Step To The Graveyard Easy Part 11

"You could benefit from it. If you played your cards right."

Cape said, "I won't be in Tahoe long enough," and started away.

She called after him, "You give up easy, salesman."

"That's the way I do everything these days," he said without turning. "Easy."

13.

Andrew Vanowen said, "You're not what I expected, Cape."

"No? What did you expect?"

"Older man, glib, not so low-key."

"Should I take that as a compliment?"

"He didn't mean it that way," Stacy Vanowen said.

"Stacy." Sharp, but without looking at her. As if he were telling a pet to be quiet.

She smiled faintly, looked out through the tall window on her right. A slant of suns.h.i.+ne lay across that side of her face, along her bare shoulder and arm. On the lake, on the gla.s.s, the sunlight glittered hotly. On her it seemed cooler, a paler shade, like light rays on sculptured white marble. Reach over and touch her, and she'd have a marble feel-cool, smooth, surface-soft. The type of woman who would never sweat, even when she was making love. Direct opposite of her sister.

Of her husband, too. He was like something made out of bone and tightly strung wire, covered with tanned rawhide and powered by a generator tuned so high you could hear it hum and crackle. He attacked his crab c.o.c.ktail as if it were an enemy. The crab c.o.c.ktails had been waiting along with the Vanowens when Cape was shown to their table in the packed, beam-ceilinged restaurant. One for him as well. Ordered in advance. He hadn't touched it. And wouldn't.

Through a red mouthful, Vanowen asked, "What is it you do, exactly?"

"Do?" Cape said.

"Your livelihood. What's your business?"

"You might say I'm retired."

"From what?"

"The rat race."

"That's an evasion."

"Not really. I used to work for a manufacturing firm in Illinois, and I got fed up with the grind."

"And now you collect photographs of people you don't know and travel around selling them, is that it?"

"No, that's not it. Everybody seems to think I'm a salesman. That's what I used to be. It's not what I am today."

"Everybody's a salesman."

"Not me. Not anymore."

"Perhaps Mr. Cape is simply a good Samaritan," Stacy Vanowen said. "They do exist, you know."

"Not in my experience." Vanowen finished his c.o.c.ktail, shoved his plate aside, scrubbed at his mouth with his napkin, looked at his watch, rotated an expensive ring on his left hand-platinum, with a circle of fat diamonds-gestured to the waiter, and said as if there'd been no pause, "Everybody has motives. Everybody's got an agenda."

"Not me," Cape said again.

Stacy Vanowen said, "I'd like to see the photos, Mr. Cape."

He handed her the glossies. Before she could separate them, her husband s.n.a.t.c.hed them out of her hand. He glanced at the two of her, scowled at the one of himself. "This is the studio portrait I had taken for the BusinessWeek article last year. What the devil?"

"Let me look at them, Andy."

He allowed her to reclaim the photos. "How could somebody get hold of that one? Magazine didn't use it after all, some kind of s.p.a.ce problem, and they sent it back. I don't remember what I did with it." He asked her, "Do you?"

"You said you were going to burn it."

"I thought I did." Vanowen rotated the fancy ring again, his eyes still on Cape. "I take lousy photographs. Thought this one was all right at first, but I'm glad BusinessWeek didn't use it. Makes me look stiff, like I've got a broom handle stuck up my a.s.s."

Cape said, "Maybe this copy came from the photographer."

"I doubt it. He's a friend of mine, he wouldn't sell or give away any copies without my permission."

"Did you give out any to friends or business a.s.sociates?"

"No. My secretary might have, but she usually mentions that sort of request. I'll ask her about it."

"I don't like this," Stacy Vanowen said. "These pictures of me..."

Cape asked her, "Can you tell when they were taken?"

"It had to've been recently, within the past month or so. I've only owned this beige outfit a few weeks." She hugged her arms. "They make me feel cold. As if I've been... violated."

"d.a.m.n right it's a violation," Vanowen said. "These people you told Vince Mahannah about, Cape, the ones in San Francisco-"

"Boone and Tanya Judson."

"Grifters, cardsharps." He made an angry gesture, s.h.i.+fted in his chair, leaned back, leaned forward. "Why did they have these photos? What's their game?"

"I don't have any answers for you, Mr. Vanowen."

"The poker scam idea doesn't make sense. My wife isn't a player, she never gambles at all. She-"

He broke off as more food arrived. Three orders: one seafood salad, two plates of some kind of fileted whitefish. Cape glanced at his fish and then ignored it.

Stacy Vanowen said, "What if it's some kind of kidnapping scheme?"

Her husband jumped as if she'd goosed him. "Kidnapping?"

"It's possible, Andrew. We're well off, aren't we?"

"They wouldn't need seed money for something like that," Cape said.

"That might've been just a lie to mislead you."

"There's also the photo of Vince Mahannah. Why include him if you and your husband are kidnapping targets?"

"G.o.d, I don't know. Who knows how people like that think?"

"It's a big jump from convention-circuit con games to a capital offense. I don't see those two making it."

Vanowen said, "You're no expert, Cape."

"You're right, I'm not."

"All right, then. We don't know what they're up to, that's the bottom line." Vanowen poked at his filet, banged the fork down without eating, pinched the ridge of muscle along his lower lip instead. "Mahannah pa.s.sed on their description, but I want to hear it from you. In detail."

Cape obliged.

"Total strangers," Vanowen said. "Stacy?"

"Yes. To me, too."

"Well, if either of them shows up around here, they'll d.a.m.n well be sorry-"

His s.h.i.+rt pocket buzzed. Cell phone. He had it out and switched on and jammed against his ear in three fast movements. He said, "Vanowen," listened, said, "How much?" and listened again. Then he said, "Twenty minutes," and made the cell disappear as swiftly as he'd produced it.

His wife said, "You're leaving, I suppose."

"Have to. Business. You go ahead and finish your lunch."

"I'm not hungry."

"Eat it anyway." Vanowen snaked a hand inside the pocket of his sand-colored slacks, brought it out clutching a checkbook. Inside was a loose check, already made out. He dropped it on the table, used one finger to slide it over toward Cape.

Cape ignored it, just as he'd ignored the crab c.o.c.ktail and the fileted whitefish.

"Go ahead," Vanowen said, "take it."

"No, thanks."

"It's for two hundred and fifty dollars."

"I wouldn't care if it was twenty-five hundred or twenty-five thousand. I don't want your money."

"Why the h.e.l.l not?"

"Because I didn't earn it. Because I don't take money for offering a helping hand. Because I spent most of my life letting myself be bought in one way or another. Because I'm tired of everybody I've met the past two days misjudging me and my motives. Take your pick."

Vanowen stared at him as if he were a new and baffling species. Abruptly he got to his feet. He said to Cape, "Suit yourself," said to his wife, "I don't know what time I'll be home," and power-walked his way out of the restaurant.

Cape picked up the check, tore it into small pieces, and dropped the pieces onto his plate. He said, "Cla.s.sic type A, your husband. He'll have a ma.s.sive coronary someday, if he doesn't slow down."

"I've told him the same thing. He won't listen." She sighed, pushed her salad around on the plate. "He can be overbearing and abrasive, and he thinks money is G.o.d and he's one of its disciples. But he's a decent man underneath. Really, he is."

Cape doubted that. Andrew Vanowen, as far as he was concerned, was just what Justine had led him to believe-an arrogant, high-powered a.s.shole. Stacy Vanowen knew it, too, despite what she'd said. The knowledge was in her eyes, in the tight line of her mouth.

He said, "I'll take your word for it."

After a time she said, "Those people, the Judsons or whoever they are..."

"What about them?"

"Do we have anything to fear from them? Your honest opinion."

"I doubt it. Whatever their game was, it's likely I sidetracked it when I took their cash and got hold of those photographs. And I'd be willing to bet it was nothing as heavy as a kidnapping."

"That's rea.s.suring. Anyway, it's our problem now. You'll be leaving Tahoe soon, I suppose."

"Soon enough. Your friend Mahannah invited me to sit in on his poker game tomorrow night."

"Oh? Are you going to?"

"Haven't made up my mind yet."

Pick, pick at the salad. "When you do leave, where will you go?"

"Reno, maybe. North from there or east into Utah. Depends on my mood at the time."

"I envy you," she said. "Sometimes I wish I could just get in my car and drive and keep on driving."

"Why don't you?"

"I'm a woman, for one thing. Women alone are targets."

"Not if they're careful."

"You can't be careful twenty-four/seven, can you?"

"You have a point. n.o.body can."

"Besides, I'm married and I love my husband and most of the time I'm reasonably content with my life. I leave the free-and-easy lifestyle to my sister."

"Lacy?"