Pious Deception (34 page)

“That’s pretty blue-collar decadence.” Chase laughed. “Well, bon appétit.”

Kiernan hesitated then replaced the receiver.

The smell of broiling fish floated through the door. Ezra cocked his head expectantly. Below, a huge wave arched and crashed, sending three body-surfers speeding toward the rocky shore. Kiernan watched them hold form till they were within seconds of being smashed into the rocks, then twist back under the surf. Last week when Chase had said she was not unlike Austin Vanderhooven she hadn’t asked him why. The question had gnawed at her all week. Vanderhooven had died in the rising wave of his obsession. And she’d been lucky enough to see her obsession peak and crash like the waves. Like the surfers, she could duck under and float back out.

The phone rang. Irritably, Ezra barked, yawned, and returned his head to its perch. “Kerry. It’s Stu. How’re you doing out there?”

“As well as can be expected for someone who is virtually buried under wolfhound. How about you?”

“It seems kind of dull here in Phoenix without you stirring things up. You know you left enough ruffled feathers to fill a heap of pillows.”

“Who are those feathers attached to?”

“For starters you’ve got the Vanderhoovens fussing because they can’t bury the body until the coroner’s inquest comes up with a real death certificate. The one Necri signed is gone—not that it would have been legal anyway. Necri seems to be gone too. Can’t say I’m surprised.”

Kiernan could picture Stu, settled much like herself on the porch of the house she’d imagined for him. His boots would be on the railing, a beer in one hand, an empty Ben’s Burger bag beside him. “What about Sylvia Necri?”

“Well, no doubt about it, Sylvia’s in a heap of trouble. Once the sheriff heard about her giving Bud Warren access to the retreat’s water rights, he didn’t take long to ask ‘in return for what?’ ”

“For updates on the status of Rattlesnake and McKinley’s will? Information that Bud Warren got from Beth Landau, who got it from Vanderhooven, right?”

“Right. I don’t know what-all the D.A. could have done with that, but what he is doing is using it as leverage. So between that leverage and the forgery charge, Sylvia’s talking a mile a minute. On the other hand, Bishop Dowd isn’t talking at all. Under psychiatric care is the official word. And what I hear is that Dowd is showing no improvement. Considering all the charges the D.A. could bring against him, that could be a right smart move on his part. Only thing he did let slip was that there are Sheltons in L.A. and Florida.”

“How’d that sit with the archdiocese. I can’t imagine the Sheltons would get much from the McKinleys, but from the Church …?”

“Make one helluva lawsuit. But it’ll never go to trial. Bishop Harrington is making it his business to find the Sheltons and take care of them. Harrington’s an ethical man; he wants to do the right thing by them. He’ll get a lot of support on that. The Catholic community here is really getting behind it. The Sheltons won’t be wanting for much.”

“So, Stu, are you taking it easy now?”

“Easy! Kerry, I’ll be running my bow legs into the ground for the next month paying off all the favors I begged for you. You’re going to have to hire me to help you out on a case out there just so I can get away. You know, I’ve got connections all over.”

Kiernan smiled. “I’ll bet you do, Stu. But for now, you stay put. I’ve got some Jersey bluefish on the way to you, and if Federal Express has to leave them on your stoop, you’re going to be real sorry.”

“One minute to dinner!” Brad Tchernak called from the kitchen doorway.

“I heard that, Kerry, and I know better than to stand between you and your fodder.” The phone clicked dead.

“You ready?” Tchernak stepped around the doorway. His sun-bleached hair stood out in all directions after their swim in the inlet. On his deeply tanned chest the thatch of hair was nearly blond now. One of those grins that transformed his face slowly took hold. “Kiernan, you know it’s great to have you back.” His smile widened; he dropped into a three-point stance, grunted menacingly, charged across the room to the deck and scooped her up. Ezra barked and resettled himself.

Nuzzling her neck, Tchernak said, “Lineman’s greeting.”

“That’s how you handled the defensive line, huh?”

“Well, on the field we got penalized ten yards for holding. And we didn’t end with a kiss.”

“Ten yards? A small price to pay.” She grinned, reached a hand around his back and palpated his gluteus maximus.

Susan Dunlap (b. 1943) is the author of more than twenty mystery novels and a founding member of Sisters in Crime, an organization that promotes women in the field of crime writing.

Born in New York City, Dunlap entered Bucknell University as a math major, but quickly switched to English. After earning a master’s degree in education from the University of North Carolina, she taught junior high before becoming a social worker. Her jobs took her all over the country, from Baltimore to New York and finally to Northern California, where many of her novels take place.

One night, while reading an Agatha Christie novel, Dunlap told her husband that she thought she could write mysteries. When he asked her to prove it, she accepted the challenge. Dunlap wrote in her spare time, completing six manuscripts before selling her first book,
Karma
(1981), which began a ten-book series about brash Berkeley cop Jill Smith.

After selling her second novel, Dunlap quit her job to write fulltime. While penning the Jill Smith mysteries, she also wrote three novels about utility-meter-reading amateur sleuth Vejay Haskell. In 1989, she published
Pious Deception
, the first in a series starring former medical examiner Kiernan O’Shaughnessy. To research the O’Shaughnessy and Smith series, Dunlap rode along with police officers, attended autopsies, and spent ten weeks studying the daily operations of the Berkeley Police Department.

Dunlap concluded the Smith series with
Cop Out
(1997). In 2006 she published
A Single Eye
, her first mystery featuring Darcy Lott, a Zen Buddhist stuntwoman. Her most recent novel is
No Footprints
(2012), the fifth in the Darcy Lott series.

In addition to writing, Dunlap has taught yoga and worked for a private investigator on death penalty defense cases and as a paralegal. In 1986, she helped found Sisters in Crime, an organization that supports women in the field of mystery writing. She lives and writes near San Francisco.