“Well, hello, Ray,” she said in a low voice. “What the heck are you doing here?”

A second woman stepped around the other side of the car to face me. Her face glowed red in the taillights.

“I sent for him, Gail.” She gave me a handsome smile. “Thanks so much for coming, Ray.”

Looking completely comfortable with the current situation, and with her striking looks, and with the small black pistol in her hand, was Vera Driscoll.

Chapter 50

50

At The End of The Island

I was dazed and dumbfounded. And wrong.

As she came forward to join Gail, I saw it wasn’t Vera at all, although it might have been her sister, and if Jack Donovan were offered a trade, I don’t know that he would have refused.

It was the late Martha Prentice.

Death had simply done wonders for her appearance. Her hair had been dyed a lustrous blond and was in a pompadour, the sides brushed back into a chignon; her makeup was expertly applied, her lips boldly emblazoned in a pout of Parisian scarlet. She wore a wool coachman’s coat with pointed velveteen lapels.

I had a dim notion of why she looked so much like Vera, but at the moment it was far down on the list of things I needed to know.

“Hello, Martha,” I said. “Who’s that dead person in the Oakland morgue with your teeth?”

“Sorry to bring you out on such a foggy night,” she said, ignoring my question. Her eyes flitted up to the sky. “It’s supposed to lift pretty soon.”

“Let him go,” implored Gail.

“Not yet. Soon.” She turned back to me. “Now I have a few questions for you, Ray, and I want you to know I’m pretty good at determining when someone’s lying, just the way people in your business can tell when someone is playing out of tune. Just be aware that if you lie to me, it will work against Gail’s best interests.”

“Can’t he just leave?” Gail asked. Martha answered by not replying.

In terms of appraising Gail’s collusion in whatever unpleasant thing was unfolding here (and I think it was safe to say that nothing really swell was happening), I took it as a bad sign that Gail herself was not flabbergasted that her mother had been resurrected—and with such gorgeous nails at that.

No matter. I’d try to get her out of this mess whether she wanted out or not.

Martha asked me, “Did you arrive alone?”

“Yes. Like Gail told me to in her phone message.” I looked over at Gail. “Except I don’t think the message at my hotel really was from you, was it, Gail?” I turned back to Martha. “I doubt she would have said she burned her music pages. She would have called it her score.”