For the first time in a long time, I slept. I didn’t wake until nearly nine in the morning, when my cell phone buzzed. It was my stepbrother Jake calling.
Jake. Jesse. Jail.
“Oh, my God, how is he?” I cried, snatching up my phone. “What’s happening?”
“He’s out.” Sleepy sounded extremely pleased with himself.
“He is?” I sat bolt upright in bed. “Is he all right? Where is he? What happened? Can I speak to him?”
“All charges dismissed. See, it pays to have the very best criminal attorney on your side. Got a DUI? Call the DUI Guy. Not that that was applicable in your boy’s case, but—”
I didn’t want to burst Jake’s bubble, since I knew it wasn’t his high-powered attorney’s skills, but my slick mediating that had gotten Jesse off the hook.
“Thanks so much, Jake,” I interrupted. “I really appreciate it. I’m sure Jesse does, too. Where is he? Can I speak to him?”
“He’s right here in the car with me. I’m driving him back to the Crossing because he says you have his car? Boy, that’s good, because if Five-Oh looked inside the BMW and found all that, er, contraband, even the DUI Guy wouldn’t have been able to get him off—”
“Jake, can I speak to Jesse?” Sometimes I wondered if all of my stepbrothers, with the exception of David, had been dropped repeatedly on the head as newborns.
“Uh . . .” I heard a slight murmuring, and then Jake came back on the line. “Sorry, Suze, maybe later, all right?”
I tried to keep the acid out of my tone because I knew none of it was Jake’s fault. He’d been a really good friend to both of us. But I was angry. “What?”
“Listen, Suze, don’t worry, nothing bad happened to him, he’s just a little worse for wear. I mean, come on, Suze.” Jake’s tone dropped to a whisper. “The guy spent the night in jail. No one wants to talk to their fiancée first thing when they get out of jail.”
“I would,” I said. I swung my legs over of the side of the bed. “I would want to talk to my fiancé first thing when I got out of jail. In fact, I thought we were going to head over to the arraignment together and I was going to serve as a character witness and—”
“Well, Suze, you know what? Sometimes there’s stuff men don’t want their lady involved in, and this is one of those things.”
“What lady? I’m not anyone’s lady. What the hell are you even talking about? And how could Jesse possibly not want me involved? I’m already involved. What happened? Did he get beat up in jail? Is there something he’s hiding? Put him on the phone right now, Jake, or I swear to God, I’ll—”
“I think it would be better if I got him home first and rested and fed and showered up,” Jake said in a more normal tone. “Then you can come over later and the two of you can talk. All righty, Suze?”
“All righty? Don’t you all righty me. Who are you, his new life coach?”
“See?” Jake was whispering again. “This is exactly why I didn’t want you down at the courthouse. You’re too emotional.”
“Emotional? Me? What about him? He’s the one who—”
“Picking up the groom from the courthouse after he’s spent the night in jail isn’t the job of the bride. It’s the job of the best man. Which is another reason why you guys should have appointed me as best man, and not groomsman. And I don’t know what’s up with this Paul guy, but do not, and I mean do not, ever bring up his name again around Jesse. Every time they mentioned it in court, this muscle in his face started twitching—”
“Don’t worry, I have no intention of mentioning Paul, not now, or ever. But listen, you’ve got to tell me. Is it me Jesse’s mad at, or just Paul? Because honest to God, Jake, if he calls off the wedding, I’m going to lose it. That dress has been hanging in my closet for so long I think it’s got more cobwebs than my vagina.”
“Uh-oh,” Jake said. “I’m starting to lose you. I think I’ve just hit an area where there’s no cell service.”
“There aren’t any of those on the way from Monterey, you moron.”
“See you later this afternoon, Suze. Bye, Suze.” Jake hung up.
I lowered my cell phone and then sat there, feeling like punching something. Lucia had said everything was going to be all right, but as far as I could tell, her prediction was about as accurate as the local weather forecaster’s. It had called for sunshine, but as usual a thick marine layer hid the “mountain” view—and just about everything else, as well—outside my windows.
Gina was already up and out of the apartment—a text she’d left on my phone said she’d gone to an audition (Carmel-by-the-Sea’s outdoor theater was always putting on musicals), then to run errands.
This was fine with me. I had plenty of errands of my own.
“What’s this?” CeeCee asked, looking at the laptop and cashbox I set down on the table between us at the Happy Medium an hour later, after I’d showered, dressed, and met her for a breakfast of grits (her) and pancakes with extra tofu bacon (me, and only because the Happy Medium is vegetarian).
“Oh,” I said, swallowing a large gulp of coffee. “Just everything you need to break the story of the decade. Well, maybe not the decade, but the year, at least. Your editor is going to love you. You could probably get a job at the San Francisco Chronicle with a story this big.”
“I don’t want to work at the Chronicle.” CeeCee opened the cashbox. It was easy to do so, since the lid was broken, and hanging sadly on its hinges. “I just want off the police beat. Geez, Suze! How much money’s in here, anyway?”
“Fifty grand. Don’t look at what’s on the thumb drives around here, or in front of anyone under eighteen.” I glanced around the café, which was bustling. It did some of its best business during the breakfast hour, which was why Gina was dying to snag the Saturday morning shift. CeeCee’s aunt had assured her she’d get her chance, but only after she’d “paid her dues” with the less busy night shifts. “It’s pretty gross.”
“Oh, yeah?” CeeCee, unfazed, was already working on deciphering the password on the laptop. “What’s up?”
“Pretty soon a guy is going to walk into the Delgado Photography Studio over on Pine and find his boss, James Delgado, dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. That stuff you have there was locked inside his desk. When you get a look at what’s on it, you’ll know why he chose to off himself. There are two client lists—one for his regular photos, and one for photos he was distributing illegally according to U.S. federal child exploitation laws.”
CeeCee made a face. “How charming.”
“Yeah. I think a good thing for you to say in the story you write about it—before you turn all this stuff over to the police—is that you found it in a padded envelope on your doorstep this morning. You have no idea who could have left it there, but you assume it was Jimmy himself, out of shame and remorse for all the terrible things he did. But that’s for the police to determine, of course.”
One of the many things I liked about CeeCee Webb was that she didn’t waste time asking stupid questions. Her sense of morality was well honed, but highly flexible. And she was professional to the core.
She also knew a good thing when it walked up and was presented to her at the breakfast table.
“Great,” she said, her gaze never leaving the screen in front of her, even as she occasionally reached over to consume a mouthful of grits. “No problem. One thing, though. What if they ask me for the envelope?”
“Sadly,” I said, “you threw it away, and it already got taken to the dump. How could you know it contained something so incredibly important?”
“True. So I take it, since you’re involved, this Delgado didn’t really commit suicide?”
“Oh, no, he really did. Maybe you could mention in your story how there’ve been a number of studies suggesting people like him would rather die than face the social stigma of having their crimes exposed—or quit committing them.”
“Nice line, thanks, I’ll use it.” She continued to type. “What was that other thing you mentioned you wanted to speak to me about?”
“Oh, yes. Well, considering I’m giving you this truly enormous story, I was wondering if you could stifle another one.”
Now she did look up from the screen, her violet eyes playful. “Susannah Simon, are you trying to impede the freedom of the press?”
“Absolutely. Since you write the local police beat, could I ask you not to report in it that Jesse got arrested last night for assaulting Paul Slater?”
The look in the violet eyes went from playful to gleeful.
“He did? How delish! Were you there? Did you see it? Tell me everything. Was the carnage extensive? What did Paul say to get him so angry? What in God’s name were you even doing with Paul in the first place? And why didn’t you invite me?”
“If I promise to tell you everything,” I said, “in excruciating detail, will you promise to do everything you can to make sure the whole thing stays off the Internet and out of the paper? I think it would mortify Jesse if his colleagues at the hospital found out.”
“Cross my heart.” She made a slash with her finger across the faded gray Mission Academy sweatshirt she wore. “And hope to die. Are you going to eat your tofu bacon?”
“No. It’s disgusting. Why can’t they serve turkey bacon here, at least?”
“Aunt Pru won’t allow animal by-products in her establishment. That’s soy milk you’re putting in your coffee.”
I uttered a four-letter word, nearly dropping the metal pitcher.
“Sorry. Now tell me everything. Where did it—”
“Hello, girls.” Aunt Pru swooped down on our table, her many bangles jingling. “Did I hear my name?”
CeeCee slammed down the cover to Jimmy Delgado’s computer. “Good morning, Aunt Pru.”
“Busy working, I see.” She kissed the top of her niece’s head, which was turning pink beneath CeeCee’s snow-colored hair. “She’s so industrious, isn’t she, Susannah?”
“Like a busy little bee,” I said, standing up and gathering my messenger bag. “Which reminds me that I, too, have work to do, and must run.”
“Oh, how sad.” Pru looked regretful while CeeCee scowled, angry that I was escaping without having shared the tale of Jesse’s arrest. “But it all turned out the way I said it would, didn’t it?”
“What did, Prudence?” I was busy digging through my wallet for cash. I figured treating CeeCee to breakfast was the least I could do.
“With the little girl. She never meant to hurt anyone. She was only frightened, and in pain. But you helped her, didn’t you?”
I froze, staring at her, then finally managed a smile. So “the lost child” had been Lucia all along. I ought to have known. Paul Slater had never been lost a day in his life. He’d always known the exact path he was taking.
Too bad it was the wrong one.
“I think so, Pru,” I said. “Thank you. But I didn’t do it alone. I had a lot of help from my friends.”