Being cops, however, the members of the Pico Mundo PD sense instinctively that they lack some crucial knowledge to be able to fully understand our relationship. Likewise, although I appear uncomplicated and even simple, they regard me as a puzzle with more than one missing piece.
When Stormy and I stepped out of Green Moon Lanes at ten o’clock, an hour after nightfall, the temperature in Pico Mundo remained over a hundred degrees. By midnight the air might cool below triple digits.
If Bob Robertson was intent on making Hell on Earth, we had the weather for it.
Walking toward Terri Stambaugh’s Mustang, still thinking about the death-marked blond bartender, Stormy said, “Sometimes I don’t know how you can live with all the things you see.”
“Attitude,” I told her.
“Attitude? How’s that work?”
“Better some days than others.”
She would have pressed me for a further explanation, but the patrol car arrived, pinning us in its headlights before we reached the Mustang. Certain that I would have been recognized, I waited hand-in-hand with Stormy for the cruiser to stop beside us.
The responding officer, Simon Varner, had been on the force only three or four months, which was longer than Bern Eckles, who had regarded me with suspicion at the chief’s barbecue, but not long enough for the sharp edge to have been worn off his curiosity about me.
Officer Varner had a face as sweet as that of any host of a children’s TV program, with heavy-lidded eyes like those of the late actor Robert Mitchum. He leaned toward the open window, his burly arm resting on the door, looking like the model for a sleepy bear in some Disney cartoon.
“Odd, pleasure seeing you. Miss Llewellyn. What should I be looking for here?”
I was certain that the chief had not used my name when he had dispatched Officer Varner to the bowling center. When I was involved in a case, he made a point of keeping me as invisible as possible, never alluding to information acquired by preternatural means, the better not only to protect my secrets but also to ensure that no defense attorney could easily spring a murderer by claiming that the entire case against his client had been built upon the word of a flaky, self-proclaimed psychic.
On the other hand, because of my intrusion at the barbecue that resulted in the effort by the chief and Bern Eckles to put together a quick profile of Robertson, Eckles knew that I had some connection to the situation. If Eckles knew, then word would get around; it might already be on the police-department grapevine.
Still, it seemed best to play dumb. “What should you be looking for? Sir, I don’t understand.”
“I see you, I figure you told the chief something that makes him send me out here.”
“We were just watching some friends bowl,” I said. “I’m no good at it myself.”
Stormy said, “He owns the gutter.”
From the car seat beside him, Varner produced a computer-printed blow-up of Bob Robertson’s driver’s-license photograph. “You know this guy, right?”
I said, “I’ve seen him twice today. I don’t really know him.”
“You didn’t tell the chief he might show up here?”
“Not me. How would I know where he’d show up?”
“Chief says if I see him coming but I can’t see both his hands, don’t figure he’s just getting a breath mint from his pocket.”
“I wouldn’t second-guess the chief.”
A Lincoln Navigator pulled in from the street and paused behind Varner’s cruiser. He stuck his arm all the way out of the window and waved the SUV around him.
I could see two men in the Navigator. Neither was Robertson.
“How do you know this guy?” Varner asked.
“Before noon, he came in the Grille for lunch.”
The lids lifted slightly from those sleepy-bear eyes. “That’s all? You cooked his lunch? I thought ... something went down between you and him.”
“Something. Not much.” I compressed the day, leaving out what Varner didn’t need to know: “He was weird at the Grille. The chief was there at the time, saw him being weird. So then this afternoon, I’m off work, out and about, minding my own business, and this Robertson flips me off, gets aggressive with me.”
Varner’s heavy lids became hoods, narrowing his eyes to slits of suspicion. Instinct told him that I was withholding information. He wasn’t as slow as he looked. “Aggressive how?”
Stormy saved me from a rough lie with a smooth one: “The creep made a crude pass at me, and Odd told him to back off.”
Fungus Man didn’t look like the kind of macho stud who thought every woman was panting for him.
Stormy, however, is so strikingly good-looking that Varner, already in a suspicious mood, seemed inclined to believe that even a schlump like Bob Robertson would work up enough hormones to try his luck with her.
He said, “Chief thinks this guy vandalized St. Bart’s. You know about that, I guess.”
Deflecting this dogged Sherlock, Stormy said, “Officer Varner, curiosity is killing me. Do you mind my asking—what’s your tattoo mean?”
He wore a short-sleeve shirt, exposing his massive forearms. On his left arm, above his watch, were three block letters: POD.
“Miss Llewellyn, I’m sorry to say that as a teenager I was one screwed-up puppy. Got myself involved in gangs. Turned my life around before it was too late. I thank the Lord Jesus for that. This tattoo was a gang thing.”
“What do the letters stand for?” she asked.
He seemed embarrassed. “It’s a crude obscenity, miss. I’d rather not say.”
“You could have it removed,” she said. “They’ve gotten a lot better at that in recent years.”
Varner said, “Thought about doing just that. But I keep it to remind me how far off the right path I once went and how easy it was to take that first wrong step.”
“That’s so fascinating and so admirable,” she said, leaning closer to the window as if to get a better look at this paragon of virtue. “Lots of people rewrite their past rather than face up to it. I’m glad to know we’ve got men like you looking out for us.”
She poured this verbal syrup so smoothly that it sounded sincere.
While Officer Varner was basking in her flattery as happily as a waffle in whipped butter, she turned to me and said, “Odd, I’ve got to get home. I have an early morning.”
I wished Officer Varner good luck, and he made no attempt to continue grilling me. He seemed to have forgotten his suspicions.
In the car, I said to her, “I never realized you had such a talent for deceit.”
“Oh, that’s too serious a word for it. I just manipulated him a little.”
“After we’re married, I’m going to be on the lookout for that,” I warned her as I started the car.
“What do you mean?”
“In case you ever try to manipulate me a little.”
“Good heavens, odd one, I manipulate you every day. And fold and spindle you, as well.”
I couldn’t tell if she was serious. “You do?”
“Gently, of course.