John Lescroart - Hard Evidence

Casting off under motor power, even at only five knots, Hardy figured it wouldn’t take three minutes on the straight shot to get out beyond the jetty.

‘You mind if we go aboard a minute?’

It was already too dark to see much on the deck, not that Hardy was looking for anything specific. Tom, meanwhile, walked forward to the cabin door. ‘See, this is what I mean.’

Hardy came up beside him.

‘They leave the door unlocked. What are we supposed to do?’

‘Anything get taken? Maybe you should check.’

It was so easy Hardy almost felt guilty, but not enough to stop himself from following Tom down the ladder into the cabin.

The boy turned on the lights and stopped. ‘No, everything looks okay,’ he said.

Hardy thought okay was a bit of an understatement. They were in a stateroom that was easily as large as Hardy’s living room. A zebra rug graced the polished hardwood floor. Original art – oils in heavy frames – hung along the walls. There was a black leather sofa and matching loveseat, an Eames chair or a good copy of one, a built-in entertainment center along an entire wall – two TVs, large speakers, VCR, tape deck, compact disc player.

Being aboard seemed to make Tom nervous – he fidgeted from foot to foot. ‘Maybe we better go back up, huh? Doesn’t look like anything’s gone.’

But Hardy was moving forward. ‘Might as well be sure,’ he said lightly. He was at the galley – tile floor, gas stove, full-size refrigerator. A glimpse at the wet bar -Glenfiddich, Paradis Cognac, Maker’s Mark Bourbon, top-shelf liquors.

He heard Tom coming up behind him and kept walking forward to where the bulkhead came down. A full bathroom, far too big to let it go as the ‘head.’ The master bedroom, up front, was as large as Rebecca’s new room, the queen-size bed neatly made. Two desks, one a rolltop, an exercycle and some dumbbells, more expensive knick-knacks.

‘This is something,’ Hardy said. Tom stood mutely behind him. ‘Are there rooms aft?’

Hardy ached to open a few drawers in the desks. Casually, he moved to the desk on the bed’s right and pulled at the top drawer. It appeared to have nothing useful – paper clips, pens, standard desk stuff. The drawer on top to the side contained what looked like sweat bands. Hardy reached in and felt around. Sweat-bands. ‘Nothing here,’ he said, lightly as he could, closing the drawer.

Then around the bed, hoping Tom would stay another minute. The rolltop was closed up, but the front drawer slid open. Same story – nothing. Hardy pulled the side top drawer. ‘I don’t know if we should…’ Tom said.

A quick glance down, the drawer open a couple of inches – inside, some maps, navigation stuff. He pushed it closed with his hip and turned around.

‘You’re right, good point.’ Mr Agreeable. ‘Let the police get a warrant.’ Hardy turned around and walked quickly back through the galley and stateroom, past the steps leading up to the deck, past another bathroom off the aft hallway, to the first guest bedroom – double bed, dresser, television, a floating Holiday Inn.

‘We really should go up,’ Tom said from the steps.

‘Okay,’ Hardy, casual but determined, browsed the route back along the opposite hallway, passing through the second room, which was mirrored from floor to ceiling and equipped with most of a complete Nautilus set, a stair-climber, more free weights. Owen Nash took his workouts seriously.

Up on the deck, Tom took a minute to carefully lock the cabin door. Hardy asked, ‘How’s a boat like this sail?’

Tom locked the door, double-checked it. ‘Well, it’s not a hot rod. It’s really for deep water.’

‘Could one man handle her?’

They were walking back up the pontoon to the office, Tom leading. ‘Oh sure. The sail’s are on power if you need it. Mr Nash went out alone a lot. Over to the Farallons and back. It’s harder in a smaller boat, but he liked it.’

‘What’s at the Farallons?’ He asked about the small rock islands twenty miles off San Francisco’s coast.

‘I don’t know,’ Tom said. ‘They say that’s where the great whites breed – you know, the sharks. Maybe he was into them.’

Bad pun, Hardy thought.

They were at the Purple Yet Wah, out in the Avenues on Clement. Moses McGuire was sucking on a crab claw. ‘Black bean sauce,’ he said. ‘I believe with black bean sauce on Dungeness crab we have reached the apex of modern civilization.’

Frannie was glaring at Hardy, who was looking down at his plate.

‘I hate it when you guys fight,’ Moses said. ‘Here I am talking about cultural issues, without which we would all soon be savages and -’

‘Why don’t you tell your friend Dismas that we had an understanding about telephones and being late.’ She stood up and threw down her napkin. ‘Excuse me, I’m going to the bathroom.’

Hardy picked up his chopsticks. ‘I think I’ve already said I was sorry four times, now five. I’m sorry. Six. Sorry sorry sorry sorry.’ Hardy put down his chopsticks. ‘Ten.’

‘Don’t tell me,’ Moses said. ‘She thought you were dead.’

‘She always thinks I’m dead, or going to die.’

‘There is some justification there.’

‘There is no justification at all. I have not come close to dying. Being late doesn’t mean you’ve necessarily died.’

Moses rubbed his crab claw around in the sauce. ‘It did for Eddie.’ He held up his hand, stopping Hardy’s response. ‘Uh uh uh. Here’s an area where we could increase our sensitivity.’

‘Moses…’

‘You could have called. Phones are nearly ubiquitous in our society.’ McGuire was the majority owner in the Shamrock Bar, but he also had a Ph.D. in philosophy from Cal Berkeley.

‘You, too, huh?’

‘She’s my sister. I’m allowed to be on her side from time to time.’

‘I was working on a case. I’m a lawyer now, remember. I wasn’t out running around with loose women. I wasn’t narrowly avoiding death. I was working.’

‘You had an appointment with me and Frannie. A simple one-minute phone call and all would have been well.’

‘Okay, all right , next time I’ll call. Big deal.’

‘Frannie’s worried it’s going to start happening all the time. As you say, you’re a lawyer now. Well, that’s the way lawyers are.’

‘Lawyers aren’t any one way…’

Moses stabbed the last pot sticker and popped it into his mouth. ‘Excuse the generalization, but yes they are. Frannie wants you to be a daddy, not to work all the time. That’s why the job looked so good, remember. Regular hours, interesting work. I can hear your words in my memory even as we speak.’

‘How late was I?’

Moses chewed. ‘One hour and forty-five minutes, which is plenty of time to work up a good head of worry. It’s not Frannie’s fault she worries. She loves you, Diz. She’s carrying your baby. It’s pretty natural, don’t you think?’

‘Well, I love her too.’

‘I am sure you do.’

‘Well…?’

‘Well,’ Moses repeated. ‘There you are.’

Their white frame house was bracketed by two apartment buildings. Back in the mid-‘80s, Hardy had been offered a sinful amount of money to sell to a developer so that a third five-story anonymous unit could rise where now his sixty-foot-deep green lawn was bisected by a stone walkway, a low picket fence, and a doll house with a small front porch and a bay window.

Before their marriage they had talked about moving -starting over with a place they could equally call their own. The problem was that although the house had been Hardy’s for a decade, Frannie already loved it. One of Hardy’s first actions after the wedding was to transfer half the title to Frannie’s name – they didn’t have a prenuptial agreement. Frannie’s quarter-million-dollar insurance policy was both of theirs; Hardy figured the house put them on relatively equal footing.