The fourth book in the Nina Reilly series, 1998

Our deepest thanks to:

Nancy Yost, for her continuing faith and tireless good cheer; Maggie Crawford, for helping us to focus this manuscript and cut to the chase; Patrick O’Shaughnessy, for his keen insights into male behavior; Carole Baron, for her formidable support and enthusiasm.

The Honorable Suzanne N. Kingsbury, Judge of the Superior Court, and the Honorable Jerald Lasarow, Judge of the Municipal Court, and their staffs at the El Dorado County Courthouse in South Lake Tahoe for their kind generosity and time.

Stephen J. Adler, author of The Jury-Disorder in the Court, published by Doubleday in 1994, for the real scoop on the American jury machine; Helen Henry Smith, author of Vikingsholm, Tahoe’s Hidden Castle, published in 1973, for her personal reminiscences of Emerald Bay’s fascinating past; Leonore M. Bravo, author of Rabbit Skin Blanket, published in 1991, for her unique perspective on this century’s Washoe Native Americans; Mark McLaughlin, author of Sierra Stories, published by Mic Mac Publishing in 1997, for his folktales of this magnificent region.

A belated thank-you to Pell Osborn for being our first serious critic.

And thanks to Brad Snedecor, for everything.

All errors and liberties of interpretation are our own.

At ten years old, over a breakfast of tepid oatmeal, I read my first newspaper article, a story designed to grab you, a squib on page two, where they put the sensational stuff. My aunt ripped it out and thrust it in my face. A guy on his way home from the movies fought with a mugger, shot him dead, and died of stab wounds.

All for sixty dollars.

So two fools died for sixty bucks, and two fools killed for it. Sad, wasn’t it? My aunt sure thought so. So did I. I knew one of the dead men.

There was a lesson in it for an impressionable ten-year-old, just like there is for you when you read the same story a couple of times a year. Look at that! you say. He’s dead, and for what?

Sixty dollars!

Why, that’s not even enough to buy a decent meal in a restaurant these days. Not enough to pay rent on a cardboard box. Not enough to die for!

That morning, while my aunt preached in the background, I read the story again and felt like someone in a tree house watching ants marching up the trunk. Young as I was, listening with half an ear to her interpretation, I realized the meaning of what had happened better than she did.

Now I understand it even better.

That mugger didn’t take time to question the wisdom of his actions. He was too busy trying to quiet the nerve-wracking din of his body needing things. Like Billie Holiday once said, “You’ve got to have something to eat and a little love in your life before you can hold still for any damn body’s sermon on how to behave.”

Sixty was enough for him. Enough to feed him and the family for a couple of days. Enough for a fix. Enough to get somebody else off his back. Enough to make any risk worth it. Enough to strike out at another miserable soul and take his precious life away.

Now that I’m an adult, I see the brief struggle between two ants for a crumb even more clearly. And, like you, I’m everlastingly surprised at the meanness of people’s aspirations. I wouldn’t risk my life for sixty dollars; I’ve been sophisticated by my culture. Plus, I have what I need.

Unfortunately, there’s a vast, arid wasteland between what I need and what I want. And I’ve discovered something else.

I have to have what I want.

Now, you’re thinking you’re above all that. Well, maybe so. But try something for me. Take a moment one dark night. Imagine yourself lying at the center of a mattress stuffed with big bills, how soft that would feel, how secure, how sensual, how gratifying… how pleasurable! How cosmopolitan to lie there on money touched by so many hands, that has fallen from the sky to feather your nest at last. All of a sudden, you’d be the luckiest person alive. No more kissing ass for you! Get your own licked for a change.

Sounds like fun, doesn’t it.

And indulge yourself in one more sick and twisted daydream. You can have all the money you ever wanted. You don’t have to steal it. No, the money is yours for the taking if you’ll do this one thing…

You’d grab the chance. Of course you would.

But you wouldn’t sell your soul cheap. You’d demand enough to quiet once and for all the silent roaring of your desires. Your number might not be the same as mine, but there is a number.

Admit it. You’d kill for it.

Just like me.

Better to ride in a limo than walk on a street these days. You never know who you’ll meet out there. Maybe someone like my father, holding a knife tight in his fist, needing your money. Maybe someone like me. Deadly as I have to be.

Life’s hard lessons. You want to be the one who walks away alive… and rich.

Rest in peace, Dad.

Nina Reilly opened the window in her office in the Starlake Building on Highway 50. Warm air smelling of toast and dry grass drifted in to mingle with the brittle cool of air-conditioning. Outside, every shade of rust and gold shimmered in a hot October wind that rustled papers on her desk. In the distance, brightly colored sails waved against the blue backdrop of Lake Tahoe. She could sense a shift in the weather. The sultry air held a tang in it, like the end of something sweet, lemons in sugary tea.

Leaning through the opening to catch a ray of sunshine, Nina watched as a man and a woman in spotless white athletic shoes, plaid shirts tied around their waists, dropped hands so that the woman could stoop and gather some carrot-colored leaves from the ground. She held her little pieces of autumn like a bouquet, dancing a quick step or two in front of the man on the sidewalk. The man continued walking, apparently unwilling to play the game. Giving up, she resumed her place beside him, dropping her leaves one by one as they went on, like Gretel casting off a trail of crumbs.

“Way to keep this place energy efficient,” Sandy said, standing in the doorway to Nina’s office, hands on her womanly hips. Today she wore a fringed blouse and a shiny silver concha belt that jingled like coins when she moved, khaki pants, and cowboy boots, which made her look like an over-the-hill rodeo rider. Sandy enjoyed dressing for the office but she would never look the part of a legal secretary.

Two years earlier, she had worked as a file clerk at Jeffrey Riesner’s law firm, a couple of miles west on Highway 50. In spite of Riesner’s dissatisfaction with her work, her character, her looks, and her air of superiority, Nina had hired her when she had begun her solo practice in South Lake Tahoe, one of her more astute moves.

Sandy knew everyone in town and had a titanic strength of purpose that co-opted or crushed everything in its path. A lawyer starting up a practice in a new place needed to get clued in fast, and Sandy had brought in the vital first clients, organized the office, and installed herself as Nina’s keeper. Nina knew law. Sandy knew business, everyone’s business.