"There's a man on line three with information about one of the women who was killed at the construction site," his secretary said. "I think you should talk to him."
"Okay. What's his name?"
"Ramon Gutierrez. He's the clerk at the Hacienda Motel in Vancouver, Washington."
Page hit the button for line three and talked to Ramon Gutierrez for five minutes. When he was done, he called Ross Barrow, then headed down the hall to Randy Highsmith's office. Fifteen minutes later, Barrow picked up Highsmith and Page on the corner and they headed for Vancouver.
"Can I watch TV?" Kathy asked.
"Did you have enough pizza?"
"I'm stuffed."
Betsy felt guilty about dinner, but she had put in an exhausting day in court and didn't have the energy to cook.
"Is Daddy going to come home tonight?" Kathy asked, looking up at Betsy expectantly.
"No," Betsy answered, hoping Kathy would not ask her anymore about Rick.
She had explained the separation to Kathy a number of times, but Kathy would not accept the fact that Rick was most probably never going to live with them again.
Kathy looked worried. "Why won't Daddy stay with us?"
Betsy picked up Kathy and carried her to the living room couch.
"Who's your best friend?"
"Melanie."
"Remember the fight you two had, last week?"
"Yeah."
"Well, Daddy and I had an argument too. It's a serious one. just like the one you had with your best friend."
Kathy looked confused. Betsy held Kathy on her lap and kissed the top of her head.
"Melanie and me made up. Are you and Daddy going to make up?"
"Maybe. I don't know right now. Meanwhile, Daddy is living someplace else."
"Is Daddy mad at you because he had to pick me up at day care?"
"What made you ask that?"
"He was awful mad the other day and I heard you arguing about me."
"No, honey," Betsy said, hugging Kathy tight to her.
"This doesn't have anything to do with you. It's just us.
We're mad at each other."
"Why?" Kathy asked. Her jaw was quivering.
"Don't cry, honey."
"I want Daddy," she said, sobbing into Betsy's shoulder. "I don't want him to go away."
"He won't go away. He'll always be your daddy, Kathy. He loves you."
Suddenly Kathy pushed away from Betsy and wriggled off her lap.
"It's your fault for working," she yelled.
Betsy was shocked. "Who told you that?"
"Daddy. You should stay home with me like Melanie's mom."
"Daddy works," Betsy said, trying to stay calm. "He works more than I do."
"Men are supposed to work. You're supposed to take care of me."
Betsy wished Rick was here so she could smash him with her fists.
"Who stayed home with you when you had the flu?" Betsy asked.
Kathy thought for a moment. "You, Mommy," she answered, looking up at Betsy.
"And when you hurt your knee at school, who came to take you home?"
Kathy looked down at the floor.
"What do you want to be when you grow up?"
"An actress or a doctor."
"That's work, honey. Doctors and actresses work just like lawyers. If you stayed home all day, you couldn't do that work."
Kathy stopped crying. Betsy picked her up again.
"I work because it's fun. I also take care of you.
That's more fun. I love you much more than I like my Work. It's no contest. But I don't want to stay home all day doing nothing while you're at school. It would be boring, don't you think?"
Kathy thought about that.
"Will you make up with Daddy, like I did with Melanie?"
"I'm not sure, honey. But either way, you'll see plenty of Daddy. He still loves you very much and he'll always be your dad.
"Now, why don't you watch a little TV and I'll clean up, then I'll read you another chapter of The Wizard of oz."
"I don't feel like TV, tonight."
"Do you want to help me in the kitchen?"
Kathy shrugged.
"How about a hot chocolate? I could make one while we're cleaning the dishes."
"Okay," Kathy said without much enthusiasm. Betsy followed her daughter into the kitchen. She was too small to have to carry the heavy burden of her parents' problems, but she was going to anyway. That was the way it worked and there was nothing Betsy could do about it.
After they were finished in the kitchen, Betsy read Kathy two chapters of The Wizard of Oz, then put her to bed. It was almost nine o'clock.
Betsy looked at the TV listings and was about to turn on the set when the phone rang. She walked into the kitchen and picked up on the third ring.
"Betsy Tannenbaum?" a man asked.
"Speaking."
"This is Martin Darius. The police are at my home with a search warrant.
I want you over here immediately."
A high brick wall surrounded the Darius estate. A policeman in a squad car was parked next to a black wroughtiron gate. As Betsy turned the Subaru into the driveway, the policeman got out of his car and walked over to her window.
"I'm afraid you can't go in, ma'am."
"I'm Mr. Darius's attorney," Betsy said, holding her Bar card out the window. The officer examined the card for a second, then returned it to her.
"My orders are to keep everyone out."
"I can assure you that doesn't include Mr. Darius's attorney."
"Ma'am, there's a search being conducted. You'd be in the way."
"I'm here because of the search. A warrant to search doesn't give the police the right to bar people from the place being searched. You have a walkie-talkie in your car. Why don't you call the detective in charge and ask him if I can come in."
The officer's patronizing smile was replaced by a Clint Eastwood stare, but he walked back to his car and used the walkie-talkie. He returned less than a minute later, and he did not look happy.
"Detective Barrow says you can go in."
"Thank you," Betsy answered politely. As she drove off, she could see the cop glaring at her in the rearview mirror.
After seeing the old-fashioned brick wall and the ornate scrollwork on the wrought-iron gate, Betsy assumed Darius would live in a sedate, colonial mansion, but she found herself staring at a collection of glass and steel fashioned into sharp angles and delicate curves that had nothing to do with the nineteenth century. She parked next to a squad car near the end of a curved driveway. A bridge covered by a blue awning connected the driveway with the front door. Betsy looked down through a glass roof as she walked along the bridge and saw several officers standing around the edge of an indoor pool.
A policeman was waiting for her at the front door.
He guided her down a short set of stairs into a cavernous living room.
Darius was standing under a giant abstract painting in vivid reds and garish greens. Beside him was a slender woman in a black dress. Her shiny black hair cascaded over her shoulders and her tan spoke of a recent vacation in the tropics. She was stunningly beautiful.
The man standing next to Darius was not. He had a beer gut and a face that would be more at home in a sports bar than a condo in the Bahamas.
He was dressed in an unpressed brown suit and white shirt. His tie was askew and his raincoat was draped unceremoniously over the back of a snow-white sofa.
Before Betsy could say anything, Darius thrust a rolled-up paper at her.
"Is this a valid warrant? I'm not going to permit an invasion of my privacy until you've looked at the damn thing."
"I'm Ross Barrow, Ms. Tannenbaum," said the man in the brown suit. "This warrant's been signed by judge Reese. The sooner you tell your client we can go through with this, the sooner we'll be out of here. I could have started — already, but I waited for you to make certain Mr. Darius had representation during the search."
If Darius was a black dope dealer instead of a prominent white socialite and businessman, Betsy knew the house would have been a shambles by the time she arrived. Somebody had ordered Barrow to go very slowly with this case.