I WATCH DAVID AND TAMARA PEEL AWAY DOWN THE driveway with a rooster tail of flying gravel. Have I fallen down the rabbit hole? It occurs to me that I didn't tell her not to mention the fact that I'm a vampire to David. Or to warn her what will happen if she's entertaining thoughts of delivering David to Sandra to use as leverage against me. But I remember the stupid way she looked; her brain was vapor locked by giddiness. What are the odds my name will even come up?

Any skepticism I had that Tamara and Sandra cooked up this visit today to trap me into another meeting vanished with the look of pure delight on Tamara's face when David wrapped his arms around her waist. I wonder how she's going to explain her distraction to Sandra? Or is Sandra a football fan, too?

Christ.

I walk around back to the carport and climb into David's Hummer. After my Jag, driving it is like wrestling alligators. It does better on the open road, though, and I head right for the O'Sullivan house.

The O'Sullivans live in Fairbanks Ranch, a wealthy enclave in northern San Diego County. It's two fifteen when I pull up a block away from the O'Sullivan compound. Fairbanks Ranch is not a gated community. It doesn't have to be. Each residence has a gate and fence all its own.

I'm debating whether to walk from here or drive up to the house. I have a better chance of getting in and out without notice if I walk. On the other hand, the streets of Fairbanks Ranch are wide and tree lined and patrolled regularly by a security company. If I leave the Hummer here, will it attract notice?

The answer comes immediately. A sedan marked "Fisher Home Security" has passed by twice in the five minutes since I arrived. The second time, the car pulls to a stop behind the Hummer and the driver's door opens.

I watch in the rearview mirror as the uniformed guard approaches. He's middle-aged, gray, balding, with a slight paunch. His bearing suggests a military background, erect, stern. He has one hand on his belt, resting on the handle of a long flashlight, the mannerism of one who was used to carrying a gun. The military was most likely followed by a stint as a cop.

I roll down my window and wait.

The guy touches two fingers to his forehead in a greeting. "Afternoon, ma'am. Are you here to visit a resident?"

Behind his dark sunglasses, the eyes are cautious. I guess they have to be when you're responsible for the security in a neighborhood where the median price of a house is three million dollars.

I put on a bright smile. "Yes, sir. I'm visiting my aunt. I've had a bit of car trouble. I called my boyfriend, and he's sending a tow truck. It shouldn't be too long."

He casts an eye toward the hood of the Hummer. "Want me to take a look for you?"

"No, thanks. It's not necessary. This has happened before. I'm going to walk on over to my aunt's and wait there for the truck."

"I'd be happy to drive you," he says. "Want to give me the address?"

"Actually, it's right around the corner and I don't mind walking. It's so beautiful here."

He is studying me, no doubt wondering if I look like an ax murderer or a burglar or, even worse, a vagrant. Evidently, I pass inspection because I get the two-finger salute again and he leaves me with a curt "Have a nice day, miss."

He returns to the car, and I notice he takes the time to write down the Hummer's license plate. I notice because he wants me to. In fact, he makes an obvious show of it before getting into the car, a not-so-subtle message that I shouldn't try anything because he has my number. The fact that I'm driving a seventy-thousand-dollar automobile does not make me above suspicion here at Fairbanks Ranch.

I half expect him to shadow me when I get out of the car, which would pose a problem. He watches me lock the Hummer, and I feel those eyes follow as I walk up the sidewalk. In a second, though, he starts the car and pulls around me, sending me another of those quasi-salutes.

I trot up to the O'Sullivan gate. There's a camera, but it's focused on the gate, not the keypad, and it doesn't swing toward me when I punch in the code. Jason's doing? If he thought to disable the camera, too, he's one smart kid.

The gate swings open and I sprint inside, keeping to the bushes that line the drive. I don't know how many security cameras they have on the property and I doubt Jason does, either. The one on the gate is obvious.

From the road, you can't see the house, but I know what to expect and I'm not disappointed. The O'Sullivans live in a big, square Tudor set in the middle of an acre of manicured lawn. From the outside, the house appears to have a hundred rooms. The paving stone driveway circles the house. Jason said his dad's study was in the back. I head in that direction.

The ground level of the house has about two dozen sets of French doors. I have to peek into each room before I find the one that matches the pictures of the crime scene. I wish I had gloves. Unfortunately, I didn't expect to be driving the Hummer. I expected to be driving my Jag, which is where the gloves are. So I do the next best thing. I pull the hem of my T-shirt free and cover my fingers with the cloth to try the door.

It opens.

I step inside, close the door and wait to see if I'm greeted by the shriek of alarms.

Nothing. So far, so good.

The den looks exactly like it did in the pictures-except O'Sullivan's body is no longer sprawled on the desk. The forensic team evidently released it as a crime scene because there is no yellow tape and the room has been cleaned. It appears the desk blotter has been removed, and there is a piece of carpet cut out from the area where O'Sullivan's chair rested. The chair is gone as well. There's a box of Kleenex on a sideboard. I pull one out. Since I doubt I'll find anything of interest here, I move out of the room, using the tissue on the doorknob, and try to locate Mrs. O'Sullivan's office.

Jason said it was upstairs. The first challenge is to find the stairs. The den opens into a gallery almost as wide as my living room. It's paneled in dark mahogany, lined with portraits. The combination of dark paneling and a collection of intricately framed gloomy portraits of stuffy-looking gentlemen in early eighteenth-century garb sucks the air right out of the room.

I hurry through and try the door at the other end. Success. This door leads to the entry hall. There are rooms on each side and in the middle, a double curved staircase right out of Gone With the Wind. I ignore the flanking rooms and run up the stairs.

I should have asked Jason to draw me a map or at least tell me which of the twenty closed doors I'm looking at is his stepmother's office. Since I didn't, and I've never met her, I can't rely on my sense of smell to ferret her out. At the head of the stairs, though, I pick up a flowery citrus scent. Feminine and subtle. Expensive. I follow it to the third room on the left.

This is definitely a woman's room. Rose-colored wallpaper, blond French Provincial furniture. Bedroom furniture. Mr. and Mrs. O'Sullivan must have had separate bedrooms. My hunch is confirmed when I open the connecting door to my left. This is a man's bedroom, heavy, dark furniture, hunting scenes on the walls, the scent of musk.

I close the door. There's a deadbolt on Mrs. O'Sullivan's side.

Interesting.

On the opposite side of the room is another door. This leads through a massive walk-in closet. Must be a thousand pairs of shoes. At the far end, is one more door. I try the handle.

It's locked.

Shit. I wasn't expecting that. I could easily break down the door, but that wouldn't be very subtle, now would it?

I kneel down to examine the lock. It's a simple key and tumbler. No deadbolt. In my day job, David and I have jimmied this type of lock a million times. The only problem is I left my purse in the Jag back in town and in it, my set of picklocks. Maybe I can do it the way they do in movies-use a knife from the kitchen or a nail file from Mrs. O'Sullivan's bathroom.

I go in search. First, the bathroom since I'm here. Either she never does her own nails, or she carries her only nail file with her because a cursory search of her bathroom vanity finds nothing. I'm not about to turn her drawers inside out. I run back down the steps to the kitchen.

It takes me a while to find it. I've never understood why anyone would want to live in a house so big that it takes a map to navigate the maze of rooms. It's getting close to three o'clock, and I want to get out of here as soon as I can. After several false starts through living rooms and dining rooms and media rooms and rooms whose purpose I can't fathom, I finally find the kitchen.

A kitchen about fifty yards long with a hundred places to hide the knives.

Shit again. I start pulling open drawers. The tissue is about in shreds and the idea of kicking down the door is looking better and better when I find a silverware drawer with something that looks like it could work. It's a thin-bladed butter knife. I grab it and run.

Picking the lock is not as easy with a knife as it looks on television. It takes several attempts at wedging the blade between the doorjamb and the lock before I get the feel of what I need to do. Even then, the knife blade slips, leaving thin scratches on the woodwork. Finally, I feel the lock give and the handle turns at my touch. Unfortunately, the blade of the knife breaks at the same time and I'm left with pieces that I stuff in my jacket to discard later. Hope Mrs. O'Sullivan doesn't count the silverware.

It's three fifteen.

Mrs. O'Sullivan's office is not what I expect. Compared to the carefully appointed and immaculately clean rooms in the rest of the house, this room is furnished in early American yard sale and cluttered with dusty piles of old magazines, newspapers, scrapbooks, photo albums-the detritus of her thirty some years of life before she became Mrs. Rory O'Sullivan. There are framed pictures of beauty pageants, glittery rhinestone tiaras, ribbons marking her progression from Miss El Cajon to Miss San Diego to Miss California, and culminating in the title of runner-up to Miss America. They stop there. Photos show her with Mr. O'Sullivan, one of the celebrity judges for that pageant. Her life as a beauty queen ended with a runner-up sash and the biggest prize of all.

I maneuver my way through the stuff to a desk thrust against the wall. It's as piled with junk as the rest of the room. There's nothing of obvious interest on top and everything is so dust laden, I wonder if she ever comes in here.

I try the drawers. The middle holds nothing but pencils, pens, paper clips, broken rubber bands.

The right-hand drawer is a file drawer. From the dates on file tabs, nothing has been added to categories such as "Bills Paid," "Recipes" and "Misc" since 2003, the year she met O'Sullivan. No tab marked "PI Investigating My Cheating Husband." Too bad. It would have made my life so much easier.

The left side of the desk holds two drawers. The first is empty.

The second is empty, too.

Except for one item.

A gun.

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