LITMIR.BIZ

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have it.”

      “It’s got a modem in it, right? Standard SPUDS issue, right? You do work for me, Lindsey, don’t you?”

      “Right.”

      “To work, then. You’re not on an hourly wage, Lindsey. To work.”

      Lindsey opened the bathroom door. He could see Jamie and Hakeem silhouetted against the TV screen. They’d lost interest in CNN and switched channels to a Japanese monster movie. Something with two heads and lots of scales was breathing fire and flailing at a squadron of Korean War era jet fighters.

      After a couple of jets crashed into a mountainside sending up plumes of black, oily smoke Lindsey quietly placed the telephone handset on its base. The boys did not budge. He pulled on his goose-down jacket and motioned to Marvia. She slipped into her own jacket and followed him onto the wooden walkway outside their room.

      The lodge was separated from the lake by a broad lawn, covered now with drifted snow. The January moon reflected off the lake’s smooth surface. The Coast Guard cutter had apparently returned to its pier and the news helicopter to its base. Across the lake, a torchlight ski-party was visible as a cluster of tiny moving sparks.

      Lindsey took Marvia’s hands in his own.

      She said, “We have to go back, don’t we?”

      He nodded.

      “It was going so well. Like a real family.”

      “I know. But Richelieu—”

      She looked angry. “How did he know where we were?”

      Lindsey laughed without humor. “I guess he was watching CNN.” He told Marvia about Richelieu and Mrs. Blomquist working late and just happening to turn on a TV in the office. “He must have had her calling every hotel and lodge at the lake, ’til she found us.”

      Marvia grinned bitterly. “We should have registered as the Smith family.”

      Lindsey looked down at Marvia’s face. The moon reflected from her dark eyes like two bright disks. Her dark face and short hair were silhouetted against the snow-field that stretched from the lodge to the lake shore.

      “Let’s chase the boys into their own room. I can log onto the twenty-four-hour interlibrary net from my palmtop. Give me an hour or so, then we’ll can turn in.”

      Plum pressed the palm of her hand to his face. Cold as the night air was, her hand felt warm on his cheek.

      “You going to work until you fall asleep?”

      Lindsey shook his head. She could always make him smile. He shook his head again to make sure she could see it in the moonlight.

      CHAPTER TWO

      Lindsey and Marvia Plum took Jamie and Hakeem to an old Tahoe restaurant for breakfast. It wasn’t glitzy and it wasn’t full of yuppies in the latest L.L. Bean and Eddie Bauer ski-wear but the food was good and the portions were generous.

      The boys were not pleased at missing their weekend in the snow, but Lindsey and Plum promised them another shot at it as soon as they could get away. Normally Lindsey was the one who worked Monday through Friday. Since he’d moved from International Surety’s Walnut Creek office to SPUDS, he pretty well set his own days and hours.

      Marvia Plum was the one who had to fight for the shifts she wanted. A homicide sergeant on the Berkeley Police Department had to be available when the department needed her. Murderers didn’t knock off after six o’clock in the evening. In fact, they got busy after the sun went down, and peaked just about when most citizens were watching the evening news or crawling into their beds.

      But this time it was Lindsey who had got the call, and this time it was Lindsey who clicked his heels, saluted smartly and did as he was commanded: Find the girl on the cover of Death in the Ditch.

      He dropped Marvia and both youngsters at her house. She would take care of them, get Hakeem White back to his parents and take her own son to her parents’ house. They would spend the evening there. Marvia spent more time with her mother since her father’s death. Not that Gloria Plum needed it. She had always been an island unto herself. But somehow, it seemed to Lindsey, Marvia drew strength from being in the house where she was raised, and where her father had lived almost until the end.

      Lindsey left them at Oxford Street in Berkeley. Marvia would drive Jamie and Hakeem to Bonita Street in her classic Mustang. Once the boys talked things over on the ride back from Tahoe, they decided that their adventure would make better telling than an ordinary weekend excursion would have. They’d seen the helicopter crash—it almost crashed on them. They’d helped rescue the pilot, Hakeem had been on the national news and Jamie Wilkerson was a real network cameraman.

      Lindsey’s computer search had turned up hundreds of books with “Death” in their titles, from Death About Face by Frank Kane, 1948, to Death-Wish Green by Frances Crane, 1960. Lots of Death in’s too. There was Death in the Devil’s Acre by Anne Perry, 1985, and there was Death in the Diving Pool by Carol Carnac, 1940. That was where Death in the Ditch belonged, right between Death in the Devil’s Acre and Death in the Diving Pool. But it wasn’t there.

      Maybe it wasn’t a book at all. Maybe it was—what? What would have a cover with a girl on it, with a title like Death in the Ditch, other than a book? A magazine? A record album? A pack of trading cards? They were making some pretty weird trading cards these days, everything from famous gangsters to friendly dictators. They weren’t restricted to the athletes and movie stars that Lindsey remembered collecting in grammar school, but Vansittart’s life policy had been issued in 1951. If the designated beneficiary hadn’t been changed in later years, that would narrow the field.

      He’d have to check on that, but first, after dropping Marvia and the youngsters, he headed for Walnut Creek. He pulled his rebuilt Volvo 544 into the driveway and parked beside the silver-gray Oldsmobile that had been parked there increasingly often these past few months.

      Inside the house he found Mother’s new friend, Gordon Sloane, sitting in the living room with his shoes off and his feet on the ottoman. A CD was playing ii it sounded like Mozart—and Sloane held a nearly full martini glass by its stem. He looked up, clearly surprised, when Lindsey came in.

      “I thought you were up in Tahoe. Your mother said—”

      “That was the plan. Had to come back.”

      “I hope nothing’s wrong.”

      Before Lindsey could answer, Mother came into the room. She wore an apron over a pair of jeans and a warm blouse. Her hair had gone to gray—every time Lindsey noticed a change in her it was a shock to him—and she carried a wooden salad bowl and a pair of hinged tongs. She looked like everybody’s perfect mom—by Norman Rockwell out of June Cleaver. Lindsey embraced her and planted a kiss on her cheek. She smelled like flowers and cooking.

      Lindsey said, “I guess you two were planning an evening at home. I can make myself scarce.”

      Mother smiled. “We wouldn’t throw you out of your own home. There’s plenty of food.”

      Lindsey looked past her, at Sloane. Sloane nodded. Lindsey said, “Okay. I’d better go wash up. I’m feeling kind of stale.”

      At dinner he told them about the events at Tahoe, about Jamie Wilkerson’s debut as a network cameraman, and about Desmond Richelieu’s telephone call.

      Sloane said, “We caught part of the report on TV. It was in this morning’s papers, too. They’re going nuts over Vansittart. I didn’t realize you were involved.”

      Lindsey reached for a slab of pot roast. “Only by accident. Of course Jamie’s beside himself.”

      “He’s going to be Hobart’s son,” Mother offered. “When he marries Marvia. You know Marvia, Gordon. Such a lovely girl. No, woman, we don’t say girl any more.”

      Lindsey couldn’t suppress his grin. “That’s all right, Mother. It’s a small enough matter.”

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