After they turned in to the driveway and came through the screen of redwood trees that hid the Palisades from the road, Cain saw the place and couldn’t believe he’d never heard of it. It looked like a California robber baron’s idea of a castle. A wild and tangled rose garden grew in the sloped lawn, and the house towered at the top of a low rise. Cain pulled under the porte cochère before parking and getting out, leaning back to look up at the building’s stone turrets. He counted seven chimneys and forty windows. The air was scented with roses and wet bark, with the ocean’s tang and the sweet tinge of wood smoke. They went up the stairs and opened the front door, then crossed a Persian carpet the size of a basketball court. Lucy trailed her finger along the keyboard of a Steinway as she went to the front desk and rang the bell.
An old man came out and glanced at Cain a moment before turning back to Lucy. His black bow tie was hand-knotted, and his green wool cardigan looked as old as the house.
“You’re Miss Bolet?”
“That’s right.”
“Lucy Bolet,” the man said, taking his time as he spoke her name, letting it rest in the air between them as he pulled at his memory. “You stayed with us before. Five years ago—or was it six?”
“Five and change.”
“Will you play?” he asked, nodding toward the Steinway. “A lot of us remember when you were here before. To hear you play again—that would really be something.”
“Has it been tuned?”
“Last week.”
“This evening, then. Before dinner.”
“I’ll put out word.”
“Just in the hotel,” Lucy said. “Not around town.”
“Of course,” the man said. And then, in a much quieter voice, he added, “I heard what happened. I prayed for you.”
“Thank you.”
“Are you coming back now?”
“Coming back?” Lucy asked. She seemed to consider the different meanings. “Yes—I think so.”
She reached into her purse, but Cain stepped to her side.
“Let me.”
In the room, they set their bags on the bed, then went across to the window and opened the curtains. They were looking down on the rose garden. Between the trees, at the far edge of the lawn, they could see the Pacific, blue water and white foam out to the horizon.
“Now what?” Lucy asked, just as Cain’s phone rang.
The caller’s number was blocked, and Cain answered, reflexively cupping his hand over his mouth.
“Is this Cain?”
“Yes.”
The caller had an English accent, but his voice was decades too smooth to be the man who’d contacted Cain this morning.
“Tomorrow at noon,” the man said. “He’ll be here, waiting for you.”
“Where?”
“The British consulate general,” the man said. “Bring your passport and leave your gun.”
The man hung up, and Cain stood looking at his phone. It would take a well-connected man to set up a meeting in the British consulate. And he’d chosen the location well. Foreign consulates were the only places in the city off-limits to Cain. He would have to come unarmed, and would lose all of his jurisdiction when he stepped through the door.
“Are you all right?” Lucy asked.
“Fine,” he said. They would have to check out tomorrow so that he could get back to the city in time for the meeting. He would have to find another hotel in the city where Lucy could stay.
There was a stone fireplace facing the bed. Kindling and logs were stacked nearby in a pair of wicker baskets. “Do you want me to light that before I go?”
“Please.”
“I’ll be back before dinner.”
She pulled the ottoman over to the fireplace and sat down to watch as the flames crackled up through the dry kindling and into the split oak logs. She had a book in her lap, its jacket flap tucked into the page where she’d left off.
By three in the afternoon, he was driving again. Back through the village of Mendocino, and then east, into the wooded foothills. After he turned off the paved road, he followed a set of mud and gravel ruts for five miles, and then his phone told him he’d arrived. The driveway was so overgrown that if not for the heavy chain blocking the entrance, he might have overlooked it altogether. Past the chain, the driveway curved up a hill and disappeared into the redwood trees. He parked against a mossy embankment and walked to the chain. It was rusted down its length, each end locked around a tree. One of the locks was pitted with corrosion and covered with green lichen; the other showed bright brass around the keyhole.
He stepped over the chain and went up the driveway, reaching into his coat to unsnap the strap on the top of his holster. He had no idea what Susan Fennimore had been doing up here these last ten years.
When he came to the end of the driveway, there was a clearing. A red pickup truck was parked under a wood-shake roof, and next to that was the cabin. He didn’t make it across the clearing before the front door opened and Susan stepped halfway out. She kept her left hand inside the house, and Cain supposed she was holding a rifle or a shotgun.