Free Move to Strike by Perri O'Shaughnessy Page B

contact, and a sometimes-more.
    Not home. She would still be at work. He left a message.
    Then he called some clients to let them know he was back in town. Dennis Garcia was tied up in a meeting; Mike Tons gave him about twelve seconds of his time, sounding brusque and bothered; and Ezra Friedman, good old Ez who always had something good going for Paul, had his secretary say to call back some other time. These guys represented accounts he’d had for years. He considered Ez an old friend and couldn’t help feeling deflated when he couldn’t even manage a minute to touch base.
    Nothing felt quite right lately. Since he had come back from Washington, he would be sitting in his car and suddenly feel the air grow quiet and still, as if time was suspended and the long parade of minutes left in his life had come to an abrupt halt. Before he thought to take another sip, the coffee in his cup would be cold.
    Here he was living his own individual version of the American dream, a fit, single male, still young enough to catch the eye of a pretty girl, footloose, free to drink too much beer when he wanted, stay up all night listening to the Grateful Dead, and do sit-ups out on the deck naked as a jaybird. He ought to be flying high. Instead, he felt bothered.
    Back out on the deck, regrouping, binoculars up, he watched a red-tailed hawk coasting on the wind out on the ridge. It drifted in place for a long time, like him, slightly stalled at the moment. He had arrived back at square one. Or, correction, back at minus square one, because the business obviously needed some damage control. For now, he would console himself with another beer.
    The phone rang. He took the time to pour his beer into a glass this time and take a long sip before he sat down on the couch and answered it.
    “Hi, Paul.”
    “Hello, Nina. How’d you know I was here in Carmel?”
    “Called Washington. The senator’s office told me you had come back. I figure you’ve had just enough time to take your shoes off and pop one.”
    “You know me too well.” He propped his feet on the couch. “What’s up?”
    “No ‘how are you?’ No banter? Are you okay?”
    “Still a little jet-lagged. So. How are you getting along?” Seven months had passed since her husband’s death. He had called her office now and then, hearing each time that her preoccupations didn’t include him. She was grieving too hard to think about anybody else. He had let her alone.
    And he had worked on letting her go in his own heart.
    “I’ve been slaving away. Hmm. What else? Well, it’s spring. I can sunbathe out in the backyard even though Tallac is still covered with snow. Bob’s got a yen to join a band. Matt and Andrea and their kids are growing older and wilder, every one of ’em. It’s been a long time since we talked, Paul.”
    “There didn’t seem much point in it.”
    “Whoa,” Nina said.
    “Sorry. Didn’t mean to be so blunt.”
    “We’re still friends, aren’t we?”
    “Sure. Friends forever. So what’s up?”
    “I’m calling about a case. It’s a murder.”
    “I figured.”
    “I need a top investigator, Paul. The client is a girl, only sixteen. The transfer hearing is coming up in nine days, and they want to charge her as an adult. I’m going over to Henry McFarland’s office to try to talk him out of it this afternoon. Meantime, she’s in custody, and it’s a real strain on her and her mother.
    “The victim was her uncle, a plastic surgeon at Tahoe who was slashed with an antique sword from his collection. They’ve placed her at his home about the time of the murder. But that’s only half of it. There’s something extraordinary about this case, and that’s where you come in, I hope.”
    “Yeah? What’s extraordinary?”
    “Her cousin was killed in a small-plane crash in Nevada at the same time, Paul. I mean the very same moment, practically. A college student named Chris Sykes. The victim’s son.”
    “So? What does the NTSB