The Dark Room(21)

“Why don’t you go get dressed?” Cain said. “And I’ll start with your mom.”

“Why don’t I?”

She didn’t sound the least bit interested in putting on clothes. But she turned and went back across the Saltillo tile floor, leaving small wet prints behind her. Cain waited until she was out of sight, and then he stepped inside and closed the door after himself. The only sound was a bathtub draining.

“Mrs. Castelli?” he called. “Mona Castelli?”

“Back here.”

He crossed the entry hall and entered a room that didn’t seem to have any purpose except to be large. The carpet underfoot was thick and white. He was probably supposed to take off his shoes, but he didn’t. Mona Castelli was nowhere to be seen.

“Ma’am?”

“I’m in the sunroom.”

He wandered through more of the house—a vast stone and stainless-steel kitchen, a den, a humidor larger than Lucy’s bathroom—and then he found a tiled staircase that led down to a glass-walled room at the cliff’s edge.

Mona Castelli was perched on a pair of floral print cushions on a wrought-iron chair. There was a round table in front of her with a silver pitcher atop. She was balancing a martini glass between two fingers, her nails painted like the insides of polished shells.

“You’re Cain?”

“That’s right.”

“Sit down,” she said.

He sat opposite her. He could smell the gin and vermouth when she spoke. She had frosted highlights in her auburn hair, and a carefully made-up face. It was cold in here, the wind and mist beating against the glass behind her. She wore a fur-trimmed cashmere shawl, but it did nothing to hide her figure. She looked ten years younger than she probably was, but as far as Cain was concerned, nothing would hide the fact that she was drinking a pitcher of martinis alone at two on a weekday afternoon.

“You met my daughter already, I assume.”

“Yes. I’ll talk to her after.”

“When she answered the door, was she dressed?”

“She had a towel.”

“Thank god.”

“I already did.”

She smiled at that, and he couldn’t help but like her a little for it. At least she understood how this looked, and had enough sense to be embarrassed.

“She likes to find the boundaries, and then cross them,” Mona Castelli said. “With her, it’s always been push push push.”

“Okay.”

“Now she’s at the Academy of Art—which hasn’t suppressed her penchant for streaking. Apparently, they encourage it. She volunteers as a studio model.”

He let that sit on the table between them, not sure what she wanted him to do with it. She sipped her martini, then put the glass down. Behind her, there was a wall of fog moving off the ocean toward the Presidio. It would hit the cliffs and stall, piling along the shore toward the north until it could spill under the bridge and into the bay.

“Do you have children, Mr. Cain?”

“Not yet.”

“God help you if you have a daughter,” Mona said. She looked across the rim of her glass and met his eyes for the first time. “The Montgomery girl—Melissa—said this was important. And I know there’s a police car down the street. Men posted there, to watch us. Are we in some sort of danger?”

“Ms. Montgomery didn’t say what’s going on?”

He wondered at the way she’d just referred to Melissa Montgomery but knew better than to ask about it. Either that would come out, or it wouldn’t. Asking wouldn’t make any difference.

“You needed to talk to us. That’s all she said.”

“What about your husband?”

“What about him?” she asked. “Did he say anything to me? Is that what you’re asking?”

“Did he?”

“Since when?”

“Since last night. Or this morning.”

“He slept in his office last night,” she said. Her laugh sounded like ice swirling in a glass. “He does that sometimes, when he’s busy. It’s such a long way, from City Hall to here.”

Cain had just driven it, and had watched the odometer so he could claim the mileage. It had taken him eighteen minutes, in traffic.

“He didn’t call, or email?”

“Call? Email? This is Harry we’re talking about?”

“Did anyone call for him?”

“Besides Melissa, to set this up?” she asked. “Nobody.”

“He didn’t get any message to you? I’m talking about the letter.”

“What letter?”

No wonder Castelli hadn’t wanted him to come anywhere near his family. The man had political aspirations that ran to a national scale. He probably already had a guest list for his next inauguration party. But his home life belonged on cable TV.

“Let me ask you something else,” Cain said. “How’d you meet Harry?”

She looked at the martini pitcher for a long moment but didn’t touch it. He thought of John Fonteroy, dying of cancer and longing for a plastic cup of water that lay cruelly out of reach.

“He was at a San Jose startup. NavSoft is what it was called,” she said. That icy laugh again. “This was after he got his MBA, and they hired him as a vice president.”