Chapter Three

Toward the end of Saturday’s brunch, Lisa wrangled a promise from me to meet “our new family” for dinner Monday night. When I questioned the urgency, she had blushed, said that she and the councilman were considering a winter wedding.

“You mean…this winter?”

She nodded eagerly. “If we can pull it off.”

Having spent years watching Lisa organize all kinds of last-minute emergency fund-raisers and charity functions, I figured she could have marshaled a full-scale military campaign in less time. I had no doubt the “golden, mellow wedding bells would be ringing through the night, ringing out in all delight,” or whatever the hell it was Poe said in “The Bells.”

“How extended is our new family?” I’d inquired cautiously.

“Bill has three lovely daughters.” She gave a long, sentimental sigh. “I never had a daughter, and now I’ll have three.”

“You don’t even like girls.”

She looked indignant. “Of course I like girls!”

“You sure never liked any girl I brought home.”

“None of those girls was right for you, Adrien.”

She had a point there.

I figured the least I could do was keep the English end up — in a manner of speaking. I closed the shop as soon as I reasonably could, showered, shaved, and hauled the charcoal gray Hugo Boss suit out of the back of my closet. The last time I’d worn it had been to Robert Hersey’s funeral. My mood wasn’t a lot more cheerful that evening.

I brightened a bit driving the Forester. Nothing like a new toy. I did a kind of Car and Driver interior monologue — smooth ride with decent acceleration…light but responsive steering — as I pulled onto the freeway. Thoughts of battling the forces of evil temporarily took a back seat.

We were meeting at Pacific Dining Car on West 6th Street in Los Angeles. Starting out as a railway dining car parked on a rented lot in downtown Los Angeles, the legendary family-owned restaurant has been around since 1921. This was the place where the city’s bigwigs, politicians, lawyers, and businessmen broke bread and cut their deals. It was pricey, but unpretentious. The food (and wine list) was excellent. I thought it was a good sign that we were dining there rather than at another overpriced, trendy eatery.

Our party had already been seated by the time I arrived, but Lisa came to meet me as I made my way across the dining room. She looked radiant in something blue and beaded. Her eyes were shining, her cheeks were flushed; she didn’t look a day over forty.

“Oh, darling, you look so handsome,” she whispered before hauling me off to meet the Gang of Four.

Dauten rose from the head of the table to meet me. I’ve got to admit he was not at all what I expected.

“Adrien.” He gave me a curt nod, though his handshake was hearty. He was big, bigger than Jake even, though soft around the middle. Big and bald. His eyes were a shrewd Dutch-Boy blue in his darkly tanned face. He would never have been good-looking, and I didn’t get the impression he wasted a lot of time being charming. But he had a definite air of authority. The aura of power. It would have been hard to find anyone more unlike my slim and sophisticated father.

“Sir.” I tried to apply the right amount of pressure returning his handshake. Did these people know I was gay? Was that going to be a problem? Not that I gave a damn what they thought, but if Lisa had her heart set on this, I sure as hell didn’t want to be the deal breaker.

“Call me Bill.”

Thank God, because I was never going to call this guy Pop.

“And here are the girls,” fluted Lisa, sounding nervous.

There seemed to be a mob of them. Lisa was right; they were lovely. I was briefly enveloped in a butterfly swarm of scented breasts and long legs and silky hair as the girls maneuvered around each other, hugging and bussing cheeks with me, smiling meaningfully at each other, and changing their seats for some unfathomable reason.

Once we were all seated, I realized there were only three of them. The eldest, Lauren, looked about my age. She wore a wedding ring, though there was no sign of a husband. The youngest, Emma, was twelve.

Their drinks arrived. My order for a double was taken by a sympathetic-looking waiter. Everyone proceeded to talk at once.

“Adrien writes murder mysteries as well as owning a bookstore,” Lisa was explaining to Dauten. I wondered if she’d waited till five minutes before dinner to break the news that she had a grown son. “They’re terribly clever and terribly malicious, which is so surprising, because he was always the most gentle little boy.”

“Her accent is too adorable,” Lauren said of my English-born mum, mercifully breaking my concentration. “I just love to hear her talk.”

“Oh, me too,” I said. “Especially right now.”

On my right, the kid, Emma, giggled. I grinned at her.

Lauren and the middle girl (what the hell was her name?) were tall, willowy blondes, good-looking in an All-American, Ralph Lauren advert way. The kid was thin and lanky with glossy black hair and rosy cheeks. She had inherited the family blue eyes, which were striking with her dark hair. She looked a lot like Lisa. She could have passed for her daughter — or my sister.

“We adore Lisa,” the middle one (Nancy? Natasha?) reassured me. “She’s so good for Daddy. He worships her.”

I saw Dauten patting Lisa’s hand with his giant paw as she chattered away. He wore a gold signet on his pinky finger. The backs of his hands were covered in black hair. I reached gratefully for the double Chivas Regal the waiter appeared with and knocked half of it back in one gulp.

“Was the traffic awful?” Lauren asked sympathetically.

“We’ll all have to come to your bookstore,” the Middle One told me. “I love mysteries! That’s all I read. We’ll tell everybody. We’ll get all our friends to go. You know, I always wanted to work in a bookstore.”

The kid, Emma, who had been eyeing me steadily, said all at once, “You look like someone. I know who. You look like the actor in that movie. Red River.”

“John Wayne?”

She giggled. Yeah, she was a cutie.

The Middle One, Natalie — Natalie — said proudly, “Emma likes black-and-white movies,” as though the small fry had just received her Mensa card in the mail.

“What movies do you like?” I asked Emma.

I never heard her response, because Lauren leaned across the table, whispering like the Girl from U.N.C.L.E. on duty, “So, what do you think about this plan for a New Year’s Eve wedding, Adrien?”

“Uh…”

“It doesn’t give us nearly enough time,” Natalie put in, equally covert ops. “We’ve got to stall them.”

“We’ve still got to get ready for Christmas,” Lauren told me. “Oh, by the way, you’re having Christmas with us this year, did Lisa tell you?”

“I’m going to be a junior bridesmaid,” Emma piped next to me.

“You’re going to give the bride away,” Natalie told me.

I signaled for another drink.

* * * * *

We said our good-byes in the restaurant parking lot, Lisa and the other girls piling into Dauten’s Jag as the rain began to patter down. The Jag sped past, a blur of waving hands and smiling faces. I pulled off my tie, tossed it on the passenger seat.

The misty rain got heavier as I turned onto the 110 freeway. I popped a CD in the new player: Patty Griffin’s 1000 Kisses. The melancholy opening notes filled the silent car in time with the swish of the windshield wipers.

Of course, the perfect finishing touch would have been getting pulled over for a DUI, so I was very careful driving home. Careful and depressed. I think it was hearing all the details of the forthcoming Christmas extravaganza that sent my emotions into a tailspin.

I like Christmas. Not as much as I liked it when I was a kid, but I do enjoy it. Yeah, I know it’s become cheapened and tawdry and commercialized, but that doesn’t change the reason for the season. And, of course, it’s absolutely the best time of year for Cloak and Dagger Books.

The problem I have with Christmas is the problem most single people have with Christmas, which is that, if you’re single, it is absolutely the loneliest time of year.

It would have been a lot lonelier if I hadn’t had Lisa and a handful of good friends. And this year I had Jake. Sort of.

Naturally I wanted to spend Christmas with Jake, but I realized that was unlikely. He would spend it with his family, who after forty years apparently had no clue that James Patrick Riordan had a yen for men. Despite the fact that he spent a couple of nights a week under my roof and in my bed, there was no way that Jake was going to set them straight (as it were).

Nor was he likely to spend Christmas on my turf. He wasn’t thrilled about the fact that my mother and Chan, his partner on the force, knew we had a relationship. Add four more strangers to the mix, and I’d probably never see him again.

Jake had vacation time coming — he always had vacation time coming, because he was a workaholic — and for a while I had toyed with the idea of trying to persuade him to take a trip for the holidays. I thought that on neutral ground, someplace where no one knew either of us, he might relax again, and we might regain the closeness we had shared the previous spring. But I had never got around to asking him — mostly because I was fairly sure he’d say no.

There were a few forlorn Christmas lights as I drove down Colorado Boulevard. The lamppost holly wreaths had a windblown, ghost-town look. I turned off onto the quiet side street, driving past mostly dark shops and closed businesses.

I lived over the bookstore. The building had originally been a small hotel built back in the ’30s. I’d bought the place not long after I’d inherited a chunk of change from my paternal grandmother. I’d graduated from Stanford with a degree in literature and a vague idea that running a bookstore would be a good day job for a writer. A decade later it turned out that writing wasn’t a bad hobby for a guy who ran a bookstore.

Old Town was a happening place at night, but not in my neighborhood. Around here it emptied out about eight o’clock. Generally I liked the privacy. Tonight it felt lonely.

I wondered if Jake might have left a message on the answering machine, but I knew that was unlikely. I wouldn’t see him tonight, not two nights in a row. The CD started over. I listened to the sweet sorrowful chords of “Rain,” reached over to turn off the player.

Turning into the alley behind the store, my headlights slid across the brick wall of the back of the building. I caught a gleam, like eyes shining in the gloom. I had a confused glimpse of something uncomfortably like heels disappearing out of the spotlight of my headlights. I jammed on the brakes.

Had I imagined it?

I waited, engine idling, exhaust red in the Forester’s taillights, windshield wipers squeaking against the glass.

No movement in the shadows.

A cat, I thought.

A really tall cat.

A really tall cat wearing sneakers.

I took my foot off the brake, rolled quietly into my parking space. After a moment’s hesitation, I turned off the ignition.

A gust of wind sent a milk carton skittering along the asphalt. It was the only sound in the alley, the only movement.

I got out of the SUV and went inside.

* * * * *

Things looked brighter in the morning, but that was due to sunshine slicing through the leaden cloud cover, not any emotional epiphany on my part.

I had requested that the temp agency open another can of sales associates. They sent me Mrs. Tum. Mrs. T was a diminutive and elderly lady with practically no English, which provided insight into how the agency perceived my business.

Mrs. Tum also appeared to be rather excitable in nature, as I discovered when she tried to explain to me about the graffiti on the front step.

Finally, when I was still no comprende-ing, Mrs. T grabbed my arm with her doll-sized hands and hauled me outside, where I had an up close and personal view of what appeared to be a pentagram drawn in blood on my threshold.