CHAPTER 28

 .28.

The door smacked shut behind us, a sharp report that echoed through the salt-damped quiet of the sitting room. The house felt smaller now, the shadows stretching long fingernails across the tiles as the sun finally surrendered to the Pacific.

Birdie didn’t ask how the city was; she didn’t have to. She just looked at the way Jimmy’s charcoal suit was beginning to sag, and at the way I was leaning against the doorframe; two men whose bones had turned to lead.

“Supper’s a half-hour out,” she said, her Boston lilt cutting through the gloom. “Lamb stew and soda bread. You look like you haven’t seen a proper fork since yesterday.”

“Thank you, Birdie,” I said warmly. Our lunch at the Malibu Inn had been mostly liquid. The thought of having some homemade food, Grandma O’Neill’s style, in my stomach was a comforting prospect. I could smell the stew already.

Jimmy walked to the sideboard, his eyes fixed on the crystal decanter of whiskey. “I’m hosting a party here, Birdie. Tomorrow night.”

Birdie stopped mid-stride on her way to the kitchen. She didn’t gasp; she didn’t even blink. She just stood there, the Koa-wood stillness returning to her frame. “A party,” she repeated. It wasn’t a question.

“Mostly just the Colony crowd,” Jimmy continued, his voice tense. “Rosen and Stern are handling the guest list. I expect there will be about… twenty people. Maybe more.”

I watched Birdie’s face. To anyone else, she could have looked indifferent, a professional housekeeper accepting a new set of instructions. But I saw the slight tightening of her jaw and the way her skeptical eyes flicked toward the driveway as if the ghost-smell of Rosen’s Turkish cigarettes was still lingering there. She found them as nefarious as I did.

“I’ll need to go to the market in the morning then,” Birdie said, her voice clinical. “We’ll need ice. A lot of it. And I’ll have to lock the study. We don’t want the ‘Colony crowd’ spilling gin on your father’s books or poking around where they don’t belong.”

“Do what you have to do,” Jimmy said, pouring a three-finger measure of the amber liquid.

Birdie gave a sharp, singular nod and retreated back into the kitchen. The rhythmic thump-thump of her knife against a cutting board started soon after – a steady, martial beat that sounded a lot like a soldier training with a blade before battling a lost cause.

I looked at Jimmy, who was already halfway through his drink, and wondered about that study. To me, it was just the place where an old man had watched the tide through binoculars, but Birdie was drawing a line around it as if it were holy ground.

“She doesn’t like them,” I noted, moving toward one of the French windows. “Rosen and Stern, I mean.”

“Birdie doesn’t like anyone who isn’t real, Ray,” Jimmy replied, his free hand already reaching for the decanter. “And in this town, that doesn’t leave many people for her to talk to.” He raised the crystal bottle and asked, “Want some?”

I declined and gazed at the Pacific through the window. The water looked more like troubled ink by the minute now that the sun had almost vanished. And its muttered song was beginning to sound a lot like a bad omen. Or a threat.