The Sleeping Doll (Kathryn Dance 1)

"Not that I know. You want to ask the kids?"

"No, that's okay. Thanks again, Dad."

"No worries." An expression from his days in New Zealand. He turned away, rapping on the window. " 'Bye!"

"Grandpa, wait!" Maggie ran outside, her chestnut braid flapping behind her. She was clutching a book. "Hi, Mom," she said enthusiastically. "When'd you get home?"

"Just now."

"You didn't say anything!" exclaimed the ten-year-old, poking her glasses up on her nose.

"Where's your brother?"

"I don't know. His room. When's dinner?"

"Five minutes."

"What're we having?"

"You'll see."

Maggie held the book up to her grandfather and pointed out a small gray-purple, nautilus-like seashell. "Look. You were right." Maggie didn't try to pronounce the words.

"A Columbian Amphissa," he said and pulled out the pen and notebook he was never without. Jotted. Three decades older than his daughter and he needed no glasses. Most of her genetic proclivities derived from her mother, Dance had learned.

"A tide-drift shell," he said to Dance. "Very rare here. But Maggie found one."

"It was just there," the girl said.

"Okay, I'm headed home to the staff sergeant. She's fixing dinner and my presence is required. 'Night, all."

" 'Bye, Grandpa."

Her father climbed down the stairs, and Dance thanked fate or God or whatever might be, as she often did, for a good, dependable male figure in the life of a widow with children.

On her way to the kitchen her phone rang. Rey Carraneo reported that the Thunderbird at Moss Landing had been stolen from the valet parking lot of an upscale restaurant on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles the previous Friday. There were no suspects. They were expecting the report from LAPD but, like most car thefts, there were no forensics. Also he'd had no luck finding the hotel, motel or boardinghouse the woman might've checked into. "There're a lot of them," he confessed.

Welcome to the Monterey Peninsula. "We've got to stash the tourists somewhere, Rey. Keep at it. And say hi to your wife."

Dance began unpacking dinner.

A lean boy with sandy hair wandered into the sunroom beside the kitchen. He was on the phone. Though only twelve, Wes was nearly as tall as his mother. She wiggled a finger at him and he wandered over to her. She kissed him on the forehead and he didn't cringe. Which was the same as "I love you very much, Mother dear."

"Off the phone," she said. "Dinnertime."

"Like, gotta go."

"Don't say 'like.' "

The boy hung up. "What're we having?"

"Chicken," Maggie said dubiously.

"You like Albertsons."

"What about bird flu?"

Wes snickered. "Don't you know anything? You get it from live chickens."