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“So what made you pick up that kind of hobby? You don’t strike me as a particularly nostalgic person.”

“Why? Because I’m an overpriced attorney? A spoiled rich kid? A lesbian?” I assumed her testy defensiveness was drug and pain induced, so I continued.

“Well, yeah, maybe because of all those reasons. Tell me why you keep things in scrapbooks. I’m interested.” I kept my eyes on the road. Every time I came to an intersection, I’d check the rain-soaked, empty streets for skinheads. She was doing the same thing.

“It was my nanny, Vesta. My parents hired her so they wouldn’t have to bother with me. That way they could fight and have more cognac. That was their particular favorite hobby: drinking cognac and verbally torturing each other. Vesta had gotten proficient at removing me from my parents’ sparring ring. One day, their fighting was more heated than usual. Vesta took me to my room where I cried and begged her to take me out of that house. Talk about a gilded cage.” She grew quiet with the memories.

“And the scrapbooking?”

“Oh, yeah. Sorry.” She took a deep breath. “Vesta soothed me that day in a way I didn’t expect. She pulled out a book, a scrapbook. Then she produced a box, the kind a large pair of boots came in. Inside that box were mementoes she had saved for me. Things like report cards, holiday cards, birthday party favors, pictures of friends, all kinds of things. When I saw what she had saved in that box, I knew she loved me. It was a feeling, a dawning of awareness that I’ll never forget.”

She was quiet for a few moments while more tears drizzled her cheeks. “Anyhow, Vesta said I should take up a hobby and record all my great moments, my friends, my victories, and such. She had all the glue and tape along with a colorful book that was all about the hobby of scrapbooking. I must have been about nine years old, and I’ve been scrapbooking ever since. It’s a balm for my heart when things are hard.”

“Where’s Vesta now?” I was driving into the garage of my condo building in Belltown.

“She died a couple years ago. Alzheimer’s. I had her in a wonderful care facility here in Seattle, but she slipped away from me.” Lines of deep sadness furrowed her face.

“What about your parents? Are they still around?”

“I know you’re just trying to keep my mind off my physical pain, Dev, but you’re not helping my emotions. And my parents live on opposite coasts, as far away from each other as they can get. It works well for all three of us.” She saw I had parked the car. “Can we go upstairs now? I’m so tired and I hurt.”

“Absolutely, but we need to check the halls as we go. I don’t think they know about me yet, but it’s just a matter of time.” I got out and pulled the pack holding the scrapbook out of the backseat. I went around to her door and opened it. “Ready?”

She looked up at me for a long moment. Her gaze made my heart do a flitter. “Well, I’m ready. Are you ready, Devorah Rosten?”

The number of allusions in that question kept me stumped for a few seconds. “Yeah, Laura Bishop, I’m ready. We’ll figure this out together.”

She took my hand while holding her injured wrist close to her body. We encountered nothing untoward while en route to my condo. Once we were inside, I knew we were safe, but only for the time being.

Chapter Ten

Laura went to my bathroom to visit my medicine cabinet. I heard a soft “Oh my God,” after she turned the light on. I wasn’t sure if she was impressed by my extensive pharmacopeia or by my decadent bathroom. I went to the bathroom door to see what had wowed her. She was looking at my Jacuzzi.

“Can I use that?” She sounded breathless with longing.

“Of course, but first I’ll have to put a plastic bag over your wrist, okay?” She nodded. “Look in the medicine cabinets to the far right. You’ll find a whole shelf of pain medication. And don’t ask how I got them.” I had a couple of pharmacist clients always willing to keep my cabinet stocked. “I’ll get you a big glass of water so you can take your pill. Don’t feel like you need to drink bathroom water. Yuck.” I left the bathroom avoiding the quizzical look on her face.

When I returned with the plastic bag, a rubber band, and a tall glass of water, Laura already had the tub filling. Steam rose from the stream of hot water crashing into the deep tub.

“Can you handle all this yourself? Do you need help covering your wrist?”

“No, I think I can manage. This tub is heaven-sent. I just want to be in it.” She was watching the water cascade from the faucet. Her face looked both exhausted and dreamy.

“Well, try not to fall asleep in there, or I’ll need to come haul you out.”

She cast a lazy wicked look at me. “Would that be so terrible?”

“Uh, right now, yes. We have to get out of town as soon as possible. Then we can make a plan. Okay?”

“Okay. Go away now.” She turned back to watch the water.

I put the glass of water on the vanity next to the plastic bag and rubber band. “That’s a new loofah there, so help yourself.” I closed the door of the steaming bathroom behind me and headed to my study, as far away from Laura Bishop as I could go within the condo. I forced myself not to think of her naked in my bathroom. Instead, I sank into my desk chair and brooded about my situation.

What was I going to tell Laura about my visions? My clients thought I could only see possible futures for them. As far as I knew, only Fitch knew that my tarot trances had taken a wild turn into the freakish Theater with Laura Bishop making harrowing cameo appearances. Fitch could bend with the bizarre, but Laura? I didn’t think so.

I paced my office and wrung my hands while Laura bathed, naked of all things, in my bathroom of all places.

“Underwear.” I muttered a few times as I paced. “She likes underwear. My perfect little life is perfectly doomed.”

The time was rolling into four a.m., but I needed a live distraction. I fished my cell phone from my pocket and speed-dialed Fitch.

“I know,” she said, “I’m the only person you can call at this hour who won’t be pissed off at you. But I am a little annoyed, just not at you. This Stratton thing is testing my skills, and winning, so far.” I could hear Fitch
schlump
herself into a chair and start clicking on her keyboard. I had a passing thought that a clicking keyboard was the soundtrack of Fitch’s life. Then I thought of her dungeon, and dropped the keyboard soundtrack thought.

“It’s uncanny, Devy, I can’t find anything on Stratton.”

“I’m not a Devy. What do you mean ‘can’t find anything on Stratton’?” I realized I was speaking loudly and lowered my voice in case Laura was done with her bath and within hearing distance. “Stratton should be easy. She’s a public figure. Her biography is an open book, isn’t it?” I continued to pace.

“One would think, but it’s no open book. At least no open book with appendix or footnotes. Her history definitely starts at late childhood in Boulder, Colorado. Any further back from then, it’s murky.”

“Her parents?”

“Deceased. Killed in a car accident when Stratton was eight years old. No immediate relatives, so she’s raised by a family friend. A nondescript schoolteacher who died when Stratton was twenty-one. Stratton has no surviving family that’s traceable.”

“Any school or medical records?”

“Well, yeah, they were easy to find. Too easy. They popped right up with barely a hack, like they were put there for me or anyone else to find. And then they are cursory, as if to hide other things.”

“So what do they say?”

“Good grades, sound health, nothing interesting. No teacher notes or comments. No comments by doctors, not even a prescription. Nothing personal, like most of the narrative of her young life was painted over, leaving nothing to capture anyone’s attention. In short, it’s too boring. And I don’t think a dynamic character like Stratton would have a colorless childhood. I think all this information is a plant, a screen to keep the researcher from collecting the facts about Stratton. It’s a testament to the laziness of the media that nobody has tried to dig deeper. They just accept what’s supplied.”

“What about college and law school? Anything there?” I lay down on the office couch and kicked my shoes off over the arm.

“A little bit more, but still only an outline of a life. She skied in college, but everyone does that in Colorado, don’t they? She was a member of the Alpha Gamma Delta sorority, but only barely. She’s not portrayed as an active member. She’s in only one of their yearbook pictures, and it looks like she never even lived in the sorority house. She was a member of a pre-law club where she was a little more active but not gung-ho. It was in law school where she became visible, but all those activities are part of her bio. I don’t have any reason to doubt them, but I do have reason to doubt the completeness of her official biography.”

“What about her relationships, the ones before her
shmegegge
husband? Any pictures from sorority formals or other sorts of activities. Because I just learned that she and Laura Bishop had a two-year affair.” I told her Laura’s story and how it was all chronicled in the scrapbook.

Fitch started chuckling, an evil gotcha kind of chuckle. “Oh, now you’re talking. Some red meat for old Fitch to sniff out. Pegging Stratton as a lez just made my job easier because I was looking for male attractions. And I wondered why there were no signs of any girl-boy relationships. She’s a looker, so I imagine she attracted some attention from those randy mountain lesbians, but if she ever reciprocated, I can’t find it yet. And I do mean ‘yet,’ because now they have the Fitch on the trail. Something is hinky here, and I’m determined to find out more. It’s going to take more than me hacking in everywhere. I have to go to ground.”

“What do you mean?”

“Get my hands dirty. I’ll close my dungeon for a few days, make phone calls, and travel to Colorado at least. The more information we can get on Stratton, the better.”

“While you’re there, look for other threads, not only about Stratton but about Greenfield. I suspect they share some history, some commonality. Check it out, would you. Oh, and one more thing, there’s more than Bishop is telling me. I just have a feeling she’s leaving something out of her story. In short, be thorough.”

“Anything to save our country from those two weasels. I’ll call you when I find something, Devy.”

“I’m not a Devy.” But she had already hung up.

“Who are you talking to at this hour?” Laura had opened the door of the office and was standing there looking like she’d just stepped off the half-shell and donned my robe.

“I, uh, that was just my, uh, my research assistant.”

“At this hour? Sure it wasn’t your girlfriend or maybe a boyfriend?” She took a few steps into the room. She was holding a small tube of something that looked like it had come from my medicine cabinet. She had removed the hospital’s bandage from her cheek and replaced it with two flesh-toned bandages. The spot on her skull that had been hit by the giant vase was covered by her hair only. The previous large wrap bandage was gone.

“Uh, no, no, there’s nothing like that in my life. A girlfriend, that is. That’s what I’d prefer if there were, um. Well, let’s get the guest room ready for you, shall we?” For being a hospital escapee, she looked luscious, bruises and all. “We might as well catch some sleep until the banks open and we can store your evidence.” I eased around her and walked into the hall, but she had me so
farmisht
that, in my confusion, I walked past the guest room. I recovered and turned around without losing face. “Oy, must be tired.”

She followed me into the guest room and stood patiently while I avoided her eyes and turned down the bed. I fluffed her pillows, then turned to leave. She blocked my way to the door.

“Devorah, I need to thank you. I don’t know what I could ever do to repay you for all this help.”

Any truthful answer to that would have earned me a whack across the head, so I said, “It’s my pleasure, and probably my mission. So get some sleep. We’ll be up and going all too soon.” I walked to the door and looked back. Her pallor was losing its post-bath pinkness, becoming sallow. “Did you find the pain medication in the cabinet?”

She nodded. “It should take hold in another half hour. In the meantime, I’m going to use up all your arnica cream on my cheek and a few other bruises I found on myself while I was bathing. That all right?”

“Please, help yourself to anything you need. I’ll wake you in a few hours.”

*

I went back to my office, plugged in the heating pad, placed it on the small of my back, and stretched out on the couch. If I got into my comfortable bed, I would never wake up. And Laura’s life depended upon me waking up and getting her out of there.

I thought about how weak but determined she was in that hospital room. We had created a convincing body of circumstantial evidence that Elizabeth Stratton could be involved with the deaths of the security guards and the attack on Laura. Eliminating Laura would eliminate a problem Stratton could face trying to become president. Her dewy-eyed constituents wouldn’t want to vote for an ex-lesbian, would they? Would Stratton’s affair with Laura really be that much of an impediment to the presidency?

Laura Bishop. Who was she? Some recipient of an embryonic do-gooder urge in me? My feelings about her were confusing. I had an inconvenient attraction for her, and that made this whole situation more complicated and frightening.

Stratton. She was my problem, and she was my client. She could destroy my career, or she could make me rich. When I followed that thought thread, however, I also had to accept that I was another one of Stratton’s liabilities. If she could brutally have innocent people killed, all to further her sickening career, I would be just another piece of collateral damage for Stratton. That meant that Laura’s scrapbook and the voice recorder were my life insurance.

I rolled on my side, attempting to make the couch feel at least partially comfortable. I propped the heating pad between me and the couch’s back and pulled an afghan my mother crocheted over my chilled shoulders. I didn’t savor the thought of what we had to do the next day. Every move we made could be dangerous. Laura was being hunted. I was certain of that. Anyone accompanying her was also prey to the hulking Nazi thug. I wished I knew who he was. Knowing something about him might help us protect ourselves. I should have sent Fitch on his trail too.

What really worried me was Elizabeth Stratton’s power. She was a senator, so she probably had allies everywhere. She was also a hero to people who adulated her as God’s messenger. A messenger with a manufactured biography, a bio as fabricated as the Theater that Pento created to send me his little messages.

The messages from the Theater were proving to be prescient. They had warned me of Laura’s danger in the tower and the importance of the scrapbook. But what about the sword-wielding knight? Was that the skinhead who attacked Laura or the guy I saw outside her condo building? I assumed he was the same character, along with being one of the jackasses that harassed Fitch when she was on Lopez Island with me.

Or could that Knight of Swords be someone else? Stratton? Someone not yet identified? The tableau of Laura tied up on the beach was perverse in a way I couldn’t understand. Her helplessness and vulnerability contrasted appallingly his unambiguous lack of mercy. Laura was not to be spared.

The few hours I’d spent with Laura Bishop turned something in me. I had a rare twinge of compassion for a client’s target. I didn’t pity Laura because she was so obviously capable. Her plan to use the scrapbook, voice recording, and photographs to expose Stratton was the best anyone could have done in her compromised situation. She was logical and determined. But if she made it off Lopez Island, where I planned to stash her, she could bring down the whole Elizabeth Stratton / Jerry Greenfield machine. My job, according to Stratton, was to stop her from doing that. Without Stratton’s knowledge, though, I was going to make sure Laura wasn’t hurt.

I measured, balanced, weighed, even sniffed any idea that could help me achieve Elizabeth Stratton’s aims and keep Laura safe. And I still had to decipher why I was going to the Theater and what I was supposed to learn there. What did the High Priestess and Pento expect me to do?

I was getting more frustrated as I discarded one idea after another. Stratton’s desire for power was really a mockery of our political system; worse, it was a mockery of the deluded people who believed in her. They gave her their money, time, and their integrity, like little children who kowtow to the popular kid on the playground. Anger began to seethe through me. I huffed and turned the other way on the couch, pinching my eyes closed to force sleep.

“Does your head have an ache, damsel?” Pento’s clipped speech made me open my eyes to find myself lying atop a hill overlooking the synthetic ocean of the Theater. A few birds fluttered overhead, but they looked more like rubber Halloween bats.

“Hey, I just realized something, Pento. It doesn’t hurt as much to visit you anymore. Why is that?” I turned onto my back and looked up at him. I was becoming used to seeing him from that angle.

“I rebuilt the portal. I am sorry, damsel. I had built it too narrow. An old habit from a long time ago. Humans used to be smaller.” His mostly inanimate face didn’t project much remorse. “But happily I have fixed your ache of the head problem.”