“Fine. I’ll meet with you. But don’t expect a hot pot of coffee waiting for you. This ain’t a social call.”

CHAPTER 8

THE NUMBERS WRITTEN on Decker’s notepaper matched a small stucco house in a development of modest homes. The street was wide—typical of most streets in Simi Valley—and ended in a cul-de-sac. If lawns were classified like eye color, the patches would have been designated as hazel, a mixture of green grass with russet, sun-bleached weeds. The sidewalk trees were stalks with bushy, untrimmed canopies, resembling adolescent boys with a ’fro. Mixed flowers offered some color, as did the blue sky, but most of the surrounding rocky terrain was brown and dusty.

Both of Decker’s stepsons and his younger daughter had taken their driver’s license examinations in Simi. It was a good place to learn because the roadways were broad and there were assigned left-hand turn lanes complete with arrows. With Hannah now driving, Decker was left to ponder how fast his life had come at him. He felt active and vigorous, but that didn’t change the years. Was retirement a theoretical concept or an inevitable reality of the near future?

After parking the car, he checked his watch. At precisely nine o’clock, he got out of the cruiser and ambled up the walkway, climbing two steps to reach the door. He gave the wood a firm knock, the type of rap that told a cop that another cop had arrived and there was serious talking to be done.

When no one answered right away. Decker was peeved. He rang the bell and waited, feeling uneasy when silence answered him back.

He glanced over his shoulder, as if he expected Cal to materialize; then he looked upward at the cloudless cerulean ether. No Cal in the sky, either, just the fluttering of black ravens along with harsh cawing. The late spring morning was still cool enough to be comfortable, but the warmth from the sun was attracting bugs—bees, gnats, flies, and the ever pesky mosquitoes.

He knocked again, tried the door handle, which, not surprisingly, was locked.

His watch now read 9:10.

Vitton’s driveway was empty.

Who the hell did he think he was, avoiding the police? Cal must have been an idiot to think that an amateurish dodge would discourage Decker. With an angry scrawl, he wrote on the back of his business card that he’d be in touch! He dotted the exclamation point angrily and was two steps away from his car when something tickled his brain.

The house had a one-car garage sealed with a plank door that contained a glass inset. Decker turned around, walked up the empty driveway, and peeked through the window. Inside sat an old black pickup next to a workbench area.

Would a guy like Vitton own two vehicles?