Solitude Creek (Kathryn Dance 4)

Odd, how their respective compulsions worked. Symbiotic.

"Carole says hello."

"And to her too."

One of the girls Jenkins had dated on and off. March wasn't sure why he kept the facade. Who cared nowadays? Besides, you can't cheat the Get, which knows what you want and when you want it, so why complicate things. Life's too short.

"Your drive good?"

"Fine." Jenkins had a faint Bostonian clip to his voice. He'd lived in a suburb of Bean Town before the army.

March had ordered the best--well, the most expensive--wine on the list, a Chateau Who Knew from France. A 1995. Had to be good; it was six hundred dollars. It was already open, He'd had a taste. It was okay. Not as good as Dole.

"Well. Excellent!" Jenkins said, looking over the label--all Greek to March, a private joke, considering his heritage.

He allowed Jenkins to pour him some of the sludgy wine and they tapped glasses, toasting their success. Over the past few days they'd made several hundred thousand dollars.

"Always loved it here, the Cedar Hills."

Chris Jenkins reminded March of the people in those infomercials: the handsome man, next to the beautiful woman, on a Florida or Hawaiian porch, boats in the background, palms nearby, talking about how they'd made millions with hardly any effort in the real estate market or by inventing things. In Jenkins's case, his fortune arrived from selling something very, very rare and valuable.

Desire and fear are the keys to salesmanship, Andy, boy. But desire works best.

The men sat on the couch. They regarded the crystal TV screen, on which fish swam and kelp waved, hypnotic.

"Good picture. Four-K. Man, that's beautiful. We'll keep that in mind." He set the glass down. "Now where are we?"

"All good."

"What about Otto Grant? I heard the news. They seemed to buy it."

"They did."

March paused the shark video and called up another video file on his computer. The video, a high-definition (though only 2K), showed Otto Grant, kicking in the last moments of his life, trying to get leverage to pull himself up and somehow unhook the rope from where March had tied it to stage the suicide. He struggled for a time and then shivered and went limp.

"Did he come?"

There was a rumor that upon being hanged, men sometimes ejaculated. Neither had been able to confirm this.

"Just peed."

"Ah."

"I left evidence in the shack that the man he hired is from Chicago and has already left to go back there, left right after the incident in the hospital. Solid leads. Phone calls, proxies, e-mails. They'll sniff up that tree for a while."

"Good."

"Now, you were mentioning a new job." March knew Jenkins had come to Carmel for another reason, but he wouldn't've made up the part about a new job entirely.

"Client's in Lausanne, so he wants it to happen anywhere but Europe. He mentioned Latin America."

"Any preferences as to how?"

"He was thinking a fall, maybe a cable car."

March laughed. He could hot-wire an ignition, he could disable an elevator. That was the extent of the mechanical engineering skills. "I don't think so. A bus?"

"A bus would work, I'd think."