Page 50 of The Best Trick

“She’s unhappy with him, he’s unhappy with her, or she’s helping him,” Zeus said.

“Yeah, maybe this was their plan all along,” I mused. “Like they hatched the plan to grab Doris before Wilson went into witness protection, and they feel sure they can get that ledger, rendering Wilson no threat to Don Pedro.”

Thor nodded. “A little Bonnie and Clyde action.”

“She could be the clever and daring mastermind,” I said. “She could be the one who encouraged him to go criminal, and when he got caught, she was like, ‘I’ll fix this, baby!’”

Odin grinned.

“What?” I shrugged. “I’d do it for you guys in a second.”

Odin’s grin softened. “I know you would. It makes me happy, that’s all.”

NINE

Before he had been taken in, Wilson and his wife, Clarice, lived in a cute little bungalow just inland from Venice Beach. Clarice didn't answer the door when we knocked, but her car was in the drive.

Zeus pounded harder. “Federal agents!”

This got an open.

Clarice was an attractive, petite woman in her fifties with a platinum pixie hairdo and healthy-looking freckled skin. The way she was dressed, she looked like she was ready for a jog. She even had a visor on.

“You're not the feds,” she said.

“We’re working with the feds,” Zeus said.

“Well, that doesn't give you a right to say that you're the feds, does it?” she said.

“We're acting as an extension of the feds, so I think it does give us that right,” Thor said. “Do you need us to come back with the agents we’re coordinating with? Or are you going to talk to us now?”

She sighed. “I'm out of here in twenty.” With that, she led us into her home. “You’re wasting your time, though, because I don't know anything. I’ve been through this over and over. Wilson kept me completely in the dark.”

“This shouldn’t take long,” Thor told her.

There were a lot of salmon-colored furnishings, beachy pastel pictures, and photos of buildings in Rome. In the corner, leaning against the wall, were pictures of Wilson and Clarice as a couple plus some very masculine shit—pictures of MMA fighters and bullfighters. I was guessing she had taken down all of Wilson’s favorite stuff.

“What do you want to know?” she asked.

“Did you have any idea he was appraising things in a less than accurate way?” Odin asked.

“How would I?” she said. “How would I know that kind of thing?”

“Well, you worked at the shop together,” Odin put in.

“And like I told the others, he was the one who knew about the instruments; I did the bookkeeping and clerked. I came out of a shopkeeping background, not a fine-instruments background. If Wilson said an instrument was worth a hundred thousand bucks, how was I to know it was worth more like a hundred? Those fine instruments, when they've gotten old enough, an expensive one doesn’t look all that different from a piece of crap. You put a little polish on something and restring it…” She shrugged.

“When was the first time you noticed something wrong?” Odin asked.

She looked away, seeming to compose her thoughts. “He started acting nervous and upset several months ago. He said he had a stomachache, but if he did, it was obviouslybecausehe was nervous and upset, not the other way around. Because he was completelylyingto me. He would stay out at night a lot…”

“Doing…”

“Doing what? Is that what you want to know?” She shrugged again. “That’s what I keep asking myself.”

I looked at Odin, biting back a smile, becausethat’s what I keep asking myselfwas one of his top annoying answers.Why would you keep asking yourself the same question over and over? Either you know or you don’t,he always said.

“You chose not to go into witness protection with him,” Odin said. “Usually spouses go in together.” He didn't ask it as a question, but it was a question.

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