem with companies making profits, as long as they do it ethically. And this just isn’t right.”

Anthea took a deep breath. “Seconds, anyone?”

All three plates were held out.

“A deadly combination,” Adrian said. “Chocolate and anarchy.”

“But it’s not expensive. They’re practically giving it away because they’re upgrading the whole kitchen,” Anthea said. She diced carrots and slid them gently into the bubbling broth.

“How did you learn about this stove?” Mrs. Giordano put a final pat on a mound of dough, then turned it into a large stainless steel bowl to rise.

“Well,” Anthea hedged. “I was talking to a friend who runs a restaurant.” Actually, she had called a friend of Lois’s who had been receptive to the idea of ordering an industrial stove on Anthea’s behalf. She didn’t want to bruise the old lady’s pride, but it would save her a great deal of labor to have six

burners instead of four. And during the summer a heavier, insulated oven would keep the heat down. “It occurred to me you could use it.”

Shay came in with Mrs. Kroeger on one arm, followed closely by Mrs. Stein.

Mrs. Giordano turned to Shay and said firmly, “This girl of yours is giving me a new stove. What will I do with the old one?”

Anthea knew Mrs. Giordano was hooked, but she didn’t know about Shay. It wasn’t as if she needed Shay’s permission — Mrs. Giordano was as much her friend as Shay’s after all these weekends of working side by side.

“Well,” Shay said slowly, “there must be someone who needs a perfectly good stove, but doesn’t need to run a mini-restaurant on it.”

Mrs. Kroeger said she was sure Lily Wagner needed a new stove.

Anthea dished up fettucine noodles and smothered them with meat sauce. She remembered that Mrs. Kroeger liked extra cheese.

“But who will move it?” Mrs. Giordano looked as if she were afraid this detail stood between her and her salvation.

Anthea went back to chopping carrots. “I have these two male friends. I made them a ganache last night and basically, they owe me.”

Shay was smiling. “Harold does drive a cute little mini-truck. Let’s not tell him about the stairs until he gets here.”

“The stove should be here, I mean they should have it available in a couple of weeks,” Anthea said.

She started to blush as Mrs. Giordano gave her a sharp look. She’d have to dirty the thing up or Mrs. Giordano would never believe it was used.

Mrs. Giordano said to Shay, “This girl of yours. Are you going to make her an honest woman? What do they call it?”

Shay’s mouth hung open.

Mrs. Stein croaked, “Domestic partners, that’s what it is. A bit more of that sauce would be lovely, dear.”

Anthea watched Shay slowly close her mouth. “I, uh, we hadn’t talked about it. Yet. We don’t even live together.”

Mrs. Giordano waved a hand at Shay. “In my day this girl of yours would have been called a real homemaker, and that’s no easy thing. Plus she works, she’s smart, she has the pension plan—”

“Mrs. Giordano, please,” Anthea protested. “I feel like a prize cow.” And Shay looked like a reluctant farmer.

One of Mrs. Giordano’s eloquent hand waves was directed at Anthea. “And she’s got a heart of gold.”

“I know that,” Shay said, weakly. “I think she’s quite nice.”

“Nice!” Mrs. Giordano shrugged and turned to Mrs. Stein. “Nice, they call it these days. You should have heard what I heard this morning from downstairs. We never called it nice.”

Anthea gasped and a carrot went rolling across the counter. Shay’s face was gold-orange and the tips of her ears were brick red. Anthea suspected that her own face was magenta. They’d only stopped in to