Born To Die (Alvarez & Pescoli)

The bartender at Lizards had mentioned that she’d been flirting with a man who hadn’t paid with a credit card and whose image hadn’t been clear on any of the security tapes of the building. But he had left after Shelly and, according to the one camera near the front door, had headed in the opposite direction that Shelly had taken twenty minutes earlier.

Just a chance meeting at the bar?

Or something more?

“Hey!” Harding said as they pushed open the doors and stepped into the warm winter sunshine. Seventy-five degrees, and already the local stores were decorated to the max with wintry Christmas images, festooned with fake fir trees and even faker snow. Santas, reindeer, elves, and gingerbread houses were on display, and it wasn’t quite Thanksgiving.

Strings of colored lights had been wound over the trunks of the royal palms, their fronds billowing in a balmy breeze blowing in off the Pacific.

Christmas in L.A.

He slid into Harding’s car. The interior of her hatchback was sweltering, and he rolled down the window. “Okay, so tell me, why do you think someone murdered Shelly Bonaventure?” she asked.

“Not sure.”

“She had no enemies, no angry boyfriends, no life insurance, no will, and less than three hundred dollars in the bank. Her biggest assets were a ninety-five Toyota and her cat. Who would want her dead?”

“I don’t know,” he reiterated as she tore out of the lot, her lead foot pressing hard on the accelerator.

“Yet,” Harding added as she sped toward Sepulveda. “You didn’t finish your sentence. You don’t know yet. You’re not letting go of this.”

“I’d just like to personally talk to the guy at the bar. He’s the last one to have seen her alive. He might remember something more.”

“Good luck with that. You’ve heard about needles and haystacks, right?”

“Right.”

She slashed him a knowing grin as she took a corner a little too fast. “That might not ever happen.”

For once, he couldn’t argue.

But he still wanted to have a chat with the mystery man at the bar.

Trace grabbed his cell phone by the third ring. As he did, he noticed that it was nearly four and caller ID listed Evergreen Elem. as the caller. Eli’s school. “Hello?” he said into the phone.

“Mr. O’Halleran? This is Barbara Killingsworth, the principal here at Evergreen Elementary. I was just calling to check on Eli.” In his mind’s eye, he pictured the woman: midforties, impossibly thin, with pinched features and a wide mouth that was forever in a tight, forced smile.

“He’s doing all right,” Trace said, glancing over at his son, who was sleeping on the couch, his arm in the cast, the television turned to some movie he wasn’t watching, the dog curled at his feet. “But I want to know who was supposed to be watching him.” He walked into the kitchen of the old farmhouse and pulled the swinging door to the family room shut so that he wouldn’t disturb Eli.

“We had several teachers on playground duty.”

“And none of them saw the potential danger in . . . ?” He let his question fade away and forced his anger at bay. What was the point? He knew accidents happened. No one at Evergreen Elementary was malicious or even inattentive. The kids were just messing around, and his boy got hurt. End of story. He didn’t want to come off like some overprotective jerk, and yet when it came to Eli . . .

“I’m very sorry.”

“I know. Look, he’s got a double ear infection and possibly strep throat, so I’m going to keep him home for at least a couple of days.”

“I’ll have his teacher e-mail you, and tell Eli that we’re all thinking of him.”

“I will,” he said and hung up just as he heard a rumble outside. He glanced out the window and saw Ed Zukov’s truck as it rolled down the twin ruts of the long drive.

Sarge, who had been sleeping seconds earlier, lifted his scruffy head and gave a low bark.

“Shh!” Trace headed for the back door.

Ed and his wife, Tilly, were the neighbors a quarter of a mile down the road and had been friends of his father. Trace had known the couple, now in their seventies, all his life. He walked through the kitchen and back porch with Sarge at his heels.

The wind was picking up, causing the old windmill’s blades to creak as they turned and the naked branches of the trees in the orchard to rattle. Snow was falling steadily now, big white flakes swirling and beginning to cover the ground, as the old truck slowed to a stop near the pump house.