“Why would someone want to kill Denny?” Frost asked.
“No idea.”
“So what are you doing on his boat?”
“My father did a job for him,” Fox replied. “Now he’s missing, and I’m trying to find him. I figured maybe Denny left something behind that would give me a clue about where he is.”
“Who’s your father?”
The boy said nothing.
“Fox, if your father worked with Denny, I need to talk to him,” Frost insisted.
“Why should I trust you?”
“Because I’m here to help. You’re not in any trouble. How about you and me sit down and talk?”
Fox shrugged. “Yeah, okay. Whatever.”
Frost reached out a hand to the boy’s shoulder, but that was a mistake. The next movement happened so quickly and unexpectedly that Frost had no time to react. Fox cartwheeled in place. His leg rocketed through the air, and his shoe crashed heavily into the side of Frost’s head. The blow knocked Frost sideways and toppled him over the railing, airborne. A second later, his body splashed into the cold water of the harbor. He sank below the surface and then kicked his way up, coughing and spitting. His head spun as he struggled to stay afloat, and the side of his skull throbbed. His clothes and shoes weighed him down. He swam clumsily around the aft section of the boat and then dragged himself onto the pier. The water gave up his body with a loud sucking sound.
He stood up, drenched from head to toe and freezing. He looked around at the yacht and the pier and saw that he was already alone again.
Fox had vanished.
4
“A fourteen-year-old kid dumped you in the water?” Frost’s brother, Duane, chuckled to him over the phone. “I’m sorry, bro, but I really wish I’d been there to see that. I’m never going to let you hear the end of it, you know.”
“I’m sure you won’t be the only one,” Frost replied.
He’d draped a towel over the driver’s seat of his Suburban, but his wet clothes had soaked through it. Heat blasted through the vents, but the air barely warmed him, and cold drips of harbor water continued to trickle from his hair. He’d been angry at first; then he’d felt like an idiot; now he was finally able to laugh at himself.
It was seven thirty in the morning under a clear blue sky. The Saturday streets were still mostly empty of traffic. He headed south out of the marina, and when he reached the intersection at Lombard, he decided to turn. He was still trying to decipher Denny’s message.
“Seriously, are you okay?” Duane asked him.
“Nothing but wounded pride and a splitting headache.”
“And the kid?”
“Long gone. I don’t know who he is or how to find him.”
“Well, when you do find him, run him over to meet the Niners. We could use a kicker like that.” Duane laughed again.
Frost heard the metal bang of kitchen pans in the background of the call. Duane was a San Francisco chef who’d sold his brick-and-mortar restaurant several years earlier to open up a food truck in the city’s SoMa District. He changed his menus daily to accommodate whatever food was freshest, and the result was long lines of organic-loving twenty-somethings crowding the truck at lunch and dinner. Duane didn’t make half the money he once did, but he loved it and didn’t seem to mind working eighteen hours a day. Sometimes he slept in his truck rather than make the hike back to his fashionable Marina condo in the middle of the night.
“You should come to dinner tonight,” Duane went on. “We haven’t seen you in a while. Don’t worry, the menu won’t be too gourmet for your Oscar Mayer palate.”
Frost chuckled. “What are you serving?”
“I’m bringing an Asian-Mediterranean spin to all things Canadian.”
“Why Canadian?” Frost asked.
“My new sous chef, Raymonde, is from Montreal, so I figured, what the hell.”
“What do they eat in Canada, other than moose?”
Duane snickered. “I’m still working up the menu. We’ll have some kind of poutine, I guess. Maybe I’ll do a pad thai version. Raymonde’s doing smoked meat. It’s Canada, so I’ll probably have to put a maple glaze on everything. I’m going to see if I can get a Mountie to show up, too. What’s Canada without a little Dudley Do-Right?”
“Well, I’ll be there if I can,” Frost said.
“Perfect. Tabby will be there, too. I want to see her face when you tell her about getting dunked in the harbor by a kid.”
“Sure,” Frost replied in a flat voice.
He knew there was no way he could avoid seeing Tabby Blaine. She and Duane were almost always together. Even so, she was the most dangerous person in Frost’s life. Just the mention of her name conjured the girl in his mind so vividly that she felt close enough to touch. She had lush shoulder-length hair that was mahogany red. She wore her emotions on her face, and her green eyes could go from innocent to wicked to funny to sad like the bay waters changing colors. From the moment he’d met her, they’d connected in a way that was intimate and deep. Talking to her was easy for him in a way that it had never been with any other woman.
That was a big problem because Tabby was Duane’s fiancée.
When Frost didn’t say anything more on the phone, Duane took that as an invitation to offer extra details about his Canadian menu and the intricacies of some odd pork spread made in Quebec called cretons. Meanwhile, Frost watched Lombard Street passing outside his truck. He climbed the hill at Larkin and found himself facing the famous intersection that wriggled down the other side. Apartment buildings stepped down the slope beside the red cobblestones. At this early hour, tourists hadn’t mobbed the area yet. He drove across the cable car tracks and down Lombard turn by sharp turn, eight turns in all, past green hedgerows that lined the winding avenue.
When he reached the bottom, he pulled to the curb and craned his neck to look behind him. He shook his head because he hadn’t learned a thing. Lombard was famous to outsiders, but it had no special meaning for him. He had no idea what Denny had meant with his message. He drove one more block and turned for home. Driving up and down the peaks of Russian Hill made him feel as if he were in a Steve McQueen movie.
On the phone, Duane was still talking about Canada.
“So, poutine,” Frost broke in finally when he couldn’t take any more. “That’s like French fries with gunk on top, right?”
“Don’t let Raymonde hear you say that, but yeah, that’s about the size of it. Plus cheese curds, don’t forget the cheese curds.”
“Well, count me in, eh?”
“Good. We’ll see you tonight. Oh, by the way, I heard something on the radio this morning about a murder in Russian Hill. Was that anywhere near you?”
“Inside my front door,” Frost replied.
Duane was silent. Then he said, “I’m sorry, what?”
“The guy died in my house.” Frost waited a beat before adding, “It was Denny.”
“Denny Clark?”
“Yeah.”
“Were you two talking again?”
“No,” Frost said.
“So why was he there? What happened to him?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“Wow, Denny Clark. That’s unbelievable. I’m really sorry, Frost. Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. It’s just strange, you know? There was still bad blood between us.”
“No kidding.”
Frost drove the last hill at Green Street. The yellow police tape still cordoned off the sidewalk, but the squad cars were gone. In the daylight, he could see the dark red of bloodstains running like a thin ribbon from the hillside stairs. Then he looked up at the steps of his house and had to cut off his brother.
“Duane? I have to go. I’ll see you tonight if I can.”