I dug for the car remote as I ran painfully to the Saab. I got into the car and drove away. I didn’t look back except mentally, to berate myself. One more second and I would have seen the current occupant of Patel’s house. Also, one more second and the occupant might have seen me. It was a trade-off, and I’d played it safe. For once.
I didn’t relax my shoulders until I reached the Claremont-Ashby intersection and saw nothing that looked like a car in pursuit behind me. Then I remembered the odor from the bathroom window. It came to me. It was aftershave. Citrus aftershave. The last time I’d smelled it was in a bagel shop on Monday afternoon.
I’d found Phil Chambers.
I drove to the Berkeley marina, at the end of University Avenue, wanting to put as much distance as possible between me and the open bathroom window on Woodland Road. Though I would have appreciated a walk on the long public fishing pier stretched out before me into San Francisco Bay, I sat in the Saab, in case a quick getaway was in order.
Also, my ankle hurt badly. Not enough that I thought it was broken; just a sprain, I hoped. I removed my shoe, rubbed the sore spots, and took two aspirin. That would have to do for medical attention.
It seemed clear that Phil had been hiding out in Patel’s Claremont home. I hadn’t allowed myself the leisure of checking to see if there was a number 128 Woodland Road, but I felt sure Phil’s fingerprints were on that pizza box. I pictured him at an upper window, watching for the delivery truck, then sneaking across the street, probably at two o’clock in the circle, to pick up his dinner.
Why he was there, I could only guess. At the top of my list was fugitive Phil, guilty of two murders, hiding from the police. That thought made me want to climb into one of the lovely boats berthed in the water to my right and sail away before I had to face Elaine with what I suspected. I tried to declare Phil not guilty, on the basis that a double murderer would flee farther than a few miles from his own home. Still, innocent people didn’t go into hiding at all. And the home of a dead man was as good a place as any to lie low, especially since Patel apparently had no family, and the police were not likely to return.
I tapped my steering wheel, deciding on my next step. Matt was unavailable, unless I wanted to call his cell phone and interrupt his meeting with Dana and Russell at the Berkeley PD. Also, I wanted more evidence. More accurately, some evidence that Phil was at Patel’s. If I’d thought to grab the pizza box, I might have been able to persuade Russell to dust for fingerprints. As a government employee at BUL, Phil’s prints would be on file. So would mine, I realized, a match for those on the gate and the garbage cans of 127 Woodland Road.
I had one other idea.
I picked up my phone, hit 411 for information, and then punched in the number I was given.
“Giulio’s,” said an upbeat, young, female voice.
I smiled; I’d been right about the cheerleader. “Oh, hi. Are you the one who’s nice enough to arrange for my husband’s pizza to be left outside the door?”
“Um. Yeah, is this Mrs. Boyle?”
Ha. Boyle’s Law, a key topic in every freshman chemistry class. I had to give Phil points for keeping his sense of humor in a crisis. He’d taken the name of a seventeenth-century chemist credited with formulating the relationship between the pressure and volume of a gas.
I almost hung up then, having assured myself the Boyle connection was no coincidence, but Courtney, or Ashley, or whoever was on the other end of the line seemed too sweet to leave hanging.
“Yes, this is Mrs. Boyle. Thanks for being so accommodating,” I said.
“Hey, no prob. Your husband says he doesn’t want the doorbell to wake the kids.”
“He’s a doll,” I said. “And by the way, could you please put anchovies on the next order? He always forgets to ask.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
When my cell phone rang, it woke me from a fantasy world where I tell the police where to find Phil Chambers; they arrest him for the murder of Lokesh Patel (co-spy, who wanted to turn Phil in for revealing secrets of a new nitrogen-based weapon) and Tanisha Hall (wrong place, wrong time); and at last my best West Coast friend, Elaine Cody, thanks me for saving her from marrying a traitor to the country.
“I have some news,” Matt said.
“Me, too.” I leaned back and enjoyed the sounds of seagulls, carried on a rejuvenating breeze that flowed through the open windows of Elaine’s car. Not quite Revere Beach, though. For crashing surf I’d have to drive to San Francisco.
“Let’s meet somewhere,” Matt said.
“Fine. Where’s Dana?”
“They’re holding her a little longer.”