“Sure,” Decker said. “And thank you for coming down and talking to me.”

“Well, thank you for lunch,” she said. “Only, I’m sorry you didn’t eat anything.”

Decker smiled. “I’m fine.”

“Your wife a good cook?” Annette asked.

“Very good.”

“Have a picture of her?”

Decker answered no, but he hesitated a fraction too long.

Annette said, “Yes, you do. I can tell you do. You just don’t want anyone to know you carry it, ’cause you don’t want to seem like the mushy type. Jeff’s the same way.”

“All right, I have one, then,” Decker said.

“Well, let me see it.”

“If you’re really interested.”

“’Course I am. Why else would I ask to see it?”

Groaning inwardly, he took out his wallet, knowing damn well what was going to happen. Reluctantly, he showed her a picture of Rina, and Annette’s eyes immediately clouded. She studied the snapshot for a long time.

“She’s very beautiful,” she said quietly.

“Thank you.”

“She looks young.”

“She is young.” Decker pocketed his wallet. “Not as young as she looks in the picture, but she’s still in her twenties.”

Annette wiped her mouth. “I think it’s time to be going. What about you?”

“I think that’s a great idea,” Decker answered. He stood and thought, Good old Rina—always the showstopper.

20

The house sat on the eight hundred block of Whittier Drive in Beverly Hills, a two-story Spanish villa set back on a quarter-acre of front lawn. Usually, the courtyard gate was locked, but that was no problem for Abel Atwater. He had the key. He stared at the edifice, at the verandas dripping with bougainvilleas, the arched sashes, the stained-glass windows that broke the sunlight into thousands of colored droplets. The house could double for an old Mexican mission.

He gripped his toolbox, took a handkerchief out of his front overalls pocket, and wiped his face. The house would be cool inside, even without air-conditioning. Just the way those Spanish homes were designed—full of textured plaster that resisted the heat, and lots of windows for cross circulation.

This particular house also stayed cool because it was shaded by a dozen blue-leaf eucalyptus and Chinese elms. Full-sized trees, the best part of the property: to him, more impressive than the two acres in the rear with its designer rock pool and ivy-covered tennis court. The back grounds, though magnificent, were manicured, cut down and shaped by man instead of nature. But those dozen trees in the front…untrimmed, untamed.