“Are you coming with us?” Sandy asked, standing stolidly in front of her. Nina hadn’t thought of that possibility.

“No.”

“It might help.”

“Oh, I know I should. Just leave me alone. Go get him if you have to. I still can’t figure out if he’s really alive, if I really saw him.” Nina and Paul exchanged worried glances.

“Okay, then.” Sandy opened her bag, pulled out a box of doughnuts, and set them in front of Connie. “Chocolate-covered,” she said. “Remember how we used to eat them back when the boys were little? Those were good times, and none of us are going to forget them. Nina, why don’t you and Paul wait in the car.”

Nina took Paul’s hand and led him outside, Paul grabbing the map as they passed the table. Lying back against the seat as Paul started the motor, she closed her eyes and thought that Bob would be passing through this dangerous transition to adulthood in a few years. She hadn’t cared about Danny Cervantes as a person until this moment, the slow-burning match who had found only dried-up tinder in his search for a life, and had become a conflagration. Now she hoped that somehow he could be saved. But Callie and Mikey came first.

In a few minutes Sandy came out to the car and opened the door. When they were moving again, she said, “Danny took a bottle of pills from the medicine cabinet before he left. Thirty pills. Ambien.”

“It’s a very powerful sleeping aid,” Nina said. “My God! We have to find him.”

“He let her think he was dead. He was already a ghost, all the ties with this world cut. I don’t think he can come back. She knows that.”

36

B ACK IN THE CAR, THEY REGROUPED. “Do we call the sheriff’s office now?” Nina asked. “Shouldn’t we tell them where we think Danny Cervantes might be? What’s he going to do with those pills?”

“We still don’t know he’s there, Nina,” Paul said. “I wish we had more to report. Give Crockett a buzz. See what he says.” He knew what he wanted to do: Go to Rose Knob Mountain. He knew it well. He had hiked that section of the Tahoe Rim Trail traversing the summit the day the trail opened a year ago. But he was willing to let Crockett make the decisions.

She called Crockett, who sounded very anxious at the news, especially when she told him about the pills. “He’s frustrated, Paul. He wants us to keep in close touch,” Nina said, closing her phone. “He’s going to talk with the local police and get back to us.”

They drove for a few minutes more before Nina’s phone rang. She talked briefly, then hung up. “They don’t feel they can do anything with Connie’s information yet. They are sending someone out to talk to her right away. Apparently, Crockett is also pursuing a credible report that Danny’s hiding out with the kids south of Cachagua in the mountains near Big Sur.”

Paul took a deep breath. “Damn. Those kids… do you think Danny’s mother told us the truth?”

“I do.”

“Drop me at the TART stop in King’s Beach,” Sandy told Paul as he swung back toward the road that ringed the lake.

“Say what?” Paul stole a glance into the back seat at Sandy, who was looking out the window, hands tight on her bag. He refrained from making a wise-ass addition to the question, terrified he would laugh and alienate her forever.

“Tahoe Area Rapid Transit,” Nina explained. “The bus goes around the lake to South Lake Tahoe.”

“You don’t want to help us decide what to do?” Paul asked.

“I know what you’ll do, and I’m not dressed for hiking. You brought what you need to go up the mountain and try to find him, I assume,” Sandy said.

“Yes, we have what we need in the back of the truck.”

“Well, then.”

“Shouldn’t we call Joseph to come and get you?”

“I already did from Connie’s. He’ll have somebody pick me up at the bus station. Don’t waste any more time worrying about me. I know how to get home. You have mobile phones, both of you?”

“Yes.”

“Charged?”

Nina checked her phone, then Paul’s. “Yes.”

“Don’t forget them for a change.”

“Okay, Sandy.”

She had a few more instructions and edicts for them, which they listened to all the way down to the bus stop. When she got out, she held a hand up. “He’s a kidnapper and a murderer,” she said. “Paul, take your gun.”

He patted his shoulder holster. “Check.”

“And remember,” she said, “he’s still Wish’s friend. I used my friends to find him and now we’re trusting you with his life.”

“Here we are,” Paul said, stopping.

“Thanks, Sandy,” Nina said.

“For what?”

“For coming to the party.”

“We beat Crockett,” Sandy said. “Now you do the rest.”

Nina watched Sandy grow small in the rearview mirror as they drove back around the lake toward Incline Village. “How do you think she really feels about Danny?”

“She remembers him when he was innocent. Probably wiped away a few tears for him once. Now, could you check the map? Do I turn onto Mount Rose Highway or not?”

Directed by Nina, Paul made a left up the highway that eventually led over a nine-thousand-foot pass to the high Nevada desert and Reno. After a short distance, they turned left again and wound through some high-altitude residential streets set in landscapes that looked like they had been transported from the Alps. The asphalt dead-ended in patches of sprouting mule ears, white lupines, and penstemon getting ready to bloom. “Park here,” Nina said, pointing. “This is it. The end of Jennifer Lane.”

On the left, a few large houses crawled over the edge of a downhill slope. “That’s his friend’s cabin,” Paul said, consulting a number he had written down. “Let’s go look.”

The smallest home on the block, it was very quaint, a gingerbread model, with filigreed blue shutters and painted flower boxes, obviously empty, given the pulled drapes and windblown pine needles all over the entry deck. They knocked. They rang the bell. They waited. When there was no answer, they tried again.

“An old door-to-door solicitor trick,” Paul said. “You assume only a friend would have the nerve to ring twice.”

Still no one came. Paul reached above the door to feel for a key but came away empty-handed. He proceeded to wander the front deck, turning over pots, fingering things around the edges of the deck.

“Got it,” he said, fiddling with what looked like a rock.

“You make me so nervous,” Nina said.

“Worried the neighbors are watching?” He turned around with a big smile, waving the key. “Now they think we’re visiting friends.”

“Forget the neighbors. I’m worried about breaking and entering.”

“We’re not breaking anything. Besides, a friend of a friend said we could check it out for a possible rental, remember?”

“I’ll remember,” she said, “and I’ll wait here.”

Paul disappeared through the front door. “Have a seat there. Do your best to look innocent. I’ll just be a second.” He was true to his word, returning quickly. He placed the key back into the fake rock and put it back where he had found it. They walked back to the car.

“What did you find?”

“Kitchen raided for pots and pans. Bread crumbs and peanut-butter-and-jelly stains on the counter. Couldn’t tell what all was taken, but the place on the whole was incredibly neat, so it was obvious that someone in a hurry tromped through.”

“He was there with the kids,” Nina said.

“Has to be him. Crumbs so fresh the ants hadn’t even noticed yet.”

“Anything else?”

“Just this.” He pulled a wadded-up map out of his pocket that had pinholes in each corner. “Found it stuck to the wall in the living room. Favorite trails of the Gerdes family, marked in various colors. There’s blue for easy hiking trails, red for steep ones, and yellow for four-wheel drives…”

“Crockett told me he dumped the Jeep in Sacramento and stole an SUV. Less conspicuous.”

“Yeah, he would once he had the kids. Nina, would you try to hike kids up that ridge?”