Dreams of the Dead Read online

  Before leaving for the day, Nina read the paperwork on the Paradise Ski Resort sale again. She called Lynda Eckhardt. She called the state bar ethics hotline to see if she’d have some sort of conflict of interest, considering that two years before Jim Strong had been her client. The answer was no. This was an entirely different legal matter.

  She called the South Lake Tahoe police station and talked again to her buddy Sergeant Fred Cheney, then had Sandy make copies of all the legal paperwork and deliver it to him.

  She called Michael Stamp’s office to say that she would be stepping in.

  Nina did some online research. In the library, which with its long table doubled as her conference room, she looked up the law on special appearances, in which a party in a lawsuit either didn’t appear personally at all or appeared only for a limited purpose.

  The law was vague on the question of whether Strong could carry on his litigation from Brazil. Other legal issues stemmed from Jim’s status as a missing person and from how to handle his share of the sales proceeds. Was there a chance she could convince Judge Flaherty that Jim was dead? Probably not, not until they had dealt with the bombshell affidavit.

  Jim couldn’t be alive. She had it on good authority that he was not.

  Before she left for home, Paul van Wagoner called her back. “Remember me?”

  “Who’s calling, please?”

  “Why, you naughty, naughty girl.”

  “Paul, I’m so happy to hear your voice.” Nina felt an automatic lift just talking with him again. He knew her better than anyone else and forgave her for what he knew.

  “Got your message, sweet cheeks.”

  “What have you been up to?”

  “Played hooky today and went for a hike at Big Sur.”

  “With Susan?”

  “Susan?” He said it as if he needed to think in order to remember the name, although Nina knew better. He had known her for years. According to gossip, Susan wanted marriage and had agitated hard. Nina felt uneasy about how relieved she had been when she heard through the Monterey grapevine that Paul didn’t jump at the chance.

  “I went alone,” he said finally. “We’re over.”

  “Sorry to hear it,” Nina lied. She had no rights over him. Still, Paul swam into sharper focus with this pronouncement.

  “She moved to San Francisco. That’s a long way.”

  Nina herself was over 250 miles from Carmel, and yet they had managed, at one time. In spite of months of silence, they always picked up in a happy place, when they picked up.

  “Somewhere along the line we stopped caring a whole lot.”

  “No need to offer details.”

  “Ah, but if I don’t, you don’t have to give me details about you and Kurt.”

  “Paul, I didn’t call about—”

  “Please don’t say you’re getting married again and I’m not invited.”

  “Philip Strong came to my office. He believes Jim Strong is alive.” She listened to Paul’s breath catch over the line and remembered how it smelled like cloves sometimes, or peppermint.

  “Now, why would he believe that?”

  She explained about the affidavit.

  “From Brazil? It’s a con.”

  She imagined Paul in his office, feet up on the polished desk, looking out the window at the attractive patrons below. Paul had a prosperous practice as a private investigator in Carmel, California, where he had found an office in a building that overlooked Clint Eastwood’s old restaurant and bar, the Hog’s Breath Inn.

  “I won’t discuss Jim Strong with you. You know that.”

  “I have been over this in my mind, Paul, and I’ve developed this awful suspicion that Jim’s alive. Maybe you lied. You let me think he was dead.”

  He didn’t say anything.

  “I have a right to know the truth. I thought I did for these past few years and now I need reassurance.”

  “I never lied to you, Nina.”

  She heard heat in his voice, but was it the heat of truth or the heat of deception? “You have to know how this affects me and Bob.”

  “Look. I’ll come up to Tahoe tonight. Stay at Harrah’s. See you in the morning. Been meaning to do some gambling anyway. My jar’s full of quarters and my fingers ache for cards.”

  “Why not tell me now?”

  “All in good time.”

  “What about your work?”

  “Just finished a big job. Wish is banging things out and I can leave for a day or two. Hire me. What do you say? We’ll deal with this, get it over with, hit the beach, and let the sun work its magic.”

  “Philip already has a PI,” Nina told him. “I told him I’d take the case, Paul, but I may not be able to bring you in.”

  “Take it. Let’s see what’s up.”

  They had been lovers and they had been friends, and they had done things together that gave her night frights. “Probably it wasn’t a good idea.”

  “Philip’s PI won’t be as good as I am.”

  “Not up to me.”

  “I don’t know what’s going on yet, but we’ll find out. There’s money in the pot somebody wants, and it ain’t Jimmy. Listen. I’ll be by in the morning. You got court?”

  “Short stuff.”

  “Good.”

  The intercom buzzed. “Sandy wants me,” Nina said.

  “Well, then, hustle. Never ignore the boss. See you tomorrow. Can’t wait. There’s ass waiting to be kicked up there.”

  CHAPTER 4

  Nina drove home with much on her mind. With law, a great deal of thinking went on between three and five in the morning, and Jim Strong had instantly become both a personal and professional awakener. Sometimes jogging a few blocks around the neighborhood with her dog, Hitchcock, helped her sleep better, but the slushy spring roads lately had made that risky.

  Oh, hell, she wasn’t going to sleep much no matter what.

  News nattered on the radio and she listened to the local report: snow showers tonight, a high of fifty, clear weather tomorrow. Tahoe’s dry climate had plenty of sunny early-spring days. If only Jim Strong hadn’t bobbed up like a jack-in-the-box, she might be thinking about the weekend and her new skis.

  At least Paul was coming. Maybe he would take over and figure it all out. How to feel about Paul? She plonked him on a dusty mental shelf with all her other past indiscretions, knowing he would instantly jump off. He had a way of crawling into her heart whether she invited him or not.

  She turned onto Jicarilla off Pioneer Trail and, after a few more twists in the forested streets full of cabins, went down Kulow Street and turned into the slick downhill driveway.

  These days she drove a sensible RAV4, a compact SUV that never broke down and had enough cargo space for trips to the lumberyard and the dump.

  Bob and Hitchcock must be out for a walk, though it was already dark. The cabin emitted a warm, damp smell. Bob had turned on the lights in the big room and even tossed a Duraflame log into the orange Swedish fire stove. She sat down on the couch to pull her leather boots off, then went to the kitchen to check her messages and pour her nightly glass of Clos du Bois.

  Blinking.

  “Hi,” Kurt’s voice said. “Can I come over tonight? We need to talk.” The world is a cliché, Nina thought, as she refreshed her glass.

  After a long sip, she called back and got Kurt’s message phone. “How about eight? But I have to get to bed early.”

  She had noticed that when Kurt’s latest temporary job had dried up, he began staying up late and got up later. This disrupted their relationship, since she began to yawn by 9:00 p.m. most nights.

  In her small, cozy kitchen she boiled water for spaghetti, clicking on the television news, watching with one eye on it, one on the food. A bear had been sighted wandering down Golden Bear Street. Made sense in an ursine way. She felt a small pang of worry about Bob and Hitchcock. She would have to equip Bob with pepper spray and teach him how to use it; he took the dog onto all kinds of trails, and the bears had
lately come to view South Lake Tahoe as their neighborhood Safeway. The big animals were supposed to be hibernating but with food available year-round, their ancient habits had shifted. They broke windows and garage doors and came into people’s houses, ransacking fridges and pantries and scaring everyone.

  She dumped tomato sauce into her potion of ground beef, onions, garlic, and peppers, turned the heat down, and stretched out on the couch for a moment of peace.

  The front door flew open. Bob said, “Mom?”

  “Shoes off!” she called. “Wipe Hitch’s feet!” Too late—the big, mostly black malamute bounded to her and propped both his muddy, wet paws onto her leg. She gave up, petted his coarse fur, chatted with Bob for a minute, then went back to her kitchen duties while Bob changed the station to a show about affluent kids who lived in a Neverland where snow never fell and teens never got acne.

  At dinner Bob, age fifteen and on the edge of some sort of revolution, said, “I have a test in Spanish class tomorrow. I’m going to blow it.”

  “Why? You have tonight to study.”

  “It’s too hard.”

  “You’ve talked to your teacher?”

  “He despises me. He plots my death.”

  “Bob, have you been acting up in class?” Bob seemed to develop a new annoying mannerism every day, from foot-tapping to humming to restless shifting around that Nina only had to look at at mealtimes, but the teacher had to watch day after day for an hour straight.

  Bob got up. “How come you always blame me? I’m trying to get through without dying of boredom. Mr. Acevedo doesn’t like me and I don’t like Spanish.” Bob pulled out his cell, read it, and began texting. “It’s Kurt. He says he’s coming over.”

  Bob hadn’t met Kurt until he was twelve years old, and it had seemed too late to all of them for Kurt to be called Dad. Bob and Kurt had taken to each other like puzzle pieces finally slotted together correctly. Nina found some aspects of their reunion almost uncanny, as if Bob had been somewhat of a mystery that suddenly resolved. Their coloring, their volatility, their musical talent; they were very alike.

  They loved each other now, that was the main thing. “You have to study, so say hi and disappear upstairs while we visit.”

  “Don Quixote de la buncha crap,” Bob said. “Got it.”

  “Go to work, now, kiddo.”

  He whined and complained for another minute.

  “Fine, your choice. No B average, no piano until you bring your grade up.” Bob loved playing his old stand-up piano so much that Nina occasionally used deprivation of piano time as a punishment. As a result, Bob considered the piano a luxury and pleasure. She drained pasta into a bowl and added the sauce, hoping it would pick up heat from the noodles.

  Bob’s future swam into view: a musical career of some sort. He often played late into the night after Nina went to her room. Looking at his lips, set in a teenage snarl, she allowed herself to hope he could make a living from music because a college degree would never hang on this boy’s wall.

  “How the hell would you know if I have a B average right this minute or not?”

  “Don’t swear, Bob. Do you?”

  He looked exactly as he had as a four-year-old, as he considered lying. Unlike when he was four, he realized he’d get caught. “No.”

  “Think of Spanish like you think of music. Listen to it. It can be beautiful, too.”

  He snorted and started to leave.

  “Um, but you know, clean off the table first.”

  He cleaned the table and even rinsed the dishes, although the whole time he sang loudly, songs he knew offended her. Then he went upstairs, and Nina didn’t have the energy to check whether he was playing video games or studying. She cleaned up the rest of the kitchen, threw a load of laundry in the washer, watered the house-plants, petted and fed the dog, fluffed her long brown hair, and changed out of her work clothes into a pair of fresh jeans, finishing as the doorbell rang.

  Kurt Scott wore his usual denim and fleece jacket and suede work boots. He carried a six-pack of Coors, which he set on the floor while he gave her a hug and stripped off the winter outerwear, hanging the coat in the small closet in the foyer, and stacking his boots over the layer of melting boots that already lined it. “Almost had an accident on the way in,” he said. “Slid out a little on Pioneer, and sure enough a Chevy Suburban was piling by in the opposite direction at that moment. Missed it by an inch. You could hear his horn all the way to Reno. I hate the melting spring slush that comes with a warm spell almost as much as I despise the apocalyptic winters here.”

  “Cheerful as always, eh, Kurt?”

  He laughed.

  “Sit.” She brought him a pint glass for his Coors and sat down with him in front of the fire. Kurt actually did look weary and glum. He had Bob’s black hair and blue eyes, an elegant man with a long face and narrow chin who always looked a little out of place in the mountain-man clothes he wore. Of his two dissimilar careers, concert pianist definitely fit him better than forest ranger. His hands were long and smooth. He had recently lost weight, and his face seemed thin and drawn.

  The move from Europe to Tahoe hadn’t worked out well. Kurt barely made his rent from his savings and the unemployment checks for his last layoff, and the next stop would be operating a ski lift at minimum wage. She moved closer and put her arm around him, angling up for a kiss. A butterfly flew by her lips.

  Nothing had been right for some time. “Rough day?” she asked.

  “Usual day. You?”

  “Yeah.” Nina told him about Philip Strong wanting to track down his son, and how Paul was coming up, and what he had said.

  Kurt frowned, listening without comment, then said, “Somebody’s full of shit.”

  “You mean Philip? Or Jim Strong? Or Paul?”

  “Let’s not get into that. I don’t care about Paul. Truth is, I don’t care about your case at the moment. What matters is that you care more about your job than me.”

  Nina studied the way the logs burned, listening to their crackle. Kurt hurt her so often lately. Was this what it was like when sweet turned to sour? Every tap felt like a blow.

  “Care,” she said. “That seems to be the operative word.”

  Kurt set down his beer. “Let’s talk. I came back three months ago hopeful for our relationship, wanting to mend everything. I wanted us to be a family. And it was a beautiful vision, one you bought into, too.”

  Past tense.

  “Instead I’m broke and this—unity I hoped for didn’t happen.”

  “Three months isn’t long,” Nina said.

  His brow creased. “Listen, Nina. I won’t go to work as a cashier at a casino or sell lift tickets. I’m too damn old to go back to tromping around for the Forest Service, making trails and scaring off poachers. I’m a concert pianist. Not playing for people is killing me.”

  “But since you had physical therapy, you’ve been able to play in the community orchestra. I thought you loved that.”

  “I do, but it’s not enough. I built a reputation for fifteen years in Europe. I have six CDs. I have a following. There’s nothing to challenge me here professionally.”

  He sounded confrontational. Nina felt herself heating up.

  “I got this today.” He pulled out a letter and handed it to her.

  She looked at it. “Swedish. What’s it say?”

  “I’m invited to tour Scandinavia and Russia for four months with the Royal Swedish Philharmonic. Short notice, but they want me to sub for Bengt Forsberg. He broke his leg. The Bach pieces I already know.”

  Memories of the two of them, young, swept through her mind. She remembered them kissing on a rotting porch at Fallen Leaf Lake and how much she had loved him, trusted him. She had felt abandoned and lost without him, a young, pregnant, unmarried woman.

  We can do without you if we have to, she decided. “Roughly one hundred twenty days. A summer apart. We’ll be okay.”

  “This offer could work into a full-time gig.”

/>   “Wait a minute.” She paused to think about what to say. “You came here tonight to give up on our family? You’d do that?”

  Kurt stood, got close to her, then put his hand on hers, a gesture so familiar it hurt. “You chose me for the wrong reasons. To be a father to Bob. To avoid other hard truths. Maybe you thought I’d fill in the part of parent you don’t do because you work so much.”

  “Someone has to make a living. Someone has to support us!”

  “That’s right, and you love it. I’m not criticizing. I love that about you, too. But see, you don’t love the same thing about me, that I also love my work and won’t give it up.”

  “You won’t stay here and I won’t follow you. That’s the grand idea?”

  “No.” He shook his head. “The insight here is that I don’t think you love me.”

  Nina tried to say she loved him unconditionally and madly. Her mouth opened. She cleared her throat. Nothing came out.

  He watched her try, waiting patiently as she struggled. “Bob will be fine. He knows how much we both love him. He’ll adapt. Tell him I’ll call tomorrow.” Kurt turned her so that he was facing her, then he kissed her on the forehead. “Think about what I’ve said. Let’s talk again soon.”

  The sound of his old pickup made her run to the window and look out. Orion shone down like a brilliant number seven playing card on this moonless night, on snow piled roundly all across the yard. She drew the curtains, locked up, turned off the lights, and went upstairs. Peeking into Bob’s room, she said, “Kurt had to go. He’ll call you. How’s the Spanish?”

  “Muy malo,” Bob said, looking up from the Facebook wall he was writing on.

  “Good night, Bob.”

  “Did you fight?”

  “We talked about how we both love you, and ‘that’s about the size, where you put your eyes.’” She sang a favorite childhood song of his. Then she couldn’t resist a compulsion to kiss him on the cheek. He used to smell of talc and baby oil, now he smelled of boy.

  “Urk.”

  “Sleep well. Love you.”

  “Love you, too.” His reply, automatic though it might be, warmed her.

  The evening called for a long shower, then a nightcap. Passing through her room en route to the bathroom, she looked at the case file on her bed, taken home to ready her for tomorrow’s work. Stripping off her clothes, throwing them on the floor, she changed course. Quick shower and then a pot of tea instead.