The Trade

“It’s too late, I told you. I called the coroner this morning.” Matt got up, put his empty glass in the sink. “I’m going out to eat. Sylvie still on late duty?”

“Yeah, all this week. You want to take this seriously, buddy.”

“I am taking it seriously, but what do you want me to do? I’ve already called the coroner’s office. They have my name, my address, my phone number. They didn’t ask for my social security number, or they’d have that, too. So, you want to go eat?” Bob let out a long breath. “Okay. Usual place?” Matt had been thinking of Granita for a change, Wolfgang Puck’s restaurant at the top of the road, but the prices were pretty rich for a deputy sheriff with a Malibu mortgage, even with two salaries coming in. Bob would agree if he suggested it, then insist on carrying his weight. “Sure. Googie’s Coffee Shop in five.”

CHAPTER 5

7:00 a.m. on a Friday morning, and traffic on the I-10 from Santa Monica to downtown was moving steadily. In another hour, it would be gridlock. Matt listened to Coltrane, and restrained the impulse to jockey the Range Rover from lane to lane. He got off the freeway at 9th Street, and stopped to pick up a couple of caffe grandes at the Starbucks by Macy’s—he knew better than to risk the coffee on a construction job, which tasted as if it were made with iron filings, guaranteed to burn a hole in the lining of the stomach.

By 7:30 he was at the Contessa, four hundred low-rise luxury apartments on what used to be a used-car lot before the neighborhood got too run-down even for clunkers. Swimming pools, tennis courts, running track, gym, all the bells and whistles, heavily landscaped, an urban refuge, and close to major freeways and the Staples Center. The city was jubilant, already counting on the tax base to revitalize the surrounding area. Lowell Brothers was gambling the company shirt on the project, their first venture into new construction, but so far it looked good. Ned had negotiated leases with both teams that called the Staples Center home, NBA basketball and NHL hockey, the Lakers and the Kings.

Half a dozen trucks loaded with large boxed jacaranda trees were lined up on Bixel Street outside the Contessa. By the time the job was finished, a hundred prime specimens would be in the ground.

“Good morning, Ben.” Matt handed Ben Pressman, the landscape architect, a container of coffee, popped the lid on his own and took a sip. He and Ben circled the trucks, checking out the jacarandas.

“Pretty nice, huh?” Ben said.

“Yeah. Not bad, Ben.” He and Pressman had personally selected each one, shopping half a dozen tree farms to get what they wanted. “Let’s get them in the ground.”

He stayed on through the morning, ate enchiladas with the Hispanic work crew gathered around Roxanne’s Hot Lunch, the roach wagon that made the rounds of downtown construction sites.

It was almost four when he got back to the office in Brentwood.

Two men, flipping without much interest through magazines devoted to the construction business, looked up as he walked in. Matt raised an inquiring eyebrow at Marni behind her desk in the front office.

“These gentlemen are waiting to see you, Matt. They’re from the sheriff’s department.”

The men replaced the magazines on the table, got to their feet. The elder of the two said, “Mr. Lowell? I’m Detective Jim Barstow. My partner, Detective Eduardo Flores.”

Matt glanced at the proffered shields, noted the nicotine-stained fingers and the smell of tobacco that clung to the two men. He shook hands with each in turn, conscious of Marni’s ears straining to hear every word, and ushered them into the office. Ned, frowning at the computer screen on his own side of the partners’ desk, looked up as Matt introduced the detectives. They refused coffee. Matt settled himself behind his desk, indicated a couple of chairs on the other side.

“So, what can I do for you?”

“Just a few questions. You are the Matthew Lowell who found the child on the beach, is that right?” Barstow asked. Late forties, thinning fair hair, deep set blue eyes. Slim, sharp tailoring.

Not much got past him, Matt guessed. “Yes. During the fire.”

“That would be last Monday?”

“Yes. Monday.”

“She was alive when you found her?”

Matt nodded. “Yes.”

“About what time of day was that, Mr. Lowell?”

“Sometime between four and five. It’s hard to say exactly. The smoke from the fire was black and covered the entire sky, so it was dusk long before the sun started going down. And sunset these days is at five. So I can’t say for sure. I didn’t look at my watch.”

Barstow’s partner gave a half smile. He’d caught the sarcasm. Flores was in his early forties, bulky but not fat, an ungainly nose away from being darkly handsome.

“Well, that’s close enough for now,” Barstow said. “Were you working in Malibu on Monday?”

“No, I was here, but I’ve lived in Malibu all my life and I know how fast a brushfire moves in a Santa Ana wind. I had horses in Ramirez Canyon and was worried about getting them out. And my dog was locked inside my house.”

“That’s the house on Malibu Road?” Barstow asked. He produced a small notebook from the inside pocket on his jacket.

Matt nodded. “That’s right.”

“You say you found the baby several miles north of that location between four and five o’clock. By noon the entire area had been evacuated, the highway was closed in both directions from Topanga Canyon in the south, and Trancas Canyon in the north. How was it you managed to be on that particular part of the beach at that particular time? Can you explain that?”

“I drove—”

“Wait a minute,” Ned said. “What is this? An interrogation? He’s already reported this to—”

“It’s okay, Ned, let me handle it,” Matt said. He held a tight rein on his irritation. Ned could be a pain sometimes with his big brother concern. Ginn thought it was guilt because Ned had been at Wharton in Philadelphia when their mother was killed, and had gone back to school the day after she was buried, leaving Matt alone with their father in a house that contained only shadows where she had been.

“You’re right,” he said to Barstow. “The Pacific Coast Highway was closed when I got to Topanga Canyon.”

“What time was that?”

“About two, two-thirty.”

Barstow made a note on his pad. He looked up, nodded for Matt to continue.

“I turned around and went back to the Santa Monica Freeway, took the 405 north across the Sepulveda Pass to the 101 in the San Fernando Valley.” Deliberately, Matt went through every detail of the long circuitous route back to Malibu. “The 101 west was pretty clogged because of fire closures, but I was able to make it to Las Posas Road below Oxnard. I turned off there and drove toward the ocean through the berry fields and came down the PCH that way.”

Barstow flipped through the pages of his notebook.

“On your way down the PCH you had to pass Encinal Canyon, right?”

Matt felt his gut clench. “Yes.”

“Did you drive up into Encinal Canyon?”

“Of course not. I was trying to get home.”

“And the Pacific Coast Highway was already closed at Trancas Canyon when you got there?”

“That’s right. They were pretty busy in the market parking lot, getting a convoy together to go over the Kanan Dume Road while it was still open. It wasn’t difficult to drive around the roadblock.”

“What were you driving?”

“I had a pickup and a horse trailer.”

Flores spoke for the first time. “Do you usually commute to work here in Brentwood with a horse trailer, Mr. Lowell?”

“No. I picked it up at Malibu Riding Club on Pacific Coast Highway.”