Percy Smith seemed to find the change in direction curious. His eyebrows jumped up and caused the shape of eyes to change from narrow ovals to nickel-sized circles.
"What does that have to do with anything?" Evenly, Lauren said, "It has nothing to do with anything as far as I know. I knew her, that's all. Gloria Welle. I'm just asking."
Percy nodded in a manner that said
"I knew that," although it was apparent that he hadn't been aware of Lauren's connection to the Welles.
"That nastiness happened when Phil Barrett was sheriff. Not a pretty chapter in the congressman's life. Thank goodness I don't have to reopen that one." I said, "I'm not sure what you mean by that."
Percy gestured at Hans as though the man was a waiter in a diner. When Hans hesitated, Percy stared him down until he approached. Percy didn't look toward either Lauren or me when he continued.
"Just that it's solved, that's all. That case had all the pieces this other one doesn't. Witnesses who saw something, forensics that mean something, ballistics that handed us a gun, a motive that made sense-the whole nine yards.
I wish we had some of that going for us with the Franklin case."
"And the Hamamoto case," Lauren added.
"Yeah. That, too. Coffee, Hans. I need sugar." Percy reached into a leather carry-on and removed a paperback copy of Tom Clancy's latest. The book appeared to have been through a war that was fought in a humid climate. Percy folded it open, cracking the spine mercilessly. I guessed he was on page 60 or so.
The night was almost moonless when we glided to a stop at the Yampa Valley airport. Hans preceded Percy off the plane and helped him collect his plentiful luggage.
We were airborne again in minutes, the rolling mountaintops of the Routt National Forest quickly yielding to the sharp rock faces and glacial precipices of the Continental Divide. We'd be zooming down the Front Range in minutes, home in bed, I guessed, within the hour.
Adrienne, our neighbor across the lane, heard us drive up and released our dog out her front door. Emily bounded across the dirt and gravel toward our garage with astonishing enthusiasm. She pounced left, she charged right. Before proceeding farther, she lowered her head and scooped up a stick, shaking it with enough intensity to kill it.
From Adrienne's doorway, we heard a little male voice scream, "Emily! Em-i-ly!
Come back. Come back!"
Lauren called, "Hi, Jonas. She'll come back and see you tomorrow, okay? It's late. It's time for her to go to bed."
He lowered his arms as though he were a bird preparing to fly. He stomped one foot.
"She wants to play. She doesn't want to go to bed."
"Tomorrow, honey. Tell your mom thanks for watching her, okay?"
Jonas flapped his arms again and started to cry. Lauren placed the palm of one hand on her belly and looked at the watch on her other wrist. She shook her head and her face looked rueful. She said, "Gosh, sweets, I hope our baby isn't a night person. I don't know what I'll do."
I let our carry-ons fall from my hands and gave her a hug.
"We'll do fine.
You'll do fine."
She was looking back over my shoulder toward Adrienne's house.
"That's not Erin's car, is it?" Erin Rand was Adrienne's girlfriend-partner of quite a few months, and her first same-sex paramour ever.
I looked and said, "No It's not Erin's. Not unless she won the lottery." Erin was a struggling private detective. The car by Adrienne's front door was a cream-colored Lexus.
Lauren mused, "I haven't seen Erin in a couple of weeks. Do you think she's… I don't know. Do you think they broke up?"
"I don't know either. Adrienne hasn't said anything to me about any trouble in their relationship."
Lauren hooked an arm around my back.
"Its funny, don't you think, that if that car belongs to some new love interest of Adrienne's, that neither of us really has a clue what the gender of the driver might be?"
"I bet girl," I said without any confidence.
"That looks like an estrogen-colored Lexus."
"Estrogen-colored? What the hell does that mean? No. That's an androgynous Lexus. And I bet boy," Lauren countered, holding out her hand for a shake.
"Bet?
Let's say the loser cooks and cleans up dinners for a week."
"What about take-out or restaurants?"
"No more than twice."
"Why do you think Adrienne's gone back to seeing a guy? Do you know something I don't know?"
She spun me at my shoulders and pointed me toward the front door.
"Gosh, Alan, I certainly hope so."
PART TWO. The Two Dead Girls
Monday morning came around just when it was supposed to. After some weekends that simple occurrence surprises me. This was one of those.
I drove across town to my Walnut Street office to see my 8:15 patient. Lauren took her own car into town, heading up Canyon Boulevard to the Justice Center for a meeting with the coroner's chief assistant. Their meeting was to discuss his testimony in a trial scheduled for that afternoon. She was doubtful that the case was going to plead out.
My patients all showed up at their appointed times. None of them threw me any curveballs that I couldn't hit and I was home in time for dinner.
Neither Erin's old Saab nor the cream-colored Lexus had reappeared in front of Adriennes house across the lane, and neither Lauren nor I had been brave enough to inquire about the current state of fluctuation of our neighbor's sexual orientation. Lauren and I were still sharing dinner chores, our bet unresolved.
For me Tuesday began like Monday. I had four patients to see before lunch, three afterward. I was hoping to get home early enough to indulge in a long bike ride on the country roads that crisscrossed the rapidly disappearing open prairie of eastern Boulder County. Lauren had given the opening statement in her child-abuseresultingin-death case on Monday afternoon and was due to call her first witness at 9:30 on Tuesday morning. She thought the trial would last through Wednesday at least but had grown more hopeful about settlement and half expected a plea conference during the lunch recess. She considered the first three witnesses in her case to be lethal to the defense and expected to get them all in before noon. She also suspected that her adversary at the defense table would blink.
I cooked Tuesday's dinner. Grilled halibut and steamed baby bok choy in garlic sauce. The menu was my wife's idea; Lauren was currently religious about omega-3 fish oils, garlic, and iron. On her way home from work she'd picked up a loaf of multigrain from the Breadworks on North Broadway.
She was just about done cleaning up the paltry mess I'd left in the kitchen when the phone rang. I took it in the big open room that ran the length of the west end of the house.
The house was one that I had called home for a long time. I'd lived through two periods of being single there and was now in my second period being married there. Two different wives, the second a much better match than the first. The house, once a shack, now felt new to me. The previous autumn Lauren and I had embarked on an ambitious addition and remodeling project, and the smells and feels of the place were those of a new home.
The views, fortunately, hadn't changed at all.
Our home sits near the top of a western-facing slope in Spanish Hills on the eastern side of the Boulder Valley. On a clear day-and in Colorado most of them are clear enough-our view of the Front Range extends from north of Pikes Peak to north of Longs Peak and from the greenbelt on the east side of the city of Boulder all the way to the Continental Divide. God might have a better view than we did but I wouldn't believe it unless He sent along a postcard to prove it.
As summer threatened, the days were getting longer and the sun was lingering so low in the evening sky that the sharp rays made it impossible to sit facing west without lowering the blinds, which I was loath to do. When the phone rang, I picked up the receiver and sat with my back to the mountains. I expected to hear my partner's voice. Diane Estevez had left me a message during our workday that she wanted to talk about a weekend away that Lauren and I were planning with Diane and her husband, Raoul. Diane was currently on a Taos kick. I was guessing that she wanted to lobby us to change our weekend plans from the Great Sand Dunes to Taos.