“Crab and langoustine ravioli,” Nina said to the waiter at the Terrace Grill. The Terrace Grill was an adjunct to the La Playa Hotel, a lovely old place that had been a fixture for many years in Carmel. They had chosen a table outside. It was nine-thirty at night and Nina’s stomach was as empty as a crater on the moon. She had already started on the bread and butter.

Tonight the fog spared them. The warm air settled over them as softly as a veil. Birds shook the trees and flower garden nearby, settling in for the night, and the few streaks of cloud above the waterline were stained cherry.

“We’d like to start with crab cakes,” Paul said, “then I’ll have the prawns.” He studied the wine list for another moment, then ordered a Gewürztraminer, very cold.

Nina reached across the table and took his large hand in hers. Hard, craggy, experienced, she thought, and smiled. “I feel guilty.”

“Here we sit, playing violins, figuratively speaking,” Paul said, “while Carmel Valley burns. People are dying. But we have to eat.”

“The party goes on,” Nina said.

“So it does. What’s bothering you? I mean aside from Wish’s problems, Ruthie’s death, your hangover today from the party, and being tired and hungry from this whole long day.”

“Isn’t that enough?”

“Is it about Bob’s call?”

“No… it’s nothing.”

“Not true.”

“He’s okay.”

“So you’re not ready to talk about it?”

“I’m thinking it’ll blow over, Paul. I don’t want to talk about it, as a matter of fact.”

“Why not?” Paul demanded, as peremptorily as if she were a prisoner at Guantánamo Bay withholding vital information.

“It’s none of your cotton-picking business,” Nina said, her back up. Again.

“You won’t tell me?”

“I will soon.” When I have a solution, she thought.

Paul tolerated Bob, but children, in the generic, he did not like. He would not want Bob in the second bedroom he used as an office. Of course not. Fair enough.

One bathroom. Bob’s forty-minute showers. Paul’s lips would get as tight as an abalone shell at low tide.

Why couldn’t Bob follow the plan? It had been so tidy. He had insisted on going to Sweden. Let him stay and build character.

But.

He was overwhelmed. He needed to come home. Home in quotation marks. Home in the abstract. Alas, in truth, there existed no home for Bob to come home to at the moment.

“It’s Nikki, isn’t it? Nikki’s older,” Paul said. “She does things she shouldn’t and that makes her attractive to Bob. What else is new?”

Oh, not much, Bob wants to come home, Nina thought. “Nikki’s cooling off toward Bob.”

“Ah. And what’s his response?”

She decided she would go no further in this direction, especially given the interest she saw rising in his greeny-yellow eyes. Which, in spite of the glass of wine he had just downed, remained sharp. “So, Paul,” she said, licking the tip of her already-shiny spoon, “what did you think happened to Ruthie?”

He cocked his head, but let it go. “I have a few ideas,” he said. “Ruth Frost’s car was old, so I can’t be sure.”

“But…” she offered.

“Right. But…”

“Something struck you?”

“You know how when you have a hunch?”

“You never buy my hunches.”

“But I buy my own.”

“What hunch?”

“The police think because it was a cold night, she left her motor and heat running.”

“You don’t think so?”

“I think she’d run it for a while, then turn it off.”

“Because?”

“Because she was slightly cockeyed, yes; stupid, no. Have you ever noticed that if you’re an outsider, people will believe you’re capable of all sorts of unreasonableness?”

“Maybe she felt running the motor outside would be harmless. She didn’t know she would die. Probably thought the outside air would dissipate any carbon monoxide. Maybe she passed out before she could turn off the car.”

Paul said, “Witnesses say she hasn’t had a back seat in years. That she often left the motor running to get heat, when she needed it. Not smart, with leaks in the exhaust system, but she knew that and didn’t do it for long.”

“Does anyone say she threatened to kill herself?”

“No.”

“So what do you suspect? The police seem satisfied our Cat Lady died a natural death, out feeding her beloved animals in the night, trying to stay warm in her ruin of a car.”

“I guess if I was looking at the situation from the point of view that she was living a risky existence and had a bad accident, I’d be satisfied too. But there were those marks on the exhaust pipe,” Paul said.

Nina stopped eating. “Marks?”

“Maybe natural aging, maybe not. I took a few photographs and looked at them before we came here, but they don’t really prove anything. Those marks could have happened a lot of ways. And it doesn’t look like the forensics people are planning to figure this one out for us. The authorities seem pretty set on natural death.”

“You pointed out what you saw?”

“They saw what I saw. They took photographs too, but, you know, strange way to kill someone.”

“Are you sure what’s been happening around here isn’t inspiring your imagination?”

“Maybe. But maybe somebody rigged a hose into the car to help out the fumes in the back. She went out there to take care of the animals. She ran the motor and fell asleep. Someone ran a hose from the pipe into the car.”

“Without her noticing?”

“She was sleeping. And she slept on. After a while, he removed the hose.”

“Oh, Paul. That poor woman.” Nina pictured her long hair, the heap her body made on the pavement.

“Someone got to her before she died.”

“Was she hit? Did you see a bruise?”

“Nothing so definite. But there was something off about the whole thing. Maybe a hot drink put her to sleep first. Maybe a knock upside the head, then the hose inserted into a window, was the final scenario.”

Nina rubbed her forehead. “You believe she was murdered.”

“She was the only witness to the arsons. You realize that? Remember what you said happened at that party just a few hours before?”

“I’ve been thinking about that. There was jokey talk,” she said, “about doing a lineup for Ruthie, making her pick out who she saw fleeing the arson. I guess if our Siesta Court arsonist happened to be within earshot, he heard that. Maybe he took it seriously.”

“Maybe that got her killed.”

“I’m thinking, how does this help Wish? I hate to be so cold, but his arraignment’s in the morning. And it does help Wish, but we have to prove it was a murder. The theory currently is that Danny was the Siesta Court arsonist and Wish was the outside man. But Danny’s dead and Wish was sleeping on a state-issue mattress.”

“Right. So-” She let Paul say it.

“Who killed the Cat Lady?”

16

“H EY, WISH,” NINA SAID. “WHAT’S WITH your hair?”

“Nobody wears long hair anymore. It’s a symbol of the Res.” Wish looked scalped, there was no other way to put it, and Nina’s heart went out to him. He was giving way to the peer pressure of the other inmates herded together into their seats in the jury box of the courtroom.

These tough guys wore the haircuts of male Marines and indifferent expressions, but they didn’t look tough to Nina. To her these kids, minority kids mostly, looked like inmates of any gulag or concentration camp, right down to being tattooed.

“How are you?”

“Tired of this, since I didn’t do anything to deserve it.”

“I made an appointment to talk to Jaime Sandoval-the D.A.”

“So I don’t get out today?” Her expression answered him and his face twisted. Nina checked her watch. Monday-morning arraignments started in five minutes.

“Soon, Wish, I promise you. Something important has happened. The main witness linking Danny to the previous fires is dead. The lady who fed cats, Ruth Frost. Carbon-monoxide poisoning when she ran the heat in her car night before last. An accident, they say.”