Т Паркер - The Last Good Guy

I felt like my body had vanished. Like I was just a brain having thoughts. “Nothing since, from Daley?”

“Nada.”

“Amber Alert?”

“Declined. Mrs. Rideout pressed the deputies, but they told her it was for the most urgent cases only. That a truant ditching school to party with friends and getting into an argument made this less urgent. They offered to call in a county BOLO on the SUV, told her it was the best they could do.”

I had a frozen memory of Penelope Rideout’s anger at me for not returning her calls during my Monarch Academy interviews. Of her almost trancelike control of that anger, her clenched eyelids and balled fists and the silent prayer or spell or curse. I’m ninety percent lover and ten percent killer.

“How are you feeling, Roland? Warm yet?”

“Just a little.”

“Then you’ve been in long enough. You’ll feel like a new man once you thaw out.”

“I look forward to that.”

“I’ll be damned,” said Burt. “Champ, this may be troubling news, but based on Dick’s description of Mrs. Rideout’s car, I’d say she just drove up to the gate again.”

“Yellow V-Dub ragtop?”

“None other.”

A numb lifting of my head. Some of the ice bags slid off. “Ring her in and help me get into the house, Burt.”

As the shivering tapered off, I felt better. Dried my tight pink skin, got on workout pants and a zippered hoodie, and arranged my hair above my crime-scene face. Then went back down to the patio, where Penelope Rideout paced heavily in the shade of the palapa.

“Why can’t I get you when I need you? I will not be ignored. I will not be — oh. Oh my God. Look at you.”

“Do I have to?”

“What can I... I mean, what should... just, what ?”

“Sit and I’ll tell you.”

We faced each other across the big picnic table. I gave her the pond view. I started with Alchemy 101 and ended with my ice bath. She looked back and forth from me to the bathtub on the cinder blocks near the water. I kept my saga brief and to the point. Tried a cryogenic smile, but it hurt. She wore a yellow summer dress and white gladiator sandals and Jackie O sunglasses.

“I just raised your pay,” she said softly.

“Not necessary. Tell me about Daley’s call, everything.”

She gave me a more detailed version than she’d given Burt over the phone. Daley called just after three a.m. She was in San Clemente. She had gone to the beach at San Onofre earlier with friends. She was almost hysterical over what happened to Nick. Angry at her friends, who didn’t know anything about it except he was dead but they would protect her. She said the beach looked weird because there were armed guards everywhere. She refused to say which friends she was with. She’d split and hitched a ride to 7-Eleven with a creep. Daley was terse and vague.

“She leaps before she looks,” said Penelope. “I told her that I’d just been through forty-plus hours of worried hell over her, and she told me to come get her and make it snappy. Now she’s gone again. I was so close to getting her.”

“Who are Connor and Eric, and why is she with them?” I asked.

“I told you yesterday I don’t know them.”

“Do you know SNR Security?”

“I do not.”

“Adam Revell doesn’t ring a bell?”

Penelope stared at me from behind her dark glasses. I could see her eyes through the darkness. “I don’t like your tone of voice.”

“I don’t like getting jumped by six goons, following a lead I got from you.”

“You’re very suspicious.”

“Part of my charm.”

“I fail to see it.”

“Do you know this Cathedral by the Sea?”

A dismissive exhale. “I don’t approve of it.”

“Explain.”

“I read about it when they opened their doors. It’s in a funny-shaped building. Some of Daley’s friends go there.”

“Does Daley?”

“Yes, once. With two girlfriends. Just a few weeks ago, the last Sunday in August. He came at her aggressively.”

“‘He’?”

“The youth minister. I forget his name.”

“He came at her?”

“Recruited her for the youth group. For the Cathedral by the Sea rock band. For a cycling trip to Mammoth. After one visit from Daley, they had her booked up every weekend for a month. I had a bad feeling about him and the church.”

“Did Daley?”

“She thought the church ‘had promise.’ Her words. So I forbid her from attending again, and recommended St. Mary, Star of the Sea, in Oceanside.”

“Because—”

“It’s Catholic and I heard good things about it.”

“Were you raised Catholic?”

“I’ve never set foot in a Catholic church. Or any other, in recent memory.”

“Help me with your reasoning,” I said. “You attend no place of worship. You won’t let your sister go to one she’s interested in. So you send her to the Catholics, though you know little about them.”

She pulled off her sunglasses and set them on the table, her blue prying eyes locked onto mine. Eyes that told a story. A hard one. Beautiful but chilling.

“Only faith lasts,” she said. “It can’t be broken or taken away.”

I wasn’t sure of that, but my sureness wasn’t the point. “And Daley’s faith is supposed to conform to yours?”

“She’s fourteen years old, Mr. Ford. I’m not only her sister but her guardian. Every decision I’ve ever made has put Daley first. That’s my job on earth, and I take it seriously.”

I’d seen overparenting, so why not oversistering? Considering what had happened ten years ago on that stormy night outside of Eugene, Oregon, maybe it was understandable. Maybe commendable.

But more important to me than Penelope’s attempted management of her teenage sister was that Daley’s world had just grown larger. Nick. Alchemy 101. The Cathedral by the Sea. Paradise Date Farm. All linked by SNR Security. By Adam Revell, Connor, Eric, and the six helmeted warriors who had easily laid waste to Roland Ford, PI. Why had they done that? Because I was snooping after Daley Rideout? Maybe, but they had been in some control of her, chaperoned by Connor and Eric. What threat was I? A leap, but an easy one: the sign on the silver SUV that Scott Chan had failed to read was that of SNR Security. They had her. I’d suspected that much when I saw the SNR emblem on the ticket booth at Alchemy 101. The attack at Paradise Date Farm confirmed it. If my beating was not to keep me away from Daley, then what?

I looked at the tub of ice melting in the sun. “Mrs. Rideout—”

“Penelope, please.”

“Penelope, exactly what did Daley say about San Onofre?”

“Just that it was surreal and the old power plant looked like something from a science-fiction movie. Armed guards everywhere.”

I knew the San Onofre nuclear power plant well. Almost every Southern Californian did. I’d driven by it thousands of times, in and out of Orange County.

I felt stumped by Daley Rideout’s behavior. Wasn’t even sure how to describe it. Erratic? Careless? Reckless? Quite a wake of damage her actions had left in the last two days, from Nick Moreno to me.

“Has Daley gone to San Onofre before?” I asked.

“Not that I know.”

“For all your security efforts, there are sure a lot of things you don’t know about her.”

“You can ridicule me but not my efforts or intentions,” she said. “I do feel terrible about what they did to you. But I hope I can still count on you as an employee and an ally.”

Behind me, a cloud drifted across the sun. The daylight diminished and Penelope Rideout’s blue eyes turned gray. A breeze pushed some of her curls onto her forehead.