Bonner was sitting at a table under a big umbrella. He saw them and got up.

The phone was on a small desk across the room. He grabbed the directory, looked inside the cover for the emergency numbers, and dialed.

“What is it?” Paulette asked. “What happened?”

“There’s a woman in the house. Dead.”

“Oh, my God! Where?”

“Back bedroom. In the tub, drowned—”

“Sheriffs department. Orde,” a voice answered.

“Could I speak to Brubaker?”

“Just a minute.” There were a couple of clicks.

“Brubaker.”

“This is Eric Romstead,” he said. “I’m calling from Mrs. Carmody’s. I’ve just come from my father’s place, and there’s a dead woman in the bath—”

His arm was grabbed by a big paw, and he was whirled around. It was Bonner, his face savage. “How old is she? What did she look like?”

Romstead jerked his arm away. “I don’t know how old she is.” He got the instrument back to his ear to hear the chief deputy bark, “—the hell is going on there? Dead woman in whose bathroom—?”

“Captain Romstead’s. She broke in a window.”

“We’ll be there in five minutes. Stay out of the house!”

He dropped the phone back on the cradle. Bonner lashed out at him, “God damn you, what did she look like?”

“I don’t know,” Romstead said. “Except she had red hair.”

The big man wheeled and ran for the doorway. “Brubaker said to stay out,” Romstead called, but he was gone. The front door slammed. Before he and Paulette could reach the walk outside, there was a snarl from the Porsche’s engine and a shriek of rubber, and he was tearing down the drive. They got into Romstead’s car and ran down the hill onto the highway. By the time they’d turned in through the cattle guard the Porsche had already come to a stop, and Bonner was running in the front door. He stopped behind the other car, but they did not get out. When he looked around at her, there were tears in her eyes.

“Maybe it’s not,” he said.

“Yes,” she said. “She was one of the most beautiful girls I ever saw, and she had dark red hair.”

“Was she on drugs? There was a needle in there.”

“He was afraid she was.”

“Where did she live?”

“San Francisco.”

“She knew the old man?”

“Yes. How well, I don’t know, but she was with my husband and me on that sailboat when he picked us up at sea. Could you tell what happened to her? Did she fall in the tub and knock herself out, or what?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “But my guess would be an overdose.” He told her about the packet of heroin, or whatever it was, and the way the dresser had been ransacked.

“I don’t get it,” she said, baffled. “I just don’t believe it—”

She broke off then as Bonner emerged from the house and walked slowly toward his car. They got out, but there was no need to ask.

“I’m so sorry, Lew,” Paulette said.

He made no reply.