As he hurried up the steep cliff, the sea was soon below him. To his left beyond the meadow, the handsome houses stood, built of stone, of brick set in fancy patterns, of pale stucco with roofs displaying richly curving shingles. Between the houses and the meadow ran a narrow street, lined on his side with spreading cypress trees.
Not many cars were parked along the street, and those were spaced far apart where the cypress branches didn’t hang so low. An old battered sedan was nosed in between the trees, its back door open and a thin woman leaning in rummaging in the backseat among a tangle of paper bags and boxes, her jeans worn pale and threadbare. Thin, knotty legs. Worn jogging shoes. A short-sleeved T-shirt clinging so he could see her spine. A whiff from the car smelled of cat, but he saw no cats. He wasn’t sure what made him stop to watch her, but he eased deeper into the tangle of grass, held by an amused curiosity. Maybe the old woman and her cats would lead him to the cats his pa said lived on this shore. Maybe he’d even find cats who knew his pa, maybe elderly cats as lanky and lean as this old woman herself. Maybe, he thought, hardly daring to think it, maybe somewhere here, on this strip of shore, he would find his pa.
18
Earlier, while the three cats were busy tossing Alain Bent’s house, down the hill among the smaller cottages Ryan’s sister Hanni had pulled her van into the drive of her own remodel. Billy Young sat in the cab beside her, feeling shy of the beautiful woman. Even in frayed jeans and a faded T-shirt she was elegant, her short white hair curling carelessly around the perfect oval of her smooth, tanned face, her dark lashes and brows making her hazel eyes look huge, her hands long and elegant, busy with a clanging of jade and silver bracelets.
Hanni glanced over because he was looking at her, and gave him a wink. Now, with her construction work nearly finished, she’d brought over a load of plants, and had picked Billy up at the ranch knowing he’d be glad of the work. She’d chosen pink and red tea trees, two mock orange bushes, and a dozen breath of heaven plants; their common names pleased her more than the Latin ones, which she never bothered to remember. All of these were showy, but so hardy they lent themselves well to a rental. She had wanted oleander with its bright red or pink blooms but the bush was poisonous, and that would rule out renting to a family with little, leaf-eating children.
The sky was low and threatening, and the wind chill. Getting out of the van, she pulled a warm cap over her short white hair, pulled on a ragged jacket to keep out the wind. Preoccupied with planning the garden, she was unaware she’d had a visitor during the night. While Billy unloaded the plants, trying to shelter them from the wind, she opened the garage—and stopped.
The back door was ajar, swinging back and forth in the wind, wasn’t locked as she’d left it. She remembered distinctly pushing in the simple thumb lock before she turned out the light. When she crossed the garage and stepped outside, she could see where the faceplate was bent and pried half off, fresh tool marks on the newly painted door and on the frame. She touched nothing. Stepping back inside, she stood quietly assessing the rest of the single-car garage to see what building supplies and tools might be missing.
The boxes of hardware she’d left stacked on the worktable were still there, and the cartons of new lighting fixtures that stood on the floor against the wall. Nothing seemed to be missing, but, in fact, there appeared to be more boxes than she’d left there, the pile was half again as large.
Examining the cartons, still not touching, she found seven that were unlabeled, no brand insignia or bar codes or shipping instructions. Reaching for a screwdriver, she chose the largest blank carton, pulled on her gloves, and pried the lid open—maybe that was dumb, she knew she should have handled it differently but she was too curious.
There were cleaning materials jumbled inside, a collection of solvents, ammonia, drain cleaner and, strangely, several drugstore bags containing cold medications: a combination that made chills creep up her back. She stood looking for only a minute, then closed the box and used her cell phone to call the department.
Coming up the hill she had seen the police stakeout still in place, two officers she knew, wearing water company uniforms, kneeling at the curb tinkering with a water meter, watching the meth cottage that had been raided. Now, as she talked with dispatcher Mabel Farthy, she returned to the driveway; she didn’t want to move around in the garage and maybe scuff through someone’s faint footprints, didn’t want to destroy anything more than she already had.
When she’d hung up she stood by her van looking in the side mirror, pretending to adjust her cap, watching the uphill reflection. She saw Officer Blake answer his phone, glance briefly down at her and then away again. The two officers didn’t leave their post, she assumed they’d been told to stay put.
But it wasn’t five minutes until a car appeared answering her call, not a black-and-white, but Detective Juana Davis’s pearl-colored Toyota slipping up the hill to pull into the drive behind her van. A black-and-white appeared behind Juana, pulling to the curb. As the detective stepped out, Hanni had to hide a little smile. Juana always looked so serious, her square face so forthright and no-nonsense, the severity of her dark uniform and black stockings and hard black shoes, black cap pulled down over her smooth hair, dark Latino eyes that could look as flat as a wall. Or could, with her friends or with an unfortunate victim, turn deeply kind and caring. Now, most likely, Juana would make Hanni’s cottage part of the crime scene, locking it into their investigation of the meth operation.
That was fine with her, if they rooted out this scum. At least four men had been seen by neighbors coming and going from the meth house, two Caucasians, one Asian, and the Latino man who was now taking his meals courtesy of Molena Point Jail. She joined Juana, pulled on the cotton booties Juana gave her, and followed the detective into the garage, where Juana first used an electronic device to scan for footprints. Behind them, a white police van slid to the curb, a vehicle big enough to haul away the cartons. Officers McFarland and Crowley got out, young McFarland with his clean good looks, Crowley towering over him, his big-boned body maybe six foot five, broad shoulders, the broad hands of a farmer.
Juana pulled off her booties and stepped out to talk with them, then the two men began to walk the perimeter of the house, moving with care, scanning for anything dropped, and for footprints. Hanni watched them, thinking about the drug dealers hiding their supplies in her garage. Had they thought that because she was Detective Garza’s niece, the cops wouldn’t search here? Maybe they thought she wouldn’t notice the extra boxes right away? Maybe they’d meant to haul them out again in a day or two, maybe they were setting up a new operation somewhere else. She didn’t like that some of these guys were still around, she’d made an investment in this neighborhood, and so had Ryan and Clyde, they wanted to see this area turned back again into the charming neighborhood it had once been.
She’d bought the house eight months ago, before the surrounding houses began to stand empty, and before that enterprising parolee, who was now in jail, had started his mom-and-pop meth business, before the neighbors began to wonder about the many different cars suddenly parked on that street, and so many strangers going in and out, and called in a report. Early on, though, she’d begun to see stray cats slipping around the empty houses, wary and hungry, and she’d put out food in unset traps, luring them in, getting them used to the open wire cages. So far, she’d trapped five, who were now in a temporary shelter, but she was still seeing strays.