A giggle cut the night, then soft but urgent whispers as three girls moved quickly down the narrow alley that opened to the backs of a dozen shops.
Most of Molena Point's alleys were appealing lanes as charming as Jolly's alley, brick-paved byways lined with potted flowers and with the leaded- or stained-glass doorways of tiny backstreet stores. This concrete alley, however, was only a passage hiding garbage cans and bales of collapsed cardboard cartons that awaited the arrival of a sanitation truck. It was closed to passersby with a solid-wood six-foot fence.
The gate wasn't locked. Candy pushed it open and entered the long, trash-lined walkway, followed by Leah and Dillon. They were on their own tonight; Consuela did not shepherd them. Flipping back her blond hair, Candy fitted a key into the lock of Alice's Mirror. The three slipped inside, Candy reaching quickly to cut off the alarm system, just as the shop's owner would do upon entering.
The girls were gone only a few minutes. They emerged loaded down with velvet pants, cashmere sweaters, wool and leather jackets, with plastic bags of scarves and designer billfolds and necklaces. They had known the location and distribution of the stock as well as any store employee might know it. Dillon, swaggering out with the biggest armload of stolen clothes, glanced back as Candy locked the door. She was grinning.
Piling their loot into the trunk and filling the backseat of the car they had left parked at the curb, the three slid into the front seat, the blonde at the wheel, and moved quietly away. Watching the streets for cops, or for a stray and observant pedestrian, they saw no one.
"Cops are all home in bed," Leah announced. "Or drinking coffee at the station."
Dillon giggled. But as the car slid past Wilma Getz's stone cottage and she smelled the smoke of a wood fire, she sobered, studying the house. The sight of that solid and inviting cottage where she had so often been made welcome filled her with a sharp jolt of shame, with a moment of clarity, an ugly look at what she was doing.
In the stone cottage, Wilma was not asleep. She lay in bed in the dark, between the two cats, thinking about Lucinda and Pedric. What had they been doing out on the highway at night? Kit had spoken the truth, the old couple never drove at night. And there could be no emergency that would account for a late-night run. Lucinda had no family and none of Pedric's relatives lived on the West Coast to take him racing to them.
Before the kit slept, she had looked up at Wilma suddenly, her round yellow eyes opening like twin moons, and had said decisively, "They can't be dead! Pedric is so clever. Lucinda and Pedric call themselves survivors. Survivors like me, that's what Lucinda says."
Dulcie and Wilma had exchanged a look.
Yet what Kit had said held some truth-everything Wilma knew about the Greenlaws showed how resourceful they were. She lay thinking about their well-appointed RV, where they always carried extra food, warm clothing, medical supplies, and of course their cell phone. Pedric had fitted out the RV with all manner of innovations to make life easier for them, from a bucket with a tight lid in which they put their laundry and soap and water, letting it bounce and agitate as they traveled, to locked storage compartments that could be opened from either the inside or outside of the vehicle. Pedric had grown up traveling all over the country in similar vehicles, and he was almost obsessed with self-sufficiency.
That did not explain why they were out in the storm at night. It was not as if they had been traveling to a new campsite. They had been at the one site for over a week and according to the registration had not checked out. The sheriff said they had left behind a folding camp table, two canvas chairs, and a large cooler. As she lay thinking, warm between the two cats, she heard a car slide past the house and wondered idly who was out at four in the morning. Maybe a police car.
And as Wilma drifted off again into a depressed and anxious sleep, across the village the hardtop sedan pulled into the garage of a small rental cottage that stood behind a brown-shingled house. The cottage had once been servants' quarters.
The minute the ten-year-old Cadillac sedan entered through the automatic door, the door rolled down behind it. Inside, by the light from the door opener, the three girls unloaded the clothes. Most were still on their hangers, which Leah hung in the oversize metal storage lockers that lined the garage wall. She filled five lockers and snapped on padlocks. Four other units stood unlocked.
Leaving the car and letting themselves out the side door, which Candy locked behind them, the three girls headed away in separate directions, each to her own home. As Candy and Leah melted quickly into the night, Dillon, hurrying toward her own home, kept well away from the shadows. She didn't like being out in the small hours alone, though she would never let the others know that. Her girlfriends were about the only family she had now that she could count on. Her mother was zilch, a zero. And her dad had caved. He didn't fight back, he didn't do anything. He was just very quiet, turning away even from her- so patient and tolerant with Helen that he made Dillon retch. If she'd been her dad, she'd have packed up and hauled out of there, the two of them. Leave Helen to ruin her life any way she wanted.
Or she'd have booted Helen out and changed the locks, let her move in with what's-his-name.
But he wasn't doing either; he wasn't doing anything. Moving quickly along the dark streets, she was just a few blocks from home when she started thinking about that contractor, Ryan Flannery; when she saw suddenly a flash of green eyes and heard again the woman's rude comments, there in the Harper kitchen. Bitch.
Except, hearing Ryan's voice, for a moment Dillon was drawn beyond her anger. Ryan's retort had been almost exactly the same as Captain Harper's angry words.
And a small still voice down inside Dillon asked, what was she going to do about Ryan Flannery's challenge?
15
Kate Osborne didn't learn about Lucinda and Pedric's deaths until Sunday evening as she waited for the elderly couple to arrive for their visit. Lucinda had called two nights before, to say they'd be there by late afternoon, that they would be driving down from somewhere near Russian River, some little out-of-the way campground. And Kate had to smile. She was sure Lucinda hadn't had this much fun in all her adult life before she married Pedric. Her earlier marriage to Shamus, while busy with social functions and exciting for the first few years, had deteriorated as Lucinda aged, Lucinda staying home ignoring the truth while Shamus played fast and loose.
"I thought we'd eat in," Kate had told her. "That you might be tired, so I'd planned a little something at home. I make a mean creole, if you'd like that."
"That sounds like heaven," Lucinda had said. "A hot shower and a good hot creole supper. Couldn't be better. We'll plan to take you out the next night." Kate thought that maybe, with Lucinda and Pedric there, she could get her head on straight, maybe could look at her own problems more objectively. This last week had been so strange and unsettling.
She had actually grown reluctant to go out at all after dark, and that was so stupid. But of course she'd have to work late, if she were to finish with her present clients in a timely manner. The work week would have been satisfying if she hadn't kept watching nervously for the man who had followed her to reappear.