He went into the kitchen and opened another one of the Kronenbourgs, not happy about his own judgment. But if he had refused, she would probably just go back out to the bars.

When he got outside again, she had disappeared. The beer bottle still lay where it had fallen. Then he saw that the styrofoam lid of the hot tub was off. Marguerite’s jeans and blouse were lying beside it in a tangle on the deck. She was in the tub, leaning back, arms spread luxuriantly along the rim behind her, toes just peeping over in front.

“Why don’t you come on in?” she said. “It’s fucking freezing out there.”

Monks stopped walking and tried to think of an appropriate response. Nothing came.

“Hey, why be shy?” she said. “We’ve seen each other’s skin before.” She pushed away from the hot tub’s wall and slid toward him through the water.

“Marguerite, what’s going on? This is-silly.”

“I think you’re sexy,” she said mischievously.

Monks was quite sure that whatever was prompting her-an attempt to establish control over him, or assauge her guilt, or wound her mother, or even a reversion to her time with Freeboot, when she had held the exalted status of temple prostitute and been the object of men’s desire-it had nothing to do with his being sexy.

“That’s flattering, but I doubt it,” he said.

“You’d love to fuck me, admit it,” she taunted. “Doesn’t every guy have a fantasy about a mother-daughter team?”

“I’ve got my wrinkles, honey, but that’s not one of them. No offense.”

She stood up suddenly, a long, dewy sheen of smooth skin and wet hair. But her smile was glassy, her eyes wide with false innocence, or maybe just dope.

He turned away hastily. “Here’s your beer,” he said, setting the bottle on the deck and retreating.

“If you bring me that, I’ll tell you something you want to know,” she called after him.

“Put your clothes on,” Monks said, pulling the kitchen door open. “Then tell me.”

“It’s about Coil.”

Monks wheeled back around. Her smile faded under his stare. She dropped down into the water again, sinking up to her chin.

He walked to the tub and knelt beside it. She backed away as far from him as she could get.

“If this is some kind of game, tell me now,” he said. “I’ll walk away and it’s over. But you’d better not lie about my son.”

“I’m not lying,” she said. Her voice was very small now and her eyes were scared.

“What is it you know?”

“He’s okay.”

Monks gripped the tub’s rim hard.

“How do you know?” he demanded.

“I can’t tell you yet.”

He bristled. “What the hell do you mean, you can’t tell me?”

But she had recovered some composure, knowing that she held the cards.

“You have to do things just right, and you can talk to him,” she said.

“Do what things just right?”

“I’ll let you know.”

“You’ll tell me now, goddamn it!” He lunged toward her and grabbed a fistful of her wet hair, twisting it hard.

“I don’t know yet. Let me go!”

Her yelping voice pierced the cloud of anger in his brain. He relaxed his hand and she jerked free.

Monks took a mental step back. The implications of what she was saying were sinking in.

More gently, he said, “Are you telling me you’ve been in touch with Freeboot?”

“He never left me, not for a second,” she whispered. “I could feel him around me all day, and in me all night.”

Monks was stunned. He had assumed naïvely that she had been getting over her obsession. Instead, it sounded like she was in deeper than ever.

“And you’ve talked to him?” he said. “Is that how you know about Glenn?”

She didn’t answer, and her gaze slid away from his.

“Marguerite,” he said, choosing his words carefully. “If you know where Freeboot is, you have to tell the police. This is very, very serious.”

“No cops,” she said emphatically. “Nobody else, period. He says it’s between you and him, that you’d understand that.”

“He sent you to tell me that? He wants to work out some kind of a deal?”

She nodded, her gaze still averted. And that, Monks thought, was the reason that she had tried to seduce him-on Freeboot’s orders. Monks would be unlikely to go to the police if he had just had sex with his lover’s daughter.

“Marguerite, you can’t be serious about trusting him again,” Monks said.

“He’s forgiven me. He needs me.”

“How can you believe that? Remember what everybody agreed on-you, the police, the counselors? Freeboot used you. That’s all it was. If he says he’s forgiven you, he just wants to use you again.”

She shook her head almost sadly, and repeated words that he had heard too many times: “You don’t know him.”

“What about him leaving Motherlode up there to die in the fire? Maybe on purpose?”

“Bullshit, man, that was an accident,” Marguerite said angrily. “She was passed out and nobody knew it until too late.”

Monks gave up trying to reason with her.

“Get dressed,” he said. “We’re going to the sheriffs.”

“No! I’ll deny it. I’ll say I was just goofing. And then you’re shit out of luck.”

He hesitated, afraid that she was right.

“I’ll let you know,” she said again. “Just stay cool.” Then, glaring at him, she slid one arm across her breasts and her other hand between her thighs, in the time-honored gesture of a nude woman covering herself from unwanted eyes.

“You better get out of here before my mom comes home and sees you hanging around me like this,” she said haughtily.

Monks stood up, reeling from the dizziness of blood rushing from his head, and made his way back into the house.

28

Monks stood in Sara’s kitchen, breathing deeply, trying to get a handle on what to do next. There didn’t seem to be any good choices. He decided to stay out of Marguerite’s way for the moment-give her privacy to come in and get dressed. Then he’d try to talk to her again. He walked into the living room, thinking hard for a line of reasoning that might make her listen, and waiting impatiently for the sounds of her coming inside.

Instead, he heard a car’s engine starting up.

He strode to the nearest window and looked out just in time to see her backing the Altima out of the driveway fast. Her right hand was pressed against her ear, as if she were talking on a cell phone.

More red flags went up in Monks’s brain. Marguerite must have pulled her clothes on still wet and gone straight to the car, in a hurry, intent on avoiding him. She didn’t have a cell phone, and Sara always took her own to work.

His immediate suspicion was that Freeboot had given her one, in order to communicate with him.

Monks trotted out to the Bronco and took off after her, west on the county road toward the little town of Elk. He left his headlights off, taking the risk in spite of the fog, and drove fast until he spotted her taillights ahead. He dropped back out of sight, accelerating every minute or so to make sure that she was still there ahead of him. From the glimpses he got, she was still talking on the phone, probably paying no attention to her surroundings.

It was just four miles to the intersection with Highway 1. Marguerite turned north, up the coast toward Fort Bragg. Monks let another vehicle get between them. He turned on his headlights now, trying to blend with the stream of traffic that would be in her rearview mirror, but pushing to stay close enough so that he would notice if she turned off.

Which she did almost immediately, into the parking lot of the state beach right there at Elk. The move was so fast and sudden that Monks almost missed it. He made the snap judgment to drive on past rather than pull in right behind her, then immediately started fretting that she already had spotted him-that she was turning around and would shake him before he could get back. He slammed on his brakes, skidding on the roadside dirt, and spun the Bronco in a U-turn.