This was something she never talked about. It was hardly a secret that she’d been a cheerleader in college, and those who didn’t know assumed it based on her looks. If anyone ever asked what those days had been like, she made a joke about dating the quarterback or chanted a halfhearted victory call.
It wasn’t that she was ashamed of her cheering days. Although the trajectory from pep leader to cop inevitably led to Buffy the Homicide Detective jokes, she’d been making them longer than anyone. And if the stereotype of the cheerleader was round-heeled and airheaded, she was secure enough in her self-knowledge that she never let other people’s prejudices bother her. Let them think she was dumb-she’d find a way to use that to her own advantage.
It wasn’t even the difficulty of persuading a noncheerleader that there was a spiritual aspect to the art. She’d never been shy about standing up for anything she believed in, no matter how obscure or unpopular.
But that sensation, that moment of floating-that was private. It belonged to her alone, and she wouldn’t share it if she knew how. Every once in a while she’d catch the eye of another former flyer and an understanding would pass silently between them. They were a sisterhood of the flight, and they had something the rest of the world lacked-a memory of peace, a sense that there was always the possibility of transcendence in the world.
Which was why the tableau into which she had stepped made so little sense.
She and her partner, Head Detective Carlton Lassiter, had picked up the call as they’d returned to their unmarked car after a fruitless morning searching for witnesses in the previous night’s hit-and-run death of a wino on State Street. Possible 187 on Lasuen Road.
Lasuen Road was one of Santa Barbara’s most beautiful streets, a curving line of ocean-view houses leading up to the El Encanto Hotel. But no neighborhood was safe from crime, not as long as there were people in it. And if she’d had any doubt about that the flashing lights of the three police cruisers outside the rambling Spanish house would have put them to rest.
As Lassiter pulled the sedan into the long driveway, O’Hara gave the scene a quick once-over. The house looked small from the front, but she knew that like many of its neighbors it was built down the steep hillside, and might have as many as three stories below the ones visible from the street. There was a tiled walkway cutting through a lush lawn toward the heavy oak front door.
A woman was standing in front of that door, staring into space as if she were trying to figure out how she’d gotten here. She was sheathed in a gray St. John Knits suit that brought out the blue in her striking eyes even from this distance. Long blond hair framed a face that might have looked thirty just moments ago. Shock and grief had undone in a second all the work of Santa Barbara’s top plastic surgeons, and there was no hiding the fifty-five years she’d been on the Earth.
O’Hara waited for Lassiter to meet her on the passenger’s side of the car, and they fell into lockstep as they walked toward the woman. Before they’d made it halfway across the grass, a uniformed officer stepped between them and the woman.
“DB’s down this way,” the officer said, attempting to steer them toward a concrete path that ran from the driveway down the hill along the side of the house.
“That’s funny,” Lassiter said, whipping off his sunglasses so he could aim his most terrifying glare at the officer. “I don’t remember asking for directions. Do you, Detective O’Hara?”
The officer, who looked like he might have graduated from the academy that morning, turned pale. “I didn’t mean to-”
“To tell us how to investigate a crime scene?” Lassiter finished for him. “To determine the order in which we collect our information? Maybe you could save us all a lot of time and just let us know who killed the victim.”
The rookie’s throat muscles throbbed as if he were fighting to keep his lunch from coming up. He’d seriously overstepped and he knew it. O’Hara might have joined Lassiter in torturing the kid, until she noticed the dark, wet patch on his uniform shirt just above his badge, and a small beige smudge next to it. Then she understood.
“Tears don’t stain unless you let them, Officer Randall,” she said, reading his nameplate. “But foundation is a bitch to get out of blues. That’s the mother?”
The officer’s face went from white to red like litmus paper dunked in lemon juice. “She asked me,” the officer started. “That is, she’s upset. Understandably upset, since it was her daughter and-”
“Unless she was understandably upset because she killed her daughter,” Lassiter snapped.
“I didn’t think-”
“We’re well aware of that, Officer Randall,” Lassiter said.
O’Hara could see a real danger that the rookie’s tears would soon be joining those of the grieving mother on his shirt. “It’s all right, Officer,” O’Hara said. “Comforting grieving survivors is part of the job. Just make sure to keep in mind what the most important part of the job is. Now, where’s the body?”
O’Hara could sense Lassiter’s irritation without glancing over at him. He wasn’t done hazing the rookie yet. But something about this scene was troubling her, and she couldn’t figure out what it was. There was nothing new to her about tragedy striking in the best neighborhoods, at the most fortunate people, on the most beautiful of days. Still, ever since they got the call she’d had a rumbling in the back of her mind that this was going to be bad, and she needed to find out just how much.
“Follow this path down the stairs,” the officer said quickly, before she could change her mind. “At the end of the house turn right onto the deck. There’s a sliding door to the laundry room. She’s inside.”
“Thank you, Officer,” Lassiter said with exaggerated politeness. “You may go back to comforting the bereaved. But do us one favor. If she should happen to say something-anything-jot it down with a little note about the time, would you?”
Without waiting for an answer, Lassiter turned and headed toward the stairs. O’Hara considered saying something reassuring to the kid, but really, what was the point? He had screwed up, and he deserved everything her partner had said to him, along with several of the things he’d wanted to but didn’t.
O’Hara followed Lassiter down a steep, narrow flight of concrete steps that plunged down the hill alongside the white stucco wall. Halfway to the garden there was a door set into the side of the house. Out of habit Lassiter jiggled the knob and found it locked, then continued down.
At the bottom of the hill the path led onto a small, flat parcel of garden surrounded by a high hedge of cypresses. The space had clearly been landscaped by pros some time ago, but since then it had been allowed to go wild. A patch of roses was overrun by weeds, while the gate to the caged vegetable garden had been left open and deer had eaten everything inside down to the roots. Something had gone wrong in this household even before today’s tragedy, and O’Hara made a mental note to check whether it was financial or medical or something else that might concern their investigation.
“This way,” Lassiter said, gesturing to the wooden deck that came off the path. She followed him to a sliding glass door that had been left open and stepped through.
She hadn’t thought much about what she was walking into. A basement converted into a laundry room or a hobby den, most likely. If she’d asked above she might have learned that the house’s lowest level had been converted into a apartment for the owner’s daughter.
But whatever she might have learned would have done her no good once she stepped through the door. She might as well have plunged down the rabbit hole or passed through the mirror.
What Juliet O’Hara saw was herself, flying. There was the long blond hair, the blue-and-gold cheerleader’s sweater and short pleated skirt revealing the toned tan legs floating effortlessly above the tiled floor.
She blinked hard and forced away the sensation of flight. Blinked hard and forced herself back to the now.