Lying in Wait by J. A. Jance Read Free Book Online

mental urging. That wasn't fair, not when the end of that poor mistreated child's life had made such long-lasting changes in mine. Surely her name was far too important a detail for me to have forgotten.
    I was still berating myself for my failed memory as we drove past those several fateful landmarks. The whole while, Sue Danielson was talking away a mile a minute, but I wasn't listening, wasn't paying attention. Encountering memories of Anne always stirs me with a terrible sense of loss--with an inconsolable aching for what might have been.
    I'm sure if I had caught a glimpse of my own face in the rearview mirror right about then, I would have seen reflected back my own J. P. Beaumont version of Alan Torvoldsen's thousand-yard stare. And maybe for many of the same reasons.
    "You say this is a hit-and-run?" I asked finally, as we turned right on Emerson once more and started to get serious about finding Perkins Lane. I figured it couldn't be that hard, since I knew it was right down on the edge of the bluff, near the water.

    "You haven't been listening to a word I've said, have you?" Sue Danielson chided.
    "No, I guess not."
    "I don't blame you," she said. "It was bad, all right. When I first saw him, I almost tossed my breakfast."
    It would have been impossible and pointless to attempt explaining to Sue Danielson why Gunter Gebhardt's charred remains had been the last thing on my mind as we traveled around Magnolia's winding streets. Far better to let her continue believing that I, too, was lost in thought, haunted by that day's murder rather than by one that had taken place years in the past.
    It was just after nineA.M . when we came down the steep, fallen-leaf-cluttered incline that marks the beginning of Perkins Lane. The Elgins' house--a three-story, ten-thousand-square-foot giant--couldn't be missed. Other houses on the street were clearly of Pacific Northwest origin. This one with its pale rose stucco walls and gray tile roof might have been an Italian villa that had shipped out to sea and come to rest on the wrong coast. It was so new that glass stickers still lingered on some of the upstairs windows.
    Although most traces of construction rubble had been removed, the scarred earth sat naked or else covered with bales of hay placed at key spots to prevent erosion. The bare rocky ground seemed to be waiting to see what hardy trees or shrubs could be tricked or trained into clinging to that steep hillside.
    Two black Mercedes, one from the mid-eighties and one newer, sat side by side in the driveway. Parked off to one side of the house was an old beater '76 Datsun station wagon that probably belonged to a housekeeper.
    "That's cute," Sue Danielson said, wrinkling her nose. "His-and-her Mercedes."
    "Don't be so sure about that," I said, once more unfolding my long legs out of the cramped confines of the Mustang. "For all you know, in this day and age, it could be his and his or even her and her."
    Walking up to the house, I paused long enough to look at the cars more closely. The older of the two, a 500 SEL, was missing glass from the right front headlight. The fender surrounding the light was bent and buckled, and the grill had a crack in it as well. In addition to that, the hood ornament was missing. From what I knew of European auto repair, Bonnie Elgin was probably looking at several thousand bucks' worth of bodywork to make her slick but disfigured Mercedes look like new again.
    Sue Danielson gaped openly at the imposing mountain of house. "I wouldn't want it," she announced with a disinterested shrug, and headed for the front door. "Too many bathrooms to clean."
    Better detachment than envy, I thought. As a working cop, Sue Danielson wasn't likely ever to end up living in circumstances anywhere near this kind of opulence.
    She gave the doorbell an angry shove, and a man opened the door almost as soon as the bell stopped chiming. He was around fifty years old--a fit specimen of upward mobility, dressed in an