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The mother shrieked.
The driver slammed on his brakes.
His car shuddered to a stop.
“For the love of God,” a woman at the next table said as the mother hurriedly pushed her child to safety.
“You should watch where you’re going!” she cried, clearly upset.
The driver just glared at her as if the situation was her fault.
Shaking her head, she pushed the stroller onto the sidewalk, then checked on her baby.
Grimacing, the jerk hit the gas again, his tires chirping and most of the customers went back to their conversations or electronic equipment. Ravinia stared hard at him and as he jumped out of the car, he caught her intent gaze. As he shouldered his way into the shop, she lowered her eyes and turned toward the coffee shop. A few steps behind him, she caught the door that was swinging closed, then slipped inside.
In loose shorts and a T-shirt with some surf shop logo on the front and back, he seemed to have already forgotten her as he surveyed the menu mounted high over the barista station. She hung back from him for a bit, surveying him and noticed the tip of his phone peeking from his pocket.
An idea began to form as she pretended interest in the refrigerator case of yogurt and water. As the other people in line were served, he jiggled his leg impatiently, then when it was his turn to order, he leaned forward and started talking intimately to the girl behind the counter.
It was her chance. As if jostled from the crowd behind, Ravinia bumped him slightly and deftly slipped his phone from his pocket. He threw her a dark look, but the girl serving him was cute and he was in the middle of some heavy flirting.
“Sorry,” Ravinia muttered, but he didn’t notice.
Strolling casually back outside, she immediately tried to access the phone. She hoped to high heaven he didn’t have an automatic lock on the thing, which, fortunately he didn’t. She knew enough to work the phone and had no trouble pulling up an Internet search for Kingston Investigations in Santa Monica. No luck. But there was an office in Los Angeles. That had to be the right guy. She memorized the address and phone number just as the dude with the sports car came bursting back outside.
Frantic, the drink he was carrying sloshing onto the pavement, he raced past her to his convertible and started searching the interior. “Son of a bitch,” he muttered in a panic as he set his drink on the hood and it fell over, the warm contents oozing over the car’s shiny finish. “Son of a goddamned bitch!”
Suppressing a smile, Ravinia nonchalantly walked over to him and held out the phone. For a moment, he ignored her as he was so angry about his drink and intent on searching his car.
“This what you’re looking for?” she asked.
He glanced over at her and his jaw dropped. “You goddamned thief!” He snagged his phone from her fingers.
“If I were a thief, I’d keep it. You’re lucky I didn’t call nine-one-one and report you, since you almost ran over that woman with the stroller.”
“She was standing in the middle of the fuckin’ parking lot!” he sputtered.
“You were driving too fast.”
“That doesn’t give you the right to steal my
phone, you little bitch. I should call nine-one-one on you!”
“Go right ahead,” Ravinia challenged. She was bluffing. She had no intention of sticking around and trying to explain herself to the authorities, but this asshole didn’t have to know that.
“Look what you made me do, you little freak.” He motioned to the mess of mocha-whatever glopped and running in sticky rivulets down the convertible’s once-shiny hood. “Just get the fuck out of my way.” Red-faced, veins throbbing in his neck, he seemed about to take a swing at her but at the last minute thought better of it. “You’re a bitch, you know that?” he declared, his gaze raking over her as if for the first time. “A fuckin’ goddamned hippie bitch!” Phone held in a death-grip, he shouldered past Ravinia and slammed back into the coffee shop, presumably for a fresh drink.
“Yeah, whatever,” Ravinia said as she rounded a corner and slipped off her backpack. After locating a pen and notepad she kept in the front pocket, she wrote down the address and phone number for Kingston Investigations before she forgot it. Then she hooked the strap of her backpack over her shoulder and went in search of one of Santa Monica’s Big Blue Buses.
Chapter 7
Get moving! A voice inside Elizabeth’s head urged her to quit staring at the ceiling and get out of bed. Make that a nagging, irritating voice.
She glanced out the window. Through half-closed blinds she saw the gray day beyond. She’d been up already and had gotten Chloe a banana, then climbed back into her bed, feeling chilled to the bone. She’d slept poorly and already her pulse was rocketing along at an increased pace. She’d thought, hoped, that after Court’s funeral she would start to feel normal again, but that hadn’t happened. Barbara’s admonition about pretending that she cared more kept rolling around Elizabeth’s mind. And she was worried about Detective Thronson, about what was going on in the investigation. Elizabeth had the impression that Thronson didn’t trust her and thought she might be lying or covering up something. She couldn’t help wonder if the detective thought she’d had something to do with Court’s death.
Frowning, she stared at the light fixture overhead. Had she? Was she responsible for the horrifying accident that took two lives?
She squeezed her eyes closed. No. No. Of course not. With an effort, she tamped back all those same memories that haunted her about Mazie and Officer Unfriendly. The more she thought about them the worse she felt.
