Unfit to Practice (15 page)

“Assume the files were stolen to find out Kevin's secrets, you mean,” Paul said.

“Okay,” Wish said. Relying on a genetically programmed aid to thinking, he was worrying his lower lip exactly like Sandy did sometimes. Paul looked over at Sandy and darn if she wasn't doing it, too. Nina's pen scribbled angular abstracts all over the nice clean page she had just exposed on her pad. Paul noticed that he himself had just polished off his second doughnut. So had Sandy.

They all felt the strain.

Wish finally let go of his lip. He raised a finger. “Mrs. Cruz.”

“She hit gold there,” Sandy agreed, tearing off another chunk of doughnut.

“Mom, are you sure you want that?”

A dreadful, anticipatory silence descended upon them. Sandy drew herself up slowly. “Sometimes I feel like hog-tying you and leaving you out in the field for the red ants,” she said.

“But you said—” Wish blurted.

“Dip him in powdered sugar first,” Paul advised.

“But she said I should stop her if she—”

“Nina?” Paul said hastily. “You were saying?”

“Lisa Cruz testified at the hearing on Thursday morning,” Nina said. “She could have picked up my truck key lying on the counsel table during a break, or on the ground if I dropped it and she saw me. It's also just possible Jean Scholl, the patrolwoman who found the Bronco, had something to do with it. She was there that morning in court. I saw her.”

“Yeah, but how could anyone know you would leave files in there that night?” Wish asked.

“You know what I think?” Nina said. “I don't think anyone deliberately set out to get my files. I think someone found or stole my key and then used it late that night with a vague hope that they might gain access to something they could use against me, or to win a case. Something balled up in the litter, even.”

“Sometimes when you're looking for a break, you see a chance and you say, dingdong! This could be my opportunity!” Wish said, still casting a wary eye upon his mother.

“We'll talk to Ali,” Paul said, “and do some checking on Scholl.”

“I'll tell you who won that day. Lisa Cruz's lawyer,” Sandy said, referring to Jeff Riesner. She did not look at Wish as she took a big bite of her doughnut.

“I like to think I would have noticed such a loathsome creature slinking around my driveway,” Nina said.

“I still have a good friend at that man's law firm. She eats lunch with his secretary every day,” Sandy offered.

“Wouldn't hurt to try to find out what Riesner was doing Thursday night,” Paul said. “Check him out, Sandy. But quietly.”

“Will do.”

“Which brings up a point,” Paul said to Nina. “Nicole Zack actually was in your driveway on Thursday night.” He angled toward Wish, explaining. “Bob's girlfriend.”

“Bob has a girlfriend?”

“Bob does not have a girlfriend,” Nina said. “But you're right, Paul. You need to speak with Nikki. She's capable of a joyride.”

She handed over a copy of the written statement Nikki had given to Officer Scholl. “The police found no fingerprints, nothing, in the Bronco.”

“Impossible,” Paul said. “Unlikely, anyway. They must not be looking hard enough. I'll also have a chat with Officer Scholl.”

“Oh,” Nina said. “I should tell you I told her about these three files.”

“Got it,” said Paul.

“So Bob has a girlfriend,” Wish said. “When I was thirteen, I fell in love for the first time, too. She was a year ahead of me in school, on the track team. Sita, that was her name. She broke my heart and I've never been the same.”

“He never could watch a track meet again,” Sandy said. “It does something to you.” She popped more of her doughnut into her mouth and chewed.

“Make fun of me if you want, Mom,” Wish said. “You always put on this big act about not being sentimental. But I heard you crying in the kitchen the night Dad called and said he was coming home—”

Sandy's face began to turn purple and her eyes bulged. Wish watched the changes with an alarmed expression.

“What was that you said, Wish?” Paul put in hastily. Wish seemed unable to take his foot out of his mouth this morning. They all knew how much Sandy hated any mention of her private life. “I didn't catch it. Nina didn't either.”

Nina nodded vaguely. Sandy said nothing. She was grimacing and seemed to be building up to something. Paul thought, oh brother.

“Oh, but before you say anything more, Wish, I have a question for Nina,” Paul said, trying to deflect whatever was coming. “Um, so, returning to the issue of Bob's girlfriend, didn't you tell me once she doesn't have her driver's license yet?”

“Bob does
not
have a girlfriend,” Nina said. “And not having a license isn't necessarily going to stop you from driving. I'd like you to talk to Nikki. Now can we move on? Wish? Sandy?”

Sandy's eyes were still popping. She made a gargling sound. Her hands gripped the edge of the table. Paul thought, this is it. She's gonna explode like Krakatoa. Wish finally did it this time.

“Sorry, Mom,” Wish said. “Mom?”

“He's extremely sorry,” Paul repeated. “Sandy?”

Nina watched Sandy. They all watched Sandy, waiting for the forthcoming eruption, ready to take cover under the table if necessary.

Sandy coughed loudly into her napkin. She coughed again. Her highly bruised color faded slightly back toward normal.

“Why didn't somebody clap me on the back?” she demanded. “Couldn't you see I was choking? None of you did a darn thing to help!” She glared at them. “Now, what's so funny?”

When order returned, Nina said, “People, File Number Three presents what I think are the most urgent problems. Let's go through this. These two young women, sisters, were staying here in South Lake Tahoe at Campground by the Lake, right off Rufus Allen Boulevard—” She summarized the facts of the campground homicide.

Paul struggled to assimilate it all. He wasn't used to having so much thrown at him at one time. Nina was going to run him ragged with all these people. But he had to agree, with the file gone and Nina's notes on the events of that night gone along with it, Angel and Brandy needed to make their report to the D.A. and the South Lake Tahoe police even if he had to drag them there by their crimped and moussed hair. He and Wish would have to roust them from Angel's beauty salon right after the meeting. Paul liked barbershops with their phallic striped poles and no-nonsense razor jobs where the tacit guy agreement called for lickety-split efficiency, and he couldn't understand why women had such a different take on the same operation. What exactly did women do to their hair that could possibly require an entire afternoon?

“Angel's salon is located in Harveys Casino, in the basement,” Nina said.

Paul said, “I think Angel and Brandy have to come first. If this fellow Cody is the one with the files, he'll come after Brandy. It's possible. Telling it all to one of the deputy D.A.'s over at the courthouse may or may not get them adequate protection. Brandy shouldn't be at home alone.”

“She's worried about her fiancé,” Nina said. “He seems to have disappeared. It's another unsettling event of the weekend that may or may not be connected to the theft of the files.”

“It's a lot, Nina. I don't think we can bodyguard Brandy plus look for the boyfriend and get the other work rolling, too.”

Nina said, “I have an idea. I'll see if Andrea can put Brandy and Angel up at the Tahoe Women's Shelter. Brandy shouldn't go back to Palo Alto, especially if her boyfriend isn't there.”

“Excellent,” Paul said. “Give us a chance to try to untangle a few things. The sisters have to come first. There's some major exposure there, and I think it goes beyond speculation.” He pushed his chair back.

“We'll crack it,” Wish said. He got up and gave Nina a serious nod.

Paul and Wish went outside and slid into Paul's Mustang. Wish drew on his sunglasses and smoothed back his hair.

“Let's roll,” he told Paul.

12

D
OWN BELOW
H
ARVEYS
C
ASINO,
through caverns measureless to man, amid the video arcades and Mexican restaurants and the boutique bursting with burlwood bears, Paul and Wish found a curtain of orange crystalline beads framed by an archway. Beyond that, a door with a glass insert advertised the salon. On the glass, painted in flesh-pink and sea-green tones, Cupid shot an arrow toward filmy clouds shaped into the words Angel's Heavenly Hair.

Wish shoved the beads out of the way and stepped through, followed by Paul, who took a battering as the beads, released by Wish, fell back into his face.

“Oops,” said Wish.

The stench of primitive chemistry greeted them as they pulled open the door. A chime rang, unnecessarily announcing their arrival into the small room.

Several female faces turned to look at them, looking both intrigued and astonished. They had entered the forbidden precincts.

A young woman with brown hair, dressed in a long soft skirt, stepped up to a kind of podium. “Um,” she said, flipping a notebook open and picking up a pen. “What can we do for you?”

“We're here to see Angel Guillaume and Brandy Taylor,” Paul said, handing her his card. “Are they here?”

At the back of the room, a girl with white tips to her choppy hairstyle, a mouth full of pink tissue squares, and hands full of hair nodded so vigorously a few of the tissues flew. “Mmpf,” she said. She wore a pale blue apron with a white badge in the shape of Gabriel blowing his horn over her breast. Angel, it said.

The girl who had greeted them said, “I'm Brandy. Why don't you sit down and wait here for a minute.” Pretty and young, she curved sweetly enough to guarantee Wish couldn't take his eyes off her.

“My pleasure,” he said.

She dimpled at him. Wish sat down on a prissy brass-legged bench in front of a window. He picked up a magazine with pictures of women with long hair, short hair, tall hair, wide hair, but he was distracted, watching Brandy walk away. Paul continued to stand while Brandy took the spike-haired blond by the arm and steered her through a pastel curtained doorway in back.

Angel's the punk star, he thought, making his quick classification. Brandy's the gentle dreamer. Another woman with an angel badge came rushing out from the back, brandishing a pair of scissors like a relay runner who has just been passed the baton.

“I'll finish you up,” she told the lady in the front chair with twists of cone-shaped aluminum on her head.

“If I wanted you, Jill, I would have asked for you,” said the lady. Jill smiled, bent over, and gave a vicious yank to a metallic cone.

“Hey!” her client said.

“Oh, I'm so sorry. Did that hurt?” She winked at Paul. “How do you know Angel?” she said a moment later. They could all hear the whispered voices rising from behind the curtain.

“I don't. Not yet, anyway,” said Paul. “Mind telling me what you're doing there?”

“Frosting,” she said, then laughed at his expression. “I'm streaking her hair. It brightens up a dull look. Helps transition ladies to gray.”

“You saying my hair's dull and gray?” asked the client.

“Oh, come on. Would I insult you? You're one of our best clients,” Jill answered without answering.

“Angel, I don't have all day,” called the other woman in curlers.

The whispers stopped. Angel came out first, smoothing her apron. She put a hand on the woman's shoulder, said a few words in a low voice, and walked up to Paul, followed closely by the girl in the skirt. “Follow me, okay?”

“After you,” Wish said. They all squeezed out the door into the walkway right outside the salon. Slot machines pinged all around them.

“Nina's waiting. We have an appointment set up for you,” Paul said.

The two women looked sick. Brandy said, “Mr. van Wagoner, I don't know if we can go through with this. We went back to my house in Palo Alto last night and there's still no sign of Bruce. I'm scared. I don't think we should tell anyone anything. Maybe Cody kidnapped Bruce!”

“And I'm worried about my family.” Angel bit her lip.

“What should we do?” Brandy asked, agitated. “Tell the police Bruce's kidnapped? I don't even want to see the police. I want to stay out of this thing. Maybe he's fly-fishing somewhere in Alaska for a few days with some client of his who's got money to burn. That's more logical, more real. That guy, Cody, why would he go after Bruce anyway?”

“Right! He'd go after us!” Angel said. “He won't be thinking about my kids and my husband. They'll be safe because he'll want me or my sister. We want to hide until they all go away.”

“Where?” Paul asked. “Where would you go?”

Brandy looked at Paul and Wish. “Somewhere only we know.”

Angel shook her head. “I'm so confused. Oh, man, this is the point on TV where people don't tell the police what they know and get whacked.”

“Nobody's going to get whacked,” Wish said, horrified. “We'd never let that happen.”

“You have no choice,” Paul told them. “The police can arrest you as material witnesses if you don't come forward. Believe me. Talking to them is the wise thing to do.”

“Can't Nina just tell them what we told her?” Brandy asked. “She knows the story.”

“You have to tell the D.A. what you saw,” Paul answered, tired of arguing. “Let's go.”

“And exactly who are you, anyway?” Brandy asked Wish.

“She sent me to protect you,” Wish said. “Don't worry.”

“Oh. Wow.” Brandy gave him a radiant smile and Wish dissolved into his high-tops.

Paul didn't think telling her they weren't leaving without them would improve the situation. “We're here to escort you safely to the police. Once the D.A. has your statement about what happened at the campground, you've done your duty,” he said. “You'll be safer. It's like insurance.”

“Angel, if you don't come back in here right now,” said a voice from inside the salon, “I'm going to get up and walk out of here with one half of my head full of pink curlers, then I'm going up to Raley's and tell everybody there why I look so foolish.”

“Coming!” she said. “Look, I have to finish Mrs. Gerdes before I can leave.”

“How long will that take?”

“Let's see, finish rolling, then the perm, wash it out, dry it. Make it look outstanding. At least an hour, maybe longer.”

“We'll wait,” Paul said. “But you'll go?”

Angel looked at her sister, then back at Paul. “Yeah, we'll go.”

When Paul's stomach began to rumble as loudly as Wish's, he sent him out for some food. Paul balanced himself on the flimsy bench in the salon and observed Jill's frosting of the coneheaded woman and the manufacture of artificial curls on the head of Angel's client.

Brandy sat with him. She spoke hardly a word to Paul, but she perked up when Wish arrived, slightly bent with the weight of bags full of quesadillas and nachos. They spread the food between them and ate and talked. Brandy asked Wish questions about his studies. Listening to them, Paul learned that she had been a philosophy major at community college and that she didn't feel like she belonged in Palo Alto. She didn't talk about her fiancé, Paul noticed. Wish seemed to be making a conquest. Or he was being vanquished, Paul wasn't sure which.

After a while, Angel finished and joined them. They all piled into the Mustang.

“You know, we always intended to go to the police. We wouldn't have let that bastard get away with killing her,” Angel said as they drove alongside the lake toward Al Tahoe Boulevard. “We're just afraid.”

“Sure you are,” Paul said.

“Why did Cody have to kill Phoebe?” Brandy asked.

“You know why,” Angel said. “Sexual jealousy. She was with another guy.” Sitting in the front seat beside Paul, she pulled her feet up on the car seat as if settling down for some titillating gossip. “This is what we heard. Phoebe is sleeping with Mario but he gets arrested and lands in prison for a long time, like maybe a whole year,” she explained. “He and Cody were old friends from way back, and so Phoebe and Cody're hangin' out together moaning about poor Mario. And then one fine night they get—”

“Down and dirty,” Brandy said from behind her.

“And Mario gets out of prison earlier than anyone expected,” Angel continued. “He shows up out of the blue at Cody's house. Well, it makes sense. He goes to see his best friend first thing—”

“Wanting to spend the night on the couch and collect the money Cody's keeping for him,” Brandy said.

“But Cody's surprised and not that happy to see Mario after all. He's cagey. He doesn't want Mario to know about Phoebe hanging with him, so he makes up an excuse and says, ‘You can't stay here.' He swears he doesn't have the money but promises to get it and bring it to Mario the next day.”

“They were in on a drug deal together and Cody held the money for Mario while he was in prison,” Brandy said.

“Taking the rap, I think,” said Angel.

“So Mario asks, ‘Well, then, where the hell can I go?' 'Cause you have to remember, he's got practically no money,” Brandy added.

“So then Cody gives him twenty bucks or so and sends Mario to the campground with a ratty old tent and a bag. Some friend.”

“Meanwhile, guess who's listening from somewhere behind the drapes?” Brandy asked rhetorically.

“Mario's old girlfriend, Phoebe, who's actually been missing him or maybe is just getting very sick of Cody, his second-rate stand-in,” said Angel. “Mario was definitely the better-looking one.”

“So Phoebe sneaks out and follows Mario to the campground. And initiates a rowdy reunion. If she'd only known. It's so awful. I guess that's what those other people who had our campsite before really objected to. Probably they were hanging all over each other,” Brandy said.

“Indiscreet,” Angel agreed.

“So Cody—he came back late at night. And he killed her! Angel, should we really do this?”

“It's for the best, Bran.”

They fell silent, both with one arm folded, the other resting under a chin.

Paul turned up Al Tahoe, intrigued and moved by these two young women. Telling the story lightened their emotional load. Nina, the amateur psychologist, would probably say their reworking of these memories helped them to gain control over their fear. And then there was the relationship between them. They were like children of exactly equal weight on a teeter-totter, shifting back and forth in perfect harmony. He sighed, thinking of his own sister in San Francisco. The last time he saw her, he had been in the hospital with a broken leg. The moment he regained full consciousness and saw her there at the foot of his bed, all he could think about was how to send her scurrying home.

“Then Cody showed up,” Paul said, prompting them.

“He's got this shattering motorcycle engine. I mean, you couldn't hear a china cupboard collapse over the noise of that thing,” Brandy said.

“Or a house fall down, for that matter,” Angel added.

“A Harley,” Wish said. “Or maybe Kawasaki? They make some really powerful engines.”

Brandy, sitting next to him, seemed startled at this sudden show of interest. “Who knows?” she said. “Just
really
loud.”

“Cody hops off the bike,” Angel said, “and the fighting starts. He's really pissed about Phoebe. He says she's already jumped in the sack with Mario, hasn't she?”

“Which is literally the truth,” said Brandy. “I always wondered if those double bags were roomy enough.”

“Mario says, ‘F-off! She was mine before and she'll always be mine. And by the F-ing way, where the F is my mother-F-ing money?' ”

Paul stifled a laugh. Mario's language had even the bold Angel cringing.

“So they got into a fistfight, and I called the ranger and the ranger came and ran Cody off,” Brandy finished suddenly. “That's the whole story.”

“Except that Cody came back and strangled Phoebe,” Angel said.

This time, no amount of prompting could lift the sisters out of their silent funk.

They found Nina leaning against her Bronco in the parking lot at the county offices. She went into the D.A.'s office with Brandy and Angel while Wish and Paul waited outside for a long time.

When the women returned, Angel looked wrung out down to the ends of her bleached hairdo. Brandy had lapsed into introspective gloom. Nina had a court appearance in another fifteen minutes in the building across from the D.A.'s office.

“We have lined up a place for you two to go that's safe,” Nina said.

“What?” Brandy said. “I thought you guys said talking to the D.A. was our insurance.”

“This is just intensive short-term protection,” Paul said smoothly. “The D.A.'s office agrees it's a good move.”

“We'd like you to move into a shelter operated by my sister-in-law, Andrea Reilly, at least for tonight,” Nina said. “The location is kept very private. They have excellent security, and it's just the spot for you two until the police can arrest Cody Stinson. It's my advice that you go there immediately. They have everything you need for an overnight stay.”

“Forget that,” Angel said. “I'm sleeping in my own bed tonight. We'll bar the door. Sam's still out of town with the kids, so they're all safe, and I am so tired of running around. We'll be fine at my house.” She shook her head and twisted her mouth at the thought. “We're not going to some icky place for abused women!”

“You hired me for advice. Now take it,” Nina said firmly. “This is a good, clean place with some wonderful professional people who know how to make you feel comfortable in addition to providing security you need. As long as Cody Stinson is out there, there may be danger for you both. The district attorney's office has placed people at the shelter before.”

“No.” Brandy folded her arms. Angel followed suit.

Nina and Paul both argued hard, but in the end, the two women, armed with their elbows and stony expressions, formed an impervious blockade against all imprecations.

When Nina had to leave, Paul and Wish offered to take Angel and Brandy back to the salon. Angel announced that she was ready to call it quits for the day. She and Brandy wanted a ride back to the Harveys parking lot to pick up Angel's car, then they planned to head straight back to Angel's cabin. Subdued, they said little about their meeting with the D.A. other than to report that he seemed like a fair man who believed them and now would go out and get Cody Stinson and lock his butt up.