Diamond in the Buff Read Free Page A

hair and dark eyes that were never still. “Attack of the killer eucalyptus, eh?”
    “Raksen,” I said, “regardless of what we may think of Diamond and his theory that branches drop by appointment, we have to play this by the book. If he gets it into his head that we’re not honoring his complaint he’ll be bitching to the Review Commission faster than a eucalyptus branch falls.”
    “Like that!” he said, snapping his fingers.
    I motioned toward the fallen limb. “Go on the assumption that someone managed to sabotage that branch. Check for copper nails, wires, whatever. Cut a cross section. Make a cast. Take photos of the branch end and the spot of the tree it broke from. And let Diamond see that you’re giving it the same treatment as you’d give the gun that shot Kennedy.”
    Raksen nodded impatiently. My entreaty had been unnecessary. Raksen was a perfectionist. He never took one photo when three were possible. When he finished dusting for prints, every surface in the room was covered in powder. No spot was so remote that Raksen would admit a “responsible’s” finger could not have been there. He once clinched a case by lifting the guilty UPS man’s prints from the inside of the oven door.
    “It’s the eucalypt at the far end of the deck,” I said. “The spot’s a good ten feet above the deck. Get it if you can, but don’t kill yourself doing it.”
    Raksen nodded, spun toward the deck and was almost through the hedge before I caught his arm. “And Raksen, ask Diamond for a shot of the injury site. His left flank.”
    Raksen nodded, and headed toward the branch.
    Pereira went to get Diamond. I paused in the shade of the nearest eucalypt just long enough to cool the sweat on my body. That was a mistake, as impulsively grabbed pleasures so often are. (Howard and I had discussed this very issue as we lay in the California King two mornings ago. But we didn’t come to the conclusion about mistakes for another hour, when we were within seconds of being late for Detectives’ Morning Meeting.)
    When I stepped onto Dr. Hasbrouck Diamond’s deck the sun felt all the hotter. There was no breeze. Even the sharp, clean smell from the eucalyptus trees beside the deck had lost its edge.
    Raksen stood at the far corner, eyeing the tree in question, the overturned chaise lounge and the thick branch beside it. Had the branch broken the railing and rolled off the deck, it could have fallen forty feet to the ground, careened down the hill, and crashed into the house below or anyone who happened to be in the yard. Diamond’s neighbor might not have engineered the time of the branch’s fall, but if she had weakened the tree, she’d endangered more than Has-Bitched, and this seriocomic feud of theirs was way out of hand.
    While Raksen contemplated the angles from which he would photograph, I examined the tree itself. There were no telltale scrapes on the trunk. Like the other four giant eucalypts, it was much too big for the narrow space between the deck and the house next door. A branch or two from each tree extended above the deck. I peered over the deck railing. The ground below dropped off sharply. My throat clutched with panic, a small clutch of panic, the residue of a battle with acrophobia. Ignoring that reaction, I stared at the wild shrubs and grass and golden California poppies and poison oak that grew around the bases of the eucalypts. All but the poison oak and the occasional poppy were brown now, victims of the drought year.
    But the oddest thing here was the gate in the deck railing, a gate that opened to a forty-foot drop! Swallowing against my tightening throat, I leaned over the railing and looked down. The deck was held up by metal poles anchored in cement bases. Crossbars reinforced them. And beneath me, beneath this odd gate was the rappelling wall Hasbrouck Diamond reputedly had built for his reluctant inamorata. It ran all the way to the ground. And a rope dangled in front of it. A big