Trust Me (24 page)

Carly looked at him. “How did you know about this?”

“I didn’t. I only knew that he didn’t fall down the stairs.” Max briefly described what had happened since Thursday.

Her eyes grew wide. “You heard about this last Thursday?
This
is why you were asking me all of those questions? But… why didn’t you just tell me then?”

“It hadn’t been confirmed.”

“I see,” Carly said slowly. “And when was it confirmed?”

“Monday.”

“Monday. But you were at my apartment last night, and you didn’t say anything. No, I take that back. You said, specifically,
that it was nothing. This doesn’t seem like ‘nothing’ to me.”

She looked hurt, as if he had somehow betrayed her with his silence. Max didn’t answer. He was not in the habit of confiding
in anyone.
And now
, he thought,
would be a very bad time to begin.
He stared down at the statue, feeling a chill in his stomach.

Carly exhaled sharply. “You know, this may be news to you, but sometimes two people can actually accomplish more than one
stubborn loner. I was the one who found the blood, remember? Without me, you wouldn’t have figured this out.”

Max didn’t appreciate the reminder. He was angry with himself for never thinking to search so far from where it seemed Henry
had fallen. He had continuously taken the situation at face value, assuming first that the old man had fallen down the stairs,
then that he had been injured in the front hall. But the obvious answer was dead wrong in both cases, and his own stupidity
had cost him valuable time.

“Max!” Carly exclaimed. “Why is it so hard for you to accept that you just can’t do everything alone?”

Can’t I?
Max thought.
We’ll see.
A few tiny drops of blood had just changed everything. Carly hadn’t yet realized—or was pretending not to know—that it would
have been virtually impossible for Henry Tremayne, an eighty-year-old man with the back of his skull fractured by a nearly
fatal blow, to have gotten up from where he had fallen and walked fifty feet into the house to collapse at the foot of the
stairs.

C
arly had long been in the habit of packing her own lunch in the morning before she left home, a moneysaving effort that she
had begun in vet school and never quite felt comfortable abandoning. She had a limited repertoire of sandwiches, though, and
today she would gladly have fed her peanut-butter-and-banana-on-whole-wheat to one of her canine clients. True success, she
thought, as she poked at her carrot sticks, would be a daily delivery of fettuccine Alfredo from the bistro down the street.
As life goals went, it wasn’t a bad one.

She sighed and stuffed the half-eaten sandwich back into the brown paper bag. It was a relatively quiet day at the clinic,
and she was sitting at the table in the break room. Technically, she had an office, a tiny space that barely held her desk
and one extra chair, but she found it claustrophobic and preferred the friendly bustle of the staff area.

“Carly.”

She looked up. Richard was standing in the doorway. He looked tired, she thought, and wondered why. He had been working hard,
but he had always done long hours in surgery, and they had never seemed to affect his health before. His tanned skin looked
dull and coarse, and even his hair seemed lank.

“I thought you had the Martinez cat at noon,” he said.

She shook her head. “Canceled.”

“When? It was on the schedule this morning. If that lady thinks I won’t enforce our twenty-four-hour-notice policy, she’s
going to be very depressed when I bill her for today.”

“Her car broke down,” Carly said. “She called at ten to say so. If she were psychic, I’m sure that she would have called yesterday.”

“We could have put someone else in that time slot.”

“Not today we couldn’t. I’ve only got three appointments this afternoon.”

“Great,” Richard muttered. “So I’m paying a receptionist and a technician to sit around and do nothing. You!” He pointed at
Brian, who was sitting at the lab table, in front of the microscope. “What are you doing?”

Brian started visibly, and his face flushed a dull red that clashed with the yellow of his hair. Carly winced. He was a nice
kid, but so shy that he seemed to huddle into himself even when he was standing straight. He was great with animals; but people
were another story, and he was no match for Richard. “P-parasitology screen,” he stammered.

“Finish it and punch out. Go home.”

“I… I’m… on the schedule until six,” Brian said.

“Not anymore. Come back tomorrow when we need you. Dr. Martin is going to do her own lab work today.”

“Richard!” Carly exclaimed.

“Don’t start. You said yourself that you only have three appointments for the rest of the day. Instead of just sitting around
while the kid works, suppose you do it yourself. What a concept.”

“I am very familiar with that concept,” Carly said through her teeth. “And I am not just sitting around, I am eating my lunch.
Are you planning to send Michelle home, too? Shall I also answer the phone and book appointments, or did you want to do that?”

“Spare me the drama, all right? You might have your eye on a millionaire, but I’m trying to run a business.” He paused, waiting
for her reaction, and looked disappointed when she didn’t rise to the bait. “Speaking of millionaires,” he added, “how’s your
friend Henry Tremayne? He still in the hospital?”

“Yes,” Carly said. “How did you hear about that? I didn’t tell you.”

“It was in the
Chronicle.
In the society column—he’s rich, that automatically makes him interesting, huh? I meant to ask you about it last week, but
I forgot. What happened to him?”

“He fell,” Carly said. It was a reasonable question, she supposed, but she would have appreciated a little more sensitivity.
Richard had met Henry only once, two years ago, so he probably thought of the old man as nothing more than a regular source
of revenue, but he knew that Carly considered him a friend.

“The paper said he’s in a coma.”

“He was, last week. Now he’s waking up.”

“He’s awake?”

“Not exactly. His eyes are open, but he’s not conscious.”

“Jesus.” Richard shuddered. “If that were me, I’d want them to pull the plug.”

“I’ll make a note of that,” Carly said coldly.

“Seriously. I wouldn’t want to live like that. Do they really think he’s going to get better? What is he, ninety years old?”

“Eighty.”

“I guess we should send some flowers. He’s our best client.”

“That would be nice,” Carly said.

He frowned, considering. “Then again, if he’s not going to know, there’s no point in sending them now. Maybe later. We’ll
see how it goes.” He nodded to himself, satisfied, then poured a fresh cup of coffee and left.

Carly glanced at Brian, who was staring into the microscope as if he had become one with the lens, pretending that he hadn’t
heard a thing.

“Sorry about that, Bri,” she said. “You didn’t know what you were getting yourself into when you signed on with us, did you?”

Brian was still red with anxiety. “I meant to tell him… that there was still a lot to do, but I didn’t get a chance. Should
I really go home? I need the hours.”

“I know,” Carly said. “It’s up to you. He goes into surgery at one, and if you want to stay, I can keep you out of his way
until then. Carrie is supposed to be cleaning cages when she comes in, but if you go back and start that now, I’ll find something
else for her to do.”

“Okay,” Brian got up, relieved. “Buzz me when you need me.”

* * *

Hector Gracie was a short, muscular man with sallow skin, gray hair, and a drooping mustache that made him look more like
an aged Wyatt Earp than a senior San Francisco police detective. He shook Max’s hand and looked him up and down with dark,
expressionless eyes.

Max had not called the police directly. In his experience, everything from legal procedures to blind dates tended to run more
smoothly when they were arranged through a preestablished network. He had, therefore, called the mayor’s office, and the mayor’s
office had called the chief of police. A short time later, Gracie met him at the Tremayne mansion.

The detective listened briefly to Max’s description of what had been happening, then nodded brusquely and squatted to look
at the statue. Then, without saying a word, he stood up and walked into the house. Max followed him, but before he could speak,
he saw that the detective had already found the drops of blood on the rug. Gracie knelt, squinted at them, then stood up.
He fixed his gaze on Max.

“Okay,” he said. “I’m going to get an evidence technician out here. We’ll check out the blood, and anything else that we find.
It’s late in the game, though. This area has been cleaned?”

“More than once,” Max said.

“That won’t help.” Coolly, Gracie looked at Max as if he had personally come in with a mop and the intention of destroying
evidence.

Max stared right back at him. “Any idea why the cop in charge didn’t file a report when he should have?”

The detective shrugged, completely unfazed. “Nope. But I’m going to find out.”

Max believed him. Gracie had sharp eyes, he thought, and he was clearly nobody’s dupe. It was too soon to say that he liked
the detective, but the early signs were favorable.

“You know of anybody who doesn’t like your grandfather?” Gracie asked. “Somebody he might have had words with recently?”

“No,” Max said. “But I’m not the one to ask.”

The detective grinned, unexpectedly. “That’s okay. You’re not the only one I’ll be asking.”

It was a crosstown drive to Ocean Beach from the Ritz-Carlton, but Max had gotten into the habit of making a late-afternoon
pilgrimage on the days when his schedule didn’t give him time for morning exercise. A crack-of-dawn run through downtown San
Francisco was a relatively peaceful experience, but the same path at 6
P.M.
would have endangered his life. He had made the mistake of trying it once, shortly after he had arrived in the city, and
had barely escaped being mowed down by a bicycle courier. Rush-hour traffic, be it automotive or pedestrian, was too much
of a distraction to allow him to get into the meditative state that he craved, and using the health-club treadmill was not,
in his opinion, an acceptable alternative.

He liked Ocean Beach. It was usually shrouded in a chilly fog by the time he arrived, but there was something powerful and
serene about the endless stretch of coastline and the steady crash and hiss of the gray waves. When he ran there he felt wild,
solitary, and free, and the harsh cries of the circling shore birds touched an echoing chord inside him. The primal sounds
seemed to give voice to the isolation he often felt, but in the anonymity of the fog it seemed only natural, allowing him
to relax into himself. He had never, ever considered bringing company.

Until today.

“Okay,” he said, as he parked the car, “if you can’t keep up with me, I’m not going to wait for you. I’m going to quit and
call this a failed experiment. No screwing around. I mean it.”

His companion thumped her tail against the leather upholstery and waited for him to finish. He did not even want to begin
to think about the fact that he was lecturing a dog, but she really did seem to be listening.

“I don’t care if you chase birds,” Max continued. “Just don’t get lost. And for God’s sake, don’t
jump
on anybody.”

Lola grinned at him, and he regarded her skeptically. He probably should have brought a leash or something, but the idea offended
him. His run was about freedom, and he didn’t want to be tied to the dog any more than she wanted to be tied to him. It didn’t
seem necessary, anyway. Lola was timid and tended to stick to him like a burr. It was his hope that the atmosphere of the
beach would be as good for her as it was for him.

“Well,” he said, pocketing the car key and walking around to the passenger door to set the dog loose, “Here goes. Let’s see
what we can do.”

He knew that Lola had a checkered past, but he hadn’t even considered the possibility that a dog raised on the California
coast might never have seen the ocean before. She froze on the pavement, sniffing the air, her eyes rolling from side to side
with an astonishment that made it obvious that this was a completely new experience for her. She looked skeptically at the
soft sand, and Max began to laugh at the look on her face as she stepped cautiously off the concrete. Daintily, she put down
one paw, then another, then suddenly decided that this beach was a fine place and leaped forward, kicking up her heels like
a colt. She did one exuberant circle around him, then sped toward the water, sending gulls into flight before her as she ran.

“I’ll be damned,” Max said, suddenly alarmed as her lanky brown body disappeared into the fog. It seemed that Lola’s ability
to keep up with him was not going to be an issue. For a moment, there was nothing, then suddenly she reappeared, breaking
through the fog like a fighter jet. Soaked with brine, she did another joyful swoop around him and tore off again.