Potshot

"They get along?"

"Well as anybody, I guess. What's that got to do with abandoned properly?"

"Nothing," I said with a big sincere smile. "I just heard that he fooled around."

The woman laughed.

"Oh, hell," she said. "They both did. I think my ex may have had a little fling with Lou."

"Lotta that going around," I said. "You know what business they had in Potshot?"

"I don't know. Something to do with camping. You should talk to Nancy Ratliff. She and her ex were pretty tight with the Buckmans."

"Where would I find her?"

"She's still here," the woman said, and nodded at a small white house with blue trim. "Across the street."

"And your ex husband?"

She laughed sourly.

"Mr. Hot Pants," she said. "Don't know. Don't care."

"Thanks," I said.

"I don't want to tell you your job," the woman said, "but if I were you I'd lose that abandoned property story."

I gri

"It's gotten me this far," I said.

She shrugged. I walked across the street and rang the Ratliff bell and the door opened at once. I had caused a neighborhood alert.

"Mrs. Ratliff?"

"Yes."

"I'm from the Bureau of Abandoned Property."

I was glad the blonde across the street couldn't hear me.

"What the hell is that," Mrs. Ratliff said.

She was petite, with thick black hair and sharp features.

"State Treasurer's Office," I said. "We have some money for Mr. and Mrs. Buckman."

"Lucky them," the woman said. "You want to come in?"

"Thank you," I said.

I sometimes wished I wore a hat so when I went into a woman's house I could impress them by taking it off in a gentlemanly way. I settled for removing my sunglasses.

The front door opened immediately to her living room, which was done in Indian rugs and hand-hewn furniture that was too big for the room. There was a little gray stone fireplace with gas jets on the end wall. There was a pitcher of martinis on the glass-topped coffee table that took up too much of the room.

"I'm having a cocktail," she said. "Would you care to join me?"

It was 3:30.

"Sure," I said.

She went through an archway to the small dining room and came back with a martini glass in which there were two olives. She poured me a martini.

"Stirred, not shaken," she said.

I smiled. She picked up her glass and gestured toward me with it.

"Chink, chink," she said.

I touched her glass with mine and we each took a drink. The martini was dreadful. Not cold enough and far too much vermouth.

"So," Nancy Ratliff said. "What can I do for you?"

"Tell me about Steven and Mary Lou Buckman."

"Well, she was a bitch. Still is I'm sure."

"How so?" I said.

Nancy Ratliff took another drink. She didn't appear to know that the martini was dreadful. Or maybe she knew and didn't care.

"Well, for one thing she was fucking my husband."

"How nice for them," I said.

"Yeah, well, not so nice for me."

"How did Mr. Buckman feel about it?"

"He didn't say."

She drank again and stared into her glass. "Well, actually he did," she said. "He said we should get even with them."

"Tit for tat," I said just to be saying something, though in the context, the choice of words was unfortunate.

We were silent while she looked into her martini glass.

Finally she said, "Aren't you going to ask me if we did?"

"Only if you want to tell me, Mrs. Ratliff."

"Nancy," she said. "And yeah, I want to tell you."

I smiled happily. She didn't say anything. I waited. She poured herself some more bad martini from the pitcher where the melting ice would have diluted it by now. She took another sip and held her glass up and looked through it.

"I like how clear it looks," she said.

I nodded helpfully. Friendly guy from the Treasurer's office. Eager to please. Eager to listen.

"Yes, we got even," she said. "In goddamned spades."

"And how did Mr. Ratliff feel about that?" I said.

I had no idea where I was going. Except that Ratliff was a name I'd heard before.

"He left me and went chasing after her."

"And Mr. Buckman?"

"He went too."

"With his wife?" I said.

"I don't know. I guess so. Maybe they were all doing it. A traveling gangbang."

She looked at my glass.

"You're not drinking," she said.

"I'm savoring it slowly," I said. "What is your husband's first name?"

"Ex-husband. I divorced him. The bastard didn't even show up to contest the divorce. I took him for everything he had, except he didn't have anything."

She drank again.

"Movie producer," she snorted.

"Sure."

"And his first name?"

"Mark."

I felt very still for a moment inside and then I took a stab at something.

"You happen to know anyone named Dean Walker?" I said.

"'The cop? Yeah, used to live three houses up toward Montana. Moved away eight, nine years ago."

"He a friend of the Buckmans?"

"I guess, yeah, he'd be at parties sometimes. Him and his wife."

"You remember her name?"

"Judy, I think."

"He have anything to do with Mrs. Buckman?"

"Dean? I don't know. She'd have been willing. She was like a bitch in heat. But Dean seemed sort of straightforward. If he was fucking her, I don't know about it."

Each time she said fucking she said it with relish. As if she liked to say it, as if it were a counter-irritant. Like scratching an old itch. Forgive and forget didn't seem to work for her.

Chapter 26

SARA HUNTER LIVED in a faux Tudor three-unit condo in Westwood, a block below Wilshire. She was L.A. serious, which meant a loose-fitting, ankle-length flowered dress, some Native-American jewelry and dark leather sandals. Her blond hair was done in a single long braid that reached nearly to her waist. She wore no makeup and despite her best efforts, she was pretty good-looking.

When she opened the door she kept the chain bolt on. I gave her my card. I introduced myself. I explained what I wanted, and I smiled at her. None of it seemed to make her more welcoming.

"Why do you want to talk to me about Steve Buckman?" she said. "He's just somebody I knew at work."

"Well, that's why," I said. "I was hoping for some of your insights."

She liked insights.

"Why do you want that?" she said.

There was never a good way to say it. I'd learned over the years to just say it. Which I did.

"Steve's been murdered."

She looked at me as if I had commented on the dandiness of the weather.

"What?"

"We could talk out here on the porch," I said, "if you'd feel more secure."

She didn't speak for a moment, then she closed the door, unchained it, opened it again and stepped out. She was careful to pull the door shut behind her. The porch extended along the front of her condo to form a little veranda and we sat on some wicker chairs out there. Across the street a couple of Mexicans were trimming a hedge, and on the sidewalk below the veranda, a shapeless middle-aged woman with bright red hair was walking a small, ugly, possum-y looking dog on a retractable leash.