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“Cell phones,” Declan said with a snort.
“They work,” Hale pointed out.
“I’m not hungry, anyway. Just had breakfast.”
Hale slid a glance to the clock. Twelve forty-five. “I met with the Carmichaels earlier.”
“Who?”
“The people who bought the house on the Promenade.” It was worrisome the way his grandfather seemed sometimes to lose track. He didn’t want to borrow trouble, but there was definitely some short-term memory loss going on. Was it age or something else?
“Oh, yes, yes.” Declan looked slightly embarrassed.
Hale brought his grandfather up to date on what had transpired with the plans for the Carmichaels’ house and then moved on to some of the other projects. “We’re still red tagged on the Lake Chinook project,” he noted at the end, “but I talked to Russo, and he thinks he and Vledich can get it going again without too much more delay.”
“You think he’s right?” Declan was skeptical of the abilities of Clark Russo, and, for that matter, anyone else who worked for them.
“I don’t want to have to go to Lake Chinook if I don’t have to,” Hale admitted.
“Bad time of year to cross the mountains. Storms are coming,” Declan said.
Hale nodded, but he’d been thinking more of the time it would take, two hours plus each way in good weather. “Let’s see what Clark can pull off.”
Declan harrumphed and let it go. “How’s Kristina?” he asked, which was his roundabout way of really asking, “How’s Savannah?” which, distilled down, actually meant, “How’s the baby?”
“Savannah’s coming by today,” Hale said.
“Here? To the office?”
“She wants to reinterview us about Bancroft Bluff.”
“Ack. When in God’s name is she going to quit that job with the sheriff’s department?”
“As soon as she goes into labor.”
“Not before? I don’t like thinking about her chasing after criminal scum in her condition. It’s not right.”
“Well, today she’s chasing after us.” Hale smiled.
“What are you going to tell her?”
“What do you mean?”
“How many times do we have to rake up DeWitt’s incompetence? Our lawyers are handling the whole goddamn mess. We don’t need to be talking to the police.”
“They have a double murder to solve,” Hale reminded, seeking to deflect Declan from another diatribe about their onetime geological engineer.
“Well, it’s not our fault. Shoulda never gotten involved in that whole mess with Marcus. It’s a shame. A goddamn shame about what happened to him and Chandra. I’m not sayin’ different. But it’s not our fault, for God sakes. We built in good faith, and if DeWitt had had half a brain, we wouldn’t be in this shit storm!”
“She’s going to be here at two,” Hale said.
“Well, fine.” He turned toward the door. “I’ll be in my office.”
CHAPTER 7
Savannah picked up a chicken Caesar salad at the Drift In Market and ate it at one of the picnic tables crowned with red-and-white-checked plastic tablecloths and bunched into a corner by the west windows. She gazed through the panes, but her view of the Pacific was blocked by other buildings in the small town of Deception Bay, plus there were dense low clouds turning everything fuzzy and indistinct. She had headed north from Tillamook on her way to Seaside and had purposely stopped to eat, but her main reason for choosing the locale was that she wanted to go to the Deception Bay Historical Society and read A Short History of the Colony, by Herman Smythe. Lang had told her that the
powers that be at the historical society would not allow it to be checked out, but that it was only a few pages long and she could easily read it on-site.
