“Girl can dance, can’t she?”
The voice from the foyer stunned them like the blaring wake-up call of an alarm. It was Duane. He’d been watching the whole thing.
Tabby disentangled herself from Frost as if she were running from a burning building. She put her hands on her pink, blushing cheeks. “Oh,” she said to Duane. “Oh, hi.”
“Hi.”
“I didn’t think you could make it.”
“I got out of the truck early,” Duane replied.
Her voice stuttered. “Well, good. Great. That’s great. I was starting risotto. Can you stick around?”
“Sure I can.” Duane stared at the two of them with a strange coolness in his eyes. “Assuming that’s okay with you guys?”
“More than okay,” Frost said.
Tabby turned and disappeared into the kitchen with an embarrassed sideways glance at Frost. Duane didn’t join her. Not right away. He let her get to work. The clatter of pans sounded extra loud and extra fast, as if she were throwing a wound-up ball of nervous energy into the sizzle of shrimp. His brother simply stood in the foyer with his hands on his hips. He watched Frost, and Frost watched him back. Neither one of them said a word.
“So,” his brother said finally, when the silence had gone on for too long. “I guess I should go help my fiancée.”
Frost didn’t miss the little emphasis Duane put on that last word.
“I guess so.”
“What can I get for you, bro? Is there something you want?”
“Nothing.”
“Really? Because it sure looks to me like you want something. How about another beer?”
Frost heard the innuendo in Duane’s voice and tried to ignore it. The room spun as he collapsed onto the sofa. His headache was back, like a spike burrowing into his neck. He couldn’t remember another time in his life where he’d felt as if the walls were closing in on him the way they were now.
“No,” he said. “I’ve had too much already.”
31
Shack went along for the ride the next morning. Frost wasn’t about to let him out of his sight.
He called DiMatteo Limousine and found out that their driver Jeffrey was on assignment at the airport. He headed south out of the city and immediately got locked up in the traffic on 101. It was the same slog every morning as tech commuters crawled toward Silicon Valley. Bay Area traffic had always been bad, but since the dot-com boom had taken over the area, it was near-constant gridlock on all the freeways and bridges.
He was hungover and angry with himself. He felt like a fool for coming so close to making an irreversible mistake with Tabby, and he felt like a traitor because his brother had seen it all happen. The dinner among the three of them had been a long, uncomfortable hour of silence, and then Tabby and Duane had both left with barely a word to him or to each other. Duane’s face was a blank mask, showing nothing. Tabby looked as if she were standing on the edge of a cliff.
Frost wasn’t sure what would happen next. He felt as if lines had been crossed everywhere, and there was no going back.
His one comfort was that Shack seemed no worse for his brush with Lombard. The cat slept through the traffic jam at first, then got up and went from window to window to examine the other drivers stuck around them. His tail swished. He put a paw on the glass, as if handing out high fives. Young women cooed and waved back. Everywhere they went, Shack was the star.
His SUV inched past the calm bay waters. The Pacifica hills loomed to the west, still tipped with morning fog off the ocean. The sun was low. It took him nearly an hour to reach the airport, but he finally left the freeway at San Bruno Avenue near the huge United maintenance facility and found the private parking lot where taxis and limos waited for their fares. His badge got him past the gate, and he drove to the lineup of town cars parked near the barbed wire fence. Several of the drivers were hanging out together, laughing and smoking cigarettes.
Frost pulled into an open spot near them. He saw no signage to identify the cars for DiMatteo Limousine, but that didn’t surprise him. Their clientele preferred anonymity. When he asked the drivers about Jeffrey, they pointed him toward a young Filipino man in a black suit hanging out by himself on the other side of the lot.
He walked through the rows of cars, and the eyes of the other drivers followed him. Jeffrey sat in a fold-up canvas chair next to a sleek navy-blue Lincoln. The tall, skinny driver was eating slices of mango from a plastic bag and reading a well-thumbed paperback copy of David McCullough’s biography of the Wright brothers. Frost had already read the book himself. Before he could say anything, he had to wait for the thunder of a departing 767 to clear overhead.
When it was quiet again, Frost said, “Long way from then to now.”
Jeffrey looked up at him. Unlike his wary colleagues, the young man’s face was curious and open. He was probably no more than twenty years old. “I’m sorry, what?”
Frost nodded at the jumbo jet vanishing north toward the city. “We’ve come a long way since the Wright brothers.”
“Oh yeah.”
“‘No bird soars in a calm,’” Frost quoted. “Isn’t that what Wilbur’s wrote?”
“Yes! You’ve read the book?”
“I have.”
“I don’t meet many people with an interest in history,” Jeffrey said. “Me, I can’t get enough of it.”
“Same here.” Frost extended a hand, and the man took it. “Are you Jeffrey? Do you work for DiMatteo Limousine?”
Jeffrey finished his last slice of mango and shoved the empty bag in his pocket. “Yeah, that’s right. It pays the bills. I go to SF State in the evenings.”
“My alma mater,” Frost said. “Are you studying history?”
A smile creased the young man’s face. “Oh no. My parents wouldn’t like that. College has to be practical. I’m studying business.”
“My parents told me the same thing,” Frost said. “Not that I listened.”
Jeffrey grinned. “So what do you do?”
Frost took out his badge. “Mostly, I ask people questions. Mind if I ask you some?”
“About what?”
“A limo charter you drove last Tuesday night,” Frost said.
Jeffrey looked nervous. “The boss doesn’t like it when I talk about the rides. We’re pretty high end. We get a lot of people who are really concerned about privacy. Celebrities and such.”
“I understand. The thing is, I’m investigating a murder that might be connected to the people who were in your limo. It would help a lot to know what happened on Tuesday night. I won’t tell your boss.”
The young man glanced at the cluster of drivers on the other side of the lot. They were still watching the two of them. “There are other DiMatteo guys over there. They’re going to tell my boss that they saw me talking to you. I’ll get in trouble, and I can’t afford that. This job pays my tuition.”
Frost reached into his pocket and let one of his cards drop to the greasy pavement at his feet. “Tell you what. I’m going to walk away, and I’m going to make sure those other guys see that I look unhappy. Like you didn’t tell me anything. Then I’m going to drive away, but I’d appreciate it if you’d call me after I’m gone. Five minutes. That’s all I need.”
Jeffrey glanced at the card on the ground near the car door. “Yeah, okay. What the hell. ‘No bird soars in a calm,’ right?”
“Right.”
Frost walked away. He made a show of looking frustrated and angry, which prompted an undercurrent of conversation in another language as he passed the drivers near his Suburban. He climbed inside and drove out of the parking lot, and he wondered whether Jeffrey would follow through on his promise. He didn’t have to wait long to find out. He wasn’t even back to the on-ramp at 101 when his phone rang.