Gaby nodded. “Did you really break through that window by yourself? I’m just, like . . . wow.”
Lana smiled.
“Victor feels terrible about what happened. I’m sure he’d love to see you, but he’s out all day at meetings—”
“I know. He’s been leaving me messages. But I actually came here to talk with you.”
The girl looked confused. “Did you want to make an insurance claim? We found your wig, but it wasn’t—”
“It’s not about the fire.”
“Oh.”
“It’s about Ricardo Cruz.”
“Oh?” Gaby was starting to resemble a very pretty parrot.
“I’m wondering if you can check something for me. Do you know when Ricardo was last here at the office?”
Gaby’s eyes went wide. “I’m really not sure I can—”
Lana put her hand on the young woman’s forearm. “Please. Victor told me about it when we met, but in all the hubbub, I misplaced my notes. Can you . . . ?”
Gaby pulled her phone out of the embroidered back pocket of her jeans. Her French tips scrolled down the glass surface, her nose scrunched up as she scanned the office calendar for the past month. When she found what she was looking for, Gaby did a tiny hop in place.
“Wednesday, February first,” the girl said. “Ricardo was scheduled to go monitor one of our properties that day. But first we had a staff training about condor breeding on Fremont Peak.” She gave Lana a tiny grin. “I remember. We had vegan doughnuts.”
“And then he went to monitor a property? What does that entail?”
“When someone donates development rights, we have to check on the land from time to time. We don’t own it, but we’re responsible for making sure no one’s running a business or dumping there. Most properties, we do it once a quarter.”
“Could it have been the slough property Ricardo was monitoring that Wednesday?”
“Could be. I don’t know.”
“And then he didn’t come in Thursday or Friday?”
Gaby’s confident voice began to wobble. “That’s right.”
“Was that unusual?”
The girl looked pained, as if she had suddenly discovered a pebble in her bra.
“Ricardo often didn’t come in on Thursdays until late in the day.”
Lana nodded encouragingly. “Do you know why?”
“I think he might have had someone . . . special in his life.” The girl looked embarrassed. “Ricardo lived north of here, in Santa Cruz proper. But some Wednesdays, he’d leave the office going south. And the following Thursdays, he’d come in late, from the south too. I think he was staying over somewhere.”
“You watched his car?”
Gaby surprised Lana with a giggle, a tinkling glockenspiel of amusement. “Ricardo didn’t drive a car. He was against it.”
Lana was confused. “Did he use rideshares?”
“He biked. All the time.”
“Even to meetings?”
“Everywhere.”
“So even if he was meeting with a big donor . . .”
“He’d bike. He had two panniers—bike bags—that were strapped behind the seat. He used one for his laptop, and he carried a change of clothes in the other.” Gaby smiled at the appalled look on Lana’s face. “Some of our donors? They thought it was cute. Like he was really committed. And he was. To his bike.”
“He took good care of it, huh?”
“Have you ever known a guy who loved his truck? Always shining the chrome and rotating the tires and calling it baby?”
Lana gave Gaby a wan smile, along with a silent thanks to God that she had never been intimate with such a man.
“Ricardo was like that with his bike. He even had a drawing of it tattooed on his butt.” Gaby blushed. “I mean, that’s what I heard.”
“Sounds like quite an athlete.”
“Oh yeah. A health nut too. He refused to get a smartphone, said it rotted your brain. And he never took a sick day. Ever.”
Lana closed her eyes for a moment. She should have known it wasn’t a doctor. Just because she had cancer didn’t mean the whole world was ailing. She could see the letters DR curled on the inside of her eyelids, Ricardo and Diana, on Wednesday nights, rolling around on a bearskin rug in front of the fire at the Rhoads ranch house.
Lana pushed the image out of her mind and refocused on the young woman in front of her. Gaby looked at ease now, watching the tanned, toned gap between the delivery man’s T-shirt and his jeans. But Lana had caught a whiff of discomfort earlier. There was something Gaby didn’t want to talk about.