“Rochemont’s car is sitting in front of his garage full of bullet holes.”
Chalmondeley was amused. “Oh, that’s his old SL600 convertible roadster. He ordered a new one as soon as the sacrilege had been perpetrated upon the old. Just as Mr. Rochemont arrived, the chappie who had taken it rang him up.”
“Rang him up? Here?”
“Exactly. He told Mr. Rochemont it was a wonderful auto and gave him an address where it could be found. We gave Mr. Rochemont, old and valued client that he is, a car and driver to take him there. Understand?”
“Despite the call from the police? What address?”
Chalmondeley was drawing a line in the sand. He stiffened up sharply. “Now see here, my man, client information is confidential. I have no intention of allowing you to—”
“Oh, you’ll tell me, all right. You wanted him to get to his car in a hurry so you wouldn’t face the liability of having it stolen from the dealership.” He seized the microphone and raised his voice, filling the showroom floor. “Attention all customers! Attention all—”
“Louie!” yelled Chalmondeley in an accent no further east than the East Bay, “give this guy the address Andy drove that Rochemont kid to, Pronto!”
Meanwhile, Inga had gone shopping at The Village alongside the freeway in Corte Madera, a sprawling upscale mall with Macy’s at one end and Nordstrom’s at the other. In between were countless shoppes and boutiques and business establishments selling everything from foreign currency through clothing and jewelry and lingerie with easy-access panels to exotic foods and pricey housewares and hyperex-pensive down pillows and spreads.
Inga was in a very exclusive boutique called tres chic — no caps, no accents — trying on a formal evening gown. Giselle, skulking behind potted palms and racks of clothing, had to admit she looked good in it.
But Inga said, “It makes me look flat-chested.”
“Oui, madame,” said the saleslady automatically.
“Oh my God, do you really think so?”
“Mais non, madame,” said the saleslady immediately. “Absolument non! It makes you look, how you say, a la mode.”
“Like ice cream? I don’t get it. Oh! I need a phone.”
As Giselle watched Inga lean over the manager’s desk to reach the phone, the store manager and Store Security were giving Giselle the fish-eye from behind a potted plant of their own.
“I think I’ve seen a shoplifting flyer on her,” said Security with great confidence. She was a beefy woman with millimeter eyes whose last job had been as a Golden Gate Transit cop. Book ’em, Dano had been her credo there, and she saw no need to adjust it to this occupation.
“You’d better be sure,” worried the store manager. She was in her mid-30s with too much eye shadow and the stick-figure profile of a woman who peels her grapes before eating them.
“I’ll go get it,” said Security, “you keep an eye on her.”
Inga told the salesperson to charge it. Giselle began to move toward the door intent on a front-tail, but her way was blocked by the store manager.
“You found nothing to your liking, madame?”
“Just browsing,” said Giselle. Beyond the manager, Inga was heading for the door. “If you’ll excuse me...”
But Store Security had arrived with self-confidence high.
“Not so fast, sister. Let’s see what’s in that handbag.”
“Your job,” said Giselle. “If I open this bag for you here in the store, you’re out of work. Section 843.7 of the California Penal Code.”
“Penal code?” cried the store manager in alarm.
“False arrest, unlawful restraint, illegal detention...”
Giselle was moving toward the door and the woman was not quite stopping her, though Security was staying right with her.
“As you know, you were supposed to wait until I was out of the store before you detained me. My report will be on your superior’s desk in the morning!”
“Report?” said dazed Security.
“Superior?” said the confused manager. “I own the store!”
But Giselle was already gone.
Yew Wood Court was an unlikely named half-block stubbed-off street along the freeway on the northern edge of San Rafael. Finding it on his AAA map had lost Kearny a couple of precious minutes, figuring out how to get there a couple more. It was off Lincoln Avenue in a low-income area of rooming houses catering to recent arrivals from the hot countries to the south, leavened with the usual bottom-feeder public and private welfare agencies there to prey on the herbivores.
There were no yews, but tall old eucalyptus trees hung over Yew Wood Court, their leaves carpeting the curbs and gutters, giving it a slightly spurious midwestern look. They shaded old frame houses painted white too long ago.
Beyond a screen of bushes and chain-link fence between was a tall tan sound-baffle wall flanking the freeway. Parked up against these bushes facing out was a brand-new Mercedes 600SL convertible with the top down. Paul was nowhere around.
Kearny was in time.
He turned in, stopped. As he did, a Mercedes van went past him, stopped beside the convertible, let Paul Rochemont out, and backed out of the narrow dead-end street past him. Kearny, cursing, flung open his own door and jumped out.
Giselle had picked up Inga’s hot little Porsche in The Village parking lot and had followed it back into Paradise Drive and onto the 101 freeway north. At the central San Rafael exit, Inga went under the freeway, turned north on Lincoln. She started to swing into a narrow street called Yew Wood Court.
“Yew Woodn’t,” muttered Giselle to herself.
Inga suddenly swerved back into Lincoln and accelerated away. Giselle slammed on her brakes and swung to the curb on Lincoln, jerked on the handbrake and flipped her keys from the ignition, leaped out of the car. She had caught a glimpse of Dan Kearny just tackling Paul Rochemont at the stubbed-off end of the street, beside what looked like a new Mercedes convertible.
Giselle arrived at Kearny’s car as Dan dragged up the protesting Paul, who was swinging his elbows like an angry girl.
“What are you doing? Take your hands off me! That’s my car and—”
The new Mercedes blew up.
Dan Kearny knocked Paul down, at the same time yanked Giselle to the ground and fell on top of her. His car shielded them from the blast, the ball of fire, the rolling smoke, the flying shrapnel.
After thirty-seconds, Kearny demanded, “Anybody hurt?” Nobody was. He scrambled to his feet. “Let’s get to hell out of here.”
Giselle jerked open the rider’s side door of Kearny’s car, shoved the seat forward, and stuffed a totally disoriented Paul into the backseat. She slammed the seat back to its proper position and jumped in as Kearny was sliding in under the wheel on the driver’s side.
He jammed it into reverse, shot backward with the horn blaring right across Lincoln to the far lane while traffic stood on its nose, floored it going south in the opposite direction from which Inga had gone. Just beyond a little independent deli he squealed left into narrow Linden Lane, an underpass connecting up with the residential eastern side of San Rafael isolated by the skyway all those years before.
Giselle cast a quick look into the back. Paul looked green. He would not be listening to anything she said. But she still leaned close to Kearny and spoke in a low voice.
“Inga made a phone call from a boutique in The Village, then she drove right here. She just kept going when she saw you grabbing Paul. I told you she was involved.”