"Smuggler-terrorist-mafioso," Lynn said. "Actually, your guy's a double hyphenate."
"Whatever," Nelson said. "Anyways, some streets out there, there's so many motels he could use a different one every night. Maybe Clive Devon's the key to it. Maybe our smuggler phoned Clive Devon."
"About what?" Breda challenged, and Lynn definitely liked her better with booze in her. She didn't show that odd little grin so often. He couldn't take his eyes off the bittersweet chocolate freckle next to her lip.
"I don't know, but for starters, what if he told Devon about what went down at the airport? And that he couldn't go to their . . ."
"Rendezvous is the word you want," Lynn said. The freckle glistened now when a drop of wine bathed it. And she licked the freckle!
"Yeah, rendezvous. Maybe the guy told Devon he couldn't risk drivin to Palm Springs in a hot car, and that Devon should come pick him up."
"In Painted Canyon?" Breda asked, incredulously.
"Well, it worked, didn't it?" Nelson said. "Nobody spotted him."
"What the hell could he have that Clive Devon wants or needs?" Breda asked.
"Everybody needs somethin," Nelson said.
"What do you need, Nelson?" Breda asked.
"Shade."
"Shade?"
"Yeah, I can't do another summer down the other end a the valley. You can tell how many days a guy's worked by countin the sweat rings on his shirt. There's no shade. At least up here in Palm Springs you got the big mountain for afternoon shade. I gotta have shade. I need number seventy-five sunscreen and it don't go that high."
"Shade," Breda repeated. It was so simple. Nelson Hareem just wanted a little shade!
"I'm itchy all the time down there," Nelson explained. "Athlete's foot, jock itch. By September it'll feel like I'm wearin barbed-wire Jockey shorts. It got so dry last summer, all my elastic died and my shorts kept fallin down."
Jack Graves put his hand on the young cop's arm, saying, "I'll do my best tomorrow, Nelson. If I can tail Clive Devon, and he teams up with your dark bald smuggler, I'll get a hold of you. I'd like you to get your shade."
Breda was looking at Jack Graves, and Lynn could plainly see that she liked him. But he was no longer jealous. Jack was too troubled to even notice that exquisite freckle near the lip of Breda Burrows.
Nelson finished his beer and said, "Well, maybe we should go home and get a fresh start tomorrow, Lynn."
"I know it's time for me to go," Breda said.
"You okay to drive?" Lynn asked, hopefully.
"Of course!" she said, indignantly.
"I'll be on stakeout in front of Clive Devon's house by six," Jack Graves promised Breda.
"Six-thirty's early enough, Jack," she said.
As Lynn Cutter was getting to his feet, wincing from pain in his right knee, Nelson said, "I'd like to suggest somethin and let you all think about it tonight. It might sound crazy."
"Nothing crazy about you," Lynn said. "Fourteen percent of adult Americans say they've seen UFO's."
"I want you to consider that maybe he had somethin in that flight bag that none of us thought about."
"I'm afraid to ask," said Breda.
"Maybe he had a detonator and a nice big blob of Semtex," Nelson said.
"Semtex?"
"Same stuff that brought down the Pan Am flight over Scotland," said Nelson. "Maybe the Dan Quayle idea isn't so far off. Or maybe there's another big politician here for the Bob Hope Classic. There usually is."
Breda and Lynn gaped at one another, while Nelson silently showed them his agreeable expectant grin.
Lynn said, "Well, Nelson, I'll have to sleep on that one. Semtex, huh? I gotta admit one thing: that stuff'd kill a politician faster 'n an endorsement from Jesse Jackson."
Chapter 11
She owed herself a bath like this one, Breda thought. She'd been soaking in bubbles and bath oil for more than an hour, refilling the tub every time the water got tepid, and to hell with California's water shortage. The desert valley had underground water.
There was no getting around it, she needed Rhonda Devon's five thousand dollars, less what she'd have to pay Lynn Cutter and Jack Graves. But Breda was beginning to doubt that tailing Clive Devon to picnics and swim parties with Blanca Soltero's daughter was going to resolve anything. Maybe they were just friends.
Breda had been toying again with the idea of having Lynn pose as a patient in need of Clive Devon's urologist. Even if he didn't actually give a semen sample for a fertility check, he was smart enough to interrogate a receptionist, and might learn something about Clive Devon's link to a Beverly Hills sperm bank.
Lizzy needed six hundred dollars next week to cover room and board for a month, and at least another two hundred for her birthday present. Breda thought it best to send money on all holidays and birthdays, because Lizzy needed too many things for her mother to risk buying unnecessary gifts.