She tapped her brakes and was waved forward by a worker with a SLOW sign in his hand. He glanced into her window as she rolled past, offered her a smile, and she returned it, suddenly remembering the guy who’d stopped by the center last weekend. Barry Hume… or maybe the name was Hughes. Yeah, that was it. Barry Hughes. He’d mentioned he was a utility man with PG&E and had noticed the center whenever he was in the area. Julia crunched her forehead. Had he ever called Rob for an appointment? She hadn’t checked, although he’d really seemed to take a shine to Viv.
A little curious whether he might be among the crew at the station, Julia looked back into her rearview, but didn’t see him outside. Of course he could be in the shed or the van, she thought… not that it was of particular importance either way.
As Julia reached the wooden sign for the rescue center, it occurred to her that it might be important to find out about any trouble with the local power lines. The clouds had become more threatening after she’d left home, and she had even run into some patchy sprinkles farther east. A heavy fall downpour looked like a sure thing this morning, and since whatever work was being done on the lines probably would have to be suspended once it started, it wouldn’t have hurt her to ask the workers what was going on.
Julia considered pulling over, then scratched the notion. She had already hit her right turn signal and started up the drive, and saw no point bothering them right now.
Besides, if the lights at the shop didn’t come on when she flicked the switch, she supposed it would be all the answer she needed.
In the false PG&E van’s front passenger seat, Siegfried Kuhl waited for the Passport to swing in between the low tree limbs partially overgrowing the bottom of the drive. Then he glanced at his wristwatch.
It was four minutes to eight.
He counted down to himself, heard a few droplets of rain patter against the windshield in the silence.
At precisely eight o’clock he turned to Ciras. Seated behind the steering wheel, he made no more sound than the three Shutzhunds in the rear of the van.
“Confirm that the work on the line has been done,” Kuhl said, and tilted his chin toward the utility pole on the opposite roadside, its cables running straight over the treetops to their target.
Ciras reached for his dashboard handset and radioed up. After a moment he gave Kuhl a nod.
Kuhl looked satisfied.
“We proceed,” he said.
Rob Howell glanced at his dash clock and groaned in total disgust. A quarter after eight, damn!
He’d done it again, only worse.
His Camaro’s speedometer needle quivering over the eighty mph mark, Rob shot home from San Gregario Beach along California 84, bearing south-southwest through fog and drizzle, trying to gobble some highway miles without getting nailed by the staties. Under the best driving conditions he would have to lighten up on the gas pedal around La Honda, where the road really started to loop-de-loop, then slow his pace to a virtual crawl as he turned onto the even twistier local routes… and he had a hunch the weather would soon become a problem. Slated over with rain clouds, the sky looked about ready to spill its waterlogged guts and compound the hazardously poor visibility with a slick, wet blacktop.
Rob frowned, his face sullen under the bill of his Oakland A’s baseball cap. There was no question he’d started out the day on tenuous ground, not from the moment he’d read yesterday’s indecent game score on ESPN and abandoned any chance of falling back asleep. But he didn’t have any idea how he could have forgotten the weekly payroll ledger. How he could’ve been so careless. And what was more bothersome was that he wasn’t sure where it might be.
When he’d finished preparing the ledger on his home computer late the previous afternoon, Rob had copied his entries to a recordable CD, made a paper backup, then slipped both into an accordion folder, which had in turn gone into his briefcase on its chair by the door. That had been about four o’clock, four-thirty. Then, a short while before game time, say six o’clock, he’d pulled the folder just to give the printout a quick eyeball, and compare it with his updated employee list to be certain there hadn’t been any omissions… and that was where his recollection developed a few critical gaps.
Rob had been trying to mentally retrace his steps ever since he reached the Fairview at seven-thirty this morning, sat down at his desk to transfer the entries onto the hotel’s computer, and been dismayed to realize it was missing from his briefcase. He could remember browsing through it on the living room couch, where he had intended to settle in for the A’s-Mariner’s playoff seed duel. But then Cynthia turned in early — she had been fighting off a head cold for the past week — and he’d decided to keep her company and watch the game on their bedroom TV set. At some point in between, Rob needed to give the baby a feeding and had gone to warm up her formula under the hot-water tap. He distinctly recalled that he’d meant to bring the folder with him, re-deposit it inside his briefcase on his way to the kitchen sink… but might he have inadvertently carried the folder into the kitchen with him?
Could be, he guessed. Either that, or he’d set it down on the coffee table before getting up. What he did remember — or believed he remembered — was that it hadn’t been in his hand when he’d entered the nursery with Laurie’s bottle, eliminating at least one room as a strong possibility.
Rob produced a long sigh. The drizzle had gotten heavier, and in fact was now closer to a light but steady rain, smudging the road ahead between occasional sweeps of his windshield wipers. He switched them from INTERMITTENT to SLOW and eased off the accelerator before pulling his cellular phone from its visor clip to try his wife again. These days he could barely walk and chew gum at the same time; was he kidding himself trying to simultaneously drive and play detective? But he needed either the CD/R or printout to input his payroll data into the hotel’s computer, and it had to be done by tonight. The staff’s paychecks were cut by an outside payroll service, and unless Rob electronically transmitted the information so its processors had it waiting in their system first thing Monday morning, nobody at the hotel would get squared away on time next week… and he would be the person to blame.
Ah, what I’d give for a home Internet connection, he thought. It hardly seemed an excesive wish. With cash being as tight as it had been since the baby came along, however, anything besides bare bones necessities was out of the question at the Howell abode, and probably would be for a while yet.
Rob was positive he’d feel a whole lot better knowing the folder’s whereabouts, but he’d left the hotel in such an agitated rush that he hadn’t even thought to call Cynth first. And although he’d been trying to reach her on his cell since eight o’clock or so, she hadn’t picked up yet.
He put the phone to his ear and redialed the call, his steering wheel in a one-handed grip. Still no answer. He wondered where Cynth was. She wouldn’t take the baby out of the house in this crummy weather, especially since she wasn’t feeling well, except maybe to go up to the kennels and check on the greys. But she always brought her cordless with her when she did that.
Rob frowned again, hoping his forgetfulness hadn’t gotten contagious.
After a minute’s consideration he decided to phone the gift shop. Julia would be at work by now and could track down his wife for him. She had a full plate practically running the shelter single-handedly and Rob didn’t like imposing his personal business on her, but he could not imagine a better case for an exception.