Well, Eve thought, at least there was no need for introductions. “How do you figure that?”
“I trained Grayson,” she said proudly. “I taught him everything he knows.”
“You taught him how to shoot?” Duncan asked.
“Except for that. More importantly, I instilled in him the values, integrity, and courage behind the Big Valley Security badge.” She tapped her badge for emphasis. “That’s why everybody who works in Calabasas for Big Valley Security trains with me first. He was in here with me for three months.” Eve had a hard time imagining how the two of them could fit inside the guardhouse. “Now he floats among the different guard gates, mostly substituting for sick or vacationing guards, when he isn’t working down at the Commons.” Ruthie narrowed her eyes at Duncan. “I suppose you’re here about sweet Mrs. McCaig and her baby.”
“Yes, we are,” he said. “What can you tell us about Anna McCaig?”
Ruthie leaned toward her open window and lowered her voice, though there was nobody around who could possibly hear them.
“It’s so sad. She and Jeff McCaig have been trying to have a child ever since they got married. I think this is her third miscarriage.”
“How long have they been married?”
“Three years. Anna is his second wife, fifteen years younger than he is, from Romania. He told me that he was attracted by her energy, youth, and great birthing hips.”
“What a compliment,” Eve said.
Duncan gestured to the gate and the steep hill of homes in front of them. “Is he home?”
“Oh no, he’s on a business trip in Europe somewhere, selling movies internationally for one of the studios. That’s how he met Anna. In Berlin, during a film market. She was a hostess at his hotel. He had an affair with her for months while he was still married to the first Mrs. McCaig.”
Eve leaned forward so Ruthie could see her. “How do you know all of that?”
“The first Mrs. McCaig told me when she moved out. She said they tried forever to have kids, and when she couldn’t, he dropped her for a fertile Romanian slut.”
“What does the second Mrs. McCaig do?”
“She’s overseeing the remodel of their house,” Ruthie said. “I suppose to make the place her own and so she has something to do when he’s away. They’re doing the kitchen now.”
“How far along was her pregnancy?” Eve asked.
“She was just about to pop,” Ruthie said. “That’s what makes it so sad. She must be devastated.”
“Thanks, Ruthie,” Duncan said. “I appreciate the briefing.”
“All of us who protect and serve have to stick together.” Ruthie hit a button on her desk, opening the gate. Duncan waved goodbye, then drove through the gate and up the hill.
The homes were architecturally similar to the ones in Vista Grande, but they were much smaller, bunched closer together, and had tiny front yards. The one-story McCaig house was easy to spot—a fire truck, a paramedic unit, an LASD patrol car, and an ambulance were parked out front. There was a large walk-in dumpster in the driveway and a porta-potty on the front lawn.
Duncan parked in the open half of the driveway. He and Eve got out and went inside the house, where the temperature dropped by about thirty degrees. It was like stepping into the cold room at Costco to buy vegetables, Eve thought.
The dining room was to the right and was being used as a temporary kitchen, with a microwave, coffee machine, paper plates, plastic cups, and disposable utensils on the table and boxes of food and drinks stacked against the walls. A couple of firemen with nothing to do stood there, out of everybody’s way.
Straight ahead of Duncan and Eve was a large family room, and that’s where the paramedics and the deputy were, and where a woman, crying inconsolably, was being lifted by two ambulance attendants onto a gurney. She was a petite bottle-blonde, with collagen-injected lips and augmented breasts.
Duncan and Eve were met by a crew-cutted deputy in his thirties who didn’t seem very happy to see either one of them. Perhaps, Eve thought, he was a friend of Collier’s.
“What’s the story, Joe?” Duncan asked him.
The deputy barely looked up from his notepad as he relayed the details in a robotic monotone. “The woman is Anna McCaig, age twenty-four. She reports that she was upstairs, taking a shower, when she felt pain in her abdomen and noticed that she was bleeding from her groinal vicinity.”
Groinal vicinity? Eve wondered if that bizarre terminology reflected his lack of familiarity with female anatomy or was an attempt to avoid saying something that could be construed as crude in front of a woman.