“He wasn’t huge, but he knew how to punch and kick. He pushed me onto my knees and started talking to me in this eerie voice, low and harsh, asking me questions. He was mad with fury. That’s the only way I can describe it.” Bova sniffed and grimaced again and Betty Jo adjusted the pillow. “I’m going to sell this place. I can’t stand this.”
Nina sat down on the scuffed floor beside him. “Take your time,” she said gently.
“The only reason I’m alive is that he believed me when I told him. He knew every word was God’s truth.”
“What did he say, Mr. Bova?”
“He said nobody rides piggyback on him. He made it sound-I don’t know, sexual. ‘Nobody rides piggyback on me.’ Then he hit me hard and I lost a tooth. ‘It had to be you,’ he says, like the old song.
“I said, ‘What? What did I do? Whatever it is, I’ll make it right.’ I just made him madder. ‘You know damn well,’ he says. ‘Stop that fucking bleeding. I’m talking to you.’ He made me take off my shirt and hold it over my face, and he says, ‘You killed that woman and you’re trying to bust me.’
“I said, ‘No! I never killed anybody! I swear!’ He said again, ‘It had to be you. You were in the office, you saw me with the kids. You ran out when I dropped the gun and shot the woman. Why?’ Then I got it. He was talking about the robbery. The Hanna case. I told him-told him I was home in bed with my girlfriend when that happened. The cops called me. I live in Sparks. That’s an hour away. I couldn’t have got home fast enough to take that call.
“I said, ‘I’ll prove it to you! I’ll prove it! I’ll give you the phone records. Just leave me alone, let me catch my breath, we’ll talk.’
“He went over it and over it. He got my girlfriend’s name. He stopped beating me and he was just pushing me, still really mad, but he was starting to believe me. Cussing. He pushed me back on the floor and he stomped around. ‘Then who?’ he says.
“‘I don’t know who,’ I said, and I said he could have the cash-register money if he wanted it. He let me get up and give him the money. I was afraid the whole time he would change his mind and kill me after all. He kept his fists balled and he shoved and pushed me the whole time.
“When the money was in his pocket, he pulled out a knife. ‘That was for you,’ he says, ‘if you didn’t convince me.’
“‘I swear to God,’ I said, ‘why would I kill that poor lady?’ and I could see he believed me.
“‘All right,’ he says. ‘You give somebody a message for me.’ I said, ‘Anything.’ He says, ‘Tell Nina Reilly I didn’t kill Hanna’s wife.’ I said, sure. He said, ‘Some other fucker did her. Tell her. You going to tell her like I said?’ I told him I would tell you.
“So here’s your message,” Bova said. He had lifted his head as the words rushed out. Now he lay back and a groan issued from his torn lips.
Nina bit her lip. She sat back on her heels. Betty Jo and Wish watched.
The clock on the wall ticked loudly. The ice machine next to the vending machine right through the wall made clunking sounds. From somewhere came faint laughter.
“You have any more questions, you can ask tomorrow,” Betty Jo said. “Let’s get you back to Incline,” she told Bova. Wish helped Bova, who was still holding the towel with ice to his face, to his feet, and Betty Jo opened the door and looked around carefully. Her Porsche SUV was right out front.
“It looks safe,” she said. “But then, we don’t know anything anymore, do we?” All three of them got Bova into the passenger seat, lying almost flat and covered with a blanket.
Betty Jo shut the passenger door. “Well?” she said to Nina. “I’m not a criminal lawyer. I’m not used to this. I like Jimmy. You have any explanation for Flint’s statements?”
“Sounds like he didn’t shoot Mrs. Hanna,” Wish said.
“That’s what the man said,” Betty Jo told him drily.
“You want us to caravan up to Incline with you? To make sure you get home all right? Would that be okay, Nina?”
“Yes, let’s do that,” Nina said. It took forty minutes, even so late, to drive the dark lake road to the North Shore and Betty Jo’s mansion on Champagne Way. Wish scouted around and then they brought Bova into the house. Betty Jo’s little old husband stood guard at the door, holding a big dog with a powerful head on a tight leash. He wasn’t smiling anymore, but he didn’t look frightened.
After Bova was safely in the house, Betty Jo came back out. She handed Nina a bottle of French wine. “Thanks for the guard duty,” she said.
“You don’t have to do that.”
“It’s also an apology. I realize our interests are different. I think I’d be taking the same steps you’re taking if I were on your side. Which I am not. But when this case is over, let’s have lunch. If you don’t mind me sailing in on the Good Ship Lollipop.”
Nina smiled.
“Drive safe.” Betty Jo smacked the side of the Bronco like it was an old stallion.
Wish drove back, leaving the windows cracked so he wouldn’t get drowsy. They were alone in a postcard winter wonderland. A brilliant half-moon duplicated itself in a water-moon on the vast lake. Snow clumps fell from the trees and he had to run the wipers now and then.
When they were almost home, Nina said, “Wish? Are you positive Elliott went back to Seattle?”
“Positive? He had his ticket. He was in the line inside.”
“That’s all you know?”
“You think it was him? Elliott-he couldn’t hurt someone. He couldn’t get that angry. It couldn’t be him, Nina.”
“There are some psychiatric conditions-”
“But why would he hurt James Bova?”
“I’m just asking,” Nina said. “Wish, first thing in the morning, call Roger Freeman. Tell him about the attack. Tell him he needs protection and so does Dave. We need to get the Placerville police involved in this too.”
“Who is this guy?”
“I hope to learn more about that tomorrow in Palo Alto.”
29
NINA STRAPPED INTO THE LUXURY LEATHER seat and the Cessna took off. They flew due west and left the white Sierra range behind. She watched a cross-section of California unwind below as they flew from Tahoe to the San Francisco Peninsula: greening foothills, the still-dusty San Joaquin Valley with Sacramento and an endless maze of subdivisions and freeways surrounded by patchwork fields of almonds and tomatoes, then on to San Francisco Bay, the city itself shrouded in a fog bank to the north, a long flat bridge below that rode close to the quiet water, and finally the easy runway of the Palo Alto private airport.
A black Lincoln awaited. Nina thanked the pilot and said hello to the driver. She wore a blue silk suit and round-toed Jimmy Choos, and carried her new briefcase. She was deeply worried about the safety of just about everybody-Sandy, Dave, even Cheney, unable to predict Lee Flint’s demented steps. She carried a hope within her that XYC, Inc. would have an answer or two.
Five men sat on the other side of a polished mahogany conference table. In a perfect illustration of Silicon Valley schizophrenia, one wore jeans and a wrinkled button-down shirt, and four wore expensive suits. The jeans guy had a beard going gray. He sat in the middle.
She had entered the penthouse of a five-story building that seemed to be owned entirely by XYC’s outside law firm. The plate-glass window had a view of the clock tower and terra-cotta buildings of Stanford University.
“Gentlemen,” she said, nodding, and set her briefcase firmly onto the table. “Hello, Professor Braun. Mr. Branson.” Braun nodded back. Nobody got up. Branson said, “This is Greg Foster, a senior partner here.” Three of the suits were now accounted for.
“How do you do.” Foster, a pale man with distinguished white hair, gave her a curt nod. No handshaking with this crew.