T. Parker: Cold Pursuit

Flummoxed again, as he had been through the decades by Patricia Braga, McMichael defaulted to a nod. "I'm sorry about this."

"Where is he?"

"They took him to the morgue."

Patricia bit her lip, and for just a moment, standing there in a too-big reindeer sweater and jeans and rubber boots with fur around the top and her riot of dark hair, she looked like the girl he'd first stared at in the fifth grade, which was the moment he had first discovered Planet Female.

McMichael shook Garland 's hand and led husband and wife into Grandpa Braga's dining room. He put them at the other end of the table from where he and Sally Rainwater had sat, protecting the latent fingerprints she'd left on her chair and the polished tabletop.

He told the Hansens some of what Sally Rainwater had told him, but not all of it. He left out the man- probably a man- running across the sand into the gathering storm because he wanted the Hansens' unfettered take on the nurse's aid.

"What do you know about the caretaker?" McMichael asked.

"I never liked her," said Garland. "Pete ran an ad in the Union-Tribune , said he interviewed half a dozen."

Garland Hansen was a tall, slender man with a chiseled face and hard blue eyes. His Nordic white hair was cut short and brushed back to an appearance of velocity. He was forty-eight, ten years older than his wife and McMichael, an accountant and a former U.S. America's Cup first mate. He was now in middle management at a troubled surf-and-snow sports retail empire known as Shred!

"She was probably the prettiest one who applied," said Patricia.

Garland shrugged insincerely.

"Did he check her background?" asked McMichael.

"Of course," said Garland. "She had good enough recommendations. Supposedly putting herself through school, UCSD- biology, I think. Wants to be a surgeon. Pat and I figured if she was smart enough to do that, she could probably handle Pete."

"Handle him?"

Garland looked at Patricia, the silent handoff that married couples perfect.

"He'd fallen several times," she said. "His eyes were going. He kept driving without a license and you guys kept catching him. He hated to cook and clean. And he was lonely. Three children- one almost senseless, as you might remember, and two living out of state. Six grandchildren, including me, but they're hardly around except when they want money."

"What did he pay her?"

"I think it was five hundred a week," said Garland.

"Did she do it?" asked Patricia. Her voice wavered so she punched up the volume, and in this McMichael thought he heard the end of her toughness and the beginning of her grief.

"I don't know."

"Well, is she under arrest?" asked Garland.

"No."

"You didn't let her just walk away, did you?"

"She drove away."

Garland looked to his wife.

"Pretty goddamned funny," said Garland, standing and holding McMichael in his cool blue stare. "Someone murders Pete Braga, and a McMichael is supposed to solve it."

"Drop it," said Patricia.

"I'm afraid that's what he'll do," said Garland.

"Mr. and Mrs. Hansen," said McMichael. "Walk this house with me and help me figure out what's been stolen, besides some paintings off the walls."

An hour later McMichael's neatly hand-printed list read:

5 oil paintings by 19th cent. artists- 10 to 30K each (hall, bedroom 2nd floor, dining, 1st floor bath #2)

18th century Chinese vase- 5K (TV room)

4 a 'graphed books by Joseph Conrad- 5K per (all books from library, 2nd flr)

a'graphed b'ball gloves: Ruth, Gehrig, Hodges, Williams, Mays, Mantle, Koufax, Rose, Gwynn, etc.- 1K to 3K each (office, 2nd flr)

one mounted fish (small to medium)-$100???! (trophy room)

Items named and values estimated by Patricia & Garland, unsure of painter names, book titles, ballplayers, type of fish.

An interesting list, thought McMichael. And almost as interesting were the things not taken: $245 cash still in Pete Braga's wallet on the nightstand, a very good watch, a box full of jewelry in the top drawer of Anna Braga's dresser.

McMichael stood again in the master bedroom and watched the rain pour down on the outside deck, a large wooden platform enclosed for privacy by a waist-high railing but open to the sky. He remembered that Pete had liked to sleep out there, years ago. He remembered the fire pit. He remembered that the bay breeze cooled your skin after making love then the fire warmed you back up and the faint taste of salt and wood smoke on Patricia Braga's neck.

"I spent some good hours on that deck," she said. "Kid stuff."

Garland looked at it, then to his wife. "Looks cold."

"Grandpa slept out there practically every summer night. He used to, anyway."

Garland shook his head. Whether at Pete's sleeping habits or at Patricia was not clear to McMichael.

"What about a safe?" McMichael asked.

"Back to the library," said Patricia.

"You know the combination?"

"He gave it to me when Anna died."

The library was a classic gentleman's room, with floor-to-ceiling walnut bookshelves, ladders to access the volumes, paneled walnut walls, heavy furniture, hunter green carpet. There was a fireplace and a walk-in humidor behind glass doors.

McMichael stepped into the humidor, smelled the sharp sweet scent of tobacco and cedar, felt the air damp on his face. It was about the size of a closet, with shelves on two sides and a humidifier built into the other. He noted Pete Braga's cache: mostly Cuban maduros - Romeo & Julieta, Partagas, and Rey del Mundo. But some Dominicans thrown in, and two wooden boxes marked Libertados , which McMichael knew well because his sister owned the cigar bar and factory in San Diego 's Gaslamp Quarter where they were made. He wondered if the old man went there himself to buy them. And if he'd known his money was going to a McMichael. They were No. 7 pyramids, with dark brown wrappers.

The floor safe was hidden under a brown, brass-nail leather couch. Patricia knelt down and spun the dial.

"I don't know what's in here," she said. "I've never had a reason to open it."

McMichael knelt down beside her. It was a cylinder-type safe, ten inches across and a foot deep.

"Go ahead," he said.

Patricia reached in and lifted a handful of small boxes, which she placed on the carpet. Then another. Some black, some red, some tan, some white. She opened them and lined them up in front of McMichael.

"Grandma Anna's," said Patricia. "This isn't costume jewelry."

McMichael watched her hand as it gently moved across the jewels and gold and silver. He'd always loved the shade of Patricia's Portuguese fingers, especially where the rich dark of the top blended into the paler underside. They were thirty-eight-year-old hands now, leaner and stronger than they had been when McMichael knew her.

"She had a pair of diamond earrings that aren't here," she said. "Big two-carat things Grandpa got in South Africa. But there's got to be some other explanation. I mean- if somebody took them, he'd take all this, too. I mean, if they were even in here to start with. Right?"

"What else?" asked McMichael.

Patricia sighed, picked up a string of pearls, settled it back into the case.

"There's a species of hummingbird named the Anna's hummingbird, so Grandpa had one made for her," said Patricia. "It was life-sized, and there was a stand for it. Wings out, like it was flying. But the feathers were gemstones. It was beautiful, this big splash of red rubies on the throat and neck. Emeralds and diamonds. God knows what he paid for it. That would have been back in 'seventy-five, 'seventy-six. It's not here. It wasn't anywhere else that I saw. I guess you should add it to the list."

"I don't get it," said Garland. "How much do you need to arrest the nurse? Blood all over her? Valuables missing?"