THERE WAS A flagpole in the Castellis’ front yard, the gold-trimmed San Francisco ensign showing a phoenix rising from a ring of flames. Cain looked at it, and then beyond at the Spanish-style house that clung to the sea cliffs above China Beach. He’d checked in with the patrolmen stationed on the lower portion of the street before coming the rest of the way up. A squad car parked next to a fire hydrant, keeping out of sight of the house, so they wouldn’t alarm anyone.
Cain looked the place over as he walked up the driveway. It was a good thing Castelli had made some money in Silicon Valley before the crash. The only thing Cain knew for sure about real estate was that he didn’t have any, but he did know Castelli couldn’t have picked up a house like this on a politician’s pay. There must have been twenty rooms in the place.
He stepped off the brick driveway and followed a path lined with waist-high rosemary bushes to the front door. Everything was wet and cold, and smelled of the ocean and the pine bark mulch that was spread through the flower beds. He rang the bell and listened to the heavy chimes echo inside the house.
Castelli’s daughter, a dark-eyed nineteen-year-old, opened the door. Alexa Castelli. The patrolmen down the street had plenty to say about her, and now he understood why. She was using one hand to keep a bath towel wrapped across her chest, and the other to hold her wet hair in a pile atop her head. Steam rose from the back of her bare neck.
“You’re the cop.”
“Your mother’s here?”
“She’s in the back, waiting,” Alexa said. She opened the door the rest of the way. “We’ve never had a detective come and see us.”
She let go of her hair and shook it out, so that the dark pile fanned across her shoulders. Rivulets of bath water ran past the rise of her clavicles and then down her chest to the towel.
“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?”