The feathered Sinatra flew away.
“If I sang that well, I wouldn’t be giving flying lessons,” I said as I exited the guesthouse, “I’d be working the main room at Caesars Palace.”
Hub rubbed the sleep from his eyes. “You want some coffee?”
“Need is more like it.”
I followed him inside and took a seat at the kitchen table while he loaded the coffeemaker with grounds and water. Neither of us spoke. It was still too early.
“Heard you come in last night,” he said after awhile. “Out on the town, were we?”
“Something like that.”
He got out two cups and a quart of milk from the refrigerator. “Hope you don’t mind skim. Crissy won’t let me have real milk.”
“Skim’s like water with a little white in it. I’ll take it black.”
I told him that the sheriff’s department had arrested two suspects on suspicion of murdering Janet Bollinger.
“I heard,” Walker said.
“How’d you hear?”
“A little bird told me.”
He glanced at me over his shoulder and winked enigmatically. The coffeemaker hissed. Hub leaned his elbows on the counter and watched the ebony liquid stream into the carafe.
“Played golf with Greg Castle yesterday,” he said.
“So I heard.”
“He won’t go public with that paternity test he took. Says it would embarrass his family. He did tell me, though, he gave some thought to what you said, about an independent audit. He agrees it’d help prove his company wasn’t stealing from the government, like Munz said they were.”
“Good deal. Then I’ll just collect the rest of my money and be on my way.”
Hub looked over at me again. “What money?”
“The other five grand I’m still owed.”
“I don’t owe you nothin’,” he said sternly. “I said I’d pay you the other five after you dug up something to give the newshounds, to get ’em off Greg’s back. You didn’t do that.”
Anybody can get bent out of whack when the bills come due. But it was the degree of Walker’s vehemence that seemed out of character. For a man with an otherwise amiable, slow-to-boil disposition, he was being rather loutish.
“You didn’t know anything about Greg Castle’s paternity test until I told you about it, Hub. I think that counts for something. He also wasn’t planning on commissioning an audit until I suggested it. That counts for something, too.”
“That test don’t count ’cuz Greg won’t release it to the press. And he told me that audit was something Castle Robotics was probably gonna do anyway. From where I’m standing, that means you haven’t held up your end of the bargain.”
“I flew down here in good faith to work for you. I did the work, my plane now looks like something my cat coughed up, and did I mention I almost got killed? From where I’m standing, or sitting, as the case may be, that’s easily worth five grand.”
“A deal’s a deal,” Walker said coldly, “and you didn’t hold up your end of the deal.”
Crissy swept into the kitchen in black running tights and a gray, UC San Diego hoodie, her hair pulled back in a ponytail. Hub asked her if Ryder was still sleeping.
“Like a log.”
She nabbed a bottle of fluorescent green energy drink from the refrigerator and asked me pleasantly how I’d slept, as if what had occurred between the two of us the night before hadn’t.
“That crazy bird kept him up,” Hub said before I could respond, “like it did me.”
Crissy took a long swallow from her bottle. “He just needs a little comfort,” she said, looking at me with a small, telling smile that Hub, waiting on the coffee, didn’t catch. “Like we all do.”
I pretended not to notice, and asked Walker again how he’d heard so quickly that arrests had been made in the Janet Bollinger case.
“I heard,” Crissy said. “I got up early to do yoga and turned on the radio. It was on the news. I’m just so relieved they caught them.”
Hub poured the coffee. “Janet was a nice girl,” he said, “even if she did get involved with Munz. Nobody deserves to die like she did. Her or my daughter.”
He stared out at the pool, pursing his lips. Crissy caressed his arm, said she’d be back from her run in forty-five minutes, and gave him a departing peck on the cheek. I waited until I heard the front door open and latch closed.
“There’s something you’re not telling me, Hub.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Janet Bollinger was stabbed two days ago. Somebody drove onto the flight line at Montgomery Field that night and tinkered with the engine on my airplane. That’s why I crashed.”
“And you think I had something to do with that?”
I said nothing and watched him.
Walker began pacing angrily. “You got no right saying something like that to me in my own house. No right at all.”
“Did you go out that night, Hub?”
“I told you. I couldn’t sleep that night. I took a pill.”
He strode across the kitchen to a gumwood desk built into a small alcove and yanked opened a side drawer. Fearing he might be going for a weapon, I reached across the counter for a steak knife from a butcher block carving set — paranoia wasn’t a mental disorder among Alpha operators, it was a job requirement — when I realized that Walker wasn’t attempting to arm himself. He was reaching for his checkbook and a pen.
He scribbled out a check like he couldn’t do it fast enough, tore it off, and slapped it on the counter in front of me. The amount was $5,000.
“Time for you to hit the road, Mr. Logan.”
I brushed my teeth, gathered together my kit, and returned to the main house. I wanted to apologize to Hub for casting aspersions, but there was no one home. Walker, I assumed, had driven his granddaughter to school, and Crissy was not yet back from jogging. I jotted a note that said simply, “Blue skies — Logan,” placed it on the kitchen counter, and left through the front door, making sure it was locked behind me.
Across the street, Major Kilgore, U.S. Marine Corps retired, was hosing down a silver Lincoln Town Car sporting a bumper sticker that proclaimed global warming to be a hoax of the liberal left. He paused to watch me toss my duffel in the back of the Escalade.
“Your pal’s no hero,” Kilgore yelled. “He’s a jerk.”
“Thanks for the heads-up.”
I climbed in, cranked the ignition, turned to look over my shoulder, and began backing out of the Walkers’ long driveway. Kilgore slammed down his hose with the water still running and came storming toward the Escalade before I’d reached the street.
His eyes were like pinballs, bouncing around in their sockets. My sightline went instinctively to his hands, which appeared empty. But as we converged, he dug into the right front pocket of his Bermuda shorts. I had no intention of waiting to find out if he was packing or merely playing pocket pool. I cut the wheel sharply and drove off the driveway in reverse, onto the Walkers’ lawn, angling straight for him. He was a half-second from being flattened by 5,800 pounds of Motor City metal when I cut the wheel again, just missing him, as he leapt sideways to avoid being hit, like Superman jumping through a window.
I stood on the brakes, slammed the SUV into park and jumped out. Kilgore was lying on the grass, stunned and gasping but otherwise unscathed. In his right hand was a piece of paper he’d removed from his pocket.
“You could’ve killed me!”