Burn (14 page)

“You should get a job writing real estate brochures.”

“It's a fire ecology, ” Plum said. “Hello. If you need a brochure to tell you that, sorry, Charlie. You're beyond my help. Hope the view was worth it.”

Andrew opted to listen to the fire report on the radio anyway. He let the conversation ebb for a while. He was beginning to wonder where Heather Lomax could possibly be going, and when she was going to get there. It seemed as if they'd been driving all day.

Eventually, the little Beemer exited the 5 at a junction for State Highway 14. Northeast they traveled. Andrew saw a sign that said Antelope Valley Freeway. Plum had started to spool out more distance between them and the convertible, hanging farther back with each mile.

“What's the matter?”

“Don't worry, ” Plum said. “I know where she's going. Not so much traffic up here. Best to drop a little before our cover gets any thinner.”

“Where's she going?”

“Just kick back and enjoy the scenery. I don't want to spoil the suspense.”

Andrew considered reminding Travis Plum that he was being paid to spoil the suspense. But at some point along the long winding ride, the past thirty hours had caught up with him. Andrew felt like he had bags of sand on his shoulders; his eyelids kept sagging to half-mast, and he was rapidly losing the battle with gravity. Banter was suddenly beyond him.

He didn't know when he nodded off, or for how many miles. He only knew that when his head snapped up again, they'd left the main road and arrived at what appeared to be a long driveway lined with cedars and
pines. A broad wooden arch across the stone-walled entrance read
WELCOME TO MOUNTAIN VIEW.

“Where are we?”

“Mountain View, ” Plum said as they passed under the arch. “Welcome.”

The driveway opened up into what appeared to be some kind of hillside resort. Andrew could see a sprawling ranch-level main building with big windows and a wood shake roof. Beyond this building, groupings of what looked like A-frame lodges surrounded an open garden plaza. Wildflowers bloomed all about. Through a small orchard of almond trees, Andrew could see glints of lake blue.

“I don't suppose it's possible, ” he said, “that David Lomax is hiding out in an off-season ski lodge.”

“Those aren't ski lodges, ” Plum said.

“Do I have to keep guessing?”

Plum grinned. “Remember when I said Heather Lomax might not be shooting all her marbles?”

“I remember.”

“Let's just say maybe the nut didn't fall far from the tree.”

Andrew looked at him. Plum said nothing for the moment, maneuvering the Camry into a space between two other cars in the lot off the main building. He nodded at the windshield as he killed the engine.

Up ahead, Heather Lomax took a flagstone path toward the garden square on foot. She wore flat sandals, jean shorts, and a pale yellow halter top. In her arms, she carried what looked to Andrew like a big bunch of cut daisies tied with a ribbon.

“What say we scooch down in the seat, just in case?”

“In case of what? She can't see us this far.”

“I like to be cautious, ” Plum said.

Andrew exhaled and did as Plum requested. After they'd settled, he braced his knees against the dashboard and looked at Plum again. He felt ridiculous.

“I give up. Where are we?”

“Mountain View, ” Plum told him, “is sort of an assisted-living facility.”

“What, like an old folks home?”

“Not exactly, no.” Plum shifted in the seat to a more conversational angle. “I only use the phrase ‘assisted-living facility’ because I don't know what the politically correct term for nuthouse is. Whatever you call it, Mountain View is one. An expensive one.”

Andrew absorbed this information.

“Who does the girl come here to visit?”

“Her mother, ” Plum said. “Barbara Lomax.”

Andrew cocked his head.

“I tell you true, ” Plum said. “Don't know the story, but as I understand it, she's been here a few years now.”

“Her mom.”

“Her mom.” Plum peered up over the steering wheel, saw that the coast had cleared, and sat up in the seat. “This was the first place I followed that cop Timms and his partner. I figure they came up here thinking a good boy might have said good-bye to his mother before skipping town. That hunch must have struck out, though, so I don't know. Maybe David Lomax isn't such a good boy.”

Plum put his hands on the wheel.

“So. What do you want to do?”

Andrew looked through the windshield, off toward the A-frame unit into which Heather Lomax had disappeared.

“Wait, ” he said.

Heather Lomax didn't reappear for nearly two hours. Andrew slept in the passenger seat half the time, fidgeted the other half. He didn't know how those cops in the park managed to sit and watch the same house all day long without shooting themselves in the brain out of boredom.

Every so often, Plum started the car, ran up the windows, and punched on the air-conditioning for a few minutes. In between, Andrew sat and tried to ignore the heat as his armpits grew slick with sweat, and his clothes wilted into his skin. Plum tried to make conversation, but Andrew wasn't in the mood.

He was dozing again when things finally began happening. First, Andrew felt motion. He sat up in the seat and saw they were on the move again, traveling back down the long driveway in the direction they'd come. Up ahead, he saw Heather Lomax's little Z3 at the stone gates. Brake lights pulsed briefly as the car took a rolling left and disappeared from view.

“Better step on it, ” Andrew said.

“I'm stepping, ” said Plum. “Ease up, Sleeping Beauty. There's kind of an art to this, you know.”

Plum's greatest artistic challenge, Andrew observed, now seemed to be keeping the BMW within range. Lomax had become a different driver since her visit to Mountain View. On the return trip, she hugged the mountain turns like a racetrack.

By the time they finally made it back to the 5, she'd kicked out the jams. Even with the needle anchored at 85, Plum still struggled to keep up.

“I think we're losing her, ” Andrew said.

“If you'd rather do the driving, I can pull over.”

“Don't be so sensitive.” Andrew pointed. “She's changing lanes again.”

Through the miles they zigzagged. When the time came, instead of taking the junction back to Beverly Hills, Lomax sailed past and took the 5 down into Glendale.

They followed her off the freeway at the Colorado exit. Back in city traffic, Plum fared better, though he seemed to have dispensed with the notion of surveillance as an art form in favor of good old-fashioned bumper riding.

Heather led them east. The next time she stopped, Andrew looked at his watch. It was almost three-thirty in the afternoon. The Lomax girl turned right off Columbus Avenue, into the maw of a parking structure.

“Glendale Galleria, ” Andrew said. “What's Glendale Galleria?”

“Shopping mall, ” Plum said. He sounded a touch frazzled by now. “I'm guessing David Lomax isn't hiding here, either. What say we hit the food court? I'm about starved.”

“She's parking.”

“So I see. Strange thing to do in a parking garage. Very fishy Can we go eat now?”

“Just find us a space. I want to try and see where she goes.”

Plum sighed.

He rolled past Heather Lomax's parking stall and steered the Camry onward. “It's your dime.”

They found a slot on the next level, a corner space freshly vacated by a Suzuki Sidekick bristling with teenagers. Plum pulled into the vacuum the fun wagon's thudding stereo system left behind. Then he killed the engine and rubbed his eyeballs with the heels of his hands.

“Nicely done, ” Andrew told him. “Have a good lunch. I'll meet you back here in an hour.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Stretch my legs. See you in an hour.”

He left Plum kneading his temples with his fingertips.

Glendale Galleria was hopping. Andrew realized he'd walked smack-dab into the middle of the back-to-school shopping season. Not to mention one of the hottest days of the summer, the kind of day when young and old flooded indoor shopping malls in seething waves, all seeking respite from the heat outside.

He hadn't seen where Heather Lomax had entered the inner complex, and he estimated the odds of marking her again in this bright, soaring, climate-controlled mess to be just short of astronomical. Which left him with approximately 55 minutes to kill before reconnoitering with Travis Plum, PI.

Andrew wound up doing exactly what he'd said he was going to do: He stretched his legs, working out the kinks that had set in over the course of nearly five car-bound hours.

Only blind luck put him next to Heather Lomax again inside the mall.

He'd been taking a spin around the second level when he happened to catch a glimpse of yellow out of the corner of his eye. Andrew glanced across the way and saw her emerging from a Godiva Chocolatier with a small white sack clutched in hand. He kept on in the direction he'd been walking, then hung a casual U-turn and followed the bobbing ponytail.

Whenever she stopped to browse a storefront window,
he did the same. When she paused at a directory kiosk, he looked down at his watch and veered toward the rail. Soon he'd lost sight of her altogether.

He thought:
Forget it.
His hour was almost up, this was ridiculous, and he was beyond ready to pack it in. He stopped at a drinking fountain and stooped to gulp from the cool anemic stream.

When he straightened, wiped his mouth, and turned, his heart leapt into his throat.

Heather Lomax stood directly behind him. Before he could shake off the surprise, he saw her thrust her hand forward. He heard keys jingling just as he felt something hard jam up against his left nostril.

“This is pepper gas, ” she informed him. “Had any experience with it?”

Andrew looked down a slender bare wrist into a pair of steady brown eyes. He said, “Not really.”

Passers by began to glance over. Heather Lomax ignored them. She looked directly at Andrew. Through his unblocked nostril, he caught a light whiff of clean-smelling perfume.

“It's no picnic, ” she said. “Helpless coughing, weeping, choking, eyes swelling shut, and according to the label that's at five to fifteen feet.” She grinned sweetly and nudged her hand forward another inch, forcing him to breathe through his mouth. “Make a move, and I'll napalm your brain.”

Very slowly, Andrew showed his palms. “I wouldn't want that.”

Just as quickly as she'd raised it, Heather Lomax dropped her hand and folded her arms. She stood with one hip cocked: Godiva sack in one hand, keyring with the pepper-gas attachment in the other, finger still poised on the trigger button of the black-plastic spray canister.

“I thought I lost you jerks on the freeway, ” she said. “Still having fun, are you?”

Andrew just lowered his hands. What could he say? He'd felt this pathetic before, but not often. It was entirely possible he'd misjudged her.

She looked him once up and once down.

“So it
is
you, ” she said. “I thought you didn't want to meet me until tonight. Did I get the wrong message?”

Andrew said, “How do you know who I am?”

Thinking:
Plum. You dirty little snitch.

But the answer was far less devious than that. He knew the moment her eyes flickered over his face.

“Benjy described you.”

“Ah.” He nodded. “I see.”

Andrew realized that even despite the awkward circumstances, she was being polite about his scars. For some reason, this small bit of grace impressed him.

“So.”

“So.”

She shrugged. “So what's the story, Ace? There must be some reason why you're following me all over creation.”

“With all due respect, ” he said, “you started it.”

First, her brown eyes glinted. Then the paper sack rustled in her hand as she shifted hips. She said, “Touché.”

For the first time, Andrew really looked at her. She was pretty but not overdone. She didn't even wear makeup. Andrew didn't know why he noticed that.

“I have an idea, ” he said.

“I can't wait to hear it.”

“How would it be if you and I just called it even and started over from scratch?”

“I seem to recall giving you a bunch of money, ” she pointed out. “I'd say one of us is starting out ahead.”

“Actually, I used that to hire Plum back, so basically, you just gave him what you originally promised, ” he told her. “It's kind of a push, if you think about it.”

“What do you want?”

“Look, ” he said. “I don't have any reason to bullshit you. I know that you're looking for your brother. The way it turns out, I guess I am, too. I don't know if we can help each other or not. But I think we need to talk.”

The light in Heather Lomax's eyes could have been optimism. “Let's talk.”

“Not here.”

“Fine, we can go somewhere else. You name a place and I'll follow you there.”

“Keegan's, ” Andrew said. “Tonight, ten
P.M.
Just like we originally planned.”

“We
didn't originally plan anything, ” Heather Lo-max said. “You called Benjy and told him the way it had to be.”