Veiled Threats (11 page)

“I don't mind, honestly I don't. Let's go walk by the water somewhere.”

So we did, in silence at first and then in conversation that strained to be casual. Meanwhile, I was getting angry at myself. First I sit through a lot of music I hate, and then I let him do all the floundering when we reached the delicate subject of sex. Was that any way for a modern woman to behave? We came to a little park near the harbor and sat on a bench, the wrought iron chilly to the touch even in the warm evening. He put his arm around my shoulders, and I took the plunge.

“Holt, I think I know what you were trying to say, so why don't I say it instead?”

“But—”

“Would you like to spend the night together?”

His arm withdrew, he shifted away from me on the bench, and I knew on the instant that I'd made a bad mistake. Completely misread the situation. Put my foot in my mouth. Screwed up, big-time. Holt took a deep breath, then let it out and said nothing. A car drove by behind us, and from a boat out in the harbor a radio blared and then cut off abruptly. We both spoke.

“I didn't mean—”

“I shouldn't have—”

W e stopped, and I tried again. “I'm sorry, I was rushing things, wasn't I? Forget I said that, please.”

“It's not that I'm not attracted to you,” he said. “God, I sound like a teenager. I can't explain—”

“You don't have to.” His wife, I was thinking. He can't explain how much he still misses his wife. It was a big step for him to get romantic with me at all, and then I tried to blunder
right into his bed. Such tact, such sensitivity. I wanted to jump into the harbor, but instead I stood up.

“How about some more strolling until we meet our plane? And this time I'll let you finish your sentence.”

He agreed, but as we walked he changed the subject, and never returned to his difficult statement, whatever it was. Something about Douglas Parry, maybe? Or something about not saying stupid things to reporters? Of course, that was it: Douglas knew or guessed the source of Aaron Gold's quote, and Holt, as his attorney, was supposed to warn me to be more discreet in future. Should I take Holt off the hook by mentioning the gaffe myself? The more I thought about it, the more mortified I felt. In the middle of being warned not to shoot my mouth off, I charge right in and do it again.

“You mentioned a mountaintop ceremony,” Holt said at length, as we reached the door of Eagle Air's little office. We were a few minutes early for our return flight, and a second beefy young guy checked us in and showed us the waiting room. Holt continued, “Don't tell me someone's climbing Mount Rainier on their wedding night?”

I explained Peter and Anita's plans for a backpacking honeymoon, and he told me about the ice climbs he'd done with a mountaineering club. He seemed determined to keep the conversation light and bright, so I followed his lead, and we both began to relax. Maybe my gaffe hadn't spoiled everything after all. By the time our plane took off, I had described the reception at the Glacier View Lodge, and by the time we landed on Lake Union I had invited Holt to join me there. Why not? My clients often asked if I wanted to bring a date to their weddings, often on the assumption that I was married myself. Peter and Anita certainly wouldn't mind if I had a friend for company at their prewedding dinner dance.

“Sounds great,” he said, as we clambered into the motor-boat. “I'll have to check my calendar.”

The lake was dead calm, and his voice had a faint almost-echo, as if it came to me from far over the water. As he started the engine I had the sudden illusion that the rest of the world had vanished in the darkness, that the shore lights falling behind us were just more stars in the night. Then we were across, and the moment was gone. Holt cut the engine, and I took the precarious step up to my deck, making it clear that I didn't expect him to follow. But I was still curious if I had guessed right about his interrupted message.

“It was a wonderful evening, thank you. And if you ever want to talk about, well, whatever it was you started to say—”

“Forget it.” Holt's voice was cold, his face in shadow. Then he leaned forward into the homey light from my kitchen window. “Really, Carnegie, it wasn't important. Sleep well.”

“You, too.”

I watched the boat slide into the darkness, then unlocked the glass door from the deck. Once inside, I glanced across the living room, automatically checking for the little red light on my answering machine in the kitchen. It glowed steady, no calls. I turned away from it but then I stopped, motionless, not even breathing.

Someone else was in the house with me.

T
HE EVIDENCE WAS INVISIBLE BUT CLEAR
,
AT LEAST TO ME
:
A
faint scent in the air of my living room, sweet and spicy, but acrid somehow, bitter. I sensed it, and then, with a cold shudder, I recognized it. I had caught the same scent just before losing consciousness near the Parry rose garden. Not the soft perfume of roses, after all, but something sharper, something I couldn't identify but that I would never forget. The person who attacked me that night was here, now.

I bolted. I ran for the front door, for escape to my neighbors or the lighted parking lot, anywhere away from the trap that my house had become. Across the living room, through the empty kitchen, to fumble with the front door lock, tugging desperately at the stubborn knob. The door swung open and I stumbled outside. And smack into Eddie Breen.

“Jesus, Carnegie, what's the matter?”

“There's someone in there! Don't go in—”

But he already had, leaving me vacillating on the doorstep. The image of that dark figure in the woods had all the power of a nightmare, but if he hurt Eddie … Through the windows to my right, the bedroom light came on, then the bathroom light. I rushed back into the kitchen and down the hallway, grabbing a skillet from the wall above the stove as I went.

Eddie was standing in the living room, looking concerned, alert, on the job. My hero. “Nobody here now. Did you see him or just hear him?”

“Well, neither.”

“What?”

“Wait a minute!”

I brushed past him to check the bedroom and bathroom myself, then looked around the deck outside. Except for the slamming of my heart, everything was dark and quiet, undisturbed. No receding footsteps on the planking, no roar of a car from the parking lot. I came back in. No unaccustomed scent in the air anymore, except for Eddie's aroma of cigars. I sat on the couch, still holding the skillet. Eddie took it from my hand and placed it carefully on the end table. Then he sat next to me.

“Carnegie, if you didn't see anybody or hear anybody—”

“I smelled him, Eddie.”

“You smelled him.” His expression was courteous and neutral, the face you show a small child while she tells you about the dragon under her bed.

I closed my eyes. “It's a long story, and it's late, and— What are you doing here, anyway?”

“Forgot something in the office. Have you been drinking?”

“What if I have!” I got up to put the skillet back in the kitchen, trying to walk away from the fear and embarrassment that were fighting it out in my mind. Eddie followed me.

“You better tell me what's going on, sister. I don't know whether to call the cops or a doctor. Is your head still hurting?”

“No, but it wasn't an accident, Eddie, I'm sure it wasn't. Somebody attacked me after the fund-raiser, either Theo or somebody else, and whoever did it was here tonight. He must have gotten away just before I came in.”

“And you know that because you
smelled
him?”

Quickly, I explained about the bittersweet scent. I began to relate Aaron Gold's warnings about Keith Guthridge and his criminal connections, and to speculate about Theo's role in all this, but Eddie turned away from me to pick up the phone.

“What are you doing?”

“Operator, I need Douglas Parry, P-A-R-R-Y, in Medina.”

“Eddie, I've got that number upstairs, but why—”

“Shh! We've got to do this fast.” He nodded to himself as the operator gave him the number, then called it. “Hello, Parry residence? I need to talk to Theo, your driver. It's urgent…. Well, can you give me his number? No, it can't wait.” A pause, more nodding, then he hung up and dialed again. Just as I realized what he must be doing, he held the receiver to my ear.

“Hello? Hello?” Theo's voice, blurred with sleep, then angry. “Who is it? What the hell—”

Eddie hung up the phone and looked at me, his snowy eyebrows lifted. “It takes, what, forty minutes to get to Parry's place from here? Say half an hour, speeding with no traffic. A little more than that to fall asleep. So unless this mysterious smell lasted all that time, I don't think Theo was here tonight.”

“But somebody was!”

“You sure? Is anything stolen? Let's look around, check the office, and then we'll sit down and talk this over, OK?”

“OK.”

We searched, Eddie skeptically and me with grim determination, for some sign that a stranger had invaded my home or the offices of Made in Heaven. We found nothing. No valuables gone, nothing out of place. I thought I caught the familiar scent upstairs in the workroom, but one window
was open a crack to let in the breeze, and I couldn't be sure. My head was aching with a vengeance. It was two in the morning. We went downstairs without speaking, and I dropped onto the couch.

“Eddie, I don't know. Do you think I'm crazy?”

“I think you're scared, but I don't understand why. If you really think somebody attacked you the other night, you should go to the police. If you don't …” He shrugged.

“I don't know what I think, anymore. Aaron Gold's got me jumping at shadows.”

“The reporter?”

I nodded, and told him about Gold's warning. It all sounded silly and melodramatic to me, and obviously to Eddie as well.

“Tell you what,” he said finally. “I'll get my stuff from the office, and lock up tight. Then I'll come down here and sack out on the couch, how about that? You get a good night's sleep, and—”

“Eddie, thanks so much, but I feel ridiculous enough without needing a baby-sitter. You go on home. I must have been imagining things. If anything else happens, anything at all, I'll call the police and then you. I promise.”

But nothing sinister happened, nothing at all. I overslept and woke up with nothing worse than a hangover, and called Eddie in the office right away.

“No more trouble?” At least he wasn't laughing at me.

“No trouble. I'll be up soon. Make the coffee strong, OK?”

I considered calling Holt as well, but why? He didn't know about my mysterious nonexistent intruder, and I certainly wasn't going to tell him. Upstairs, Eddie made no further mention of the night's adventure, and by midday I had just about put it down to brandy and nerves. Still, I wasn't
giving up on my search for the owner of the gold card case. Next stop, the 418 Club. That evening Lily and I had our delayed chicken dinner at my place, then set off.

Compared to the Powerhouse, the 418 Club was a cinch. For one thing, they weren't playing bad music, or any music at all. For another, we were rescued before we did anything too ghastly.

I guess I was expecting a tavern, with beer signs and crowd noise. In fact, the 418 was quieter than most libraries. The large, low-ceilinged room, upstairs from a dry cleaner in Ballard, held about two dozen pool tables in orderly rows stretching off into the cigarette haze. Each was lit with a single low-hanging light fixture, with near darkness in between. Lily and I, hesitating at the entrance, could hear the occasional murmur of men's voices and the click of pool balls, and not much else. A sign near the door said “Please No Excessive Whistling. No Noise.” I immediately resolved not to whistle, not a single note.

“How much time, ladies?” A weedy, round-shouldered man drummed his fingers impatiently on a glass display case holding pool paraphernalia, T-shirts with the club's logo, and a selection of cigars.

Lily was quicker on the uptake than I was. “What's the minimum?”

“A n hour.”

Our plan this time, after the gym fiasco, was to hang out for a while, maybe come back a couple of times, and then begin to ask around about Theo. We paid for an hour, and he handed us a black plastic tray of balls. “Table nine.”

I almost asked for cue sticks, till I realized that dozens of them were ranged in racks around the walls. Table nine was in a remote corner near the restrooms. As we walked over, a
few of the other patrons, who were all men, glanced at us in a less than friendly way. Judging from clothing, they ranged from bankers to panhandlers, but in this setting Lily and I were the odd men out. So to speak.

We selected cue sticks, cunningly going for straight wooden ones, then surveyed our table.

“Can you play pool?” Lily murmured.

“Well, no, but I've seen
The Color of Money.
We rack up the balls like this …” The pool balls were surprisingly heavy in my hand, and made a satisfying thump as I dropped each one into the triangular rack. I scooted the wooden frame forward and back to align the balls, and they clicked like M&M's do when you scrabble in the bag for them at the movies. “Then we lift the rack away and break with the white ball, like
this
—”

Unfortunately, I'd only seen the movie once. When I stroked the cue ball it popped off the green surface like a dolphin leaping from the sea. Lily lunged for it, but it sailed to the floor to land with an echoing crack. Lots of stares, a few laughs, and then a familiar voice.

“Christ on a crutch, Carnegie! What are you doing here?”

It was Eddie, just emerging from the men's room. He scooped up the still-rolling ball and handed it back to me, glaring indignantly through a little cloud of cigar smoke.

“Just trying something new,” I said lamely. “Do you, um, come here often?”

He snorted.

“No, really, are you kind of a regular?”

“I guess so, yes. Why?”

“I was just wondering, do you ever see Theo in here?”

“You've got Theo on the brain lately. What's this all about, anyway?”

I glanced at Lily. She was studying her shoes. “Uh, Lily and I were thinking of taking up pool, kind of in private, so we wondered if we'd run into anyone we know here. Like you, or anybody else we know. Joe Solveto, or Theo, or anybody.”

“Never seen either of them. The only familiar face I see around here is your friend the flower guy. The Russian.”

“
Boris
comes here?”

He looked at me curiously. “Yeah. So what?”

“So … so I guess Lily and I better be going. See you tomorrow, bright and early.”

“Good. We've got work to do.”