Stephen White - Warning Signs

"Let me put it this way: I'll give you ten thousand dollars for the unconditional rights to Viv."

"No way."

"That's what I figured. Now tell me about the drug-sniffing pooch."

I said, "I've been wondering, do you think I'm the right age to start having annual prostate exams?"

"Answer my question or I'll glove up right now and give you one I promise you'll never forget."

I pulled back a dusty canvas tarp and lifted myself up to sit on the edge of one of Peter's old workbenches. I knew that the fact that the shop was pretty much the way Peter had left it when he died had nothing to do with his wife's attempt to create a shrine. Adrienne wasn't exactly preserving Peter's shop in his memory; she just hadn't gotten around to moving any of his stuff, selling it, or giving it away. I suspected that with the exception of continued additions of boxes and assorted household junk from Adrienne, the barn wouldn't change much in the next decade.

I asked, "Did you know Leo Bigg?"

She lowered herself to the top of a box. The dogs immediately decided that she was prey and surrounded her. Emily sniffed her pockets for treats. Anvil tried to crawl onto her lap.

She asked, "Where on earth is that question coming from?"

"Just curious."

She stared at me. "You're often difficult, Alan, but you're not usually this constipated. If you don't answer at least one of my questions, I swear I'm going to kidnap your dogs."

I smiled. "If the threat of a sadistic prostate exam didn't sway me, you think the threat of moving my dogs across the lane and feeding them too many treats is going to unseal my lips?"

"Talk."

"Leo Bigg's story came up in a therapy session. I just thought that you might have known him."

"Leo's not dead, Alan. He's in prison. And, yes, I do know him. He was a good doc-is a good doc. Everything you'd want in an oncologist. But my suspicion is that that's not what you wanted to know. You want to know about his tragedies, don't you? You want to know whether he was the kind of guy who would do what he did?"

"Yes, I do."

"Everyone who knew him was shocked at what he did. Everyone. He found something most of us, thank God, never find-he found his breaking point. The weight of his heartbreak must have simply overwhelmed him. I can't explain what he did any other way."

I thought about Marin, the rape, and I nodded. "Did you know his family? His wife?"

"I probably met his wife at parties, but I don't remember her well. Those were the days before Jonas was born, and the Biggs already had kids. Plus the Biggs always floated a few social strata above Peter and me. They wouldn't hang with us. It would have been slumming for them."

"Lauren and I hang with you."

"Like I said, slumming."

Anvil had succeeded in curling up on Adrienne's lap. Emily was still nosing around in search of treats, nudging Adrienne in the flanks as though she were reluctant livestock. Adrienne relented and gave each of the dogs a biscuit from her pocket. She rarely went outside unprepared to indulge the dogs.

She said, "Now tell me about Rin Tin Tin."

Instead of answering I asked, "How's Susan Peterson doing?"

She laughed. "You want me to discuss someone else's bladder control with you? Are you psychotic? Tell me-who's Rin Tin Tin?"

"The woman is someone I met recently. She's a disabled police officer who trains K-9 dogs to supplement her income. She likes to take her dogs on what she calls 'field trips' as part of their training. I offered to let her use our place. She came in here by mistake."

"That's the best you can do?"

"Most of it's true."

She laughed loudly.

"The rest I can't tell you."

"Figures. Bet you want me to keep my suspicions from your wife, too, don't you?"

"How'd you guess?"

She stood and returned her attention to the boxes. I asked her if she wanted my help finding something.

She said, "You think I want you to search through my stuff? There're important things in here."

I jumped down from the workbench and started to leave the barn.

Adrienne said, "I ever tell you that being your neighbor is no picnic?"

"Yeah, you've told me. That being the case, it's probably fortunate for me that you love me."

"True. By the by, call my office and set up a time with Phyllis. I think I do want to get a nice slow feel of your prostate."

Under my breath, I said, "Fat chance."

Adrienne said, "I heard that."

L ucy Tanner didn't go home right away afterleaving Alan's office.

Shortly after she'd been old enough to drive she'd discovered that nothing she did gave her the succor and peace she felt when she was alone behind the wheel of a car. As a younger woman, she'd required open roads and speed to achieve the contentment she sought from her automobile. During the first few years after she'd graduated from college, she'd thought nothing of driving alone from Colorado to San Diego and back on a long weekend to sneak in a few hours surfing in Encinitas.

The trips were a lark. The surfing was usually a thrill. The driving was a necessity.

Now she could achieve some modicum of solace simply by driving city streets or cruising the narrow canyons that snaked into the foothills above Boulder. The speed to which she was once addicted was no longer necessary. A dirt lane up Magnolia served her purposes as well as a wide-open interstate on Floyd Hill up I-70. The turbo boost on her cherry-red Volvo was about as essential for her as a box of condoms was to a nun. She was thinking it was time to trade the car in for something else, though she couldn't decide exactly what.

When she left Alan's office, Lucy headed north on Broadway, paralleling the naked hogbacks that ridged Boulder's western rim. Her fiancé, Grant, lived in a townhouse in Niwot, a once-charming rest stop of a village that had grown into an extra bedroom for Boulder's expanding family. She weaved east until she connected with the Diagonal Highway and started the familiar route to her boyfriend's house a few miles down the road. She barely noticed the soft colors that were illuminating the clouds above the hogbacks.

Lucy knew Grant wasn't home. He was in the field, somewhere in central Wyoming, doing a wildlife survey. She'd received an e-mail from him that morning and had sent one back his way, a don't-worry-about-me-I'm-doing-fine pack of lies. Her journey to his home wasn't about seeing him; it was about driving to see him. She looped past his house twice, finally parking for a moment in the place beneath the big cottonwood where she usually left her car when she was spending the night.

Her engine running, she listened to Gloria Estefan sing something in Spanish. The backbeat was invigorating but the tone was lamenting. Gloria obviously wasn't pleased about something, but Lucy didn't remember enough of her high school Spanish to know exactly what. As the song ended and the disc jockey moved into a commercial for an herbal elixir that he promised was just as potent as Viagra, Lucy touched a button to change stations, pulled out from beneath the cottonwood, and steered her way back onto the Diagonal, this time heading toward Boulder.

She stayed on the Diagonal until it ended, and then stayed on Iris until she reached Broadway, where she turned south. She'd arrived at a decision as she was stopped at the light at Twenty-eighth Street. Her next stop was going to be the home of the Bigg family. She'd already checked their address. They lived south of Baseline in a cul-de-sac below Chautauqua.

She cruised the cul-de-sac only once. Four houses on big lots. The garage door was open on one of the houses on the corner. Somebody was working on an old motorcycle with a sidecar. A dozen lights were ablaze in the two-story Bigg home. One car-a six- or seven-year-old BMW-was parked in the driveway; two more cars were on the street nearby.