Racing the Light (Elvis Cole #19; Joe Pike #8)(16)

I got up, stretched, and wandered into the kitchen. The cat had finished his food and left. Off hunting coyotes for dessert.

I ate the last duck roll and wandered out onto the deck. The eastern sky had darkened to midnight blue and hazy shadows pooled in the deeper parts of the canyon. It was still warm, but not terrible.

My nearest neighbors lived across from me on the far side of a bend in our street. Grace Gonzalez was a stuntwoman, her husband was a stunt coordinator, and their two grown sons were stunt performers as well. I heard laughter, and saw their entire family out on their deck, Grace, her husband, the sons and their wives and a couple of grandkids, poking at something on their grill and laughing. Grace saw me and waved. I waved back. Grace cupped her mouth and shouted.

“Burgers and links! You’re welcome to join us.”

I shouted back.

“Thanks. Another time.”

Her husband hoisted his beer and they returned to their grill.

The quality and warmth of their lives was as real as the grill and the mountain we lived on. I waved again, but none of them noticed.

I went inside and listened to Josh’s podcast with Skylar Lawless.

The outlandish subjects favored by Josh and Ryan left me expecting an amateurish geekfest with Josh firing off sex jokes and snickering like an eighth-grade dweeb. I hit the play button and expected the worst. After two seconds of silence, Skylar Lawless quietly opened the show.

“When people recognize me, they see a woman who was photographed having sex with strangers. What they don’t see—and don’t know—are the insights I gained into ordinary human relationships. These insights inform my art. They free me to tell the truth without shame.”

Skylar sounded nothing like I expected and neither did Josh. She spoke with a warm contralto voice, and described her career as a sex worker in terms of empowerment and growth. The few times she laughed, her laughter was quiet. Josh spoke too quickly, sometimes talking over himself, but his questions were thoughtful and his comments were never salacious or lewd. His questions focused on her art and what she hoped to achieve with it. I found myself interested and wondered if Corbin Schumacher had ever heard his son’s show. I doubted it.

The interview ran for one hour and twenty-eight minutes. The production quality was stellar.

When it ended, I thought about the blonde-and auburn-haired women I’d met at Skylar’s apartment and about Josh being loud and stalkery. The podcast left me feeling Josh and Skylar were friends, but not friends with benefits. He had sounded interested and obviously enjoyed their conversation, but he hadn’t been flirty. A lot could change in five months and probably did.

I put my laptop aside and went to the sliding glass door. Darkness had filled the canyon. Golden lights specked the far ridges, each light marking a home. The Gonzalez family still laughed.

I was trying to decide what to do next when the phone rang. I thought it might be Ryan or Wendy Vann, but a woman with a soft southern voice spoke.

“Hey, Studly. Are you busy?”

Lucy Chenier always made me smile.

“I’m sorry. Who’s calling, please?”

It was a silly joke Lucy and I had traded a hundred times, me pretending I didn’t know her or her pretending she didn’t know me. It was a play on our familiarity and fondness, but this time Lucy did not respond. Her slight hesitation was a gaping chasm.

I said, “Lucy?”

“This is sudden, so if you can’t, we’ll understand.”

Her words came out as if she was nervous and trying to hide it.

“Can’t what? Luce, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong.”

Something was wrong.

“Oh, well, good. I feel much better now.”

“We’re coming to L.A. tomorrow. We’d like to stay with you.”

“We?”

“If you don’t mind. If it’s okay.”

Something was wrong. Lucy Chenier was my closest female friend. Once upon a time, I would have married her, but she left. Lucy had not slept under my roof in years.

This was her choice.

Not mine.

I would have married her, but the choice wasn’t mine.





9





An actress named Jodi Taylor had hired me to help with a problem in Louisiana, so I flew to Baton Rouge and met her Attorney, a woman named Lucille Chenier. Lucy and I fell in love. Lucy and her son, Ben, who was eight when we met, eventually moved west to be with me. Lucy’s ex-husband decided to drive a wedge between us and in many ways did. Bad things happened to Ben, and before it was over people had died. Lucy’s ex went to prison, but the damage was done. Lucy and Ben returned to Louisiana. Better for Ben to heal, Lucy said. Safer from the violence I seemed to attract. I couldn’t blame her. She was his mother.

I said, “Luce?”

“I’m with Ben. Here, let me put him on.”

Ben Chenier was a junior in high school now, but he sounded as excited as his nine-year-old self the first time I took him to Disneyland.

“We’re coming to L.A.”

The abrupt way Lucy had shoved the phone into his hands left me irritated.

“Great.”

“Right? The UCLA law school has a program called Law and Law Enforcement for High School Students. They offer it next month during my spring break, so we’re coming to check it out.”