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56.
Palm Springs
If Tomasi knew, he'd kill me. Blue rented a car at the airport. Desert heat hit like a fist, and she was glad to be inside the car with the air conditioner on. The California landscape of sandy hills, chaparral vegetation, and palm trees drifted past as she followed the map. She longed for John Connor. Blue, she told herself, he's a ladies' man. With your luck you are preparing to take another mud bath. Well, she replied, if it's another dunking, it feels good now.
At the Hugh Stone estate she whistled. Five acres of greenery, a veritable park, and a big white building with a pillared entrance. This man did live in style. A gardener on a tractor lawn mower was riding around on the front lawn. The roses were in profusion. As were the For Sale signs.
A slim, tanned blonde woman in a white terrycloth pool jacket and a pink bikini bottom answered the door. She held a tiny bottle of nail polish in one hand, the brush in the other.
"My name is Laurel Humboldt," Blue said.
"What do you want?"
"I want to look around the house."
"Are you with the real estate people?"
"Yes, of course. What a lovely property it is."
The thirtyish blonde had pampered skin, pinked lips, and arrogant brown eyes. "Why haven't I met you before?"
"Well, there are lots of us."
The woman waved her nails to dry. "I won't let you in."
"Honey, I thought you were eager to sell. So what's up?"
The blonde waved her polish. "That your dent-a-fender?"
Blue turned. "That? Oh no, I walked. Good for a person."
"You're full of crap."
Blue stuck her foot in as the door closed. "Miss Stone?"
"Ouch," Astrid Stone said, stepping back and examining her violated fingernails. In her haste to close the door, she had left a zigzag of glossy pink polish on the dark wood.
"Not so hasty, Miss Stone. Please. I'm with a really big consortium. We can offer lots of money--if we decide to buy."
"I don't see your Jaguar out there."
Blue scratched her head. "I can have a Jaguar flown in, Federal Express, if that will make you happy. What if we all went around flashing Jaguars? Don't you get it? We're subtle."
Astrid stepped back. "All right, come on in. I'll give you a quick tour, but then you've got to leave."
Blue stepped into the spacious foyer and looked up. "Wow. Nice place. Huge." Twin staircases serpentined along the walls, leading to a mezzanine. Beneath, wide doors were half open, leading to what looked like a ball room. Beyond far glass walls, a pool glittered. What parties they must have thrown here!
Astrid shook her head. The blonde wisps flew. My, Blue thought, but this lady probably has wealthy young eligible men falling all over themselves. Only she wasn't so young. Divorced? Probably, Blue assessed. Burned out probably.
"You want the dollar tour?" Astrid offered.
Blue nodded.
Astrid set her polish down and strode into the ballroom. "We used to throw parties here." She marched outside. "This is the pool. Come on, I'll show you my father's personal, private study." They looked into an abandoned room with empty book shelves. A desk was littered with papers. Blue had hoped for more than this. A frightened Hugh Stone hiding behind curtains, perhaps. It would take an army to go through this place inch by inch. She wanted to leave and forget the whole thing.
There was something spooky, cold, frightening, heartless about Miss Stone. "Very luxurious," Blue said as they walked through room after room. "Thank you. Well, that's about it."
They were on the second floor. Blue looked: Corridors, rooms, doors, worn carpets. Plants in corners and under windows. Windows, needing a washing. "Miss Stone, sorry I bothered you. You were polishing your nails. Up here?"
"I was by the pool," Astrid said.
"I hear music."
"That's my stereo."
"You were by the pool, and your stereo was playing on the second floor. You can't hear it from here to the pool."
"You are sure a nosy bitch, aren't you? I could play stereos in every room of the house day and night. Who cares?"
"Just asking. Seems like a waste of energy. Is this the corridor to your apartment?" A corridor stretched out still and dark. The music had fallen silent. At the end of the corridor was a white door. Blue started walking that way.
"I said the tour is over. I thought you were leaving."
"Does your stereo have an automatic shutoff, Miss Stone?"
Astrid wrung her hands, and caught herself. "I think you should leave now. My apartment is my personal private business."
Blue shrugged. "We have to look at everything. Do you understand? With this kind of money involved and all."
"I'll show you out."
"Let me see the goddam apartment."
"I won't let you in there. It's private." Her pitch rose.
Blue stared down the long corridor. There was a spy-hole in the door. She heard a loud creak of wood. That would be a man's weight. "That's not your daddy in there, is it?"
"No, of course not." Astrid's hands rose to her chin. She stared with deathly fascination at that closed door, which stared back like a cobra about to strike.
"You seem nervous," Blue said and started toward the door.
"Garth!" Astrid yelled.
Blue felt a prickle on her scalp. Who? She half expected the door to open and a man with a straight razor to rush at her. At this distance, she'd have time to drop, pull her gun, and shoot. Nobody with a razor could cross this much distance quickly enough to stop her.
"Garth!" Astrid screamed. "Garth!"
The door opened, and it was not a man with a razor, but the jogger who had killed Olvera and Guzman. Blue recognized that long, scarred face. He held a gun, this time no silencer.
"Kill her!" Astrid screamed.
Blue dropped, rolling, and pulled out her automatic.
"This was a setup!" he bellowed at Astrid. "You bitch!"
He fired deafeningly. Out of the corner of her eye, in a fleeting second, Blue saw Astrid lying in a crumpled heap.
Blue rolled into the shelter of a doorway. The door was unlocked and she rolled into a room. It all went in slow motion. No way she would tangle with this turkey. She'd made a mistake, and now the only way out was OUT.
She heard his feet pounding on the wooden hallway floor as she dove through an open window. Lowered herself down an ivy trellis that collapsed cracking and popping under her weight. Caught a glimpse of him, of his gun, of his mean hard face framed in blond hair. The scar on his cheek.
Heard him crashing about, breathing hard, above.
Run!
She heard his feet thundering down the stairs.
Through the house, the only way.
He thundered down the stairs, and she ran as fast as she could, tossing folding chairs out of her way in the ball room.
Through the expansive foyer.
His feet on the stairs.
Caught a glimpse of him on the stairs.
He stopped to aim.
She crashed through the ballroom door and kept running.
She heard his feet pounding behind her.
She grabbed a tablecloth, twirled it in the air.
He fired behind her and a shot whizzed by, shattering glass. At the same moment, wrapped in the tablecloth, she jumped through the shards.
He fired again, while running, wildly, and missed. She smelled grass, sweet and wet, then chlorine as the pool rose up to meet her.
She fell in, wrapped in the cloth, blind, fighting for air, for light, still holding her gun. Chlorine are at her sinuses.
As the cloth parted underwater, in a dim bluish light echoing with lost sounds, she saw his shadow looming at the edge of the pool. In slow motion, as a bullet traced down toward her, she raised her gun and fired. It was a matter of speed now. Whoever got that fatal bullet in first...
She emptied the gun, and the shadow loomed over her. But the bullets stopped coming. Slowly, like a dying manta ray, the huge form of Bill Garth sank down toward her.
Gasping, she burst to the surface. Roses. First thing she smelled, coughing up gouts of chemicals and mucus: roses, sweet roses. And she heard distant sirens as she exhaustedly grasped the edge of the pool and gathered her energy for the next step--getting to her man. The first hints of darkness were already closing in, and she must make that flight to San Diego.
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