7

PLACERVILLE USED TO BE A GOLD town back in the mid-eighteen hundreds. Today, gold still can be gathered, especially in the summer, from tourists on their way up Highway 50 from the San Francisco Bay Area toward Tahoe, 250 miles of not much happening until the steep peaks of the Sierra take over. First there is the Bay Bridge to get across, then the long traffic jam of the East Bay, then the new Carquinez Bridge where the Delta country begins.

Then there is nothing much-fields, heat, truck stops, military bases, Sacramento, factory outlets-for a couple of hundred miles. Then the uplift of the Sierra succeeds the hot valley behind as the SUVs and sedans labor up seven thousand feet of altitude to Echo Summit and Lake Tahoe just beyond.

But first, where the foothills begin, still seventy miles from Tahoe, the highway goes through Placerville, with its historic courthouse, quaint streets full of shops, and endless forest all around, and the culture begins to change with the climate. The idea of working ten hours a day in a Silicon Valley cubicle begins to seem suspect. The men want to stop for a beer, DUI laws be damned. The women want to wander down the street looking for a tiny piece of history to take home with them. It is freedom they are looking for, as if the flatlands have imprisoned them, and Placerville is the first town on the road where they can let loose.

Nina turned left and went up a short hill. Most of the homes were small and old, well-settled in their arbors of firs.

She drove until she saw a metal mailbox reading “Hanna.” Cracked asphalt led to a red Ford 150 pickup, which took up a lot of the driveway, and another filthy old truck huddled in the carport. Nina parked behind the pickup and climbed out. The sun shone down; it was so quiet here she could hear the creak of the trees catching breezes high above.

Chelsi, in shorts and a shirt that showed her brown stomach, opened the screen door on the shady porch and came out to greet her. Behind her shambled a man who must have been her father, tall and athletic like her, big-handed and big-footed.

“Dad, this is Nina.”

“Roger Freeman.” He squeezed her hand and put his other hand lightly over the squeeze as if to apologize for the strength of the handshake. “Sarah’s brother. Come on in, Dave’s inside.” He shot a quick glance at Chelsi. “He’s not at his best this morning.”

Dave Hanna sat in a La-Z-Boy in front of a recorded ball game on TV, the sound turned off, his eyes glued to the screen. He didn’t get up and barely acknowledged Nina’s greeting.

The small living room still held traces of Sarah Hanna-a white-framed wedding picture on the mantel of a smiling young couple, she seated quietly, big blue eyes hopeful, flowers held in her lap, he with his hand on her shoulder, making it clear how the marital dynamics would work even then. Sarah’s auburn hair touched the shoulder of her ivory gown. Dave looked a lot younger in the picture. Nina knew from her notes they had been married for ten years before Sarah died. Dave had been thirty-two, Sarah twenty-eight when they married.

A white lace tablecloth on the dining-room table still looked as if it had received Sarah’s touch, and the green upholstered chair and ottoman with its own reading lamp across the room had obviously been hers. The rest of the room had a shoddy, stained look, and smelled like somebody slept in it.

The wreck on the recliner pressed the remote control. The TV went black. Dave Hanna shifted around, saying, “This better be good.”

“A settlement offer usually is,” Nina said. “May I?” She took Sarah’s chair. Roger pulled out a couple of straight chairs from the table, and he and Chelsi sat down. Now they had a sewing circle going, only Dave was clearly a stitch short today. Eyes downcast, he scratched his neck. Nina would bet he had already tossed down a couple of beers this morning.

She glanced again at the wedding picture. A traditional male, yes, but he had lost the woman most important in his life. Grief killed some people, she thought, along with: You take the client as you find him, unless he or she is too far gone to reach at all. Nina opened her briefcase.

“It’s a formal offer, made in good faith, I think,” she said. “But it isn’t much to compensate you for the loss of your wife, Mr. Hanna. A total of fifty thousand dollars.” She recapped her visit to the Puckett mansion and Bova’s proposal to add to the insurance company’s offer. “We have until Tuesday before court to accept or reject. Or counteroffer.”

“Not enough,” Roger said. “Obviously.”

“It may be close to all they have to offer,” Nina said. “Bova brought the Ace High out of bankruptcy three years ago. He has tax liens against him as an individual. His home in Incline is mortgaged heavily. The motel isn’t exactly flying high as a business.”

“But Aunt Sarah is dead and those people have got to take some responsibility for that!” Chelsi cried. She shook her head, her expression pained. “I don’t think I told you enough about her. She was so great. Did you know she coached the girls’ basketball team at the high school here? There were easily a hundred kids at her funeral.”

“Crying,” Roger Freeman added.

“I understand,” Nina said. “No amount of money can compensate your family for losing her. But you have to remember the motel wasn’t directly responsible. It was negligent at best. In other words, the motel legally won’t have to bear the full burden of compensating you for your loss.”

“If the clerk had been at the office watching out like she was supposed to, she could have called 911!” Chelsi argued.

“I agree,” Nina said.

Roger said, “Maybe Bova had something to do with the shooting. Maybe the clerk did. Maybe the clerk had a friend who picked the motel because she’d conveniently go next door. We don’t know anything yet.”

“We’re investigating,” Nina said. “But we’re starting so late, we’re in a risky position. The judge may dismiss the case against the motel on Tuesday.”

“How much did you say?” Dave Hanna said.

“Fifty thousand. Each side pays its own attorney’s fees.”

“How much would you get?”

“I’ll add up my actual time and my investigator’s time. A couple thousand dollars, I’d guess, would be the amount.”

“That’s very decent,” Roger said. Chelsi nodded.

“The important thing you need to know is that if the motel was directly involved in the shooting in some way and we find that out, I believe we can sue them again on a different legal theory. This settlement would not release them from any direct involvement, only from a negligent involvement,” Nina said.

“What do you think?” Hanna said.

“I would let the motel out, so long as Mr. Bova agrees to cooperate fully while we try to catch the shooter. And so long as the judge will let us keep the case against the shooter alive for a while longer.”

“If it’s going to end the case, I don’t want to settle,” Roger said.

“Rog, this isn’t about you,” Hanna said. “Sarah was my wife. This is my case.”

“My name isn’t on it, sure, but she was my sister.”

“Why don’t you butt out?” Hanna said. “Whatever happens, you won’t get a dime. Sometimes I think you keep hammering at this suit to punish me.”

“What are you talking about?”

The glaze of alcohol in Dave Hanna’s eyes suddenly departed, to be replaced by simmering anger. “I was there and couldn’t save her. You hate me for that.”

“That’s not so.”

“Yeah, well, you don’t give a damn about me, about how this has affected my life. You’re chasing a ghost. You keep Sarah alive that way. For you, this lawsuit is really just a way to keep people thinking about her, isn’t it? Sometimes I think if we ever found the guy who shot her, you still wouldn’t believe it! What would you do for a hobby then, huh?”

“Dave, please.”