He declined the hostess’s first offer of a table, which was prime territory smack in the middle of the dining room, and instead asked for a booth in the distant corner. Once we were led to his preferred suburban outpost, he took the bench that was facing the big room; I was left with a view of a brick wall that was adorned with a large, quasi-erotic photograph of young eggplants and ripe figs. For some reason I found myself thinking of D. H. Lawrence and Alan Bates.
Then I got it: My association was to the cinematic version of Women in Love. I smiled at the memory, and stole another gratuitous glance at the figs. “What is this, really?” I asked.
“Sherry has Simon. I wanted to spend some quality time with you.”
“Yeah? At the Sunflower? You really expect me to believe that?”
“I’m hurt,” he said, investing all of his energy in the menu. “Can’t even do a nice gesture for a friend. What are you hungry for? Look”-he pointed at the entrée list-“everything here’s free range and wild and shit. Has to make you happy.”
“How’s Carmen?” I asked, temporarily giving up on my quest to discover the purpose of the meeting. I wasn’t in a hurry; I knew we’d get there eventually. “She buy you that tie?”
Sam looked up and flicked a quick glance at the dining room. I thought I saw him nod his head just the smallest amount.
I had to resist turning and taking a look for myself. Suddenly, Darrell Olson was at my side. Two seconds later, Jaris Slocum was standing right behind him.
42
“Hi, guys,” Sam said to the two detectives. He didn’t feign surprise. I had to give him credit for that.
I glared at Sam. He made the same little hey-everything’s-copacetic face and did the same hey-everything’s-cool hand gesture that he’d thrown at me back in my waiting room while I was trying to figure out why he was camping out reading magazines.
“Make some room,” he said to me.
I slid over and was immediately pinned against the wall, with no chance of escape, by Darrell Olson.
Sam and Jaris Slocum-their chests and shoulders were much broader than mine and Darrell’s-totally filled the space on the other side of the table. A waitress came by and took our drink order. Apparently sensing the tension at the table, she skipped any flirtation and kept her smile under wraps. We all ordered beer. Four different brands. Just another way of shouting out that we weren’t a bunch of buddies sharing a pitcher.
“You guys hungry?” Sam asked.
“You bet,” Darrell said. “I love this place.”
One mystery solved: Darrell had chosen the restaurant. I slid my menu toward him. My own appetite was wavering. While glaring at Sam, I asked, “What’s this about? You should check with my attorney if you want another interview, Detective Slocum. We shouldn’t even-”
He snapped back. “I know exactly what-”
Sam interrupted Slocum’s interruption. He said, “Call him Jaris, Alan. We’re all friends here.”
What?
Slocum tried again. “I’m perfectly aware that I need to go through your attorney to discuss… that other matter. I’m always eager for a chance to chat with Mr. Maitlin. But Darrell and I aren’t here to talk about Hannah Grant.”
I might have been offended by the gratuitous sarcasm about Cozy if I wasn’t still stuck on Sam’s announcement that “We’re all friends here.” Since when? And if we’re not here to talk about Hannah, what the hell are we here to talk about? At that moment I thought of Bob Brandt, and to no one in particular said, “It’s your move.”
“Hey, allow me,” Sam said. “This little party was my idea.”
I thought my narrowed eyes and tight brow aptly communicated to Sam that I didn’t approve of any of the choreography he’d put into his soiree so far.
“A little background to start,” he said, sticking to the charade that we were all just friends having a beer and sharing some crispy tofu triangles. “Jaris and Darrell had a piece of the Mallory Miller investigation. Lucy and I were doing time line. They were assigned to follow up a couple of potentially promising leads: one being the empty house next door-the one that’s for sale-and two being the possibility that the girl somehow ended up with her mother.”
“This is all about Mallory, then?” I asked. Despite my skepticism, I knew my question was evidence of capitulation on my part. I should have been throwing money on the table for my beer and walking full speed away from the three Boulder cops.
“A little patience, maybe?” Sam said. The drinks arrived. Sam waited until the waitress was gone again before he continued. “I was thinking about the conversations you and I had, you know, about the guy with the car, that classic Camaro, and about the house next door to the Millers’ with the waterfalls and shit, and about your friend, Dr. Estevez, and what happened to her in Las Vegas.”
Darrell said, “Sam came to us. We heard his thoughts and started wondering whether there might be some connection, something that tied things together.”
“Some connection?” I asked, even more skeptically than before. I already feared a connection among Bob and Mallory and Diane, and I was beyond skeptical that I was hearing about this from Darrell Olson and Jaris Slocum.
“Yeah,” said Slocum.
As far as I was concerned he was nothing more than a punk with a shield. “I’m uncomfortable with this,” I said, trying hard not to sound petulant. Sam’s expression told me that I hadn’t quite succeeded. I felt as though all the confidential information that I’d been trying to guard about my patients was in a balloon hovering above the table, and that each of the three detectives was dimpling the latex with the point of a saber.
The worst part? I knew I’d gotten myself into this one by trying to finesse the confidentiality rules with Sam.
“Hear us out,” Sam said.
Slocum’s mug of beer was almost gone. He’d either been real thirsty, or he was real anxious. He looked toward our waitress and raised the mug and his eyebrows. He wanted a refill.
Darrell said, “We didn’t know about the guy with the car. The one who rents the garage next door to the Millers. That was news to us. It could be an important piece of information. We should have picked up on it, but it slipped through the cracks.”
I glared at Sam. “Slipped through the cracks, huh?”
Slocum picked up from there. “And the fact that your friend disappeared in Las Vegas? That’s curious to us, too.”
“Curious?”
“Well, worrisome, of course, but curious, too. Given the circumstances.”
“What circumstances are those?” I asked.
“Everything,” Slocum replied.
“Everything?”
“Yeah.”
I found that I liked him almost as much now that we were all friends having beers and I was calling him “Jaris” as I had when he was ordering me around outside Hannah Grant’s office and I was calling him “Detective.” I said, “For old times’ sake, Jaris, treat me like you treated me at Hannah’s office. You know, like an idiot citizen. Tell me what ‘everything’ means.”
“Alan,” Sam said.
I remained unconvinced about the announced agenda for this impromptu meeting. “We’re not talking in code about Hannah Grant right now? You’re all sure about that? If we are, my lawyer’s probably not going to be too happy about it. Come to think about it, neither will my wife.” I don’t know why I threw in the part about Lauren. It was petty, but then so was my state of mind.