She hoped she hadn’t made this too intriguing, because if she had, Jill would pick up the phone and listen in. But if she made it a bit unpleasant, Jill would ignore it.
Marilyn Bakewell was standing near the counter. Her hair wasn’t as stiff today, but it still hadn’t gotten messed up during class. She had been listening to the conversation.
Her blue eyes met Pammy’s for a moment, and then Marilyn pasted a frown on her face.
“Jill, I think I pulled something in my leg. Maybe I’m doing something wrong…?”
Jill glanced at Pammy, as if expecting Pammy to help.
Pammy pivoted and headed toward the office, relieved that Marilyn had deflected whatever Jill was going to do next.
Pammy hadn’t expected it, and she would have to thank Marilyn later.
She hurried to the office, hoping she wasn’t too late.
51
Eagle
Eagle was nearly asleep when the phone rang. She snapped to attention, her heart pounding. It took her a moment to figure out where she was.
Pammy’s chair. Behind the desk. Office at the gym.
Shit. Eagle hadn’t realized she was so tired that she could doze that easily. If she had known, she would have read the already-outdated morning papers, with their speculative coverage on what might go wrong when Apollo 11 tried to land.
The phone rang again, and her heart rate rose. She was actually nervous. She hadn’t expected to be nervous.
Before she dozed, she had scrawled notes on a back page of Pammy’s yellow legal pad. Eagle turned to those notes now, skimmed them, cleared her throat, and picked up the receiver.
“Yes, hello,” she said in her most cultured voice. It wasn’t really put-on. It was the voice of her stepmother, whom she used to imitate to her friends years ago.
“I’m callin for Mrs. Dorothy Knight?” The male voice on the other end was deep, with an accent she’d heard before. One of the doctors she served with had come from New Orleans, and he spoke with the same low tones, with the precision that came from someone who knew that his accent was different than the accent of the people around him.
“This is Mrs. Knight,” Eagle said.
“Mrs. Knight,” the voice continued, “my name is Justin Lavassier. You left a message with my girl, said it was urgent.”
He pronounced Lavassier differently than Pammy had. It wasn’t quite in the French manner. La-Voss-e-ah.
She wasn’t sure why she found that fascinating, but she did.
“I did, with a message for you, Mr. Lavassier.” She tried to pronounce his name the way he had, but knew she had failed.
The office door opened. Val started in. Eagle held up her index finger.
“Let me just move around the corner, here, to somewhere a bit more private. One moment.” Then, pretending she was in a hotel room, she said to Val, “You can just leave that alone. Just close the closet door. That’s a dear.”
Val frowned at her, then smiled, finally understanding that Eagle was pretending she wasn’t alone so that any noise Val made would be covered. She slipped past the first chair, banging the desk.
Pammy opened the door as well, glanced at both of them, and then eased the door closed. She sank quietly into the only remaining chair.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Lavassier,” Eagle said. “That took a little longer than I thought, but I didn’t want to be overheard. My husband doesn’t know I’m contacting you.”
Pammy glanced at Val, then looked at the legal pad, which only had Eagle’s notes on it. Not getting any information from that, she simply leaned back in the chair.
Lavassier didn’t say anything. He just waited for Eagle to continue. That had to unnerve his upper-class clients. It certainly made her uncomfortable.
“I got your number from some friends—”
“Who referred you, Mrs. Knight?” he asked. His tone wasn’t quite curt, but it was very businesslike.
“Carla MacGivers. We went to school together long ago, and I try to see her whenever we come to California. She says you found their daughter.” Eagle let her voice rise just a bit on that last bit, almost as if she were asking a question.
If Lavassier heard the question, he chose not to answer it.
“I…um…my daughter, Angela, she’s…um…my husband, he says I shouldn’t worry about it. She’ll come around. She’ll come back to us. But he doesn’t know she dropped out last spring, and I’ve hidden the clippings from him.”
“Clippings?” Lavassier asked.
“Of the protests during that horrid park incident? One of the girls putting daisies in the barrel of the guns, in those photos that went to various newspapers? That’s my daughter.”
Pammy smiled a little, but Val’s eyes widened. Eagle’s heart was beating hard. She might have taken this a bit too far. She could almost read Val’s mind: maybe Lavassier knew who those kids were.
“Have you spoken to her?” Lavassier asked.
“That’s the other problem, sir. She has moved. She has no forwarding address and she has sent no phone number. Carla tells me you can find my girl, and convince her to go back to school. She says it’s expensive—”
“I don’t discuss my business over the phone, Mrs. Knight.” Lavassier’s voice was softer now, less businesslike. Eagle got the sense that he believed her, that he thought he was dealing with some distraught housewife. “Where are you staying? I’ll come talk to you.”
“No,” Eagle said, a little breathlessly.
Pammy frowned, as if she didn’t understand what Eagle was saying no to. Val just folded her hands and watched.
“My husband could be back at any moment,” Eagle said. “I have some free time tomorrow evening. There’s a restaurant near the Golden Bear Motel…? I believe the restaurant’s also called the Golden Bear. Can you meet me there, say, eight?”
“No,” Lavassier said. “I have other plans tomorrow evening. Perhaps next week…?”
“We’re only here until Monday. My husband has business in San Francisco, and I asked to come along this time, to meet up with Angela, I told him. He’s too busy. So, next week isn’t possible, and I have some wifely duties over the weekend, you understand, things for the spouses?”
Lavassier made a sound that was halfway between a disgruntled humph and a sigh. “Why don’t I come to you while your husband is in meetings?”
“Forgive me, Mr. Lavassier, but if I start receiving strange gentlemen in my hotel room, someone will surely tell my husband, and right now, I would prefer not to tell him anything.”
Pammy swallowed visibly. Val nodded her encouragement.
Eagle looked away from them, at the legal pad itself, because she needed to focus.
“Mrs. Knight, I know that your friend Mrs. MacGivers told you that my services are expensive, but she probably didn’t tell you how expensive. If you want my help, then you’ll have to involve your husband.”
Eagle let out a trill of a laugh that made Pammy jump. She’d clearly never heard Eagle make that sound—and, quite frankly, Eagle had only made that sound in the past when she was mocking her stepmother.
“Mr. Lavassier, I have family money, which my husband has no access to. My father did not approve of the marriage, and that was his condition, you see. Carla did tell me that you charge a small fortune. I have resources, and I am prepared to pay a small fortune to find my daughter and get her away from those filthy hippie creatures she’s living with.”
Eagle spit out those last words, and that truly was her stepmother’s voice. Only she had heard it discussing that filthy Indian girl her husband made her live with. Her stepmother had only said that to Eagle’s father once, and he had told her to never say it again.
So she had never said it to him again. Just to her friends, and to Eagle herself. That tone, she knew very well.
“All right.” Lavassier sounded reluctant. Eagle didn’t know if that was a negotiating ploy or if he truly was reluctant. “How about this? We meet tonight at eight at the Golden Be
ar Restaurant on San Pablo. Will that work for you?”
“Tonight,” she repeated, her gaze meeting Val’s. That would mean moving up a few things that Eagle had planned to do over the next twenty-four hours, but from Eagle’s perspective, it was possible.
Pammy had gone pale. She looked terrified.
Val looked terrified too, but she nodded. She could do it. And Eagle had already figured out how to make her plan work with just the two of them.
“I…I…I would have to rearrange some things,” Eagle said. “But I believe it is possible. If you require some kind of deposit in cash, I would not be able to do that—”
“You’re moving very quickly, Mrs. Knight,” Lavassier said. “We do not know if you actually need my services. They’re quite specialized.”
“I had an extensive discussion with Carla,” Eagle said. “I like your results.”
“Nonetheless,” Lavassier said. “I might not want to take on your daughter’s case. We will talk tonight. If we decide to work together, we’ll sign an agreement, and I will take a check for one-third to one-half of my fee.”
“All right,” Eagle said. “I will bring my checkbook.”
“And at least one good photograph of your daughter,” Lavassier said. “A recent one.”
Eagle’s breath caught. A photograph? She hadn’t planned on that.
“I don’t have a recent photo,” Eagle said. “But that photograph in the newspaper—”
“Isn’t enough. You’ll understand if we decide to work together,” he said.
“All right.” Eagle made herself sound slightly confused and a little frightened. She would have to make the photograph thing work, somehow. “How will I recognize you?”
“I’ll find you,” he said, and hung up.
She sat for a moment with the receiver against her ear, mostly because she wanted to process what he had said before she answered any questions.
He was confident he could identify her without any description, which meant he felt confident in his powers of observation. Eagle had been counting on the fact that he wouldn’t recognize her from their encounter earlier in the week.
Having her sit across the table from him would be a bigger risk than she thought. But she didn’t want Pammy to meet with him, and if Val did, they would have to deal with the race issue—and take the risk that he would not work for a black family.
Not to mention having to explain how someone like Carla MacGivers would have a close friend like Valentina Wilson.
Eagle put the phone down slowly.
“Tonight?” Pammy asked. “We can’t do this tonight. We’re not ready.”
Eagle smoothed her hands over the legal paper, thinking how to answer Pammy, trying to figure out how, exactly to handle what would come next.
“What’s he like?” Val asked.
That was a better question than Pammy’s. Eagle raised her head. Pammy was flushed, her eyes too bright. But Val leaned forward, eager. Intent.
Eagle let out a breath. She had been a lot more nervous than she even realized.
“He likes to be in control,” she said slowly.
“You got that from a phone call?” Pammy asked.
Eagle nodded.
“That’s why he changed the meeting time?” Val asked.
“I don’t know that for certain,” Eagle said, “but it seemed that way. It was just a sense, though. Nothing I can put words on.”
“He believed you about the MacGivers,” Pammy said.
Eagle nodded. “He seemed to relax when I had a name, one that he recognized.”
“You’d think he would have done some kind of background on the family,” Pammy said.
“He probably had,” Val said. “But who checks school companions?”
“You were lucky you didn’t mention which school,” Pammy said.
“I thought of that as I was saying it.” Eagle ran her hands over the pad again. “If I listed a school and I was wrong, he might have known. I have the sense he did know.”
“Do you think he’ll investigate Dorothy Knight?” Val asked.
“I didn’t give him enough to go on,” Eagle said. “I didn’t tell him what hotel, and I didn’t tell him my ‘husband’s’ name. I made it sound like we were in San Francisco, not Berkeley.”
“But you did give him the name of the daughter,” Pammy said.
“And unless he knows someone in admissions here,” Eagle said, “he’s not going to be able to find out if she’s a student by tonight.”
“I worried when you mentioned those photographs in the paper,” Val said.
“Yeah,” Eagle said. “I noticed. I figure if he brings the papers and points out some identification, I’ll say that I was referring to a different photograph.”
“You don’t think he would do that, do you?” Pammy asked.
“I have no idea what he does with his new clients,” Eagle said. “I can tell you this. He wasn’t happy about having to deal with the wife. He would have preferred a couple or the husband.”
“How are you supposed to know who he is at the restaurant tonight?” Val asked.
“Eagle will recognize him,” Pammy said.
“I probably will, yes,” Eagle said. “But he seems to think he’ll recognize Dorothy Knight.”
Val tilted her head to the side, as if she were considering all of the possibilities of that.
“Then you can’t be Dorothy Knight,” Pammy said. “I’ll have to do it.”
Eagle shook her head slowly. “We’ve been through this. I think we’ll be all right.”
Val put an arm across her stomach, then rested the elbow of her other arm on top of her wrist. It was a protective gesture, one that covered most of her torso. She probably hadn’t even realized she was making it.
“He thought he’d recognize Dorothy Knight,” she said, with great emphasis on the name. “There’s a type he’s used to dealing with, and that type doesn’t fit into the Golden Bear Restaurant.”
“Maybe,” Eagle said. “I thought he’d key into the nerves instead. This isn’t something most upper-middle-class people do.”
“Maybe,” Val said.
“I’ll be nervous enough to take this,” Pammy said.
Eagle shook her head. “The key is to seem nervous, not be nervous.”
Val was still studying her. “Do you have any expensive clothing?”
Eagle let out a small laugh. Expensive clothing? She had the clothes she wore before she enlisted—or some of them—and her uniforms, plus the jeans and shirts she had picked up at the junky shops off Telegraph.
“I have a sleeveless white dress I was going to wear,” she said. It would probably get ruined, but she was willing to pay that price.
“I’ve seen that dress,” Pammy said. “It’s dated.”
“You’ll need something new and stylish,” Val said. “Forgive me for being blunt, but can you afford something upscale?”
“I can’t even afford something downscale,” Eagle said.
“Then I’ll go with you,” Val said. “We’ll get you something at one of the shops—”
“Roos-Atkins,” Pammy said.
Eagle made a face. “I hate that pretentious place.”
“Precisely,” Pammy said. “Get something conservative that someone would wear in the Midwest.”
“And makeup,” Val said.
“And some faux pearls or something,” Pammy said.
“Costume but no gemstones,” Val said. “If you wear fake pearls or something, he’ll wonder why you’re wearing fakes and pretending to have money.”
“Good point,” Pammy said.
“And good shoes,” Val said.
Eagle half-smiled. “Does this clothing discussion mean you’ve both accepted the fact that I’m meeting him?”
“I don’t like it,” Pammy said, “but I don’t see how we have any other choice.”
“All right then,” Eagle said, standing up slowly. “We have a lot of errands to do before we get underway
. Meet back here at six?”
“I’m coming shopping with you,” Val said.
“No,” Pammy said. “That would be memorable. Let me.”
She reached over the desk and removed the cash box. From inside it, she removed five twenty-dollar bills and handed them to Eagle.
“A hundred dollars?” Eagle said with a gasp. “For one outfit?”
“And shoes and makeup,” Pammy said. “Believe me, at Roos-Atkins, that might not be enough. Don’t skimp. If you need more money, come back here and get it.”
“I’m just going to end up ruining it tonight,” Eagle said. “That’s a waste of money.”
Val stood too. “We’re risking a lot tonight,” she said. “I think we can risk ruining one expensive dress.”
Eagle felt dizzy. She had never owned anything expensive, and now she was talking about ruining it. Still, she made herself take a deep breath. She needed to think clearly. There had been one other point she wanted to make before they left.
Pammy stood up as well. The cash box sat on the desk between them.
“He’ll probably call back,” Eagle said. “Maybe as a double check. Don’t answer.”
“All afternoon?” Pammy asked. “But—”
“He’s wily,” Eagle said. “If you use the business name, then we’ll never see him again. If you answer and you’re not me, he’ll wonder what’s going on. Just don’t answer. It won’t hurt for one afternoon.”
Pammy took a deep breath. “What about Jill?”
“She’s trouble,” Eagle said. “Send her home.”
Pammy looked uncertain. Eagle felt a surge of impatience.
“Do you want this to succeed or not?” Eagle asked.
“Yes,” Pammy said. “Since we’ve decided to do this, we need to do it right.”
Eagle didn’t like how Pammy phrased that, but it was better than a flat-out no.
“Then send Jill home,” Eagle said.
Pammy nodded. “I’ll need to close tonight, then.”
“Yes, you will,” Eagle said. “Apologize, call the class if you have one. But you can’t answer the phone here between now and nine o’clock tonight.”
Protectors Page 48
