She quickly brought me up to date.

  “That’s good news then.”

  “She’s still in serious condition.”

  “That’s better than critical.”

  “Still in a coma. They don’t know when they’ll bring her out of it yet. Maybe as much as another week or so. But the doctor said all her vital signs have stabilized, and her chances have improved significantly over the past few hours.”

  “So she’s going to make it.”

  “God, I hope so. I don’t know what I’d do...” She paused, gathering her emotions.

  I waited until she regained her composure. “Sarah’s lucky to have such a caring friend.”

  “I’m the lucky one. Without Sarah…I don’t know where I’d be. She took a chance on me, hired me after…” She paused, took a deep breath, then continued, “It’s just that she helped out at a very bad time in my life.”

  Once again, I contrasted Mrs. Wambaugh’s assessment of Sarah to the people who knew her best and couldn’t reconcile the competing versions. But since Mom was not exactly a sympathetic witness, I was nearing the point where I could completely discount her view as self-interested. But I really needed to talk to Sarah and hoped I’d get the chance soon.

  “Do you know where Sarah lives?”

  “Sure. She has an apartment on 33rd Avenue, near Golden Gate Park. She loves that park. Loves to have tea in the Japanese Gardens.”

  “She lives alone?”

  “Yes. While she was dating Christopher, he actually wanted her to move in with him. She couldn’t believe it because they’d only dated for a few weeks and she was never serious about him. She said she gave him no encouragement in that direction.

  “How upset?”

  “Just typical when someone you love doesn’t feel the same way. He didn’t get violent or anything. It was always kind of a one-sided relationship anyway. She thought he was cute, like a puppy. But too immature to have a real relationship with. Plus, there was Mrs. Wambaugh. I never met her, but I guess she hated Sarah. Sarah couldn’t believe what a bitch she was. Since Christopher didn’t really stand up to her, I think that kind of did in their relationship in the end.”

  “What about Christopher? Where does he live? And Rachel, too.”

  She hesitated, cleared her throat, blew her nose. “Well, until recently, they lived together in a condo in the Embarcadero. Supposed to be total luxury with amazing Bay views. Sarah says it’s unbelievable since neither one of them makes much money. I guess their mom picks up the tab. But Christopher moved out a few weeks ago. Sarah said he’s living temporarily with his mother.”

  After telling her that I’d probably be at the hospital sometime tomorrow, I got off the phone knowing that first thing in the morning I’d be heading out to Atherton to see how the ultra-wealthy lived.

  My thoughts were interrupted by a call from London.

  “How are ya, big fella?”

  “I love it when you call me big fella.”

  “I’ve never called you big fella before.”

  “That wasn’t you?”

  “Funny guy.”

  “That’s me. A laugh riot.”

  “How’s Frankie?”

  “Out seeing Fantastic Beasts.”

  “Pardon me?”

  “It’s a movie.”

  “I’ll bet it is. Are you two doing okay without me?”

  “No.”

  “Having trouble knowing what to do as a surrogate parent?”

  “No. Thanks to Frankie, who’s amazing. She pretty much takes care of herself. I just give her some check-in support. But I’ve got this new case that has me bent out of shape.”

  “Nothing unusual.”

  “Easy for you to say.”

  “Tell me about it.” I did. Alexandra has an analytical mind and a nose for research and ferreting out salient facts nurtured by her twenty years as an investigative journalist. She sometimes picks up on things that I miss.

  “Mmmm. Has to be about money.”

  “And probably family secrets.”

  “What about the father?”

  “Marsh says he’s kind of a ghost. Has been for the past ten, fifteen years.”

  “I’d find out more about him.”

  “Him and about a half-dozen others, including Sarah, if she recovers and I can talk to her.”

  “Remember how confounding Frankie’s case was.”

  “You’re right. This one is child’s play so far compared to that.”

  “Find about the father,” she repeated.

  “Max! That was so cool…”

  Frankie burst through the front door and unleashed a fusillade of words about the movie. It sounded like J.K. Rowling was going to continue to be the richest woman in England for a while longer.

  I told Frankie that Alexandra was on the phone, and she snatched the receiver away from me. As she began describing the movie, I went to the kitchen to put the frozen pizza I picked up for dinner in the oven.

  While I listened to Frankie’s excited chatter and waited for the oven to warm, I added the missing patriarch of the family to the growing list of prospects I needed to talk to.

  I also flashed on a notion that would kill two birds with one stone. I was going to ask Meiying to come and stay here with Frankie for a couple of days, which would free me to pursue leads, and also get her off Dao’s boat so Marsh and I could prepare for Takeshi and his gang’s return.

  All in all. Things were looking up. I had a plan. I had a pizza in the oven.

  Alexandra and Frankie seemed happy with each other and with me.

  Things might turn to fecal matter by tomorrow, but for right now, life was peachy keen.

  Ten

  Early the next morning, after walking Frankie to the bus stop, it took me around an hour to drive out to the most expensive zip code in the country. Five square miles of ultra-exclusive, woodsier-than-thou real estate nestled in the heart of San Mateo, near Stanford University. You’d have to look far and wide, and you’d end up on a fool’s errand, to find a place that you could spend more money for a house than Atherton.

  I felt a little richer in spirit if not in reality just driving through. Life’s possibilities seemed to open up. The sun overhead was struggling to peek through a layer of gray clouds, but I was sure that it would burst through here first.

  I was hoping that Phoebe’s information was correct, and I wasn’t on my own fool’s errand. I had no desire for a tête-à-tête with Mrs. Wambaugh. I was hoping that Christopher was holed up in the bosom of his family and that his mother would allow him to talk to me, and if she didn’t, then being a fully grown twenty-four-year-old man, he’d make his own decision. In other words, I was hoping he wasn’t another man child.

  I rounded a wide curve lined with white oaks and a smattering of soaring redwoods and spotted a mailbox that corresponded with the number I had.

  The driveway was made of cobbled stone. It was long and twisty and snaked through a thicket of more redwoods and cedar and pine. Beautiful brick planters, hundreds of them, filled with bright blue and yellow and pink flowers of all sorts lined the driveway. It had to be someone’s full time job just to care for and water the things.

  Beauty has its price. and in Atherton, they can afford to pay it.

  After a long trek, just when I thought that the driveway might turn out to be a bridge to nowhere, it finally opened up into a wide shamrock-shaped parking area fronting a sprawling single-story house framed in redwood. There were two other buildings to the north of the main structure. One was a fancy barn that looked to be a horse stable. I guessed by the fact that there were a lot of hay bales about and two lustrous brown horses grazing nearby.

  The other structure was a large two-story cottage, probably guest or servant quarters or some such combination. The architectural style was a mix of California contemporary with touches of French Colonial. Windows and wood and red brick melded agreeably with the landscape. Old money spent decorously.

  A familiar sound drew my eyes back toward the main house. The thwack of a racket smacking an air-filled rubber ball of jaundiced hue.

  I couldn’t see the tennis court as it was hidden by the house and the thick trees. I also couldn’t see the pool, which I was sure was there despite not hearing any tell-tale splashes. My years of investigative work have fine-tuned my understanding of human nature and its predictability.

  I got off my bike, parked it beneath a redwood, and ambled along a crushed stone pathway beside the house.

  There it was, a glistening rectangular-shaped pool with a Polaris pool sweep riding its blue-green surface, spouting water like a baby porpoise. Attached to the pool was an elevated spa framed in red brick, and behind that was a kind of Roman atrium structure with benches and tables and couches enough to seat a hundred people. Also the biggest built-in BBQ I’d ever seen with enough grill area to feed burgers to the third infantry.

  The tennis court, or rather courts, were located about fifty yards behind the backyard and pool area. The property had to be at least five acres, perhaps more. Behind the standard chain-link fencing, a man with medium-length, wavy, red hair wearing tennis whites lay crouched and staring at an odd-looking machine. A white-topped oblong-shaped bowl filled with yellow tennis balls sat above a red plastic base that read Lobster on the side and front. The device looked nothing like a lobster, and I wondered why the marketeers chose that name.

  It looked like two irregularly shaped polyhedrons made of plastic and mashed together. But I guess it would be hard to fit that description on the side of the device and even harder to market it in a catchy way.

  Every few seconds, a ball would shoot out of Lobster, and the red-haired man would smack it with authority.

  The door to the courts was open, and I took that as a welcome sign. Christopher Wambaugh was so involved with the Lobster that he didn’t notice me until I spoke. By that time, I was less than ten feet away from him.

  “Nice stroke,” I said.

  Startled, he dropped his racket.

  “Sorry.”

  A tennis ball hit him in the thigh. He took a step back, stumbled, staring at me in surprise or horror or fear.

  But I’m not such a bad guy once you get to know me, so I pushed forward.

  “I’m Max Plank. You’re Christopher, right?”

  He was a good-looking kid, more pretty than handsome, although a little wan. Very white, which made his orange-red hair stand out. He had wary green eyes and was slim and soft with thin arms and spindly legs.

  “Who are you?”

  “Max Plank,” I repeated. He hadn’t heard of me. I’m always shocked by the number of people unfamiliar with my oeuvre.

  He reached down and picked up his tennis racket. A ball whizzed between us, just missing my elbow.

  “What do you want?”

  “Just to chat. I’m a friend of your mother’s. And of Sarah’s.”

  “Sarah?”

  “Sarah Swan. Your girlfriend.”

  “We broke up.”

  “Still. You know what happened to her?”

  He looked away. Another ball shot by, slamming against the fence behind us.

  Christopher turned, walked over to Lobster, and flipped a switch. The low humming sound that I hadn’t been aware of stopped. It was quiet save for the chattering of little birds and the sound the soft breeze made moving through the trees. The scent of pine needles with an underlay of chlorine from the pool filled my nose.

  He stayed near the machine, studying me with watchful eyes. I kept my gaze steady on him but gave him time. Finally, he said, “Why are you here?”

  “Actually, I’m working for your mom. She had me investigating Sarah, and I was there the night she was shot.”

  “Bullshit,” he said.

  “Okay. Why am I here?”

  He frowned. “My mother did not hire you. She wouldn’t…” He hesitated, looked away, trying to make sense of things. “She couldn’t, wouldn’t dare…”

  “She did and does, Christopher. Why would I make that up?”

  “Shit,” he said, sounding more exasperated or frustrated than angry.

  “Why did she hire you? What the hell is wrong with everyone?”

  I wasn’t sure what he meant by that, but I plunged forward. “She hired me because she didn’t trust Sarah. Your mother thought she was taking advantage of you.”

  “We broke up…she broke up with me.”

  “Did you tell your mother that?”

  He closed his eyes, gripping the tennis racket until the knuckles on his right hand turned red.

  A little girl laughed somewhere nearby. A big splash coming from another pool in the house to the north of this one.

  “Were you upset with Sarah?”

  “Of course. Wouldn’t you be?”

  I just looked at him, offering no relief.

  “Have you been to see her in the hospital?”

  “We broke up,” he said, firmly, as if that explained his behavior. All emotion and feeling erased in an instant.

  “Had to be recently, right? Just in the past few weeks? So you don’t care at all that somebody shot her, almost killed her?”

  “Of course I care. I talk to Rachel every day. She says no one can see Sarah. She’s in a coma. I don’t know whether she wants to see me or not anyway, but I’ll go to the hospital as soon as Rachel tells me I can.”

  “Where were you that night she was shot?”

  I’d startled him again. “So that’s why you’re here? Because you think I tried to kill her?”

  “I’m talking with anybody and everybody connected to Sarah. Trying to figure out who had a motive to want her dead. At this point, I don’t suspect anyone, but everyone is a suspect.”

  “What are you some kind of fancy P.I. or something?”

  “Or something,” I said. I don’t like to think of myself as fancy. Perhaps a little whimsical at times.

  “The cops have already been here asking questions. I don’t know why I should talk to you.”

  “Detective Marley?

  He dipped his chin a smidge in response.

  “How’d you like him?”

  He wrinkled his face in displeasure.

  “Yes, he’s an acquired taste, and an asshole.”

  “Still, he asked all the questions that you’ve asked.”

  “But I’m a lot nicer guy, right?”

  “Jeez,” he muttered.

  “What do you do?” I asked, one of my out-of-the-blue questions. You’d think it would be part of a grand strategy to get at the truth, but I’m just a curious guy and was wondering what a hyper-spoiled young man like this one did with his time.

  “What do you mean?”

  “What do you do to occupy yourself. I mean,” I waved a hand all round me, “you’ve got all this, but it has nothing to do with you. You didn’t earn it. You just found yourself in the right womb. So, do you have a job?”

  “You don’t know shit about me. I don’t have to tell you anything about myself.”

  “I guess not. But I’ll find out anyway. Us fancy P.I.’s have our ways of finding out.”

  “Screw you.”

  “Lookit, kid, I’m just trying to find out who shot Sarah. I know you must still have feelings for her, even though you’re hurt. Why not cooperate with me? I’m good at what I do. Will you help me? Let’s find the shooter and put him where he belongs.”

  He gave me the proverbial long, silent stare, but then something broke, he shrugged his shoulders and said, “Mom, really hired you?”

  “She sure did.”

  “Shit, she’s too much.”

  I nodded. No point in restating the obvious. I didn’t think he was a momma’s boy, but it had to be a struggle maintaining your independence with someone as overly controlling as Mrs. Wambaugh, and in the lap of this kind of luxury.

  “When was the last time you were at the Children’s Network offices down near the Black Canary?”

  He looked surprised, his forehead wrinkled up, trying to puzzle something out.

  “You volunteer there, right? How often are you there? Were you there the night Sarah was shot?”

  He opened his mouth. Shut it. His face flushed red. He rubbed the back of his hand across his face. “I…if you’re trying to accuse me of—”

  “Simple questions, Christopher. You’re going to have to answer them sooner or later. If not to me, then the police.”

  “This is bull. I haven’t been over there for weeks. Haven’t had time to volunteer. I didn’t have anything to do with Sarah’s—”

  “Busy guy, eh?” I didn’t wait for his answer. “How about your father?”

  His eyes widened, and his face tightened. A bit of a shock that one. Wrong question or the wrong time.

  He was saved by a shrill bell.

  “Plank! Christopher!” Someone was yelling from inside the house, and it didn’t take me more than a millisecond to determine who that was.

  “Stop! Right now! Wait. Wait right there.”

  We both turned and looked and caught Mrs. Wambaugh tearing out of the sliding doors fronting the back of the house, her long aqua silk gown trailing high behind her. She looked a bit disheveled, her hair not perfectly coiffed, her makeup not yet applied. I doubted she ever let the world see her this way, but a threat to her family left her sense of propriety in the dust.

  Neither of us said a thing while we waited and watched her stride purposefully toward us. When she was mere feet from me, she gave me a stern narrow-eyed look of disdain and barked, “How dare you?”

  “Good day to you too, Mrs. Wambaugh.”

  Her face turned even redder. Steam escaped her ears. I kid you not. Okay. Maybe I just imagined it, but it seemed real at the time. “Who gave you permission to trespass on my property?”

  I looked around, exchanged a glance with Christopher, who looked alarmed and maybe a little sympathetic toward my plight. “Well, would you believe I was taking a ride on my bike and found myself in this idyll and remembered you live here and felt it would be rude to not stop and say hello.”

  More figurative steam shooting out of her ears. “How dare you?”

  “You already said that and—”

 

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