The Empty Chair

shirt. His concession to the fact he was part of corporate America was a tie; as befit a Silicon Valley businessman, though, the design wasn’t stripes or Jerry Garcia flowers but a cartoon Tweety Bird.
    “Hey, Lara.” He walked up and shook her hand, leaned against the bar. “Remember me? I’m Will Randolph. Sandy’s cousin? Cheryl and I met you on Nantucket—at Fred and Mary’s wedding.”
    Right, that’s where she recognized him from. He and his pregnant wife sat at the same table with Lara and her boyfriend, Hank. “Sure. How you doing?”
    “Good. Busy. But who isn’t around here?”
    His plastic neckwear read Xerox Corporation PARC. She was impressed. Even nongeeks knew about Xerox’s legendary Palo Alto Research Center five or six miles north of here.
    Will flagged down the bartender and ordered a light beer. “How’s Hank?” he asked. “Sandy said he was trying to get a job at Wells Fargo.”
    “Oh, yeah, that came through. He’s at orientation down in L.A. right now.”
    The beer came and Will sipped. “Congratulations.”
    A flash of white in the parking lot.
    Lara looked toward it quickly, alarmed. But the vehicle turned out to be a white Ford Explorer with a young couple inside.
    Her eyes focused past the Ford and scanned the street and the parking lots again, recalling that, on the way here, she’d glanced at the side of the van as it passed her when she’d turned into the restaurant’s parking lot. There’d been a smear of something dark and reddish on the side; probably mud but she’d thought it almost looked like blood.
    “You okay?” Will asked.
    “Sure. Sorry.” She turned back to Will, glad she had an ally. Another of her urban protection rules: Two people are always better than one. Lara now modified that by adding, Even if one of them is a skinny geek who can’t be more than five feet, ten inches tall and is wearing a cartoon tie.
    Will continued, “Sandy called me on my way home and asked if I’d stop by and give you a message. She tried to call you but couldn’t get through on your cell. She’s running late and asked if you could meet her at that place next to her office where you went last month, Ciro’s? In Mountain View. She made a reservation at eight.”
    “You didn’t have to come by. She could’ve called the bartender.”
    “She wanted me to give you the pictures I took at the wedding. You two can look at ’em tonight and tell me if you want any copies.”
    Will noticed a friend across the bar and waved—Silicon Valley may extend hundreds of square miles but it’s really just a small town. He said to Lara, “Cheryl and I were going to bring the pictures this weekend to Sandy’s place in Santa Barbara. . . .
    “Yeah, we’re going down on Friday.”
    Will paused and smiled as if he had a huge secret to share. He pulled his wallet out and flipped it open to a picture of himself, his wife and a very tiny, ruddy baby. “Last week,” he said proudly. “Claire.”
    “Oh, adorable,” Lara whispered.
    “So we’ll be staying pretty close to home for a while.”
    “How’s Cheryl?”
    “Fine. The baby’s fine. There’s nothing like it. . . . But, I’ll tell you, being a father totally changes your life.”
    “I’m sure it does.”
    Lara glanced at the clock again. Seven-thirty. It was a half-hour drive to Ciro’s this time of night. “I better get going.”
    Then, with a thud of alarm, she thought again about the van and the driver.
    The dreadlocks.
    The rusty smear on the battered door. . . .
    Will gestured for the check and paid.
    “You don’t have to do that,” she said. “I’ll get it.”
    He laughed. “You already did.”
    “What?”
    “That mutual fund you told me about at the wedding. The one you’d just bought?”
    Lara remembered shamelessly bragging about a biotech fund that had zoomed up 60 percent last year.
    “I got home from Nantucket and bought a shit-load of it. . . . So . . . thanks.” He tipped the beer toward her. Then he stood. “You all set?”
    “You bet.” Lara stared uneasily at the door as they walked toward it.
    It was just paranoia, she told herself. She thought momentarily, as she did from time to time, that she should get a real job, like all of these people in the bar. She shouldn’t dwell so much on the world of violence.
    Sure, just paranoia . . .
    But, if so, then why had the dreadlocked kid sped off so fast when she’d pulled into the parking lot here and glanced at