Clark was home, his kids weren't alone anymore, and he was going to do whatever he was going to do. They would leave or they would stay, he would call Carol Hillegas or he wouldn't, he would ask Jasper for help or not, and there wasn't a whole helluva lot I could do about it short of putting a gun to his head. Life in a free society.

I opened another Falstaff, then called Lucy Chenier at her office. 'It's the world's greatest human being, calling for Ms. Chenier.'

Lucy's assistant, Darlene, laughed. 'I see we've upgraded from the world's greatest detective.'

'They're one and the same, are they not?'

'Only when we're talking about you, Mr. Cole.' To know Darlene is to love her. 'I'm sorry, but Ms. Chenier isn't in.' It was just before six in Baton Rouge. Lucy normally stayed in her office until six, unless her son, Ben, had a soccer game.

'Is she at home?'

'You could call her there and find out, I suppose.'

I kidded with Darlene for a few more minutes, then hung up and phoned Lucy's home. She answered on the first ring with 'Hi, David!'

'David?'

'Oh. It's you.'

'Maybe we should hang up and start this conversation again.'

Lucy laughed and said, 'David is David Shapiro, who just happens to be the most experienced news talent attorney in New Orleans, and who also happens to be representing me.'

'KROK made a firm offer?'

She said, 'Negotiations are officially under way.'

The grin started deep and came out big. 'Lucille, that is totally wonderful.'

'It's only their opening offer, and we have to counter, but we're close, Elvis. We are really, really close, and this is going to happen.' You could hear the energy and excitement in her voice. 'David thinks we'll conclude by the end of next week. After that, it's just a matter of waiting for Ben's school year to end, and then we can move out.' The end of Ben's school year was less than six weeks away.

'KROK doesn't have a problem with waiting?'

'Not at all. They've even offered to put me in touch with a real estate agent to help us find a place to live.'

We talked, and as we did the tension slowly seeped away with our sharing, and my home became my home again, warm and enveloping and no longer a place that had been invaded by another. The cat's door clacked, and the cat walked over, bumped against me, and purred. Maybe he could feel the change, too.

Lucy asked about the Hewitt children, and listened as I told her about my trip to Seattle, and the uncomfortable facts that I had learned about their father. She said, 'You took it upon yourself to fly to Seattle to look for him?'

'There's a sucker born every minute, Lucille.'

She sighed, and I could almost see her smile. I could see her in the big overstuffed chair in her living room. I could see Ben on the floor surrounded by Incredible Hulk comic books while he watched Babylon 5. I could smell the bay leaf and sassafras of the oyster gumbo simmering for their dinner in the warm safe house near LSU. Exactly the kind of house that Teri and Charles and Winona did not have. Or maybe I'd just drunk too much Falstaff and all of it was wishful thinking. She said, 'You're not a sucker, you nut. You're the man I love.'

'Thanks, Luce.'

We talked for another hour, sharing our excitement and the evolution of our love, and then we hung up, Lucy promising to call with periodic updates on her status with KROK, and me promising to send her the real estate section from the Los Angeles Times, and both of us making those sugary kissing sounds. Sometimes I'm so schmaltzy I embarrass myself.

I brought the remains of my beer out onto the deck and listened to the breeze ruffling the leaves and to the shush of the cars down in the canyon and to the silence in my home. The cat came out and sat with me. I said, 'Lucy will be here soon. You'd best get used to it.'

He rubbed his head against my leg and purred.

It hadn't been such a bad day, after all.

CHAPTER 13

I woke the next morning telling myself that I should take a free day and relax. After all, I was officially unemployed, and when you get beat up by Russian weightlifters in Seattle you deserve time off. Teri and Charles and Winona were no longer my responsibility, and Clark had been warned, so there you go. Portrait of the detective with time on his hands. Unemployment had its advantages.

I fed the cat, then worked my way through forty minutes of tae kwon do katas in the hot morning sun and considered my options: I could run along the Pacific Coast Highway with Joe Pike or drive up to the Antelope Valley to pick fresh peaches or lay on the deck all day eating venison sandwiches and reading the new Dean Koontz. These all seemed like ideal ways to spend a day, but by nine that morning I had shaved, showered, and made my way down the mountains to the Beverly Hills Public Library to learn what I could about the Markov brothers, and what Clark did to get them so pissed off.

Being unemployed is easier said than done.

The Beverly Hills Library is one of the more wonderful libraries in the city. It is clean and neat and Spanish in its architecture, smack in the heart of BH between the Beverly Hills Police Department and the BH City Hall. A slim woman with very short hair showed me how to use their on-line search service and helped me connect with the Seattle Times. I downloaded every article they had about the Markov brothers and Vasily Markov's prosecution and subsequent sentencing, and when I printed the download it came to eighty-six pages. What's a day at the beach when you can spend your time reading about the Russian mob?

It was a crowded morning with no free tables, so I sat at a table opposite a couple of young women who looked about right for UCLA. I smiled at them when I sat, and they smiled back. One of them was tall and blond, with blue glitter nail polish and short, ropy hair. The other was short and dark and might've been Persian. Her nail polish was black. The blonde whispered something to her friend when I sat, and they giggled. I said, 'No giggling.'

The blonde frowned at me. 'No one was talking to you.'

'My mistake.'

The first headline read: MOB BOSS INDICTED ON 39 COUNTS. The basic story was as Reed Jasper described: Vasily Markov headed an organization of Russian emigres who had long been suspected of involvement in counterfeiting, black marketeering, smuggling, extortion, and murder, but that it wasn't until 'an insider in Markov's counterfeiting ring' turned state's evidence that the grand jury could get an indictment. That insider was Clark Hewitt.

The blonde and her friend giggled again, but when I glanced over they pretended to be studying.

The articles described Hewitt as a professional printer who had been 'coerced' by Markov into printing counterfeit U.S. dollars for export to the former Soviet Union. No mention was made of Clark's family, and no mention was made that Markov suspected that Clark had been skimming and had targeted him for death. Other than minor details, there was nothing new or revealing in the first seventy-four of the eighty-six pages, and I was beginning to feel that I would've been better off reading the Koontz.

More whispering, more giggling.

I glanced over. Fast. 'Caught you.'

The blonde blinked at me with innocent eyes. 'Now that you've caught us, what're you going to do with us?'

I turned red and continued skimming. Flirting can be an ugly business. Especially when your girlfriend is soon to move in.

The blonde leaned toward me and looked at the downloads. 'Why are you reading about criminals?'

'Term paper.'

'You're not writing a term paper.'

'You're right. I'm with the library police, and I'm about to bust you for unlawful flirting.'