Solitude Creek

CHAPTER 29

‘Hello?’

Arthur K. Meddle turned from surveying the placement of chairs at the Bay View Center to see a man in the doorway.

‘Help you? Hold on.’ He turned away and shouted, ‘Charlie, add another row. Come on. Four hundred. Got to be four hundred. Sorry. Help you?’

The man stepped closer. He seemed bored. ‘Yessir. I’m a Monterey County fire inspector.’

Meddle gave a fast glance at the ID. ‘Officer Du

‘Officer.’

‘Sure. What can I do for you?’

‘You the manager?’

‘That’s right.’

The well-dressed polite fellow looked around the interior of the center, with furrowed brows. Then his eyes came back to Meddle. ‘You may’ve heard, sir, about the incident at Solitude Creek? The club?’

‘Oh, yeah. Terrible.’

‘We’re thinking it was done intentionally.’

‘I heard that on the news.’ Meddle didn’t know this guy so he didn’t add what he wanted to: ‘What kind of crazy shit would do that?’

‘The county board of supervisors and the Sheriff’s Office – the Bureau of Investigation too – they’re thinking he may try another attack.’

‘No! Hell, is it really a terrorist? That’s what Fox was saying. Was it O’Reilly? I don’t remember.’

‘Oh, I don’t know. Between you and me, I’d think if it was terrorists, somebody would’ve taken credit for it. They do that.’

‘True.’

‘Anyway, sir, the county supervisors’ve issued a reg that requires any venues with events of over a hundred people have to postpone or pass a special inspection.’

‘Postpone?’

‘Or pass the inspection. We’re making sure that what happened at Solitude Creek won’t happen again. I mean they could catch the perp first. That’s a possibility.’

‘We can’t very well cancel. Tonight? It’s bringing in seven thousand dollars. It’s a book signing. The author’s publisher’s paying for it. You know the economy out here. We can’t afford to shut down.’

‘Like I said, your choice.’

‘What’s this inspection? I’ve got a current occupancy cert.’

‘No, this is different. We have to make sure the fire doors can’t be blocked. You need to remove all the locks from the emergency-exit doors, or tape the latches down and chain off the area around them from the outside, so nobody can block them.’

‘Like that guy did at the roadhouse, with the truck.’

‘That’s right,’ Du

‘Chain off an area outside the doors?’

‘And I mean chain off. Literally. Ten feet away. So he can’t block them. Frankly, it’d be easier to cancel the event.’

‘You want me to cancel?’

‘I’m just telling you the options.’

‘But you’re leaning toward our closing.’

‘Easier for everybody,’ Du

‘Not for us.’

Seven thousand dollars …

‘Look, I’m just saying,’ Du

Shit on a stick. As if he didn’t have enough to do already. ‘No, I’m not cancelling. But if people sneak in because we’ve left the doors unlatched, that’ll be on you.’

‘It’s a book signing, right? You get a lot of gate-crashers at book signings?’

Meddle hesitated. ‘It’s not like a Stones concert.’

‘So. There. Now, your smoke alarms? They’ve been tested recently?’

‘We had an inspection ten, twelve days ago.’

‘Good. Still, I’ll double-check them.’

Meddle asked Du

‘I’d probably pick one that a truck couldn’t break through.’

It sounded expensive. Meddle said, ‘I’ll go to Home Depot now.’

‘Thank you, sir. I’m sure everything’ll be fine. … What is this book thing anyway?’

Meddle explained, ‘Hot new self-help thing. About living for tomorrow. I read it, like to keep informed about who appears here. The author says people live too much in the present. They need to live in the future more.’

‘Like what? Time travel?’ The inspector looked perplexed.

‘No, no, just think about where you want to be in the future. Picture it, plan it, think it. So you’ll reach your goals. The title is Tomorrow Is the New Today.’

Du

CHAPTER 30

Well, okay. Interesting.

Dance braked her SUV to a stop in one of the driveways that led to the Bureau of Investigation parking lot. She was between an unruly boxwood and a portion of a building occupied by a computer start-up.

Near the front door of CBI headquarters, Michael O’Neil stood in the lot talking to his ex-wife, A

The woman was dressed in clothes that were very, very different from what Dance recalled when A

Who could have imagined?

It had been her decision to end the marriage and move to San Francisco. Rumors of a lover up there. Dance knew A

And, bang, O’Neil a

It was a classic ‘Send In The Clowns’ moment, the Sondheim song about two potential lovers for whom the timing just wasn’t cooperating.

O’Neil, gentleman that he was, accepted the situation. And they fell into ‘another time, another place’ mode. As for Boling – well, he’d said nothing about Dance’s co

She now noted: O’Neil had his hands comfortably at his sides, not in his pockets, or clutching crossed arms, either of which would have been a defensive gesture that meant: ‘I just don’t want you here, A

No, they were, in fact, smiling. Something she said made him laugh.

Then A

Then he waved to the children and returned to the office. A

And Dance suddenly recalled something else. The other night when she’d asked about O’Neil’s new babysitter, his body language had changed.

New sitter?

Sort of.