Marcia Muller - Locked In

Julia entered Shar’s room hesitantly, an ice bag that the nurse on the desk had provided pressed to her nose. It would help to keep her eyes from blackening, the woman said. Ice hadn’t done anything for her in the past, but she accepted the bag gratefully.

Shar was turned on her side before a window overlooking a eucalyptus grove. The room was quiet and fragrant with flowers. Julia skirted the bed, drew up the single chair, and looked into Shar’s eyes.

Light filled them, and Shar blinked.

“You’re awake,” Julia said.

Another blink.

Dios , it was creepy! She’d never seen Shar so motionless and silent. How the hell did they know she was in there anyway? This blinking could be a reflex.

No. Ted had said she was completely aware, that one blink meant yes and two meant no.

Still, it was creepy.

A questioning light came into Shar’s eyes. She stared steadily at Julia’s ice bag.

“Oh, this,” Julia said, “ de nada . I’ll explain.”

She gave Shar a full report on her cases. Asked the same thing she’d asked herself, Ted, and Patrick. “Did I do the right thing leaving the money with the Peepleses?”

One blink. Yes.

“What should I do now? Oh, hell, I know you can’t answer me. But I just don’t…”

Shar’s gaze fixed on hers, strong and compelling.

“Okay, I could turn it over to the police.”

Two blinks. No .

“Right. We’re not even sure it’s stolen.”

Blink.

“But I don’t think this guy who worked in the stockroom at Home Showcase saved that much out of his salary. Or won the lottery. And if he had, it’d be earning interest in a bank, rather than stuffed in a duffel bag under the floorboards of his parents’ tack room.”

Blink.

“We don’t even know he’s the one who put it there. Right?”

Blink.

“Or if he was the one I chased through the vineyard?”

Blink.

“So what do I…? Dig deeper, way deeper into the guy’s life?”

Blink. Then Shar closed her eyes. Tired.

Julia sat by the bed a few minutes more before leaving quietly only when she was sure Shar was asleep.

God, these tracking devices were getting better and better!

He sat on his Harley-a more powerful version of the one he’d wrecked last fall-across from the Spindrift Lodge near Big Sur. The lodge was old and sprawling, its logs washed silver-gray by the elements. Woodstove chimneys protruded above each unit, and the ice plant lawn between the semicircular driveway was strewn with driftwood. Craig had just checked in-unit twenty. Mick wasn’t about to go up and knock on the door, though; he’d wait it out, see what happened.

Last night after he left Craig and Adah’s apartment he’d located Craig’s SUV where it was parked a block away and slapped a tracking device under the bumper. At three in the morning Mick’s monitor showed the vehicle was in motion. Mick left his condo and followed.

Why, he wondered on the long drive down, was Craig being so damn secretive about his line of investigation? Sure, it was politically sensitive, but it might have something to do with Shar getting shot and paralyzed. Well, maybe it was just the old FBI training kicking in. Or maybe Craig wanted to score a big one for himself.

No, Craig wasn’t like that. What he was looking into had to be something major. And he wanted to be sure of his facts before he enlisted the rest of them.

An hour passed. The sky was clear, but a cold wind was blowing in and the sea was beating against the cliffs, throwing up big fans of spray. Good weather in Big Sur didn’t last long.

As he waited and watched, Mick thought back to the night last November when he’d been on a similar stretch of highway, drunk out of his mind and stoned on grief because he’d lost the woman he’d considered the love of his life, Charlotte Keim. So drunk and stoned he’d decided to see how high the Harley could fly above the Pacific. He’d misjudged and landed hard on the roadside, hard enough to injure himself seriously and knock some sense into him. Sweet Charlotte had done the same: she was seven years older than he, and during repeated conversations over the next couple of months she’d convinced him that life and love didn’t end at twenty-two.

She was getting married next month to an old college sweetheart. He wished her well.

Activity at the inn. A car-plain, gray, probably a rental-pulled in. A woman in jeans and a dark-colored jacket, her head covered with a scarf, got out and went into the office. She returned quickly, retrieved a bag from the car, and entered Room 19, next to Craig’s.

Mick took out his binoculars, noted the license plate of the car. Jotted down her time of arrival.

Half an hour later another inconspicuous sedan arrived. White this time. A man in jeans and a parka, its hood pulled up and resting low on his brow, got out and went to register. When he came out, he moved the car and entered Room 21, to the other side of Craig. Mick noted down the plate number and time.

For an hour after that, nothing happened. It was getting cold on the clifftop: icy gusts of wind ruffled his hair and permeated his leather jacket. Finally he started the Harley and drove into the inn’s parking lot. The pleasant woman at the desk agreed to give him Room 22.

“That’s the second request I’ve had today for a certain room number,” she said. “Man came in this morning and took Room Twenty, said he was meeting two associates; he described them and asked they be put on either side of him. Said not to mention he was here-it was a surprise. You a member of his party, too?”

“Yes, ma’am, I am.” He wanted to ask her the names all three had registered under, but didn’t want to arouse her suspicions. “Any good takeout places that deliver around here?”

“There’s a pizza joint, but I wouldn’t recommended it.” There was an ominous tone to her voice.

Mick was glad he always carried a couple of nutrition bars. It could be a long night.

The second of the Bill Delaneys turned out to be Callie O’Leary’s attorney. He had his office in the front room of his shabby Victorian on Shotwell Street in Bernal Heights, two blocks from All Souls’ former headquarters. When Rae came to his door and said she was an investigator hired to locate Callie so she could claim an inheritance left her by her grandmother, Delaney let her in, but the small eyes that peered out of poochy folds of flesh were shrewd and wary.

He probably didn’t believe her but hoped there might be something in it for him.

Delaney urged her to take one of his clients’ chairs and sat behind his old oak desk. The room’s sagging shelves were lined with law books, but the bindings looked brittle and were faded by the sun coming through the unshaded bay window. The air smelled of dust and stale cigar smoke; the collar and cuffs of Delaney’s blue oxford cloth shirt were frayed. Rae felt much better dressed in her jeans and sweater.

“So Ms. O’Leary is an heiress,” Delaney said, folding his stubby-fingered hands on a file in front of him.

“I wouldn’t put it that way, but the sum is substantial for a… woman of her means.”

“And how would you know about Ms. O’Leary’s ‘means’?” “I’ve been to her last address. And from what people tell me, she was a hooker.”

Delaney frowned reprovingly. “A sex worker, Ms. Kelleher. There’s a difference.”

She ignored his correction. “Can you provide me with Ms. O’Leary’s present address?”

“She doesn’t wish it to be made known. She calls me periodically, however. Perhaps you could leave the check for the inheritance with me, and I’ll hold it for her.”