Out at Night. Susan Smith Arnout

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      “Don’t even think about it.” He thumped his tail and Grace scratched his white chin. He had a narrow jaw, little teeth. He slopped out his tongue and kissed her. Grace bent down and scratched the place right in front of his tail and he raised his rump and wagged his tail.

      “I get called into this by some guy. Asks for me by name when he’s dying. So in the airport in Florida, between flights, I go to a business center and Google him. Turns out he stormed a lecture I was giving last month to forensic biologists on DNA and profiling. Storming a roomful of police nonsworns, can you believe it? Probably set some record for speedy arrest. Thaddeus Bartholomew.”

      A clatter of bottles. Grace looked up.

      “You okay?”

      Jeanne had knocked over the bottle of red ink and it spilled across her fingers. Grace caught a swift smell of vomit and wood sap, a sharp image of bloody hands bent over a prone body, chest open.

      Grace closed her eyes and waited it out.

      When she opened her eyes, she was back in the tattoo shop. Jeanne groped for a Kleenex to mop it up. She missed the box and tried again.

      “He’s a bad actor, Grace. Ted Bartholomew.”

      “I wondered if Frank knew him.”

      “We ran right into him, the day he died. Palm Springs isn’t that big.”

      The skin around Jeanne’s eyes was getting crepey, and the eye shadow she used clumped in tiny balls of violet that made her eyes look very blue.

      The teen in the chair stirred and Jeanne patted her calf heavily and stared out the front window. Grace had helped Jeanne paint the words rose tattoo in ornate red letters on that window years ago. Last year, Jeanne had added the words and removal, and Grace wondered how long it would take for the girl in the chair to come back for that part.

      “Frank’s been putting this ag convention together now for over a year. That creep Bartholomew—sorry to be disrespectful of the dead—has been on his ass for most of it. Calling him a killer for GM-ing crops. Frank,” Jeanne said wonderingly.

      Grace remembered Jeanne’s boyfriend as tall, with long, expressive fingers, smelling faintly of mulch, wearing brown boots and a laminated California state ag tag on a plaid shirt. Two geeks in a pod, Jeanne called herself with Frank.

      Jeanne had met him at a conference for genetically modified crops, an interest that had morphed naturally out of her retirement as a scientist, and dovetailed with her lavish gardening efforts. A recent blue rose crossbreed had earned her a blue ribbon at the Del Mar Fair.

      “I heard Bartholomew was killed in some field.”

      Jeanne’s mouth tightened. “Well, he was alive when we saw him in Gerry Maloof’s. Frank hasn’t bought a single new thing for himself in years, and I made him go with me to get some pants. He has to introduce the secretary of interior, for crying out loud. He’s so hard to fit, with his long inseam.”

      Grace didn’t want to hear about Frank’s long inseam, or any other part of Frank’s body, either. The small, homely beats of a relationship reminded her too much of Mac and what she might never have.

      “And that’s where you ran into Bartholomew.”

      Jeanne stippled in the red and the unicorn glowed. “It’s a fine, fine store. They were having a sale on these lovely linen pants.”

      “What was Bartholomew like?”

      “I’m not exactly an impartial witness here, Grace.”

      “Your impression.”

      Jeanne moved the needle, drew another line on the pale skin. “Fiery. Passionate. Threatening to sue.”

      “On what grounds?”

      “You need grounds?” The needle made a small metallic whirring sound. “No government oversight. Accidental gene transfer to new crops. Disastrous, life-threatening killer bad stuff we don’t even know about yet, and somewhere, a monarch butterfly is keeling over dead in the food chain. The usual. And if that doesn’t work, he vows to shut down the conference by force, if necessary.”

      “By force. He used those words.”

      Jeanne nodded. She swabbed the skin with a fresh pad and the sharp odor of astringent cut the air. She dropped the pad into the trash.

      “What was Frank’s reaction?”

      “Subdued. He’s maxed out, Grace. Has meetings from early in the morning until late at night. Probably knows your uncle better than you do.”

      “Then he needs to be careful.”

      Jeanne tightened her arms against her body, as if trying to warm herself. “Frank can only tell me a fraction of what’s going on, but everything he says, Grace, scares the hell out of me. You have no idea how many times a day bad guys threaten to maim or blow up or poison somebody.”

      “Uh. Yeah, actually, Jeanne, I do.”

      “I’m talking about Palm Springs, Grace. Crumbly, aging, jauntyfaced Palm Springs. Every time they slap a face-lift on that old girl, the plaster crumbles. She’s still got the moves, but it’s motor memory. She’s harmless. And an ag convention dealing with world hunger. That sounds safe, doesn’t it? Except lots of countries ban GM crops. Frank says he thinks the protests have tapped some big nerve.”

      “Mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore.”

      “Exactly. I loved that movie, too. Liked it less when I saw it in the middle of men’s sportswear waving its fist at my Frank. Oh, and get this. Then Bartholomew whips out this throwaway camera and takes a picture of me.”

      Grace shifted in her chair. The fan feathered cold air along her arms.

      “He did the same thing the day he crashed my lecture. Got right up in my face and snapped a shot.”

      Jeanne looked at her. The cracks along her mouth seemed to have deepened in the weeks since Katie’s kidnapping. “Why?”

      “I have no idea.”

      “What are you supposed to do there?”

      “You mean, today? It’s one thing to go to Palm Springs and tell a bunch of FBI agents the gist of my lecture. That’s my only intersect with the vic and maybe they can find something in there. It’s another getting dragged into the middle of a murder investigation, and that’s exactly what Uncle Pete’s doing. He booked a room for me. I’m there for the count.”

      “Except that’s not your only intersect with the vic.”

      Grace looked her.

      Jeanne glanced at Grace over her glasses and hunted through bottles, picked one up, held it to the light.

      “Bartholomew didn’t call out Frank’s name. Or mine, either. He asked for you.”

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