The Sleeping Doll (Kathryn Dance 1)

"Remember that night on the beach? When I needed you to help me? With that woman in the trunk?"

She nodded. "You . . . you want me to help you do something like that again?"

His blue eyes staring into hers. "I don't want you to help. I need you to do it yourself."

"Me?"

He'd leaned close and gazed into her eyes. "Yes. If you don't, we'll never have any peace, we'll never be together."

She slowly nodded. He'd then handed her the pistol he'd taken from the deputy guarding James Reynolds's house. He showed her how to use it. Jennie was surprised at how easy it was.

Now, feeling the anger within her, splintery as hard candy, Jennie walked to the bed of the cheap

motel and shook out the contents of the small shopping bag she was using as a purse: the gun, half of her remaining money, some personal effects and the other thing Daniel had given her: a slip of paper. Jennie now opened the note and stared at what it contained: the names Kathryn Dance, Stuart and Edie Dance, and several addresses.

She heard her lover's voice as he'd slipped the gun into the bag and handed it to her. "Be patient, lovely. Take your time. And what's the most important thing I've taught you?"

"To stay in control," she'd recited.

"You get an A-plus, lovely." And he delivered what turned out to be their last kiss.

Chapter 62

Leaving headquarters, Dance headed down to the Point Lobos Inn, to see about transferring the bill from Kellogg's credit card to the CBI's own account.

Charles Overby wasn't happy about the expenditure, of course, but there was an inherent conflict of interest in having a criminal defendant pay for expenses to help out the very institution that had arrested him. So Overby had agreed to swallow the cost of the inn. His shining moment of supporting Kellogg's prosecution didn't extend to other aspects of his personality, though. He whined mightily about the bill. ("Jordan Cabernet? Who drank the Jordan? And two bottles?")

Dance didn't tell him that she'd volunteered to let Samantha McCoy stay there for an extra few days.

As she was driving she listened to some music by Altan, the Celtic group. "Green Grow the Rushes O" was the song. The melody was haunting, which seemed appropriate under the circumstances, since she was en route to the location where people had died.

She was thinking of the trip to Southern California next weekend, the kids and dogs in tow. She was going to record a group of Mexican musicians near Ojai. They were fans of the website and had emailed Martine some samples of their music. Dance wanted to get some live recordings. The rhythms were fascinating. She was looking forward to the trip.

The roads here weren't crowded; the bad weather had returned. Dance saw only one car behind her on the entire road, a blue sedan trailing behind her a half-mile.

Dance turned off the road and headed to the Point Lobos Inn. She glanced at her phone. Still no message from O'Neil, she was troubled to learn. Dance could call him on the pretense of a case, and he'd call her back immediately. But she couldn't do that. Besides, probably better to keep some distance. It's a fine line when you're friends with a married man.

She turned down the inn's driveway and parked, listened to the end of the elegiac song. Dance recalled her own husband's funeral. It was logical that Bill, with a wife, two children and a home in Pacific Grove, should be buried nearby. His headstrong mother, though, had wanted him buried in San Francisco, a city he'd fled when he was eighteen, returning only on holidays, and not a lot of them. Mrs. Swenson had been strident when discussing her son's resting place.

Dance had prevailed, though she felt bad to see her mother-in-law's tears and had paid for the victory in small ways for a year afterward. Bill was now on a hillside where you could see plenty of trees, a stretch of Pacific Ocean and a sliver of the ninth hole at Pebble Beach--a gravesite for which thousands of golfers would have paid dearly. She recalled that, though neither she nor her husband played, they'd planned on taking lessons at some point.

"Maybe when we retire," he'd said.

"Retire. What's that mean again?"

She now parked and walked into the Point Lobos Inn office, then took care of the paperwork.

"We already had some calls," the clerk said. "Reporters wanting to get pictures of the cabin. And somebody's planning to give tours of where Pell got shot. That's sick."

Yep, it was. Morton Nagle would not have approved; perhaps the tactless entrepreneur would appear as a footnote in The Sleeping Doll.

As Dance was walking back to the car, she was aware of a woman nearby, looking out into the mists toward the ocean, her jacket fluttering in the breeze. As Dance continued on, the woman turned away from the view and fell into a pace that matched the agent's, not far behind.

She also noticed that a blue car was parked nearby. It was familiar. Was this the driver who'd been behind her? Then she noticed that it was a Ford Focus, and recalled that the vehicle stolen at Moss Landing had never been recovered. It too was blue. Were there any other loose ends that--

At that moment the woman walked up to her quickly and called, a harsh voice over the wind, "Are you Kathryn Dance?"

Surprised, the agent stopped and turned. "That's right. Do I know you?"