Booked for Murder (2 page)

She took a small pair of green rubber binoculars from her satchel
and scanned the beach from north to south. Luckily for her purpose, there were surprisingly few people, and those there were clearly didn't belong to the bucket and spade brigade. Every time the woman's binoculars picked out a dog, she paused and took a careful look at the animal and its owner. There was no sign of her target.

The woman lowered her binoculars and waited five minutes before repeating the exercise. On the third sweep, she picked out the black Labrador frolicking in the waves. In spite of his playfulness, he was clearly no puppy. She felt a frisson of excitement. Forcing herself to be patient, she continued her slow scan. A couple of hundred yards behind the dog, a figure jogged slowly. A finger nudged the focus wheel and the face came into sharp focus. There was no doubt about it. It matched the pictures supplied by her client. The dog was a six-year-old Labrador cross called Mutton. The woman was a thirty-seven-year-old journalist with a reputation for stirring up trouble. Her name was Lindsay Gordon. If the observer was successful in her mission, tomorrow someone else would have to walk the dog.

With infinite care, the watcher returned the binoculars to the satchel. It was time to do the business.

Chapter 1

L
indsay Gordon jogged gently along the hard sand at the edge of the Pacific surf on Half Moon Bay. Against the rhythmic beat of Air Nikes on wet sand and the thud of blood pulsing in her ears, the waves crashed less regularly. Ahead of her, Mutton chased the foaming surf as it retreated across the sand to be sucked back into the vast body of water, occasionally pausing to bark a deep protest as some bubbles he'd been particularly attached to disappeared. Other joggers might have Walkmen clamped to their heads, shutting out everything except their chosen sounds. Lindsay preferred a more natural music, particularly on a day like today when she had death on her mind.

The day had given no indication that it was going to bring tears before bedtime. She'd got up with Sophie and they'd eaten breakfast on the deck together—peaches, bananas, grapes and walnuts chopped up and sprinkled with Grape Nuts, freshly squeezed orange and grapefruit juice and, for Lindsay only, the industrial-strength coffee she still needed to kick-start her day. It didn't matter how healthy her diet and her habits became; she had grown up on a high-voltage caffeine jolt first thing in the morning, and herbal tea was never going to boot her synapses into activity. Later than usual, because it was Sunday and she was only on stand-by, Sophie had headed north to the hospital in the Bay Area where she worked with HIV-positive mothers, leaving Lindsay to her computer. She preferred to work when Sophie was on duty so she could enjoy their time off together without guilt. Consequently, she
didn't mind settling down with more coffee and a pile of photocopied newspaper cuttings next to her keyboard.

Six years before, she'd stopped practicing journalism and started teaching it. Not a day had gone by when she hadn't congratulated herself on her decision. Now, thanks to the “publish or be damned” demands of her boss at Santa Cruz, she'd been catapulted into her past life. A persuasive editor had talked her into a publishing contract for a book on the decline of British tabloid journalism from 1980 to 1995. It was supposed simultaneously to be a penetrating political analysis and an entertaining romp for the general reader. “Define oxymoron,” Lindsay muttered as her machine booted up with its usual mechanical grumbles. “The demands of a publisher's editor. On the one hand, deep and insightful. On the other hand, shallow and superficial.”

Today, the Falklands conflict. Not the battles between the Argentinian and British soldiery, but the rows that raged between government censors and militant journalists betrayed by proprietors who caved in under pressure. And the
Sun
's shameful “Gotcha!” headline on the sinking of the
Belgrano
. It was more than enough to keep her absorbed in her screen until late afternoon, apart from a quick break at noon to walk Mutton around the scrubland and eat a chicken Caesar salad.

By five, she'd had enough. Whistling the dog, Lindsay had fired up her battered black Caddie and headed inland to a grocery store a few miles away that carried a stock select enough to satisfy the most discriminating California foodie. Lindsay's freezer was empty of bread, and she needed to stock up on ciabatta with olives, with artichokes, with sun-dried tomatoes and just plain. The challenge was always to get it home without tearing lumps out of it en route. While she was there, she raided the deli counter for grazing material for the evening. It was that once-a-month night when Sophie would be out with her doctor friends putting the world to rights, so Lindsay could veg out on the sofa and watch the
Inspector Morse
episode she'd taped the week before, with occasional trips to the kitchen to stack up another plate of nibbles. Bliss.

Her plans died when she got back to the house and finally got round to opening the morning paper. She idly flicked over the front
page, breaking off a piece of artichoke ciabatta.
Darkliners Author Dies in Freak Accident
seemed to separate itself from the rest of page three and rise towards her like a macabre magic carpet.

“No,” Lindsay breathed as she started to read.

The piece of bread never made it to her mouth. Lindsay sat down suddenly on a kitchen chair and reread the article, tears pricking her eyes. Mutton slumped against her leg, butting his head against her sympathetically. Lindsay's hand went to the dog's head in an automatic movement, rubbing her fingers over the silky ears. Her other hand traced the outline of the newsprint. Penny was dead.

The tears spilled over and trickled down Lindsay's cheeks. Less than five weeks before, Penny had been sitting on their deck knocking back Sierra Nevada amber ale and bemoaning the end of her relationship with Meredith Miller, the woman she'd been seeing for the previous five years. It had been a shocking conversation. If anyone had asked Lindsay who were the couple most likely to make it work, she'd have answered without hesitation, “Meredith and Penny.” They'd always seemed entirely compatible, a marriage of equals. Even Penny's need to remain in the closet because of her huge market among teenagers in middle America hadn't been a bone of contention; it was matched by Meredith's own requirements. A computer scientist with a defense contractor, she had top-secret clearance, a grading she'd lose immediately her sexuality became known to her professionally paranoid bosses.

The two women had shared a tall Victorian house that had been divided into a duplex; Meredith lived in the two lower floors, Penny above. But the terraced garden at the back was common, allowing them to move freely from one section of the house to the other without being overlooked. So they'd effectively lived together, while maintaining the fiction of being nothing more than friends. In San Francisco, Lindsay had realized a long time ago, it wasn't always easy
to tell who were lovers and who merely friends. It was so easy to be out that everyone assumed anyone who wasn't had to be straight and sadly lacking a partner.

Although it had been clear from the tone of the conversation that it had been Penny who had given Meredith her marching orders, she had spoken with deep regret about the ending of the relationship. “She left me with no choice,” she'd said sadly, head leaning against Sophie's shoulder as Lindsay tended the barbecue. “Right from the start, we always had borderlines, you know? We had common concepts of what was acceptable in a relationship and what wasn't. Fidelity was an absolute. She must have known she was leaving me no option, doing what she did.” She took another pull on her beer and stared into the sunset.

“Maybe she was testing you,” Lindsay had tried.

“I don't think so,” Penny said. “I think she was in self-destruct mode. And you can't stop somebody who's that determined.”

“No, but you don't have to give them a shove in the wrong direction,” Lindsay muttered, knowing she wouldn't be heard over the hissing of the marinade she'd just used to baste the salmon.

By the end of the evening, Penny had had enough bottles of the dark golden ale for Sophie to insist she stayed the night and Lindsay had had enough of Penny's grief to slip away on the excuse of checking her e-mail. “Tactless toerag,” Sophie had muttered as she'd slid into bed beside her later.

“How can I be tactless from my study?” Lindsay asked plaintively.

“Have you forgotten who taught you to be computer literate? Who showed you how to surf the Internet?”

“Oops,” Lindsay said.

“Oops is right. You going off to collect your e-mail was the signal for Penny to slide right over into maudlin tears and reminisce about Meredith turning the lesbian community cyberpunk.”

“But only if they let her wear a bag over her head,” Lindsay responded. “You know, I couldn't do a job where I had to stay in the closet.”

“No,” Sophie sighed. “You have many fine qualities, Lindsay, but discretion isn't even in the top forty.”

And now Penny was dead. Lindsay kept staring at the newspaper. She had no idea what to do next. She supposed she should call Meredith in San Francisco, but she didn't have any enthusiasm for it. It wasn't that she didn't want to be supportive, rather that she knew she was more use at the practical rather than the emotional side of things. In their partnership, it was Sophie who did emotional support.

Impatient with herself, Lindsay wiped the tears from her face. She'd take the dog for his evening run, then she'd call Meredith. “Penny would have taken the piss mercilessly,” she told Mutton as she walked up to the bedroom and changed into her running uniform of shorts, T-shirt and cross-trainers. “‘Whatever happened to the tough journalist?' she'd have said. ‘Thought you could face out anybody? You scared of a bit of raw emotion, Lindsay?' She'd have been a proper monkey on my back, dog,” she added as Mutton licked her knee.

Lindsay jogged up the street, then cut across towards the beach, avoiding the wiry grasses that would whip her legs raw within minutes. Once on the sand, she headed for the water's edge, turned her back on Pillar Point and let her rhythm gradually build to a place where it became a part of her she didn't have to think about. There were fewer people than usual on the beach that evening but Lindsay didn't notice. Penny Varnavides was at the center of her mind's eye, caught in a slo-mo memory replay, playing beach volleyball with Lindsay, Sophie, Meredith and half a dozen other women last Easter. Lindsay could see the ponytail of glossy black hair switch across Penny's tanned shoulders as she leapt for the ball, the sun glinting on dark eyes and white teeth as she soared into the sky, fingers stretched to the limit to nudge the ball upwards again for one of her team-mates to sweep back over the net.

Never again, Lindsay thought, bitter and sad. Next time they all trooped down to the beach, they'd be one short.

Although she wasn't consciously checking out her surroundings, part of Lindsay's mind was on alert. Her evening routine with the dog had been going on sufficiently long for her to be familiar with other locals who ran or walked by the ocean. A stranger was enough in itself to register with her. A stranger walking a north-westerly line that
looked as if it were chosen to intersect inevitably with her southerly one was enough to take her mind momentarily off Penny. Lindsay slowed slightly and stared at the approaching figure.