Wolf in the Shadows - Marcia Muller [46]
Well, one solution to the problem was obvious to me, but it would mean violating a cardinal rule: when there’s a possibility of danger, never involve, even to the smallest degree, family members or other people you care about.
Now I assessed the danger. I’d shaken RKI’s operatives, I was certain. There had been no one waiting outside my father’s house this morning, no one tailing me. I’d be taking a calculated risk, but the odds were on my side. Anyway, what could RKI really do? Torture my husky, six-foot-four, streetwise brother into revealing my whereabouts?
I looped onto the San Diego Freeway north, then caught 94 west toward Lemon Grove.
* * *
Visiting John’s neighborhood in Lemon Grove is like taking a trip back in time. The streets are without sidewalks and hilly, the lots irregular, the small dwellings highly diverse. People keep chickens, goats, ducks, and horses; packs of wild dogs roam free. Ethnically, the residents are as diverse as the architecture and, so far as I know, live in relative amicability. Even what my brother calls the “car collections” in some yards are overgrown with vines and wildflowers.
John’s house sat atop a knoll a few blocks over the line from San Diego’s Encanto district. Its driveway was unpaved and rutted, winding among yucca trees that grew in profusion on the downslope. The small stucco house had a red tile roof and a fresh coat of—appropriately—lemon-yellow paint; a bench—stolen from a downtown bus stop in one of John and Joey’s last thieving rampages—sat under a mulberry tree, and on it were two beer cans. I smiled, picturing my brother relaxing there as he surveyed his domain.
I pulled the Scout up next to a shiny new Mr. Paint truck and got out. Behind the house, by one of two oversized garages, stood numerous plastic paint buckets, apparently washed and set out to dry. The sun was just breaking through the cloud cover as I walked toward the house and heard music—sixties rock, the only thing John will listen to. A good sign that my brother was at home and probably in the mood for an early visitor.
As I stepped up to the front door, hand poised to knock, the music abruptly broke off; from a loudspeaker perched somewhere in the trees behind me, John’s voice said, “Sharon McCone, who told you you could steal my Scout?” Then the screen door flew open, and I was enveloped in a bear hug.
When he released me and I recovered my breath, I stepped back and looked him over. In appearance John and I are as different as can be: he has blond hair, and his features betray the Irish side of the family; I’m a genetic throwback to my great-grandmother, Mary McCone, a Shoshone woman who joined my great-grandfather Robert on his westward journey. But John and I have always been closer to each other than to any of our other siblings, and now I was pleased to see that he looked both healthy and—judging from his leather vest and cowboy shirt and new polished western boots—prosperous.
“Pretty snappy duds,” I commented. “What’s with the speaker?”
“Rowdy neighbors moved in downhill. When they get too loud, I turn the thing on and issue warnings with a heavy biblical flavor. Scares the shit out of them to think God’s paying such close attention.” He held the screen door open, and I ducked under his arm, smiling.
I hadn’t remembered the little living room as a claustrophobic’s worst nightmare, but that was how it seemed today. John’s office had expanded along the entire left-hand wall, and his sound system took up the one opposite. The couch was pushed dangerously close to a fireplace that angled alongside the glass door to the patio, and the rest of the floor was covered by stacks of cardboard cartons. John had only bought the house right before the Christmas holidays, but this was carrying on the post-move chaos far too long.
“What’s all this?” I nudged the closest box with my toes.
John glanced into it. “Ma’s dishes. You know, the ones with the