La Jolla
Monday April 5 2004
Caitlin turned the car down the Richards' street, an arrow-straight suburban drive sprinkled with parked cars and lined with neat little houses close to the street and to each other. She looked down toward Joel and Melanie's place near the end of the street, and took her foot of the gas. The minivan coasted, slowing.
Beside her, Sarah said, "Is something wrong?"
"I don't know. Looks like practice is breaking up early."
A Mercedes convertible sat at the curb in front of the house, facing their way. Its trunk was open, and a blonde-haired woman Caitlin recognized was tossing an instrument case into it with more haste than care. She slammed the lid down, jerked open the driver's door, dropped in, and fired the car up. The Benz didn't squeal its tires as it took off, but the vehicle was breaking the twenty-five-miles-per-hour speed limit before it passed the first house. It rolled by, and Caitlin saw Kim Perlman glaring out the windshield, hands tight on the wheel.
Bobby ambled out of the open garage door with his acoustic case in hand. He glanced down the street, spied the approaching minivan, and gave a little wave. When they pulled up, he stepped into the street to talk through the driver's window. "Hey, guys."
"Bobby, is practice over?"
"Yeah." He glanced at the compact he'd driven to the house. "Nobody's in the mood anymore. Going to hit the skate park with Eddie before it gets dark. You sticking?"
Caitlin looked past him into the garage, and saw the other three band members frozen at their instruments, watching: Alex sitting behind her drum set, sticks still in her hand; Lori gripping the sides of her Yamaha; Melanie holding her guitar in front of her as if for protection or concealment. Caitlin glanced at Sarah, and got a tiny nod. "Maybe for a little while."
"Kay. See you back at the house." He dropped the case into the car's rear seat, got in, and took off.
"Hm," said Sarah. "Did he seem just a little too relaxed?"
The two girls got out and headed up the driveway. Mel, Lori and Alex watched them. Alex, her face flushed, set her sticks down carefully on her cans with a soft tattatat, and Kat saw her hands were shaking. Lori and Mel shared a brief look.
"Melanie," Caitlin said, "is everything all right?"
The girl placed her guitar in its stand. "I don't know how you share a roof with him, I really don't."
"You get used to him," Sarah said. "What happened?"
Lori let go of her keyboard and crossed her wrists over her breast. "He was magnificent."
"Kim showed up for practice," Melanie said. "Unexpected."
"And uninvited," Alex said. "Guess Mondays aren't inconvenient enough."
"Ten minutes late," Melanie went on. "Making an entrance, I think. She came in with two cases and started unpacking as if we'd been waiting for her."
"She treated us like studio players she'd hired for backup," Alex said. "Everybody but Bobby. She introduced herself before Mel had a chance, and asked him for help setting up her keyboard - right at his elbow. She talked guitars with him, and gave him a couple compliments about his choices, and asked him about his favorite music. Working him hard. Not just flirting. Cutting the rest of us out, like the two of them were the only people in the room who mattered."
Sarah scoffed. "How long did he put up with that?"
Alex smiled. "Well, he gave us all a glance, you know, like he was asking if this bimbo was for real. I think I fell in love with him right then. But Mel just shrugged and picked up where we'd left off. We got through a couple songs – Kim was here yesterday, and picked up quite a bit of our songbook – and then she butts in with a song suggestion, one of hers, and she just starts playing it. None of us knows it, of course, so all of a sudden our practice is the Kim Perlman Show."
"She was good on keyboard, gotta give her that," Lori said.
"She plays this tune, smiling at Bobby the whole time, then finishes up and says, 'or how about this one?' And starts another of her concert specials, a love ballad. When she's done, she asks Bobby what he thinks – not any of us, just him."
Sarah arched an eyebrow. "And?"
The little blonde's grin widened. "He told her."
"Not at first," Melanie said. "He just said it was pretty, but he didn't think it was the Sirens' style. You should have seen her face. It's probably the most lukewarm review she's ever gotten. Then he asked me what we should play next – changing the subject, sort of, and bringing us back into the discussion. But she wouldn't let it go. She told him that tune had won her standing ovations. She acted like she was doing us a favor by offering to play it at our gigs.
"That's when Bobby warmed up. He said, 'Well, maybe our audiences are a little more discerning than you're used to. I think they'd boo you off the stage with that piece of crap.'"
"Swear, the temp in the room went up," Alex said. "I broke out in a sweat."
"She was so shocked she couldn't speak," Melanie went on. "But he wasn't done. He said, 'The score is clever and technically challenging. But as a love song, it falls flat. The lyrics are just too witty and generic and soulless. Your singing voice has great range and control, but there's no emotional depth to it. Anybody who's been in love can listen to you do this and know you don't have a clue what love is.'"
Alex said, "I never wanted to kiss a boy so bad in my life."
"Just kiss him?" Lori smiled. "For a second, it looked like she couldn't decide whether to slap him or grab him by the ears and plant one on him. Then her injured pride won out, I guess. She said, 'I don't have to put up with this,' and a few other things, and started packing up. But real slow, like she was waiting for him to apologize, or maybe for somebody to beg her to stay." The smile widened. "He unplugged her keyboard and wound up the cord."
La Jolla
Tuesday April 6 2004
Randolph 'Skip' Masterton sat in a wide padded chair on the flybridge of his shiny new forty-two-footer, one hand on the wheel, at peace with the world. The reassuring rumble of the twin diesels at quarter throttle mixed with the cries of gulls following his wake and the music from the cabin below. He smiled as the sun disappeared beneath the sea on his right, setting the sky above him on fire.
The boat wasn't really new, or really his – yet. It was an immaculate year-old Azimut, an Italian-built luxury cruiser that looked as fast and sleek as a Ferrari despite being three times the size of his old boat. The marina working on his Sea Ray usually rented the deluxe craft by the day or week to select customers, but had offered it to him gratis as a loaner, no doubt looking for more business from his father. Skip was sure they'd make him a great deal on it and take his Ray in trade to get his father's ninety-six-footer in their service slip on a regular basis.
The Azimut was a sweet ride, with all the bells and whistles. The dash looked like a fighter cockpit, full of switches and lights for everything from the docking thrusters to the bilge pumps, as well as displays for the radios, sonar and radar. The flybridge extended back over the rear deck into an upper-level lounge, to bring the party to him while he piloted high above the water. The cabin below was roomy enough for a TV lounge, kitchen, and foul-weather pilot's station. It also had three separate bedrooms, which would come in very handy if the coming trip worked out as expected.
Skip and his buds were beginning a long-planned weeklong excursion down the Baja coast. There were plenty of resorts there, and a number of American-transplant retirement communities too, built to take advantage of the lower standard of living in Mexico. They were just like upscale subdivisions back home, neat walled and gated communities where the only Spanish was spoken by the groundskeepers and domestic staff. Some of the property owners had kids his age who shared the three boys' lifestyle and interests, a fun crowd. Skip's father had several old friends down there, and Skip had an open invitation to visit from one of them – and another rather different invitation from his daughter.
The sky changed from orange to turquoise as the twilight deepened, and lights began to shine like stars on the shore to his left. Skip smiled and flipped on the running lights. If Laura was elsewhere or otherwise engaged, there would still be plenty of fun ahead. Her father would still get Skip a slip at the community dock, and they'd stay on the boat, at a safe distance from gossips who might report back to the old man. A tourist district lay just outside the community's walls; there were plenty of clean safe places to drink and dance and party. And the army of servants and entertainers in the area included plenty of pretty girls who appreciated the attention of a rich young Norteamericano. It was shaping up to be a memorable vacay.
He heard someone climbing the steep built-in steps. Dale, his oldest friend, appeared above the deck with a pair of Carta Blancas. "Dude," he said as he passed over an ice-cold beer. "We are there." They clinked bottles. "Rich is fixing munchies. What's the plan for tonight? Drive right through, or put in somewhere?"
"Depends. We can play it any way we want, really." There were a number of places along the way where they might dock, or sheltered places where they could simply drop anchor for the night. That had been the original plan, back when they'd been taking the Ray. But the Azimut, unlike his Sea Ray, was well-equipped for night travel.
Dale eyed the throttle settings and the water-speed gauge. "This rate, we won't be pulling in till after midnight."
"Party'll be just heating up then." Skip took a pull from his bottle with an eye on the shoreline a quarter mile distant. The dark cliffs of the state beaches were behind them; the boat was rounding the promontory that marked the beginning of La Jolla and its pricey beach communities. "Twice the speed burns four times the fuel. There are places to fill up along the way, but I don't know how late they'll be open."
"Well, we could take a turn at the wheel if you want a break." He grinned. "Rich is lusting after this baby."
"Forget that. I'm having a talk with the old man as soon as we get back. This bitch is mine."
They motored on. The last of the light left the sky, and a breeze came up, making Skip glad of his light windbreaker. His mood turned darker as well. He didn't understand why until it occurred to him that they were nearing the spot where the Ray had capsized. When the wave had struck, the thirty-footer had heaved as if it was a bathtub toy, and he'd been flung toward shore like a stone from a catapult, surfacing just in time to catch the wave again and be slammed to the bottom. For a bad moment, he'd thought he was going to die.
He reminded himself that that event had put him behind the wheel of this fine new ride, a floating apartment with a bed for each of them. But another thought intruded: by all rights, we should still be one bed short downstairs.
Dale must have been feeling it too. He said, "Talk to him today?"
"Yeah," Skip said. "Just for a minute. He's still pretty out of it."
"I ordered a security upgrade for my house today," called Richard from the open door beneath them. "Fucking animals."
Their friend Eric had been in and out of surgery – and mostly out of this world – since Sunday night. Skip had seen him briefly on Monday, and had sort of wished he hadn't: the guy had looked like he'd driven his Jag off a cliff. He was covered with plaster and bandages, and had so many tubes and wires running in and out of him you'd think he was on life support. According to his parents – possibly in the same room for the first time since the divorce -Eric's life wasn't in danger, but he was going to need a lot of reconstructive surgery and physical therapy.
Eric had been more or less lucid while Skip was visiting. The cops were already there, looking for a statement, and had questioned Eric as closely as the guy's condition would allow. They'd traded a look over Eric's disjointed story about being assaulted by two strangers who broke into his garage.
"Eric," one of the cops had said, "do you know anyone who might want to do you harm?"
The stare Eric had fixed on the cop's face had told Skip that his friend was about to tell a whopper. "No. Nobody."
Skip had wanted to talk after the cops left, but a nurse had bustled in and stuck a needle into one of Eric's IVs and sent him off to la-la land. Out in the hall, the cops were talking with Skip's mom and dad. "I'd rather not elaborate, but your son's injuries and the damage to the car occurred at the same time, in the garage. Whoever did this doesn't appear to have been inside the house," one of them had said. "I can't rule out an interrupted burglary, but… Mr. Calvin, has anyone threatened your son recently? Any enemies you know of?"
Eric's dad had been clueless, of course. Still, even without whatever info Eric hadn't wanted to share with the cops, Skip supposed he could draw his own dots and connect them well enough.
Dot One: last Saturday, around noon, the four of them are motoring by La Jolla and spot four bikini-clad hotties lounging at a backyard pool overlooking the beach. They decide to try their luck and drop anchor, only to be chased off public land by a rent-a-cop and two big dangerous-looking guys with guns under their coats.
Dot Two: Saturday night, Eric runs into one of the beach babes alone at a party, and invites her for a drive in his Jag that ends at his house. She downs a bottle of Dom while they shoot a few games of pool, then leads him into his bedroom and screws him blind.
Dot Three: Sunday night, Eric gets the living shit beat out of him in his own house, and his pretty Jag is turned to scrap.
The three of them had discussed it earlier on the dock as they'd walked from cars to boat and back again, loading their gear. "A very clear message, I'd say," Richard had said. "Hope she was worth it." Better him than me, he hadn't said; the little dye job had been Rich's 'prize' in the scissor-paper-rock contest when they'd picked targets.
"Yeah," Skip had said, thinking of a dot he'd kept to himself, after the look his friends had shared when he'd first brought it up, shortly after they'd talked to the Coasties; if he'd persisted, he was sure they would think he was losing it.
But they hadn't seen that girl's eyes.
They were approaching the spot now. A string of well-lighted houses appeared along the beach ahead, shining like gems on a necklace. One of them, the sixth from the left he thought, was where he'd washed up half-drowned to see her staring down at him from the top of the steps.
"It was a fluke, man," Dale said in a low voice. "The Coast Guard said so. Just a freak wave, something that happens maybe a couple times a year. We just hit the lotto, that's all." But he glanced out to sea as he said it.
It had seemed like a harmless joke, cruising by the beach house with a bottle of bubbly to applaud the girl's performance. They'd also wondered if the girls might all be more approachable now that one of them had been scored; sometimes it happened. And one of them, at least - the one he'd 'won', the beauty with the great tan and the long black hair - had seemed to take it in good humor. But now Skip was certain she hadn't taken it well at all.
His rational mind argued that the dark girl's little striptease was just play, not a ploy to bring the boat to a halt and turn all their attention towards shore; that she'd stopped flirting so suddenly because she'd seen the wave rise up behind them and frozen.
But when he'd washed up on shore and finished retching up seawater, he'd regained his wits and lifted his head and she'd been standing right there, as if she'd been waiting for him. As if the freaking wave had delivered him to her. She'd looked at him without an atom of surprise or sympathy, her eyes daring him to put into words what he was thinking. Then, eyes still flat and filled with contempt, she'd lifted her top and given him the peek at her tits that he'd gestured for from the boat, her message plain as anything: was it worth it?
"Hey," Richard called, "grub's almost ready. Bring it up?"
"And a couple more beers," Dale called down.
"Oke." Skip heard the sliding door open and shut as his friend re-entered the cabin.
"Hey," Dale said, staring towards shore. "Isn't that the house?"
Skip followed his friend's gaze. They'd drawn alongside the string of beach houses now; at the sixth one from the left, someone was moving around the pool. He couldn't make out much detail at this distance, but it looked like a girl in a white bikini.
"Not mine," Dale said. He'd drawn the stacked redhead, who'd worn a green bikini on Saturday and a white one on Sunday. The only other girl who'd worn white ….
A pair of ten-power binoculars was nestled in the document compartment at Skip's right hand. He pulled them out and trained them on the shore. Under power, the boat bobbed very little in the calm water, and he was able to find the back of the house with no trouble.
The little blonde who'd been Eric's 'prize' was skimming the pool with a long-handled net. Skip admired the slender girl's bare legs and flat belly, and the graceful way she moved around the pool, pushing and turning the tool as if performing with it. She might have been last choice in the draft, but she was still plenty cute, even if she didn't have much of a rack-
She lifted her head and stared right at him.
He fumbled the binocs and almost dropped them. "Shit."
Dale said, "What is it?"
"She…" He hesitated. Get a grip. You're a quarter mile out. There's no moon, and her night vision is shot from all the house lighting. She probably doesn't even see your nav lights. Even if it was noon, she wouldn't recognize the boat, and three hundred yards is way too far to recognize faces. She just heard the engines, that's all, and she's staring out into the dark. He lifted the glasses again, found the beach, the steps, raised the glasses a touch to the pool deck…
She was staring dead into his eyes.
He froze, unable to look away.
Her mouth moved, stretching wide, forming words in exaggerated pantomime.
Go. Away.
He dropped the glasses back into the holder with a clunk, tightened his grip on the wheel, and shoved the throttles forward. The engines shouted, and the bow rose briefly before the trim tabs brought it back down.
From below, Rich called, "What the fuck?" Dale glanced from Skip to shore and back again.
Skip raised his voice to be heard over the growl of the engines. "Maybe midnight is a little late." He fixed his eyes on the radar screen as the boat picked up speed. "Let's kick it, just for a while."
Escondido
Wednesday April 7 2004
Anna put on her most earnest expression and stared up into her companion's closed face. "Mr. Garcia, this isn't what you're thinking."
"I think I've been offered enough bribes to know one when I see one." The building inspector's hand dropped to the cell phone holstered at his hip.
"No." Anna didn't put the sheaf of bills in her hand back in her bag; instead, she waved them in his face. His hand, which had closed around the phone to draw it out, stilled. Even though her offer of the money had offended him, a handful of twenties three inches from his nose still claimed his attention. "Just hear me out, sir. Then do whatever your conscience demands. Will you?"
He took his hand off the phone and folded his arms, waiting.
They were standing alone in the Escondido warehouse. The ruined interior had been cleared away, leaving a huge empty brick-walled cavern. The double row of windows fronting the street was boarded over, eliminating the only source of natural light. Powerful worklights provided bright area lighting, but left much of the space in shadow. Anna pushed aside an unbidden memory of the Nevada warehouse and began.
"Mr. Garcia, offering you money to turn your head is the exact opposite of what I intended. The new owners are going to be dropping a great deal of capital into this project, and they want everything done right from the very start. They instructed me, as their agent, to hire someone for a more thorough structural inspection."
The man's frown deepened. "More thorough."
"Sir," she said carefully, "the Planning Commission knows that the Historical Preservation Society will be looking over its shoulder at this case. I was sure it would send its best man out for the inspection. I've watched you working, and I'm sure I was right. But I know that inspectors are only allowed to render official judgments based on minimum standards." She presented the money again. "After you've done the inspection required by law, I'd like you to look this place over again, as if it was yours. Anything that bothers you, even if it's legally permissible, I want to know about." She looked around the big space. "After all, what better time to find and fix problems than when the building's a blank slate and everything's accessible?"
He unfolded his arms. "Put your money away," he said. "I can't work for you. Conflict of interest, even if the purpose is what you say."
"Oh." She let her hand drop to her side. "I'm sorry. Could you recommend someone? Or would that violate professional ethics?"
"Just follow me. Do you have something to take notes with?"
"Yes! I mean, no, but I have a very good memory."
"Well." He turned away, stepping over thick power cords. "There may not be much to remember. What's left of this place is solid. Shame they replaced the brick floor with concrete."
"You've been here before?"
"Twice. Twelve years ago, when the city was thinking of bulldozing it and the HPS stepped in. Then a year later at the start of the apartment conversion." As they made their way toward the wall, he said, "I haven't seen any plans for the renovation."
"It's at the concept stage," she said. "Pending the initial inspection."
"Apartments again?"
"Uh huh. Upscale."
"Well, that should make the Hippies glad."
"Hippies?"
"HP. Historic Preservation. I know some of them were worried it might get turned into low-income again. But this doesn't seem the right neighborhood for upscale. It's not slums, nothing like that. And crime's low. But I think you're gonna have a hard time finding renters."
"We have some ideas about that."
They were at one of the building's outer walls, an expanse of dark-red brick blackened further by soot. He produced a big folding knife and scraped gently at one of the bricks, revealing much brighter material beneath, then dug at the mortar joint next to it. "Hm. A little damage, but…" He produced a small steel ruler with a sliding gauge and probed the cavities. "Well within code."
"But is it safe?" She pressed.
He looked down on her, as most adults did. "That's what code is for. And the reg's meant to apply to standard brick walls that are usually no more than eight inches thick. These are thirty if they're an inch. So yeah. Just dig out the crumbly mortar and re-point it, scour the char off the bricks and apply a coat of sealer, and you're good." He took a large flashlight from his belt and shone it up toward the center of the ceiling. The beam pierced the shadows to reveal massive wooden trusswork high above, darkened by fire or age. "That's another story. Most of the interior was ruined by smoke and water, but if there's serious fire damage, that's where we'll find it. But I can't really take a look. I'll have to come back with a truckload of scaffolding and a crew. Or else dig a hole in the roof. Ceiling must be thirty feet."
"Thirty-two feet, six inches," she said. At his look, she went on, "I checked it out with one of those laser gadgets. The walls are all plumb and square, too. Mr. Garcia, are you afraid of heights?"
He scoffed. "Building inspection's no job for a man afraid of heights."
"Let me make a call or two. There are little boom trucks that will fit through the outside door, aren't there?"
His eyebrows rose briefly. "The front door, sure. If you knock out the blocked-in half." He gave her the names of three rental companies. "You might not find one that can deliver today."
"We'll see." Phone in hand, she followed the inspector as he made his way toward the back of the building, checking the walls wherever they looked discolored. She called the first number and asked to speak to the manager. Garcia's eyebrows rose again when she offered the rental agent a triple fee for delivery within an hour, but his only comment was, "Looks dry in here, now all the wet stuff's been pulled out. Would have been a shame to knock a hole in the roof if it's sound."
She smiled and made another call, this time to a local remodeler, and arranged for the front doorway of the old warehouse to be restored to its former dimensions. When the man on the other end, who was the owner, promised to send a crew out right away, she offered another premium for quick service, but he refused; the company was a family business, the same one she'd hired to demolish and clean up the interior, and she had tipped the workers generously.
They reached the rear door and stairwell. Mr. Garcia eyed the Brand new steel door and nodded. "Good idea, fencing in the parking lot out back," he said. "People around here will chase you down the street to give you back your wallet if you drop it, but construction materials are fair game." The man shone his flashlight down the winding stair and gave her a sidelong look. "No telling what's down there. This place has been wide open for months."
"I'll go first, then."
He scoffed and started down the stairs. "Half the building's volume is below grade. It used to be an ice house as well as a warehouse and mercantile. But you won't be able to put apartments down here without extensive alterations."
She followed him down. "What sort of alterations?"
"Digging, mostly. Every apartment will need two exits, one leading directly outside. And every floor needs two stairways. Fire code." They reached the first basement. Mr. Garcia swung his light around: the beam made a tiny circle of light on the distant wall. He shone it up to reveal the blank ceiling nine feet above the floor. "Plenty of room to install utilities, anyway."
"I don't think the owners will want to make any big changes to the building's exterior," she said. "We'll use the space for storage and such, or not at all."
"There are ways to do it without it showing from the street. Still, if you forgo that option, it's sure to ease the approval process." The flashlight's beam traveled over a big furnace with a hydra of ductwork running all over the ceiling. "Junk."
"Damaged?"
"No, just junk. The housing board was always getting complaints about the heat in this place. Code has been upgraded since this was put in, but if the building's footprint remains unchanged and this unit is still functional, then technically…" He let the sentence trail off.
"It goes," she said firmly.
His smile was brief but wide. "There's something on this floor you need to see." He led her away from through the darkness to one of the side walls and began to walk alongside it. "Afraid of the dark?"
Anna's LE optics enabled her to discern all four walls of the big space using the scant lumens reflected from Mr. Garcia's light; she noted that they seemed to be making their way toward a large wooden door set into the outside wall. "Sometimes, when I'm alone."
"Ah." They stopped at the door. "I figured they wouldn't do anything with this, since it wasn't required. Hold the light." He pulled at the door, and it swung out crookedly on broken hinges, scraping across the floor. "Take a look."
She shone the flashlight into the opening, which illuminated it to her eyes bright as day. A rough passage led away from the door, ending in a heap of rubble forty meters distant. "What is it?"
"A tunnel, obviously, but I don't know what for. This used to be a cold storage area, with the ice house on the floor below – you can see where there used to be a hole in the floor for hauling the blocks up and down." He took the light from her and shone it all around the tunnel walls. "The opening is original to the building, I'd say. There are no plans on file predating the renovation, but I think there was a cargo elevator here, probably winch- or horse-drawn. Whether the tunnel was dug at the same time or after, I can't say, but the shaft was filled in at some point."
"Where does it go?"
"Only as far as you see, now. Where it used to go, I don't know. At a guess, you're looking at a bolt-hole of some kind. Probably dug at the same time as the basements. This area was still a sort of no-man's land between feuding land barons in the eighteen-eighties, and there were still a few restless Indian tribes hereabouts too." He smiled. "Might have come in handy during Prohibition, when this place was a distribution center for hooch all along the West Coast."
She stared down the tunnel. "That's very interesting."
"If I were you, I'd have it filled in. You don't want someone mowing the grass falling into it. I'm pretty sure it extends past your property line, so you'll want to have it surveyed."
They descended to the lower basement, but found only sturdy fieldstone walls. He said, "Half expected this to be flooded from the fire hoses."
"It was, about six inches deep. I had it pumped out."
"Well, it was built to collect icemelt. No harm." But he looked carefully at the floor and walls just the same.
As they climbed the stair, Mr. Garcia said, "How many apartments are you thinking of putting in, then?"
"We're not sure. No more than a dozen."
"Really." They reached the ground floor, and the inspector gazed around the dark hangar-sized space. "About the same as before. Thought you said you were going upscale."
"We are. A student-community floor plan. Big bedrooms. Shared kitchen and bathrooms, lots of common space. It's the newest thing."
He scoffed. "A dozen college-age kids could trash all your work in a week."
"There'll be a caretaker on site. And we'll screen our applicants carefully." She smiled. "It'll be like joining a frat without having to pledge."
"Long commute from L.A. or San Diego. Specially when I-15 packs up."
"Oh, I think we can find a handful of students looking for a little seclusion."
"Whose parents have deep pockets. And want to keep their kids isolated from all the campus hijinks." He nodded. "Maybe."
A knock at the front door announced the arrival of the renovator's crew. Twenty minutes later, the eight-by-eight doorway stood wide open, and the men left, promising 'Miss D' to return at her call to board up the opening.
Mr. Garcia eyed the void. "That's not a standard size for an opening anymore. I'm afraid you'll have to close it up again, a few inches at least. Unless you can find someone to build you a custom door."
She smiled and showed him a catalog from her bag, its pages full of antique trimwork and paneling. "There's a firm in San Francisco that salvages and reconditions architectural details from old buildings. They have a very nice atrium door that should fit perfectly. They're putting it on a truck as we speak."
He shook his head. "Cost really is no object with you people. I'd sure like to know who's bankrolling this."
Her lashes lowered. "That would be a violation of my professional ethics, sir."
He grinned at her, then they both turned toward the opening at the sound of a big diesel. A flatbed semi pulled up in the street outside, a small boom truck strapped to its trailer.
Fifteen minutes later, the little machine was easing silently through the front doorway. Mr. Garcia positioned it at one end of the floor and began deploying its outrigger legs. He waved her away when she started to help. "Don't get your hands dirty. This'll only take a minute." When he was done, he said, "Want to go up?"
She eyed the stenciled warning on the side of the bucket: MAX LOAD 250LBS. "I think we may be a little over."
"Don't worry about that," he said. "They always cut the safe load by half."
She raised an eyebrow. "Well. A safety inspector who ignores posted warnings?"
He smiled, mostly with his eyes. "It's my wild streak coming out. No, really, it's just for liability, in case some nitwit tries to use the truck without extending the legs. It's safe. Unless you're afraid?"
She stepped up into the bucket. "Lay on, MacDuff."
With a whine of hydraulics, the jointed boom unfolded and lifted them smoothly toward the roof. The bucket platform swayed a little as they approached the top. "It's all right," the inspector said.
Anna smiled. "I know. You wouldn't have invited me if there was the least danger."
The massive trusswork came within reach, dark wood beams sixteen inches thick bound together with heavy steel plates and wrist-thick bolts. Mr. Garcia reached up and scraped at a member with a fingernail, freshening the smell of smoke. "Hm."
"What?"
"Hundred-twenty-year-old oak lumber. Hard as iron. Not even charred. If it's all like this, you'll only have to paint it with Kilz or some such before you frame and drywall the ceiling."
"Actually, there was some discussion about leaving part of the trusswork exposed. Is there some way to clean the wood and get rid of the smell without covering it?"
He touched a control, and the bucket slid sideways along the beam, swaying. "There are enzyme applications. But they have to be professionally applied, and they're-"
"Expensive."
"Right." He scoffed. "I'll give you the name of a firm."
They explored the entire support structure, descending to move the truck several times. Halfway through, he said, "You're not bored with this?"
"Not at all. You make it all very interesting."
An hour later, the truck folded up for the last time, and Mr. Garcia stowed the outriggers. "Nothing left but the roof. Don't expect to find much. You could park cars on that trusswork, and the decking looks sound from underneath. Just a looky-look at the flashing and brickwork and we're done." He smiled "Hungry? There's a nice little diner a couple blocks away."
She lowered her lashes again. "At the risk of sounding full of myself, could saying 'yes' possibly be construed as a bribe?"
"Possibly," he said. "I just turned down half a grand from your hand. I think I can risk someone seeing us together. Uh, wait, I didn't mean to imply-"
She giggled. "Yes. I'm on a diet, but I'd love to sip water and talk while you eat."
An hour later, at the still-open front door, the inspector took his leave. He said, "When you call for your electrical and plumbing inspections, mention my name. It won't be me comes out, but they'll know me."
There would be no other inspections. Mr. Lynch and she had agreed that no outsiders would be allowed inside the house once construction began, and no plans of the interior's real layout would be submitted to any records bureau. From this point, all official documentation regarding the building's renovation would be forged.
Anna nodded. "I will."
