John Lescroart - The Hunt Club

After she'd refilled his coffee cup three times, he refused the fourth and leaned back in contentment, asking for the check.

"You're sure? Nothing else?"

"Well, there is one thing, if you don't mind."

"Sure. Anything."

"Maybe you can tell me why I live in San Francisco and not here."

"Oh, I love it down there."

"I do, too, but I love it here more."

"I know." She seemed to be floating in some ethereal place, completely unconcerned and unaware of the passage of time. Suddenly, but in no hurry, she looked all around her, taking in her elegant surroundings. "This place really is like nowhere else."

"Especially today."

She flashed a wicked smile. "Don't tell me you're going to the auction."

"Okay. I won't tell you that."

"But you are?"

"Actually, sadly, no."

"Well, that is sad, but if you were, I was going to hate you for a minute there."

"And now you don't have to. Do you work here all day?"

"Is that a line?"

"It could be. It might not be. If it was a line, would it offend you?"

"No."

"Okay, then, let's call it a line."

"That's sweet, but I've got a boyfriend." Her smile touched his heart as she told him she'd be right back with his check. He watched her with terrible longing as she waited on the other tables, as nice and efficient with each of them as she'd been with him. Maybe she was a robot, a Stepford wife in the making. But damn…

When she came back to him, she leaned over and confided in him as though they were old friends. "Don't look now," she said with quiet excitement, "but the older couple and the boy at the front table? They are going to the auction."

"Who are they?"

"The Manions. Mega high rollers. Manion Cellars?"

Mickey threw a quick glance toward them. "Out eating breakfast just like normal folks?"

"Actually, they come in here a lot."

"You think they're taking the kid to the auction?"

"Maybe not. But if they do, I doubt they'll let him bid."

But the Manions had paid their bill, and now they were getting up. Mickey, fighting sticker shock at the twenty-eight-dollar breakfast tab, decided he could make back some of it by going on the clock for Hunt. He left two twenties for Julia under his plate-might as well leave her with a good memory of him. At least he wasn't cheap.

He walked out onto the street, which now at a little after nine was beginning to come alive, although there was no sign of the Manions.

Which, he thought, was impossible. They'd only left the restaurant thirty or forty seconds before he had followed them out, and he'd seen them start off to the right. He didn't think they could have even made it to the nearest corner. They must have entered one of the adjacent shops, so he started strolling, window-shopping. Four doors up, an old-fashioned barber's pole slowed him down, then drew him inside.

"I just thoughtyou'd want to know." Mickey was back in his car in St. Helena, fresh from his own haircut.

"I do want to know," Hunt said. He hadn't gotten out of the holding cell until three thirty in the morning, Shiu and Poggio making his life unpleasant just because it was so darn much fun. They'd protected the lives of the good citizens of San Francisco by verifying Hunt's permit to carry a concealed weapon, by making sure that his PI license was valid, then graciously informing him that they were letting him off with a warning for carrying the wrong weapon on his permit. He felt that Shiu honestly expected him to say thank you.

Now at least he understood why Juhle hated him.

By the time he'd retrieved his car and gotten back home, it was close to five o'clock, and he'd crashed in his clothes for about four hours, until Mickey's call woke him up. "But," Hunt said, "I thought you weren't going up there."

"Yeah. I changed my mind." Mickey waxed poetic for a moment or two about the day's probable delights, including the breakfast he'd just eaten, which would have been worth its exorbitant price tag even if Julia Roberts hadn't been his waitress.

"Did you ask her out?"

"No. She's got a boyfriend."

"And also twins, from what I hear."

"What? My waitress?"

"No. The real Julia, you fool. You want to tell me about the Manions?"

"Well, first off, the kid did not want the haircut, and I can't say I blame him. But the mom had made up her mind. By the way, is she really the mom? I have to say, grandmother is more what she looks like."

"Well, she might be the grandmother, but she's also the mom."

"If you say so."

"I do. It's complicated. So, the haircut Todd didn't want? What about it?"

"They buzzed him clean. He was pissed. I would have been pissed, too. But she was, like, extremely uptight about it. It was going to happen."

"She needed to change his appearance. Today."

"Why?"

"So he wouldn't look like that picture you saw yesterday with me and Juhle. The kid."

"That was him?"

"That was him. So where are they now?"

"I don't know. I assume back home or off to the auction."

Hunt's voice reflected his disappointment. "You're not still with them?"

"That would have been a little obvious, don't you think? No. Since I was there, I stayed and got my own haircut. Just a trim, thanks."

"Mick."

"You want me to catch up with them again." Not a question.

"If you could."

"Are you coming up?"

"What do you think?"

From Hunt's descriptions,Juhle thought he'd have better luck with Caitlin Rosalier than with any of the other principals. Besides that, she lived in Boston, where it wasn't so early in the morning. The gods smiled, and she was home and seemed eager to talk with him.

The phone call she'd had last night had really bothered her and kept her awake most of the time since then. Yes, she would be fine with Juhle faxing her an autopsy photograph. "It's not too gross, is it?" She'd been really close to Staci once and now seemed to need some sense of closure if, in fact, her friend had been the victim. There was a copy shop on the corner, and she could go there and call Juhle back with the fax number, and he'd told her he would wait for her call.

Before it came, though, Juhle's partner got back to him with the news that he wasn't coming in on this weekend morning. Maybe Juhle didn't realize it, but some cops couldn't live on their meager city incomes and had to supplement their earnings with part-time work such as Shiu's shifts at the Manions. Juhle would stay in touch and keep him informed, though. Right? Thank you very much. He could probably arrange to be in by early afternoon if it was a real emergency, but he didn't even want to commit to that until Juhle had something truly substantive and, in Shiu's words, "Remember, based on evidence, Dev."

Juhle hung up, said, "Asshole," and stared out through the fog at the freeway from his desk in the otherwise empty homicide detail.

For most of the next twenty minutes, he studied the forensics folder, laboring over the affidavit he would attach to the warrant he hoped to get on the Manions' two homes and their cars. At these locales, he would specifically be looking for the murder weapon or clothes that might be contaminated with blood or gunshot residue. From the cars, he hoped to get a hair or even a blood sample that would match Andrea Parisi's.

The evidence would not be as compelling since fingerprints lasted a long time, and perhaps Mrs. Manion had been to Palmer's home socially, but if he could get them, he'd like to find fingerprints indicating that Mrs. Manion had been in Judge Palmer's office. The rug in the judge's office, too, had yielded several different hair samples, and though any DNA or other sophisticated tests on these would be slow coming in, if they came up positive, they would help.