Page 71 of Pro Bono

“About then, but we might need to set aside a few days, because these early meetings should look like they’re all just chance. I’ll call you.”

Rose drove to LAX, returned the car, and waited with May, whose flight to Phoenix left first. Then she caught her own flight to O’Hare.

The next time they happened to be in the club at the same time as Linda Warren was in early morning a week and a half later. They found her in the women’s gym, finishing a workout on an elliptical trainer. They greeted each other warmly but very briefly, and then she went to work exercising with kettle bells. Mary and Wendy were at first unsure aboutwhat to do next because they hadn’t dressed or prepared for this, but then Mary stepped up on a treadmill and brought it up to a trot. That left Wendy to go into the locker room to get a massage. Afterward she happened to step into the shower when Linda went in, and they greeted each other again. Linda seemed to have formed a routine—aerobics, hand weights. After a quick shower she put on a bathing suit and went outside to swim lengths in the big pool.

All three met again afterward in the shaded patio area outside of the dining room and had lunch together. Wendy and Mary were both expert at giving impressions rather than information. Linda had become comfortable forming friendly relationships through years of talking with people she met in each of the cities where she had lived. She was clearly a person who didn’t mind being alone, but she was also open to the right approach.

For the next few days Wendy and Mary showed up early at the club and performed variations on the ritual that Linda followed. This was not a strain for them. They had both made careers out of drawing the attention of men who were placed on the planet to be lured by women like them, and that had meant working to enhance and maintain their bodies with constant exercise and dieting.

After three more weeks, Mary and Wendy had become fixtures in Linda’s second life in Los Angeles. The three went to the beach together, hiked in Griffith Park and on some of the trails in the hills, went to dinner at good restaurants. Linda learned from the two women that they had both divorced men who had been forced by California law to split the family assets evenly. Both husbands had immediately married the women they had been cheating with, and had subsequently become richer than they’d been at the time of the divorces. Mary said she was glad, because she hadn’t wanted to feel sorry for that rat, and Wendy laughed and agreed. They were similarly philosophical and good-naturedabout nearly every topic. They had both married again, this time to men they considered improvements over the last ones.

Charlie Warren and Vesper Ellis were at Charlie’s place. They had been out to dinner, and he was picking up some fresh clothes for the week’s work and checking his mail on their way back to Vesper’s house. When he heard the burner phone in his right coat pocket buzz, he was startled. He looked at the display expecting to see a wrong number, but the name was “2.” He swept the green oval aside and said, “Hi.”

The voice was Copes’s. “Hi, Charlie. We’ve been keeping an eye on your mother. There’s only one thing, but we think it’s worth mentioning. She’s been going to a country club in the morning with a gym bag kind of thing that has a shoulder strap. She stays about three hours, from around nine, goes inside to work out, then goes outside for a swim, eats lunch, and then drives home.”

“Yep,” Charlie said. “She told me pretty much the same thing.”

“Did she tell you she’s got some new friends?”

“Just that she’s met a few people that she likes. Not much about who they are or anything. What’s up? Has she met a man or something?”

“Not that we know of. What we’ve seen is women. There are a lot of people you see once in a while, only a few you see every day. There are two women in particular who come together most days, and they walk around looking in the main building first, and then outdoors by the pool, on the patios, at the putting green, and so on. Every time they come, they seem to get together with your mother.”

“Is there something that I should worry about?”

“Not that I know of. We just wanted you to know we’re living up to our agreement and keeping our eyes open.”

“Thank you,” Warren said. “I appreciate it.”

“Just remember us on payday.”

29

May and Rose arrived at Peter’s lake house together in a Kia rental car that looked nothing like the Mercedes Rose had been driving in Los Angeles for a month and a half. The truck delivering the three kayaks was right behind them. The driver pulled it over to the side of the road far enough so that a skilled driver would have a hope of getting a normal automobile past it. He got out of the truck and opened the back doors, then pulled the first kayak out onto the hydraulic lift, then the other two, and lowered the lift to the ground. He used a two-wheel dolly to move the three to the side of the boathouse. He reloaded the dolly and handed Rose a clipboard with the order receipt uppermost of the papers. She took the pen, signed, and handed it back to him. He got into the truck and began to back it up toward the last wide area along the road so he could turn around.

Peter appeared at the door a minute later beside a younger woman wearing a creamsicle-orange tank top, tight white jeans, and short boots. She had both hands up behind her head sliding an elastic band over the ponytail she was using to confine her blond hair. She leaned close to Peter to kiss him, went down the steps, walked to the side of the house,lifted a helmet onto her head, started the motorcycle parked there, drove it slowly out onto the road, and off in the direction the truck had gone.

May got out of the Kia and went up to Peter. “Is it my imagination, or are they getting younger?”

“Probably just that I’m getting older.” He kissed her cheek. “Thanks to them I’ll have something to regret about dying.”

Rose said, “Whichever one is on duty that day will pull your gold fillings and sell your organs.”

“If she’s any of the current ones she’ll have earned them. You two must know by now that you’re not going to shame me out of being a man and liking the things that men like. Give up.”

“We will for now, but only because we need you for the Linda Warren thing. As your male-gaze-sharpened eyeballs must have told you already, we’ve brought the kayaks. We’re probably going to be set a week from tomorrow, but we’ll be in touch by phone up to the actual time. Can we put the kayaks inside the boathouse? They’re plastic, so it won’t hurt them to be out, but it would be best if nobody sees them.”

“Sure. Let’s do it now.”

“By ‘we’ I meant ‘you,’ May said. “We need to go into civilization and buy supplies, so they’ll already be here.”

“All right,” he said. “Remember to pay cash.”

“Yes, sir,” Mary said. “You need any supplies for yourself and your lady friends? Breath mints? Birth control? Coloring books?”

“No, thanks,” he said. “See you later.”

As Rose was driving the Kia back out toward the highway, she said, “Do you think he’ll come through if we need him?”

---