‘Can Donnie stay for dinner?’ Wes asked.
‘If it’s okay, Mrs Dance.’
‘I’ll call your mother.’ Protocol.
‘Sure. Thanks.’
The boys returned to a board game and dropped to the redwood decking, crunching some chips and drinking Honest Tea. Soda was not to be found in the Dance household.
Dance found the boy’s home number and called. His mother said it was fine for him to stay for dinner but he should be home by nine.
She disconnected, then returned to the living room where her father, Stuart, and ten-year-old, Maggie, sat in front of the TV.
‘Mom! You came in the back door!’
She didn’t, of course, tell her that she’d been checking the perimeter and double-locking the gate. Two active cases, with a number of bad actors, who could, if they really wanted to, find her.
‘Give me a hug, honey.’
Maggie complied happily. ‘Wes and Donnie won’t let me play their game.’
‘It’s a boys’ game, I’m sure.’
A frown crossed Maggie’s heart-shaped face. ‘I don’t know what that is. I don’t think there should be boy games and girl games.’
Good point. If and when Dance ever remarried, Maggie had announced she was going to be ‘best woman’ – whatever her age. She had also learned of feminism in school and, returning home after social studies, had declared, to Dance’s delight, that she wasn’t a feminist. She was an equalist.
‘Hi, Dad,’ Dance said.
Stuart rose and hugged his daughter. He was seventy, and though his time outdoors as a marine biologist had taken a toll on the flesh, he looked younger than his years. He was tall, six two, wide-shouldered, with unruly, thick white hair. Dermatologists’ scalpels and lasers had left their mark too and he now rarely went outside without a floppy hat. He was retired, yes, but when not babysitting the grandkids or puttering around the house in Carmel, he worked at the famed Monterey Bay Aquarium several days a week.
‘Where’s Mom?’
Staunch Edie Dance was a cardiac nurse at the Monterey Bay Hospital.
‘Took the late shift, filling in. Just me tonight.’
Dance headed into the bedroom, washed and changed into black jeans, a silk T-shirt and burgundy wool sweater. The central coast, after sunset, could get downright cold and dinner tonight would be on the Deck.
As she walked down the stairs and into the hallway a man stepped through the front door. Jon Boling, forties, wasn’t tall. A few inches above Dance but lean – thanks mostly to biking and occasional free weights (twenty-five-pounders at his place and a pair of twelves at hers). His straight hair, thinning, was a shade similar to Dance’s, though a little darker than chestnut, and with none of her occasional gray strands (which coincidentally disappeared after a trip to Rite-Aid or Save Mart).
‘Look, I’m bearing Greek gifts.’ He held up two large bags from a Mediterranean restaurant in Pacific Grove.
They kissed and he followed her into the kitchen.
Boling was a professor at a college nearby, teaching the Literature of Science Fiction, as well as a class called Computers and Society. In the graduate school, Boling taught what he described as some boring technical courses. ‘Sort of math, sort of engineering.’ He also consulted for Silicon Valley firms. He was apparently a minor genius in the world of boxes – computers. She’d had to learn about this from the press and Wes’s assessment of his skill in programming: modesty was hardwired into Boling’s genes. He wrote code the way Richard Wilbur or Jim Tilley wrote poetry. Fluid, brilliant and captivating.
They’d been going out for a while now, ever since she’d hired him to assist on a case involving computers.
As he offloaded containers of moussaka, octopus, taramasalata and the rest, he noted her arm. ‘What happened there?’
She frowned and followed his gaze. ‘Oh.’ Her watch, crystal shattered. ‘The Serrano thing.’ She explained about the run-in at CBI, when the young man had fled after the interview.
‘You all right?’ His gentle eyes narrowed.
‘No danger. I just didn’t fall as elegantly as I should have.’
She grimaced as she examined the broken glass. The watch had been a Christmas present from friends in New York, the famed criminalist Lincoln Rhyme and his partner, Amelia Sachs. She’d helped them out on a case a few years ago, involving a brilliant for-hire criminal known as the Watchmaker. She undid the dark-green leather strap and set the damaged watch on the mantel. She’d look into getting it repaired soon.
Boling called, ‘Mags?’
Dance saw her daughter leap up and run to the doorway. The child wrinkled her brow. Then called, ‘Geia!’
Boling nodded. ‘Kalos!’
Dance laughed.
He said, ‘Thought we should learn a little Greek in honor of dinner. Where’s Wes?’
‘Outside with Donnie.’
Boling did a fair amount of babysitting too; his teaching load was light, and as a consultant he could work here, there, anywhere. He knew as much about the children’s schedule and friends as Dance did. ‘Seems like a nice boy, Donnie. Year older, right?’
‘Thirteen, yes.’
‘His parents picked him up once. Mother’s sweet. Dad doesn’t say much.’ Boling frowned. ‘Was wondering. Whatever happened to Rashiv? He and Wes seemed pretty tight for a while. He was brilliant. Math, phew.’
‘Don’t know. Kids move on.’ Wes, whom Dance had always thought mature for his age, had recently gravitated to Donnie and an older crowd. Rashiv, she recalled, was a year younger than her son. Maggie, who’d always been a bit of a loner, had started hanging out with a group of four girls in her grade school (to Dance’s further surprise, the popular ones, two contestants in National American Miss pageants, one a would-be cheerleader).
Boling opened some wine and passed out glasses to the adults.
The doorbell.