Read Online Sudden Exposure by Susan Dunlap - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Susan Dunlap
Tags: Suspense
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food.
A scone occupied me till we crossed the Carquinez Straits, the latte all the way past Vallejo, but after that the road rolled on undifferentiated like a giant cruller. Howard and I were on the far side of Sacramento when we figured out exactly how long it had been since we’d been out of the Bay Area together. Between tiling, shingling, spackling, and painting commitments and my overtime in Homicide (a little obsession of my own I decided not to bring up), we had become the stable homebodies of our neighborhood.
It wasn’t until we started up into the Sierra that I realized we never had gotten around to discussing either of the cases. With all the conflict and accusations between Bryn Wiley and Sam Johnson, I’d almost forgotten the Bare Buns Brigade. “Any word on the naked runner?”
“No.”
“We have an ID?”
“No.”
“Didn’t his friends ID him?”
“No.”
“Howard, why not? It’s not like the Bare Buns Brigade lures passing men off the street to a life of lewdity. They had to know the guy.”
“Right, but they knew him as Dingo. I suppose I could contact the Australian Feral Dog Society and see if any of their charges have hightailed it east.”
“The guy knew the terrain better than I did,” I insisted, a mite churlishly. Sugar deprivation does that.
“Could be a transient who cased the area.”
“A transient casing beat two? Naked? It’s not like he was planning to burgle, at least not and hide the loot.”
Howard shook his head and concentrated on the road, and the bittersweet pleasure of driving his new truck. He would not be taking it to Fresno; if it had been made of marzipan, I would have been pleased about that. The road was clear, but snow sugared the trees and bushes. I turned the heater up. If I had stayed home, I would have sat out in the yard, lapping up the warmth of that big caramel sun and reading the latest Oliver Sacks article in The New Yorker. In the Bay Area you sunbathe in March and drive to see snow. Even ghetto schools close for Ski Week.
Howard downshifted as the traffic slowed. “I questioned the two guys, them bitching the whole time about being cold, like the salmon-pink Hilton should have offered them terry-cloth robes instead of jail clothes. What I got out of them was that Dingo’d been in town a couple of weeks.”
“And he’d masterminded their routine?” I speculated.
“No, they’d done the dance before.”
“But the location, Howard, Dingo chose that, didn’t he?”
“They swore they didn’t.”
“You believed them?”
Howard hesitated. “Yeah. They’d given their performances before, on the Avenue, on Shattuck, outside the Ashby BART station, places where there are students and the like. But Rose Walk, for them it made no sense.”
I nodded. “It’s not like they’re an outreach program taking their art to nudity-deprived neighborhoods. But they did choose Rose Walk, or Dingo chose it.” I sighed. “I just can’t believe it has no connection to Sam Johnson or Bryn Wiley.”
Howard laughed. “Jill, you want to believe that.”
“Well …”
“Okay, here’s the question: If you could choose to discover Dingo was Sam Johnson’s spy, or that the hotel in Tahoe served broccoli that tasted like chocolate, which would you pick?”
“Low blow, Howard. And this from a man who’s missing the antique baseboard sale at Recycled Home.”
The vacation would have made Connie Pereira proud. We cross-country skied enough to develop aches in places I didn’t know I had muscles (and I guess I didn’t have them before ). We took in shows. Howard won a hundred thirty-six dollars at blackjack, and our only argument was whether maple syrup pushed pancakes into the junk food category. (I won twenty of Howard’s dollars when ten out of ten people agreed with me. Then to rub it in, I ordered the manhandler’s special, forgetting that I don’t like either pancakes or maple syrup.)
On Wednesday, our 10 A.M. to 8 P.M. day, I left
A scone occupied me till we crossed the Carquinez Straits, the latte all the way past Vallejo, but after that the road rolled on undifferentiated like a giant cruller. Howard and I were on the far side of Sacramento when we figured out exactly how long it had been since we’d been out of the Bay Area together. Between tiling, shingling, spackling, and painting commitments and my overtime in Homicide (a little obsession of my own I decided not to bring up), we had become the stable homebodies of our neighborhood.
It wasn’t until we started up into the Sierra that I realized we never had gotten around to discussing either of the cases. With all the conflict and accusations between Bryn Wiley and Sam Johnson, I’d almost forgotten the Bare Buns Brigade. “Any word on the naked runner?”
“No.”
“We have an ID?”
“No.”
“Didn’t his friends ID him?”
“No.”
“Howard, why not? It’s not like the Bare Buns Brigade lures passing men off the street to a life of lewdity. They had to know the guy.”
“Right, but they knew him as Dingo. I suppose I could contact the Australian Feral Dog Society and see if any of their charges have hightailed it east.”
“The guy knew the terrain better than I did,” I insisted, a mite churlishly. Sugar deprivation does that.
“Could be a transient who cased the area.”
“A transient casing beat two? Naked? It’s not like he was planning to burgle, at least not and hide the loot.”
Howard shook his head and concentrated on the road, and the bittersweet pleasure of driving his new truck. He would not be taking it to Fresno; if it had been made of marzipan, I would have been pleased about that. The road was clear, but snow sugared the trees and bushes. I turned the heater up. If I had stayed home, I would have sat out in the yard, lapping up the warmth of that big caramel sun and reading the latest Oliver Sacks article in The New Yorker. In the Bay Area you sunbathe in March and drive to see snow. Even ghetto schools close for Ski Week.
Howard downshifted as the traffic slowed. “I questioned the two guys, them bitching the whole time about being cold, like the salmon-pink Hilton should have offered them terry-cloth robes instead of jail clothes. What I got out of them was that Dingo’d been in town a couple of weeks.”
“And he’d masterminded their routine?” I speculated.
“No, they’d done the dance before.”
“But the location, Howard, Dingo chose that, didn’t he?”
“They swore they didn’t.”
“You believed them?”
Howard hesitated. “Yeah. They’d given their performances before, on the Avenue, on Shattuck, outside the Ashby BART station, places where there are students and the like. But Rose Walk, for them it made no sense.”
I nodded. “It’s not like they’re an outreach program taking their art to nudity-deprived neighborhoods. But they did choose Rose Walk, or Dingo chose it.” I sighed. “I just can’t believe it has no connection to Sam Johnson or Bryn Wiley.”
Howard laughed. “Jill, you want to believe that.”
“Well …”
“Okay, here’s the question: If you could choose to discover Dingo was Sam Johnson’s spy, or that the hotel in Tahoe served broccoli that tasted like chocolate, which would you pick?”
“Low blow, Howard. And this from a man who’s missing the antique baseboard sale at Recycled Home.”
The vacation would have made Connie Pereira proud. We cross-country skied enough to develop aches in places I didn’t know I had muscles (and I guess I didn’t have them before ). We took in shows. Howard won a hundred thirty-six dollars at blackjack, and our only argument was whether maple syrup pushed pancakes into the junk food category. (I won twenty of Howard’s dollars when ten out of ten people agreed with me. Then to rub it in, I ordered the manhandler’s special, forgetting that I don’t like either pancakes or maple syrup.)
On Wednesday, our 10 A.M. to 8 P.M. day, I left
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