That afternoon, he was wearing a red rag around his head pirate-style, his tanned forearms bare and powdered with flour, his fingers as long and nimble as a monkey’s as he gathered the dough and turned it halfway. He was using a length of chilled pipe as a rolling pin and he paused to flour it while he worked, coaxing the pastry into a rectangle.
I perched up on a wooden stool and retied my shoes. “You making napoleons?”
He nodded. “I’m catering a tea for someone up the street. What are you up to, besides a run?”
I filled him in briefly on my search for Elaine Boldt while he folded the dough in thirds and wrapped it, returning it to the refrigerator. When I got to the part about Marty Grice, I saw his brows shoot up.
“Stay away from it. Take my advice and leave it to the homicide detectives. You’re a fool if you get involved in that end of it.”
“But what if she saw who killed Marty? What if that’s why she took off?”
“Then let her come forward with the information. It’s not up to you. If Lieutenant Dolan catches you messing around with his case, he’ll have your rear end.”
“Actually, that’s true,” I said ruefully. “But how can I back off? I’m running out of places to look.”
“Who says she’s lost? What makes you think she’s not down in Sarasota someplace lapping up gin and tonic on the beach?”
“Because somebody would have heard from her. I mean, I don’t know if she’s up to something or maybe in big trouble herself, but until she shows up I’m going to beat the bushes and bang on pans and see if I can run her to ground.”
“Make-work,” he said. “You’re chasing your own tail.”
“Well, that’s probably true, but I gotta do something.”
Henry gave me a skeptical look. He opened a bag of sugar and weighed out a mound. “You need a dog.”
“No, I don’t. And what’s that got to do with it? I hate dogs.”
“You need protection. That business at the beach would never have happened if you’d had a Doberman.”
That again. God, even my recent brush with death had taken place in a garbage bin… someplace small and cozy with me sobbing like a kid.
“I was thinking about that stuff today and you want to know the truth? All this talk about women being nurturing is crap. We’re being sold a bill of goods so we can be kept in line by men. If someone came after me today, I’d do it again, only this time I don’t think I’d hesitate.”
Henry didn’t seem impressed. “I’m sorry to hear that. I hope you haven’t started a trend.”
“I mean it. I’m tired of feeling helpless and afraid,” I said.
Henry puffed his cheeks up and blew a raspberry, giving me a bored look. Big talk, his face said, but you don’t fool me a bit. He cracked an egg on the counter and opened it up with one hand, letting the white slip through his fingers into a cup. He put the yolk in a bowl and took up another egg, repeating the process with his eyes pinned on me.
He said, “So defend yourself. Who’s arguing with that? But you can drop the rhetoric. It’s bullshit. Killing is killing and you better take a look at what you did.”
“I know,” I said, with less energy. The look in his eyes was making me squirm and I wasn’t all that crazy about his tone. “Look, maybe I haven’t really dealt with that. I just don’t want to be a victim anymore. I’m sick of it.”
Henry cradled the bowl in his arms, whisking the eggs with a practiced ease. When I do that, the eggs always slop out the side.
He said, “When were you ever a victim? You don’t have to justify yourself to me. You did what you did. Just don’t try to turn it into a philosophical statement, because it doesn’t ring true. It’s not as if you made a rational decision after months contemplating the facts. You killed somebody in the heat of the moment. It’s not a platform for a political campaign and it’s not a turning point in your intellectual life.”
I smiled at him tentatively. “I’m still a good person, aren’t I?” I didn’t like the wistful tone. I meant to show him I was a grown-up, coping with the truth. Until the words came out of my mouth, I hadn’t even known I felt so unsure.
He didn’t smile back. His eyes rested on my face for a moment and then dropped back to the eggs. “What happened to you doesn’t change that, Kinsey, but you have to keep it straight. Blow somebody’s brains out and you don’t brush that off. And you don’t try to turn it into an intellectual stance.”
“No, you don’t,” I said uneasily. I had a quick flash of the face that peered into the garbage bin just before I fired. By some remarkable distortion, I could have sworn I saw how the first bullet stretched the flesh like elastic before smashing through. I shook the image away and hopped down. “I have to run,” I said, feeling anxious.
I left the kitchen without glancing back, but I know what the look was on Henry’s face. Caution and sorrow and pain.
Once outside, I had to put it out of my mind again. Back the subject went, into its own little box. I did a quick stretch, concentrating on my hamstrings. I don’t run fast enough or far enough to justify much of a warm-up. Other joggers, I know, would argue with that, citing injuries that result from insufficient stretching before a run, but I find exercise loathsome enough without adding contortions up front. For a time, I tried it, dutifully lying on my back in the grass with one leg straight out and the other cocked sideways toward my waist as though broken at the hip. I could never get up afterward unless I flopped about like a bug and I finally decided it was worth a possible groin-muscle pull to avoid the indignity. I’ve never been injured running anyway. I’ve never thrilled to it either. I’m still waiting for the rumored “euphoria” that apparently infuses everyone but me. I headed over to the boulevard at a brisk walk, keeping my mind blank.
I generally do three miles, jogging along the bicycle path that borders the beach. The walkway is stenciled with odd cartoons at intervals and I watch for those, counting off the quarter-miles. The tracks of some improbable bird, the mark of a single fat tire that crosses the concrete and disappears into the sand. There are usually tramps on the beach; some who camp there permanently, others in transit, their sleeping bags arranged under the palm trees like large green larvae or the skins shed by some night-stirring beast.
That afternoon the air seemed heavy and chill, the ocean sluggish. The cloud cover was beginning to break up, but the visible sky was a pale washed-out blue and there was no real sign of sun. Out on the water a speedboat ran a course parallel to the beach and the path of the wake was like a spinning ribbon of silver winding along behind. On the landward side, the mountains were dark green. At this distance, the low-growing vegetation looked like soft suede, with rock face showing through along the ridges as though the nap had worn away from hard use.
I did the turnaround at East Beach and ran the mile and a half back, then walked the block to my apartment as a cool-down. I’m big on cool-downs. I showered and dressed again and then hopped in my car and headed up to Pam Sharkey’s office on Chapel. Pam was the insurance agent who’d written up the policies for Leonard Grice and I wanted to probe that issue before I set it aside. I trust Vera, but I don’t like taking people’s word for things. Maybe Grice had taken out a massive policy from some other company. How did I know?
The Valdez Building is located at the corner of Chapel and Feria, a Spanish word meaning “fair.” I only know that because I looked it up. I’ve been thinking I should take a Spanish class one of these days, but I haven’t gotten around to it yet. I can say taco and gracias but I’m real short on verbs. The Valdez is typical of the architecture in this town: two stories of white stucco with a red tile roof, big arches, windows faced with wrought-iron gratings. There are azure blue awnings and the landscaping consists of small plots of perfect grass. Palm trees grace the courtyard and there’s a fountain capped by a small naked boy doing something wicked with a fish.
Pam Sharkey’s office is on the first floor and sports the same network of cubicles I’d seen at California Fidelity. Nothing architecturally innovative for the insurance game these days. It must be like doing business in a series of playpens. The company she works for, Lambeth and Creek, is an independent agency that writes policies for a number of companies, CFI being one. I’d only dealt with Pam once, when I was bird-dogging an errant husband. His wife, my client, was in the process of divorcing him and was hoping for evidence of his philandering as a negotiating tool when it came down to the settlement. Pam had taken offense, not because I’d uncovered her affair with the man, but because I’d turned up two other women involved with him at the same time. None of this was ever brought up in court, of course, but her name was prominent in my report. She had never forgiven me for knowing too much. Santa Teresa is a small town and our paths cross now and then. We’re polite to