Unfit to Practice (21 page)

“She says—she says she just won't do it.”

“What does he think of that?”

“He says he's not clairvoyant. He wants to know what the heck does she want from him? She says—ah, it's pretty private.”

“Come on, Wish, spit it out. Nothing's private to a private investigator.”

“She says she never wanted to hurt him, she loves him, but she thinks they better cancel the wedding. She won't tell him why. That makes him insane, basically.”

Oh, that girl, Paul thought, hoping for Wish's sake she reconciled with her man, and fast. What a handful.

“Now he's really mad,” Wish said unnecessarily. He turned the music up. “I'm going to buy you some new music,” he said. “Something newer than thirty years old.”

“This stuff never ages, Wish. It's classic.”

“A fancy word for
obsolete
. By the way, what was so private in his date book you took away from me?”

“Appointments.”

“There is another woman?” Wish guessed.

“He's working like a dog. He lives at the IRS office and tax court. There's no other woman. Listen, I think it's time we bow out on Bruce and Brandy. There's been enough intemperate sharing of information in this case already.”

“He's young to have big sex trouble, isn't he?”

“I hate to speculate.”

“Yeah, it is pretty disgusting, thinking about another man's sex problems.”

“Right.”

“On the other hand, I'm going to sleep good tonight, hoping that. What could be wrong with his approach, do you think?”

“Settle down, Wish.”

“She could like me, if she dumped Bruce.”

He was such a messy mix of mournful and hopeful, Paul almost laughed. “She's almost a married woman. You ain't got no business there, to misquote Sippi Wallace.”

The blue front door to Kirby's house flew open. Brandy stepped outside, pulling the door shut hard behind her.

“Things didn't end well,” Wish almost chortled.

“I reiterate, we don't get involved with clients,” Paul said. “It's unprofessional, plus it could get you in real trouble.”

“Okay, Rocky,” said Wish.

“I'm going back to Tahoe,” Brandy informed them.

Wish, grinning broadly, jumped out to open the back door for her.

Around Vacaville, Brandy finally started talking again. “I told him I'm going back to Angel's for a few more days. He's very mad at Nina for bringing all this trouble our way.”

“He's mad and he's a lawyer,” Paul summarized.

“Beeg trouble for Moose and Squirrel,” said Wish.

Friday-night traffic up the freeway to South Lake Tahoe made the long trip an infinite exercise in stop-and-go and imposed patience. The usual four-hour drive took them six. For dinner, to appease Wish and Brandy, Paul stopped in Placerville. They carbo-loaded at Mel's Diner, a chrome-trimmed restaurant on the main drag. Paul left them to it and went out to the car to use his phone. Reaching Nina at her office, he was happy to hear Bob had been invited to sleep over at a friend's house, which meant they would have the four-poster bed and the yellow comforter to themselves for the entire night. Elated, Paul hung up and went back to the table.

Watching Wish as he talked with Brandy, Paul stuck to iced tea, amazed that the gawky kid's social gaffes and big elbows did not seem to register with her at all. Brandy ate like the hungry girl she was, oblivious to the effect she was having on the big lunk. Meanwhile, Paul did what he could to urge things along. He wanted to get to Tahoe.

Unfortunately for him, there was an unavoidable delay. In a ritual that probably originated with the first language, Brandy and Wish needed to exchange life stories. Brandy talked first. I'll show you mine if you'll show me yours, thought Paul, exasperated, trying not to study his watch too openly. But Wish, Paul observed, was having the time of his life, listening intently as Brandy talked about her childhood, flirting in his oddball Washoe way. After she reported extensively, Wish told his own story in fits and starts, glossing over college, launching into asides about Sandy and Joseph, their marriage, divorce, and remarriage, their ranch near Markleeville, their activism in Native American causes.

“Your life is so exotic, Wish,” Brandy said after he finished his narrative of his vital legal investigations for Nina's office.

“It is?”

“You know, Native American people and heritage, such fascinating roots in a culture struggling to maintain dignity and identity in a new, complicated era. Your mother sounds cool, too.”

“Oh, that describes Sandy to a T,” Paul said, slipping out of the booth, meditating upon the mincemeat Sandy could make of a Wish-Brandy alliance. “And on that ominous note, I think we'd better hit the road again.”

Back in South Lake Tahoe, Nina prepared for Paul's arrival. After packing Bob off to Taylor Nordholm's—driving him there herself just for the reassurance that he was, in fact, exactly where he said he would be—she ran through the cabin with stern determination, shoving kitchen piles into drawers, kicking loose shoes and laundry into Bob's room and shutting the door, and cutting stems off three bunches of flowers she had bought to splash around the place. Roses in three-colored bunches, yellow, pink, and red, were arranged loosely in vases, placed and replaced on tables and in corners.

Then she examined her handiwork and decided things looked unearthly neat, so she messed a few magazines around on the coffee table. As if Paul cared. But the work was automatic and inexorable, as important as a court appearance to her on this night. She wanted everything beautiful and harmonious.

She missed him every night. She loved him so much! She wanted to be with him forever. Or something!

In the kitchen, she laid out ingredients as directed by Andrea to be swiftly boiled, blanched, and assembled later: fresh rigatoni, Swiss chard, toasted crumbs, anchovies, newly grated Parmesan. She tossed sliced tomatoes, slivered carrots, and two kinds of lettuce into a bowl, covered it tightly, and put it into the refrigerator. She would add homemade tomato-basil croutons and dressing, her specialties, later. A frosty bottle of champagne rested on the middle shelf, lonesome. She inserted a second beside it.

After lighting a pyramid of orange and blue candles on a side table in the living room, she threw a fresh log on the fire.

She took Hitchcock out for a brisk trot up the road, and then, murmuring words of apology, she tossed a big bone into the laundry area and shut him up inside for the night.

Upstairs, she changed the sheets on her bed and gave the yellow roses a pat. Checking the clock, she stepped into the shower. Hot steam forced her to shut her eyes. She stayed under the waterfall for a long time, until her skin was pink and shining, all the sins of the days and weeks drained temporarily away. Back in her room, she settled on a silk nightie with a matching silk robe loosely tied at the waist. She brushed her long brown hair, despaired of controlling it, and let it fly.

The phone rang. She started toward the bedside table.

The doorbell rang. She let the phone go to the message machine, racing downstairs to answer the door. Paul walked in the door, grabbed her, and trundled her into the warm, vanilla-scented living room, his mouth all over her neck, shoulders, and breasts, lips cold with the outside. Within minutes, he removed his shirt, her fine silk.

Everything.

Bliss, or fatigue, or mutual satisfaction must have knocked them both out, because a strange sound woke Nina, the sound of a key jiggling in the front door.

But how could that be? Why wasn't she in bed, with this long, hairy arm across her breasts covered demurely by a down comforter? Why did she feel so exposed?

The fire must have kept them warm, she thought groggily, realizing they had never made it to the bedroom. Paul, who lay all over and around her in an intimate clutch on the living-room rug, snored softly. Before she had time to heed the situation further or form a plan to stave off impending disaster, the front door opened widely.

Bob stepped in. “Mom?” he said. “Taylor's grandma's sick. I tried to call—” His voice fell away.

Closing her eyes, Nina played asleep, trying to keep her breathing regular, just like Bob used to do when he was little and was caught late at night reading by flashlight.

“Mom.” This time, Bob said the word more softly. He stood there in the entryway for what seemed like months, then tiptoed past them and crept up the stairs to his room.

“Wake up,” she whispered to Paul when she felt convinced of the thoroughness of Bob's absence from the room. She tried to lift Paul's heavy arm off her, but the arm, awakening slowly, had other things in mind. She repeated herself a few times, watched the lazy hazel eyes open wide at last, and fended off his hands, which had gone exploring. “I have to get up. Let me go!”

Something in her voice worked. He removed his arm. “What's the matter?”

“Bob came home,” she whispered.

“So?”

“Are you awake? He caught us lying here.” She moved her leg out from under his leg and stood up.

“God, you are so pretty from this vantage point.”

“Paul, get up!” She took his hand and tried to get him to his feet. “Put something on.” She handed him his shirt, which he obligingly put on. She handed him his pants. He pulled them over his legs. “Now button that shirt,” she commanded.

“What's the rush?” He fumbled with buttons. “He's on to us. There's no going back now.”

Trembling, she picked up her nightgown and robe. She put the robe on and climbed the stairs to her room. “Shh. I'll be right back.”

She returned fully dressed in a sweater and long knit skirt. Paul sat at the kitchen table in front of a beer and half-empty glass. Nina went directly to the refrigerator and pulled out the champagne. “We might as well open a bottle of this,” she said, and she knew how she sounded, sick at heart, horrified.

“Sure,” Paul said, ignoring all that. He popped the cork. She handed him two crystal flutes, which he filled.

“To us,” he said, clinking. “Bob will take it all right.”

She nodded and drank.

“Dinner?” Paul said, pointing his glass toward the full countertop.

“Yes, except Bob hates anchovies. You mind if I leave them out?”

“I don't mind.”

“You can't stay over tonight,” she said. “Taylor's grandma's sick.”

Before Paul could respond, Bob's door opened. “You guys decent now?” he called down the hall. “Can I come out?”

“Come on out,” Paul said.

“What will I say to him?” Nina asked.

“Say it's time for dinner. You're delighted he decided to join us after all. Say you're sorry about all that. Ask him if you can put anchovies in my half of the pasta.”

Lacking a better idea, she did.

18

O
N
S
ATURDAY MORNING,
despite the pressure Nina and Paul felt to work, they both dropped everything when Bob extorted his way into their plans.

“The only thing that's going to make it up to me is a hike up to Cave Rock, Mom,” he told Nina slyly, after she offered awkward apologies for the previous evening's living-room debacle. “I've been wanting to go there all summer, and now winter's coming and we still haven't gone.”

Nina called Paul to tell him. Paul invited himself along. “Let me check with Bob,” Nina said.

“Sure,” Bob said, “let's invite Paul. He's
such
good company. But I guess you know that.” Chuckling, he took off to find his boots.

Although Nina was clearly still worrying about Bob, he seemed untraumatized enough to Paul when he picked them up. They drove past Zephyr Cove to Nevada State Park, parking in the lot below the tunnel, Bob talking nonstop about why he needed to see the famous cave. “Wish told me there are spirits here and if we don't make any noise we'll hear them.”

When Bob let up for a few seconds, Paul listened to Nina tell about her conversation with Jack, and how Jack felt she was in the clear. She watched him out of the corner of her eye, as if daring him to say something different. He kept his skepticism to himself. He also kept himself from making one single crack about Jack.

The parking lot abutted Lake Tahoe, ending at a boat ramp, and the two or three other cars all had empty boat trailers. Flights of gulls punctuated the delicate sky, which looked as if it might destabilize into a storm during the afternoon, but the lake lay passive and cool beneath.

In a triumph of functionalism over history, Highway 50 had been blasted through the bottom of Cave Rock as a WPA project. Cars roared through the tunnel as they climbed up the hill in light scrub. Bob sat on the edge of a wall overlooking the lanes until Nina, nervous, called him back.

“The Washoe used the waters below this cave for their sacred burial area,” Bob lectured, climbing on ahead, Paul behind, Nina on his heels. “I asked Wish to come along, but he said he has too much homework, which is too bad, because he knows a lot more than I do about it.” They came very quickly to a flat area marred with concrete and broken glass with an enormous natural archway entry into the rock. Within the gloom they made out a hundred years of graffiti on the walls. Stacked bits of granite, feathers, and twigs, offerings of mysterious origins, decorated the large slabs of granite at the far end, where the rock narrowed into a V.

“There is a cave like this on Oahu,” Nina said. “Bigger, but with that same narrowing at the back. It's still an opening, but it seems to continue down into the earth at that point. The Hawaiians say it's where their race was born.”

They walked back into the light and poked around. Bob set off, climbing beyond it onto a hillside of loose shale. Nina, who had been sitting cheerfully on a rock overlooking the lake getting her picture snapped by Paul, got up grudgingly to continue on with him.

“I'll wait here,” Paul said, checking out the steep rock walls, noting the places where climbers had attached fixed holds. After they left, he walked around until one particular line on an outside wall of the cave attracted him. Cave Rock might be a sacred place to the Washoe, but to the profane rock-climbing community it was a vertical park.

Pulling his climbing shoes and some chalk for his hands out of his pack, he quickly readied himself for some free climbing, scoped the line out some more, eyeballed some handholds, and pulled himself into the ascent.

How he loved to climb. He loved the stretch of muscle under his skin, the adrenaline rush, the cold edges of rock that nicked him as he felt for handholds. He ignored the pitons left by more cautious roped-up types. After a while, he settled into a slow rhythm, taking no chances on the holds, which were, true, not too reliable, just enjoying himself in the moment, doing what his body was meant to do, his eyes six inches from Mother Earth, his hands holding her tight.

He reached the top fairly fast and sat down to enjoy another fantastic view of the lake and surrounding peaks, clouds massing in the east, a sliver of moon ghostly in the thin morning air. His reverie was interrupted by a shout, followed by a second shout, followed by his name.

He scuffled down the gentle backside of the rock face, toward the voices. There he found Nina kneeling over Bob, who was sitting at the bottom of a long rockfall, blood gushing from his knee. A bruise was beginning on one cheek, and scrapes on his arms told Paul he had taken quite a tumble.

“You all right, Bob?”

“It's not broken. I can walk.” Nina started to help him up, but he shook her off. “Leave me alone, Mom.”

They walked, or in Bob's case, hobbled, down the hill to the car, where Nina found her first-aid kit. By the time she bandaged the wound, Bob had established a policy of silence, which he somehow maintained through the stinging, painful cleansing regimen.

They rode back without even the soothing effects of music. Nina turned on NPR, and they listened to Bob Edwards telling, in his earnest round voice, the latest disheartening world news. By the time they reached Caesars, Paul was happy to say good-bye, although sorry for Nina. They got out while Bob stayed in the car, and walked a short distance away.

“What happened up there?”

“He was fine until I told him he couldn't go to ‘band practice' this afternoon at Nikki's. I made up an excuse but he saw through me, which upset him. He suddenly decided to leave the trail and climb a steeper part of the hill. I told him to stop, it was too steep. Then he fell, which humiliated him.”

“Humiliated?”

“You can't imagine how much he looks up to you, Paul. He didn't want you to see him.”

Touched, Paul said, “I'll take him out sometime and teach him a few things.”

“I don't want him rock climbing.”

“He's getting older, Nina. It's a safe sport if he learns right. I started at about his age.”

“Sure. He can spend the nights with Nikki and the days risking his neck. Why not? He's a big thirteen years old!”

Paul said gently, “He's going to grow up with or without you, honey.”

“You don't understand,” Nina said with that fierce note in her voice, and Paul did understand that he'd better back off or she might kick him out of the stepfather competition. He was feeling a certain solidarity with the kid, and she didn't like that. Did “stepfather” mean being a yes-man for the mother? He experienced a moment of doubt about Nina. She was too driven and too protective of the kid.

She made a good boss, though, and unfortunately he was in love with her. He had wanted to do some serious talking about their future the night before, and it didn't look like the opportunity would come again soon. “I'll call you after I speak with Ali,” he said.

He set out up the road toward Meyers, the next town over on the California side of the lake.

The Peck family owned some acreage on a side street off South Upper Truckee Road. Consulting his map and watching for a crooked wooden sign Ali had described, he arrived at the house at a few minutes after noon. U-shaped, with an open grassy courtyard in front, the house stepped down a hill on the backside and must have had some expansive glass in back for admiring the craggy landscape beyond. He looked forward to a peek inside, but as it turned out, he had no opportunity.

Ali Peck waved him over to the side of the house. She had a split stack of wood beside her on the left, a few short logs to the right, and a two-foot log set up lengthwise on a low stump. As he walked over, she gave it a smack with a long-handled ax. The log fell open like the O.E.D. She threw the two pieces toward the split pile, then started in on another one. “Hang on,” she said, “I'm almost done.”

She wore jeans and a V-necked T-shirt that read One Tequila, Two Tequila, Three Tequila, Floor. He watched her shoulders work. He could see her appeal. Youth, pep, spirit—she had it all, and if he could see that in a few strokes of the ax, imagine what riding with her day after day must have shown Kevin.

She stopped, set the ax against the stump, removed gloves, and wiped her hands on her jeans. “I won't shake,” she said. “Blisters.”

“You know who I am.”

“Yeah. You can call me Ali if I can call you Paul.”

“Okay.”

“I don't know what you expect to get out of me. This mess with Kevin has been such a pisser.” She pushed hair away from her face, and Paul noticed she had not broken a single nicely manicured fingernail.

“Your parents around, Ali?”

“They do a big grocery shop on Saturday afternoon. I don't want them involved.”

A careful and mature young lady, Paul thought. And it made things easier for him. “Looks like you do a lot of that.”

“Two cords a season. My father chops the other two cords. He's a karate instructor. Do you want to sit down? How long is this going to take? I'm willing to do this one last thing for Kevin, whatever loose ends you're here to take care of, but tell Kevin I won't be taken by surprise again. I'll be out of state when the permanent-custody hearing comes around. I'm not going to go through another court scene. So embarrassing. I don't specially like hurting my first lover, you know.”

“Where are you going?”

“To spend the spring at my aunt's ranch in Arizona. It's too hot for me here in the mountains at the moment. I'm a scandal.” She laughed. “I just hope all this doesn't ruin my career in law enforcement.” She sat down on a smooth rock in the yard and Paul sat on a log beside her. The yard, Tahoe style, had been left natural. The well-spaced pines and the soft lawn of needles made it look like a nature preserve.

“You may still get subpoenaed,” Paul said. “Even in another state. There are ways.”

“I'll get a better lawyer if I have to. Can we get this over with? I heard that Kevin lost the hearing. He really loves his kids. It's too bad.”

“How did it happen? You and him, I mean?”

Her eyebrows went up and she smiled. For once she looked her age. “It just happened. We were alone a lot. I was helping him right down to assisting in the apprehension of suspects. I know cadets aren't supposed to be put in harm's way but things happen fast. We became like real partners who trust each other totally. Sometimes we went on stakeouts and we'd tell each other all about our lives. Kevin was miserable with his wife. He finally broke down and told me.” She glanced at Paul.

“I'm sorry, I forgot how old you are. I need to make a note,” Paul said.

“Yes, legally I was underage. Kevin worried about that all the time. We had to be incredibly careful. He might be fired. Has he been disciplined?”

“There's an investigation.”

“He has to be in trouble. Everybody knows about us now. At least I fended off that statutory-rape garbage. My father wanted to go to the police but I wouldn't let him. After it came out, they decided not to prosecute, because I wouldn't cooperate. The fact is, we were in love. We were two adults and what we did was our own business.” She had a clear, intelligent way of talking. Maybe someday she would become a police officer, but she had some work to do on her judgment first.

“I'm confused,” Paul said. “Did Kevin and his wife split up because of the affair?”

“No! Absolutely no way could she know about it. They were living together the whole time. This custody issue hadn't come up. But we were in love. Kevin was everything to me. I planned to marry him.”

“So the two of you talked about marriage?”

“Sure. He wanted to marry me, too, but he wanted to be sure he'd get the kids. I wasn't sure what I wanted except that I wanted him.”

“So did Kevin tell his wife he wanted to separate while you two were still, ah, in the relationship?”

“No. We almost got to that point. We had plans. Go to Alaska, if you want to know. I was there two years ago on an Outward Bound kayaking trip. It was an excellent place. My parents wouldn't like me going, but they would respect my rights. But it never got to that point.”

“Why not?”

“Well, we had been together about three months. We were patrolling the condo area up at Ski Run around eleven at night in a snowfall. We had a big talk. Kevin told me, okay, Ali, this is it, I'm going to tell her tomorrow. And we're going to go to Alaska and start over, and I'll bring my kids and we'll get jobs and live in a cabin and do some hunting and trapping. He had finally come around to what I wanted. We had sex in the patrol car. I fibbed in court when I said we never did it there, incidentally. Then I went home and went to bed.”

“I see,” Paul said. He checked her face again. Was she truly eighteen, or some hard-nosed mama of forty?

Ali did that smile again, the smile with the eyebrows up that made a sort of facial shrug. “Yeah,” she said, “that's how close I came. But then when I went to bed I couldn't sleep. I thought stuff like, we don't have any money, how do we get to Alaska? And I don't like doing dishes or anything, so do I want to take care of kids? All of a sudden, you know, this lightning bolt hit me and I fell out of love. Like this.” She snapped her fingers. “All of a sudden I couldn't understand what I ever liked about Kevin.

“He has no ambition. He's actually kind of passive except when it comes to his kids. The truth is that I initiated everything. He liked being dragged along. And the sex was good but he was only my second boyfriend and there was this cute exchange student from Sofia—that's in Bulgaria, in case you were wondering—at school who I was starting to think about, like, you know, what a shame. He's soulful. He wants to be a writer. You know?”

“I know.” He thought back to a beautiful artist he knew once.

She shook her head wonderingly. “I felt like I had been sick with flu and just suddenly got over it. I searched my soul that night and I realized I didn't want to go to Alaska. I knew it was over. Has that ever happened to you?”

“Not since I was seventeen,” Paul said.

“Are you saying I'm immature? Because—”

“No, no. I have no problem with that.”

This magic sentence always worked. Ali's defensiveness dissolved and she said with a trace of boastfulness, “So that was my love affair. Is that all you wanted to ask me about?”