Man, will you listen to yourself? You sound like Sophie.
“Come on already, Em! Just put on a nice pair of jeans and one of your new sweaters and be done with it!”
I follow her instructions and run a brush through my hair, checking my reflection in the mirror. My tan is almost gone. Only the extra freckles across the bridge of my nose and the faint outline of my sunglasses around my eyes betray where I’ve been.
I walk into the hall. Stephanie’s standing in front of Dominic’s room. She turns toward me with a quizzical look on her face. “I thought you said Dominic wasn’t staying here?”
“He isn’t.”
“Then how come his bed’s unmade?”
I knew I forgot to do something this morning.
I shrug. “He’s a guy. It’s been like that since he left.”
“His bed was made the last time I was here.”
Ah, hell.
“Do you have to notice everything?”
“Will you spill already?”
Is there any way I can tell her what I’ve been doing that won’t make me seem pathetic and weak?
“I’ve been having trouble sleeping.”
“Don’t tell me you’ve been sleeping in his room?”
I nod.
She starts to laugh. “Hoo boy, you’ve got it bad.”
“Yes, yes, are we going to dinner or what?”
“Was it just once?”
I walk to the entranceway and lift my coat from the hook.
“Twice? Please tell me it wasn’t more than twice.”
I pull on my boots.
“Now I really need to see that pro list.”
I open the door and gesture to the dark outside. “I’m hungry. Do you want to keep mocking me, or are you ready to go?”
“Oh, I’m ready.” Her eyes twinkle as she pulls her hood around her face. She hops from the step onto the snowy walkway.
I start to follow her, then think better of it. “Hold on a sec, okay?”
“What the—?”
I sprint down the hall to Dominic’s room. I pull up the sheets and fluff the pillows. I tug the comforter into place and smooth my hand over it, eliminating the creases. That’s better. Now . . . a quick glance around reveals a half-drunk glass of water on the bedside table. I pick it up and put the glass on the table in the hall. I join Stephanie outside, locking the door behind me.
“What was that all about?”
“Covering my tracks.”
“To think, people pay you hundreds of dollars an hour to solve their problems.”
“Fuck off.”
“And she has a mouth too.”
I flash my teeth. “You’d better believe it.”
I get home around ten, my stomach full and my ears ringing from the too-loud music. The restaurant was one of those half-club, half-restaurant places, and the DJ was spinning disks at club-level volume. It made conversation difficult, but the upside was that Stephanie gave up on quizzing me about my recent sleeping habits when I pretended I couldn’t hear her.
As I hang up my coat and scarf, I can feel a bout of brain-won’t-turn-off insomnia coming my way. After getting caught by Stephanie, I’ve promised myself that I’ll stop sleeping where I shouldn’t. I have a feeling I’ll be up late watching infomercials.
I notice the hall light is on as I leave the entranceway. The door to Dominic’s room is ajar, though I swear I closed it two hours ago.
My heart leaps. Dominic’s been here. Maybe he’s still here? But why? What does he want? Why did he call me all those times? And what did Emily want with him at the museum?
As per usual, I don’t have any answers. Thank God I made the bed.
I hear the scrape of a chair across the kitchen floor. Either it’s Dominic or I’m being robbed. I’ll take option A, please.
I walk cautiously down the hall, my heart lifting. He’s here. He must be waiting for me, right?
Dominic’s sitting at the kitchen table wearing jeans and the sweater I gave him for Christmas. He’s flipping through the file I left scattered across the table.
“What are you doing?”
He looks up. “That’s some interesting reading you’ve got there.”
I walk toward the table and start collecting the file together. “You shouldn’t be reading that.”
“It was sitting on the table.”
“I shouldn’t have left it out. I had no idea you were coming.”
“I’m sorry,” he says testily. “I didn’t know I needed permission to come to my own apartment.”
“You don’t. You can come whenever you want. Only . . .”
“ ‘Only’ what?”
“I’m just a bit confused, I guess. I mean, you come back from Ireland and say you’re going to stay somewhere else, but then you keep showing up here without even calling first . . .”
“I called a bunch of times. You never called me back, remember?”
“I told you at the gallery. I never received those messages.”
He pushes his chair back and walks toward the sink, gripping the counter. On the cabinet above his left shoulder are the faint scratches he left when he punched it. The night Emily called. The night we slept together.
“What did Emily want the other night?”
He turns toward me, his eyes spreading a chill across the warm room. “Leave her out of this. And don’t tell her anything more about us.”
His words hit me like a slap. He doesn’t want Emily to know we slept together. They’re back together. He took her back after everything she did to him.
“I didn’t tell her anything about us.”
“Oh, really?”
“I don’t have to defend myself to you, but yes, really.”
“Right, whatever.”
My hands start to tremble. I want to take the file folder and throw it across the room like I did with the Scotch glass, but the time for infantile gestures is over. Besides, it wouldn’t make the same satisfying crash.
He starts to move past me and I grab onto his arm. “Wait, Dominic. Please don’t go.”
He shrugs me off. “I have to.”
“Will you at least tell me why you came here tonight?”
He looks down at me, but I’m not sure he can see me, not really.
“I don’t remember,” he says, and walks away.
Chapter 24: Low-Percentage Shot
Stephanie was wrong about the pro/con list. As much as I like making lists, I never made one about Dominic. I didn’t want to reduce whatever there is between us to two columns. But that was before tonight. Because tonight, I want to reduce him to something, all right. I believe it’s called a pulp.
The upside to all this anger is that I have no trouble avoiding his bedroom, and in the end, no trouble sleeping either. In fact, I fall asleep to a count of the ways in which I can make Dominic’s life miserable. It’s stupid and immature, I know, but men behaving badly have a way of bringing that out in me.
My punishment for all this easy sleep is that I once again wake up early, early, early, with my brain whizzing a million miles a minute.
I slip into my bathrobe and go to the kitchen. I rinse out the coffeepot, start a fresh one brewing, and dive into the Mutual Assurance file. By the time I’m surrounded by coffee smells, I’m deep into it, trying to make a trail out of the scattered crumbs of information.
Two hours later I’m no further ahead, but I do have a splitting headache for my troubles.
I rest my head in the palm of my hand, rubbing my eyes with my fingers. I feel sick to my stomach, like I had too much to drink last night, though I hardly drank a drop.
Can’t anything in my life be simple and straightforward? And wasn’t I supposed to be getting a turning point in here somewhere? I must be in the third act of this farce by now, right? Which means there’s just one twist left, and I can have my happy ending.
Better get on that, then.
When I get to the office, I find Jenny surrounded by several of the
other secretaries. The object of their collective cooing delight is a simple vase of multicolored tulips.
“What’s all this?”
Jenny’s friends shoot me guilty looks and scurry back to their cubicles.
“They’re for you!” Jenny says excitedly.
“Oh . . . um, well, I’ll take them to my office.”
I hold out my hands. She lifts the vase toward me. I catch a whiff of their subtle scent, the soft caress of spring.
“I think they’re from him!” She raises her eyebrows suggestively.
“What makes you think that?”
“Because he delivered them himself.”
“What? Dominic was here?”
“Does Dominic have dark hair, green eyes, and a really cute butt?”
“Um, maybe.”
“I told him he could wait for you, but he just wanted to leave the flowers and go.”
“Did he say anything else?”
“No, but he left a card, see?” She points to the flowers. There’s a small white card tucked into the large, flat leaves. “What do you think it says?”
“I have no idea.”
“Did you guys get in a fight or something?”
“Or something.”
I close the door to my office and hit the switch to turn the clear glass opaque. I sit down on the chaise longue and place the flowers gently on the coffee table. I pluck the card from its perch. My name is written in the same block letters as Dominic’s postcoital note. I fight off a flash of the feel of his lips as he kissed the inside of my thigh and open it.
I’M SORRY, it says. I’M SO SORRY. FORGIVE ME?
Without stopping to think, I dig my phone out of my purse and dial.
“This is Dominic. Leave a message.”
“Hey, Dominic, it’s me. Emma. I got your flowers. They’re beautiful. Thank you. And I wanted to say . . . you don’t have to keep staying somewhere else. You can come . . . home. If you want.” My voice catches in my throat. “I—”
Beep!
Goddamnit.
Well, maybe I said enough. I hope so, anyway.
I sit there for a while, waiting for the phone to ring, waiting, wishing, for Dominic to call me back. But wishing someone would call me hasn’t worked before, and it doesn’t work now. Of course it doesn’t.
When I’ve arranged my flowers on the windowsill and composed myself, I go to the boardroom to check on the Initial Brigade.
One look inside convinces me that leaving them with instructions to use whatever resources they needed to evaluate the videotapes quickly was a bad idea.
The blinds are pulled down and someone’s taped the edges so no light creeps in. At the front of the room are three flat-screen TVs on metal rolling stands, the kind I last saw a member of the AV club pushing into health class. The guys are each sitting in front of a screen, ensconced in a dark brown leather club chair. Their quasi-identical blazers are draped over the backs. Their eyes are trained on the flickering black-and-white images.
“E.W.!” I. William drawls as he hits Pause. “Pull up a chair and join the fray.”
“The fray” is right. The room is littered with half-empty food cartons and soft-drink cans. I can see the green edge of a beer bottle poking out from behind the garbage. The air smells like the inside of a locker room.
“I asked you guys to work hard, but this . . . this is—”
“Surprising, ain’t it?” Monty says, keeping his eyes on the moving images on his screen. “Who would’ve thought working would actually be kind of fun?”
“You call watching TV working? You guys ought to spend some time in the Ejector.”
I. William looks indignant. “A little respect, please. We’ve been wearing out our eye sockets here.”
“What have you been doing, precisely?”
“Let me show you,” J.P. says, pausing his own screen.
He walks toward the enormous whiteboard at the front of the room. The louvered wood doors that normally cover it are folded back into the corners. On the board are two columns headed “Entered” and “Left.” Below each heading is a list of names, some of which I recognize from the list Detective Kendle showed me.
“I. William’s watching the entrance camera. When he identifies someone on the list, he writes their name here and notes the time they arrived.”
I glance down the list. “Weren’t there a lot more people than that at the party?”
“That’s where Monty comes in. You see, the celebrities and socialites were the easy people to identify. That knocked off about fifty people. But the rest of the list, well, I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t know Bill Gates if I bumped into him on the street, let alone tried to identify him from the distance those cameras are set up at.”
“Do you have some massive knowledge of rich people’s faces I don’t know about?” I ask Monty.
“Nah, I looked up pictures of the guests on the Internet. When I find a good one, I print it up on the color printer and we all stare at it until we’ve memorized it. Then we search for that person until we find them. When we do, we add them to the list.”
That would explain why the far wall is plastered with the (mostly) smiling faces of over a hundred men and women, some of whom are vaguely familiar. None of them looks like someone who steals paintings for a living. Then again, what does an art thief look like? Blending into a rich crowd is probably an essential skill.
“This is going to take longer than I thought.”
“You’re telling us,” I. William says. He picks up a glass tumbler from the floor and shakes it. The ice rattles. “Looks like we’re going to need some more supplies.”
“I’ll send Jenny out for some things. How can I help?”
Monty scratches his chin. “Well, it’d go faster if we had two people who could search for the ‘unrecognizables.’ ”
“All right. Why don’t I spend some time getting to know our party guests?”
They nod in agreement and turn back to their TVs. I use the conference room phone to call Jenny and let her know where I am. With a bubbly laugh, she agrees to get some nonregulation supplies.
I stare at the faces on the wall one by one, trying to associate the name with some defining characteristic. Pointy ears = MacAfee. Widow’s peak = Grafton. Sharp nose = Hosseini. It’s like that memory game I played when I was a kid, where the faces popped up on a yellow plastic flap. I can’t remember the rules, but I’m pretty sure I kicked some kindergarten ass.
“Okay, I think I’m ready,” I say about twenty minutes later.
I. William turns and hangs over the back of his club chair. “Such a sweet kid. There’s no way you memorized enough faces in that amount of time.”
“I think I did.”
“All right, then. Pull up a chair.”
I drag one of the conference room chairs across the room and sit next to him.
“You ready?”
“Hit it.”
He points the remote at the screen, skipping backward through several hours of footage. He gets to the beginning and presses Play. The camera is pointed at the entranceway. There are two rectangular metal detectors manned by a team of bored-looking guards. The time stamp in the right-hand corner of the screen reads 7:04. The black-and-white images make the building’s features sharper but also somehow blur the guards’ faces.
Maybe this is going to be harder than I thought.
“This is when the first guests started to arrive. And in case you were wondering, no one you’ll recognize shows up for a long time.”
“All fashionably late, huh?”
“Oh yeah.”
An elderly couple comes into view. They’re both wearing dark fur coats. He’s thin and angular with pointy ears and a sharp nose. She’s softer, a little frail, and might have a widow’s peak.
I. William shoots me a look. “Any guesses?”
“Um . . . Mr. and Mrs. Jenkins?”
“Nope.”
“The Cliftons?”
“Not even close.”
“You know who it is, don’t you?”
“Of course. They were the easy ones.”
“How come?”
He nods toward the screen. “Watch.”
The elderly couple passes through the metal detector. The man sets it off and is directed to the side by a security guard in his late forties with a protruding belly. The elderly man’s annoyance is apparent in the set of his shoulders, even in blurry black and white.
As he’s being patted down, Victor Bushnell strides into view, looking immaculate in a well-fitting tux. He says something to the security guard. The big-bellied guard shakes his head. Bushnell stabs his finger into the security guard’s lapel. The guard shifts nervously from foot to foot. A younger guard with stripes on his shoulders walks over and says something. Big Belly shrugs and returns to his post. The elderly man straightens his shoulders and collects his wife. Bushnell’s super-white teeth flash at the couple. The older woman kisses him gently on the cheek.
I. William hits Pause. “Can you guess who they are?”
“Obviously someone important to him.”
“Go on, you’re getting there.”
Why would Bushnell get angry because the security guard was doing his job? Who would he want to protect like that? And why would he get a kiss for his efforts?
“Are they his parents?”
“Correct!”
Monty gives me a weary smile. “That’s two down and four hundred and ninety-seven to go.”
Three hours later, I’ve identified a grand total of seven new faces. My vision is blurry, and I feel like I’d have trouble recognizing my own face on these tapes.
There’s a knock at the door.
“What’s the password?” J.P. bellows, his eyes never leaving the screen.
“The Daily Show,” a muffled voice answers.
“You know, having her yell it through the door like that kind of defeats the whole purpose of a password.” I walk to the door and let Jenny in. Her arms are loaded with bags of “supplies.”
Forgotten Page 23
