While Other People Sleep Read online

  The hours while other people sleep are peaceful now.

  Hy is one of the slumberers; he lies in our bed, half tuned to danger, but less so than when I met him years ago. Then he was always on the alert—the legacy of living too long on society's dangerous fringes. Tonight when I left his side he didn't stir, and it pleased me that he's secure in this home we share.

  I'm sitting on the platform above Bootleggers Cove. It's a mild night for this time of year, and anyway, I'm wrapped in one of seven long terry-cloth robes he gave me for Christmas. Seven, in various colors! Because, he claims, I turn him on even more than usual when I wear this particular style, and he was afraid the mail-order company would stop making them.

  The man's a lunatic at times. I love him.

  I keep thinking about D’Silva. I'm still angry, even though on some level I feel sorry for her. I guess in time the rage will fade. I guess.

  But the randomness of being singled out like that—it's what gets to me. That, and my total lack of control over the situation. How it could happen again anytime, and I wouldn't even know until it was too late to stop it.

  Don't dwell on it, McCone. Think of tomorrow. Think of next weekend when, weather permitting, you and Hy will start to look at and test-fly aircraft. Think of the new plane, the hours you'll log in it. The house you'll have built here, the years you'll live in it.

  Let life go on. In time this habit of fear will be broken. You'll stop jumping at every ring of the phone, every creak of the floorboards. You'll let go of this nightmare.

  But the randomness …

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  Marcia Muller!

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  A WALK THROUGH THE FIRE

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  April 1

  San Francisco

  11:50 a.m.

  “I feel like a goddamn fool.”

  “What?” I hadn't been paying proper attention to what Hy was saying over the phone because I was trying to decipher the hand signals my nephew and computer expert, Mick Savage, was flashing at me from my office door. I waved him off.

  “A goddamn fool.” Hy Ripinsky's tone was injured; my lover and best friend knew better than anyone, and had radar for those rare occasions when I didn't listen to him.

  “Why?”

  “Because I should've known better than to trust Virgil. What kind of name for a contractor is that, anyway—Virgil? The jerk called me at my ranch and asked if I could come over here to the coast so he could dig a hole.”

  “A hole.”

  “Yeah, by the foundation of the old house.” Hy was currently at the property we jointly owned in Mendocino County, where we were trying to get construction of a house underway, and where the unseasonably rainy weather was doing its best to thwart our efforts.

  “And?”

  Mick reappeared in the door, somewhat wild-eyed, his blond hair standing up in stiff points that defied gravity. Again I waved him away.

  Hy said, “What d'you think? Virgil never showed. Plus it started storming like a bastard fifteen minutes ago, so now I'm stuck here and I can't find any matches to light a fire.”

  “Stuck there? Don't tell me you flew?”

  “Borrowed that Cessna we're thinking of buying.”

  “You're thinking of buying.” The Cessna, in my opinion, was a piece of junk.

  He ignored the comment. “So now I'm stuck here. No way I'm flying in this storm, and—What the hell did you do with the matches?”

  “What did I do with them?” I realized I sounded sharp, but it had been an awful morning for me too.

  “McCone, you made the fire last time we were here. Think.”

  That was true, and I couldn't blame him for being irritated. The stone cottage on the cliff's edge above Bootleggers Cove must be cold, damp, and miserable.

  “Did you check the kindling basket?”

  “First place I looked.”

  Mick reappeared, rolling his eyes in alarm.

  “What about that blue bowl on the kitchen counter?”

  “Nope.”

  “Well …” My nephew was hopping around now, as if he badly needed to pee. “Try the dirty-clothes hamper.”

  “Why the hell—”

  “Because the jeans I was wearing that last time're in there. The matches're probably in their pocket.”

  “And women think we men are strange creatures.”

  “Just look. I've got to go now.” I recradled the receiver and said to Mick, “What, for God's sake?”

  “Come on. Hurry!” He turned and rushed from the room. I heaved a sigh, got up, and followed him onto the iron catwalk that fronted McCone Investigations’ suite of offices, high above the concrete floor of Pier 24½.

  Three of my five staff members stood around the desk in Mick's office when he and I came in, staring at the brand-new computer—something he called a Wintel—that he'd coaxed me into spending a small fortune for. Ted, my slender, bespectacled office manager, fingered his goatee nervously and kept at a distance. Craig Morland, in sweats and running shoes looking nothing at all like a former buttoned-down FBI field agent, had his arms folded across his chest; his expression suggested that he feared the machine might attack him.

  Charlotte Keim, on the other hand, was very much on the attack. She advanced aggressively toward the desk, her petite features set in stern lines. “You varmint!” she exclaimed, her Texas accent more pronounced than usual. “When I get through with you, you're gonna be road kill!”

  At that instant a sickening thump came from under the desk. “Hell and damnation!” Rae Kelleher's voice shouted. She backed out of the kneehole, rubbing the crown of her curly red-gold head, a smudge of dirt across her freckled nose.

  “I told you it was plugged in,” Mick said to her.

  A cold sense of foreboding washed over me. “What's going on here?”

  “Uh …” Mick looked down at his shoes.

  “What?”

  “I … don't know. I mean, I must've done something wrong.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, you asked me to print out the report on the McPhail case. And I tried to. But it's … like gone.”

  “Like gone?”

  “It's gone.”

  There were no hard copies of the report on a major industrial espionage investigation, due to be delivered to the client this afternoon.

  “So's everything else,” Mick added in a small voice, still hanging his head. It seemed to me that his shoulders were shaking slightly. Well, if he wasn't already crying, I would—in the well-remembered words of my father—give him something to cry about.

  “Mick,” I said, “you are supposed to be a computer genius. You got suspended from high school for breaking into the board of education's confidential files. You smashed the security code at Bank of America and very nearly got yourself arrested. Last week—against my explicit instructions—you obtained federal information that even Craig couldn't call in markers for. So how in hell could you lose all your files?”

  He shrugged.

  “I don't believe this!”

  “See for yourself.” He motioned at the machine.

  I went over to the desk, narrowing my eyes against the unholy light that I—one of the top two or three techno phobes in San Francisco—am convinced is evidence computers are a creation of the devil.

  A message was displayed there. White letters on the blue background:

  APRIL FOOL! I’VE ALREADY ORDERED THE PIZZAS!

  I blinked. Relief welled up, and I staggered back, laughing and letting Ted catch me. Belatedly I'd remembered my promise that if Mick could trick me this April Fool's Day, I'd treat the entire office to pizza.

  1:33 p.m.

  “Shar,” Ted said through the intercom, “Glenna Stanleigh's on line two.”

  “Calling from Hawaii?” Glenna Sta
nleigh was a documentary filmmaker who had offices on the ground floor of the pier. For the past two weeks she and her crew had been shooting a film on the island of Kauai.

  I depressed the button. “Hey, Glenna. What's happening?”

  “Nothing good.” Her Australian-accented voice was strained. “Sharon, d'you think you could come over here? As soon as possible?”

  “To Kauai? Why?”

  “I want to hire you. My backer on this film agrees it would be a good move, so I can pay your usual rate and cover all expenses. And there's plenty of room in this lovely house I've got on loan. You could bring Hy along, make it a vacation of sorts.”

  I hesitated, thrown off stride by the unexpected request, as well as by Glenna's tone. Even at the worst of times she displayed a sunny disposition that could be offputting to us curmudgeonly types, but now she sounded miserable.

  I said, “You'd better tell me what's wrong.”

  “Can't. Not now. Somebody might overhear.”

  “When, then?”

  “When you get here. Please, Sharon.”

  An undercurrent of panic in her voice made me sit up straighter. “Glenna, I can't drop everything and fly over there without knowing why. Besides, I'm not licensed in Hawaii. I'm not sure I could arrange it so I could work there. I could refer you to an agency in Honolulu—”

  “No! I need somebody I can trust. It could be … well, a life-and-death situation.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Never more so. I think somebody's trying to kill me—or kill someone else on my crew.”

  “What! Why d'you think that?”

  “Something happened this morning. I really can't go into it now. And there've been other incidents. Please, Sharon, I don't know what I'll do if you won't help me.”

  I was silent, considering. On the other end of the line I heard Glenna breathing hard, as if she was about to hyperventilate. “Just a minute.” I reached for my calendar, paged through it, noting appointments that could be rescheduled and work that could be shifted to staff members. My personal caseload was light this month, and recently Rae had demonstrated she could handle the day-to-day operations of the agency as well, if not better, than I. Besides, Hy and I had been talking about getting away to someplace warm and sunny.

  “Give me a couple of hours,” I told Glenna. “I'll see what I can do.”

  “Ripinsky, it's me. Did you find the machines?”

  “Right where you said they'd be.”

  “Good. Listen, Glenna Stanleigh called. She wants me to fly over to Kauai as soon as possible.”

  “Oh? Trouble?”

  “Big trouble, according to her. She claims somebody's trying to kill her or one of her crew members.”

  “Claims? You don't believe her?”

  “I don't know what to believe. She sounds panicky, wouldn't go into details on the phone. Anyway, I think it's worth checking out. She's got a house on loan, and she suggested you come along, as sort of a vacation.”

  “Hmmm. Tempting, but you know what'll happen. I'll get sucked into this thing as well, and that'll be the end of the vacation.”

  “Would that be so bad? We've worked well together in the past.”

  “That we have. You're not licensed in Hawaii, though.”

  “Yes, but I've been thinking: Your company has a Honolulu office. I could probably work under RKI's umbrella.”

  “Most likely you could. I can set it up. And I may as well go along; I haven't met any of our people in the Islands yet. You want to make the travel arrangements, or should I?”

  “I will. How soon can you get down here?”

  “Storm's letting up some. I'll fly down later, meet you at your house this evening.”

  “What about the Cessna?”

  “It's on long-term loan.”

  “Well, don't take any chances with this weather.”

  “Not to worry, McCone. I've flown reckless in my time, but that was before I had you to come home to.”

  3:42 p.m.

  “Hawaii?” Rae said. “When d'you leave?”

  “There's a flight at eight-forty tomorrow morning. Hy and I will be on it if you'll agree to take over here.”

  We were seated in a booth at Miranda's, our favorite waterfront diner, enjoying a mid afternoon break. Rain streaked the already salt-grimed windows and turned San Francisco Bay to a gray blur. Inside, the diner was warm and cozy, redolent of freshly brewed coffee and fried food.

  Rae didn't reply. Instead she stared at the window, a frown creasing her forehead.

  I added, “I'm sure this trip won't last long enough to interfere with your wedding plans.” Rae and my former brother-in-law, country music star Ricky Savage, were to be married in May.

  “Better not, since you're to be my best person.” The frown deepened.

  I felt a stirring of unease. Ricky's marriage to my sister Charlene had hardly been one to instill confidence in his regard for the sanctity of that institution, and ever since he and Rae had announced their engagement on Valentine's Day, I'd had my fingers crossed against him doing something to shatter her happiness.

  She sensed what I was thinking and made a hand motion to minimize the problem. “Don't mind me. I'm grumpy today. The thing is, we'll be lucky if we're married by Thanksgiving.”

  “Why?”

  “This new album of his is taking a long time to pull together. He and the band're down in Arizona at the studio this week, and their sessions haven't been going well. And then there's the surprise wedding gift he's promised me: it's working out about as well as the album. By the time everything's settled, there won't be time to plan a May wedding.”

  “So you'll be a June bride instead.”

  She scowled. “No way! I refuse to become a stereotype at this point in life. And July is out—that's when I married my first husband. And August is when Ricky married your sister.”

  I shook my head at the complexities contemporary society breeds. Rae and Ricky had any number of anniversaries they didn't want to be reminded of, plus the difficulties of dealing diplomatically with my sister, the six children he'd had be her, and her new husband. Of course, complexities are more easily surmounted when one, like Ricky, is reputed to have earned upwards of forty million dollars the previous year….

  I said, “September's a nice month for a wedding.”

  “By then the kids're back into their school-year routine. Charlene's already informed Ricky that she doesn't want them to miss their weekend soccer meets and gymnastics lessons.”

  “This is their father's wedding we're talking about, for God's sake!”

  She shrugged. “Well, you know Charlene. I suppose we could always settle for Thanksgiving.” But she smiled when she said it. Rae, I knew, didn't care when or how she married Ricky; in a sense they were already husband and wife, had been since a few days after they met.

  “Anyway,” she added, “I've got no problem with taking over the agency. It'll give me something to do while Ricky's in Arizona. I do envy you Hawaii. This wet season's gone on too damn long.”

  “Well, don't envy me too much. It's a working trip.”

  “At least you'll be working warm and dry. You really think somebody's trying to kill Glenna?”

  “I won't be able to form any opinion till I hear the facts. Whatever's going on there, it sounds serious.”

  6:11 p.m.

  “Swimsuit. T-shirts. Shorts. Couple of dress-up outfits. Wonder if I should take my Magnum? Hassle, filling out the declaration forms for the airline—”

  “Jesus, McCone, when did you start talking to yourself?”

  I turned, saw Hy standing in the bedroom door, and felt a rush of pleasure. With this tall, lean, hawk-nosed man I shared a life, the cottage on the coast, a love of flying, and—upon occasion—certain risky ventures. He was loving, generous, sentimental, and strong. He could at times be enigmatic, mercurial, bullheaded, and downright dangerous. Right now he was just plain wet and weary.

  “So how was your fl
ight?” I asked.

  He crossed the room and flopped on the bed next to the clothes I'd piled there, running long fingers through touseled dark-blond hair and smoothing his luxuriant mustache. “Grim. You're right about the Cessna—it's a piece of crap. Altimeter went out on me, magnetic compass was whirling around like a mouse in a Mixmaster, and coming into Oakland the radio started up like a banshee wail. So when did you start talking to yourself?”

  “I always have, when I'm home alone, and neither of the cats is around to talk at. Anyway, I'm glad you finally agree with me about the Cessna.” Hy's old Citabria had been totaled a month before in an incident for which I still felt partially responsible. We'd been trying to replace it, but hadn't found a used plane we mutually liked.

  “You know,” he said, “after tonight I'm leaning more toward that Warrior we test-flew last weekend. I'd forgotten how much I like a low wing.”

  “Low wing's fine with me, but that Warrior's got its drawbacks.” I sent a lacy bra sailing toward the pile on the bed.

  He caught it, looked it over speculatively. “Pretty sexy. I thought this was supposed to be a working trip. What's wrong with the Warrior?”

  “I don't like the rudders. And the interior's kind of grungy. There's no reason we can't work in a little romance over there.”

  “A little—or a lot—suits me fine. I know what you mean about the interior. It'd take over ten grand to bring it up to snuff. But what's wrong with the rudders?”

  “Too stiff for my liking. Catch!”

  “You are thinking of romance. Yeah, you do have to kind of animal the controls around. And it really could do with a prop overhaul, maybe a fire-wall forward treatment, too.”

  “So what're we looking at beyond the purchase price?”

  “Thirty, forty grand. You know what, maybe we should be considering a new plane. When you factor in the expense of making a used one right, there's not a hell of a lot of difference.”