Dashing Through the Snow

by Lisa G Riley

  Smith didn’t even bother trying to figure out where the voice was coming from. He sighed. “Fuck the police,” he muttered and started his climb back up, prepared for a long night.

  ***

  “Oh, I’m so tired,” Lily moaned as she walked over to the king-sized bed. She took off her coat, tossed it over the back of a chair and toeing off her shoes, fell backward onto the bed.

  Smith watched her with a worried frown as he took off his own coat. He took off his gun and put it on the bureau. They’d just gotten back to their hotel after being grilled by the police and Lily was acting as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. He’d tried to talk to her about how scared she must have been, but she simply blew him off. In the meantime, Tam had disappeared into the ether and they had no idea how they were going to find him. Additionally, they still had to meet with Landry’s mistress. Smith looked at his watch. They could afford about a forty-five minute nap. He took off his own boots and padded over to the bed.

  He walked to the head and pulled the blanket and top sheet back. Climbing on behind her, he grabbed Lily beneath her arms and dragged her to the head of the bed. He lay next to her and she immediately turned towards him and curled into his body. He adjusted the blanket and sheet to cover them.

  “Mmm, thank you,” she murmured sleepily. “I thought the police would never let us leave. They practically accused you of doing the shooting.”

  “They were just doing their job. You want to talk about the shooting now?” He sighed when she shook her head, causing her hair to brush against his chin. He squeezed her when she pressed closer. “All right, then. If you won’t talk to me about that, I want to know why you don’t have a gun.”

  She shrugged. “I haven’t found one that I like yet.”

  “I can help you find one. What are you basing your decision on? Weight? Range? Trigger?”

  “No,” she murmured as she buried her nose in his neck. “Color.”

  “What?” Sure he hadn’t heard her correctly; Smith sat up and turned on the light. “What did you say?”

  Lily had flung her arm over her eyes to block out the strong light. “Smith!”

  “Did you just say that you’re basing such an important decision as buying a gun on something as trivial as color?”

  Lily sighed as if the weight of the world were on her shoulders. “Yes,” she said defiantly and sat up. “Yes, I did. What difference does it make?”

  Mystified, Smith could only stare at her for a moment before shaking his head. “Baby, color should be the least of your worries.”

  “I beg to differ. I haven’t done a lot of research on the matter, but what I’ve seen of guns so far is very unattractive. I haven’t found any that I like.”

  Fascinated by the way her mind worked, Smith again found himself speechless for a moment as he stared at her. Being shot at earlier while she was with him had really brought the issue of her safety home to him. He rose to get his gun.

  He brought it over and sat at her hip. “Here, this is my gun. It’s a Sig Sauer P226 9 millimeter.” He laid it flat in the palm of his hand and lifted it a few times in the air. “See? It’s not too light, but it’s not at all heavy.”

  Lily stared at the gun and slowly reached her hand out. “Oooooh,” she cooed as she rubbed her finger tips across the barrel. “Shiny.”

  Smith scowled and slapped lightly at her hand.

  “Hey!”

  The scowl deepened. “Shiny?”

  “Yes, Smith,” she said patiently. “It’s all very silvery and shiny. I like it.”

  Mystified, all Smith could do was shake his head again. “I simply keep it clean, as any responsible gun owner would. Now, pay attention, Lil. Sig Sauer makes a great gun. I almost got the P226 Navy, but I --”

  “Navy? They have it in navy? Do you think I could get it in green? Not a forest green, but more like an aqua or a grass–”

  “No, Lily,” Smith said as patiently as he could. “You keep talking like that, and you’ll be drummed out of the profession. Navy refers to Navy SEALS. The Navy SEALS use --” He stopped, finally noticing the smug look on her face. “I’m wasting my breath, aren’t I?”

  “Pretty much, yeah. Don’t worry about me, cowboy. I already know the weight and size I want, but the color matters to me as well. It doesn’t have to be anything flashy and of course I just want the butt of it to be a nice color, not the entire gun. Now put your peacemaker away, baby,” she said as she patted his cheek, “And let’s get some sleep.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Lily awoke to a dark, empty room. She could tell that Smith was no longer in bed with her and stretched and rolled over. “Smith,” she called. There was no answer and she sat up to turn on the light. She sensed that he was nowhere in the suite and frowned before looking at her watch. “I am so going to kill him!” She’d been asleep for two hours. She supposed she could follow him, but knew that if the interview weren’t already over, it would be by the time she got there. Muttering to herself, she rose from the bed and headed toward the connecting bath.

  An hour later she’d showered, done a little research on her laptop and had eaten the dinner she’d ordered from room service. She was dressed and refreshed and was heading out the door. “I need to clear my head. He’ll get his after.”

  ***

  Smith made his way along Michigan Avenue, amazed at how crowded the street still was even at eight o’clock at night with a temperature hovering around thirty degrees. “People are nuts,” he said under his breath. He had to admit, though, that it was a gorgeous city, especially lit up as it was for Christmas. He came upon the Art Institute and stopped in front of it for a moment. There were still people hanging out on the stairs. Others were taking pictures with the two majestic – even with ridiculously huge wreaths around their necks – concrete lions that guarded the neoclassical building, something Lily had described as being in the Beaux-Arts style earlier that day.

  He kept walking, dreading yet looking forward to Lily’s anger over being left behind. “She’s probably so pissed that she can’t see straight.” Coming upon Millennium Park, he was not surprised to find it teeming with people. The ice skating rink in the park was packed as well. His eye caught sight of a tall, slim figure dressed entirely in white – leggings, bubble jacket, beret and from the cowl neck he saw hugging her neck above the collar of the jacket, a big, fluffy sweater. She glided gracefully across the ice, seemingly lost in her own world. She stood out from the rest of the skaters, and not just because of the white. Smith stared at Lily, caught up in how smoothly she moved. “Gotta be all those years of ballet.”

  He walked over to sit on one of the benches that flanked one side of the rink, joining other spectators with their cups of hot drinks. He kept his eye on her as she skated twice more around. On her third go-around, he stood and walked over to lean over the thick, waist-high glass that separated the rink from the sidewalk. He called out to her. “Hey, sweetness. You look damned good on those skates.”

  She cut her eyes at him as she approached him. And then to his amusement, said, “Piss off.”

  Apparently he wasn’t the only one paying attention. “Sure is a funny way to say season’s greetings,” a lanky teen boy with bangs in his eyes and braces on his teeth said disinterestedly from beside him.

  Smith looked at him in amusement. “I know. Right?” He looked over the boy’s shoulder and shook his head when he caught sight of the same strange sculpture he’d seen earlier that day. It featured prominently on a rise above the rink. “Hey,” he said to get the teen’s attention again. He nodded towards the sculpture. “Do you know what that is? I’ve been meaning to ask my friend, but just haven’t gotten around to it.”

  “Didn’t think you sounded like you were from around here,” the boy said before following Smith’s gaze. “That’s Cloud Gate. It’s been around since I was a little kid. It’s totally one of the best things in the city. You never heard of Cloud Gate?”

  Smith studied the
big, silver, upside down, half-way flattened U-like thing and frowned. It shone bright in the night and he had to admit that it reflected some of the city’s skyscrapers brightly and beautifully back at them. People were swarming around and under it, taking pictures and making faces at themselves in the sculpture’s mirrored surface. He studied it some more and a light dawned. “A cloud, huh?” he asked doubtfully because it made him think of something else completely. “If you ask me, it’s shaped more like a -- ” From the corner of his eye, he saw Lily approaching again, and he reached out, grasped her arm and pulled her towards him.

  “Let go --”

  “Hey, what’s with this city and its weird public art?” he asked before she could spew her displeasure at him. He watched as anger turned to confused surprise. “Why would they showcase a big assed kidney bean in the middle of downtown?”

  Her lips twitched towards a smile for a half a second, but then she narrowed her eyes at him and stiffened again and just looked at him.

  Smith shook his head. “I’m sorry, okay? But you were so tired when we got back and you just looked so peaceful sleeping that I didn’t have the heart to wake you.”

  “Bull,” she countered and flipped her hair from her collar so that it was spilling around her shoulders. “The shooting incident scared you and you decided to go all macho on me and try to protect me. Just like you didn’t want me following up at the cigar shop.”

  Caught, Smith grinned. “Okay, that too, but you heard the concierge at the hotel as well as I did. He said the neighborhood was on the iffy side.”

  “Let go.”

  Smith released her and sighing, watched as she straightened her jacket. She always could hold a grudge. He shoved his hands in his pockets and looked over her shoulder at the Park Grill, the restaurant that fronted the rink. “I’m hungry, but that place looks way too busy. I’m going back to the hotel and ordering room service,” he told her. “You coming, or staying?”

  She considered him with narrowed eyes. “You got anything good to report on Landry’s mistress because if not, I’d just as soon stay here. I’ve already eaten.”

  “She had some things to say, yes.”

  “Fine. Give me five minutes,” was all she said before skating off.

  Lily sat at her laptop at a small round table in the anteroom of their suite. What she really wanted to do was relax on the plush-looking divan in front of the nicely roaring fireplace or the flat-screen television, but she sat straight in her armchair and said, “Okay, I’ve made a chart here. Tell me what you learned while visiting Ms. Pfister.”

  Smith looked over her shoulder. He whistled. The chart looked quite complicated. “Boy, that’s something -- all those numbers, arrows and colors and things. I’m impressed,” he said and bent to kiss her neck.

  Saying nothing, Lily hunched her shoulder to avoid him. Smith shook his head and moved away, thinking that some things never changed. “I’m sorry, damn it. What more do you want?”

  She didn’t take her eyes off the screen of her laptop. “You’re not and that’s the problem. You shut me out and treated me like a child. I don’t appreciate it and I don’t accept it, just like you wouldn’t if I tried to do the same thing to you.”

  Smith had opened his mouth to release a comeback that never came. “Shit,” he said reluctantly. “You’re right. I’m sorry, and this time I really mean it. Forgive me?”

  She looked askance at him. “I don’t know; I’ll think about it. Let’s get back to the case for now. What did you learn this evening?”

  Smith smiled knowingly and sat in an easy chair to face her. “Well for starters, she says they’re still having an affair. I tend to believe her because although she’s living in what would be considered a working class area, her clothing and furnishings are nothing but high end. She works as a hostess. Now I don’t know what they make, especially in your fancier restaurants and she works in one of those, but whichever restaurant she’s working in, I doubt she’s making enough to cover the cost of those huge diamonds she was wearing in her ears.”

  “Did she tell you Landry bought them?”

  “Yes, but that’s not even the best part. Here’s the kicker: she says that Mrs. Landry knows about her and has for quite some time.”

  Lily turned to look at him. “Really? How does she know that?”

  He shrugged. “She says Charlie-poo—yes, in addition to a bear, he is also a poo—told her and that he says Mrs. Landry is secretly grateful that he’s fooling around with her because then she doesn’t have to be bothered with his advances in the bedroom. So in essence, he told his mistress that his wife is a cold fish.”

  Unimpressed, Lily twisted her mouth. “But isn’t that par for the course when a man wants to have sex with a woman other than his wife? It seems to me that they would come up with all kinds of excuses.”

  Smith nodded. “True, true, but I don’t have any reason to doubt Ms. Pfister, and she believes him. The last thing I found out is that he’s not there. There’s no sign of a man in the apartment, and besides that, it’s too small to hide much of anything and doesn’t seem like it would be to his tastes. She says she hasn’t heard from him since last Tuesday.”

  Lily went back to her laptop. “Did you believe her?”

  Smith nodded. “Yeah, I did. My instinct tells me that she’s not a liar. She’s a cheater, but not a liar.”

  “I’ve been meaning to ask you. What did you find in Landry’s locker at the club in Sheffield-Chatham?”

  “There wasn’t much,” Smith said. “Just a jacket and a deck of cards. He rose to answer a knock on the door. “That’ll be my food.”

  He came back with a tray and placed it on the table. Sitting next to her, he lifted the cover from a plate. He smacked his lips hungrily. “Hmm, boy! That’s a good-lookin’ steak!” He picked up a fork and after smothering the accompanying baked potato with butter and sour cream, attacked it with gusto. “So,” he began after a couple of bites of steak, “did you look up the club motto or the seal or whatever it is?”

  “It’s Solus homo infirmus petit, and yes, I sure did,” Lily said and looked up from her screen. “You ordered a baked potato and French fries?”

  In answer, Smith slid the plate of fries towards her. “Thought you might be a little hungry after your workout on the rink.”

  Lily smiled and took a fry. “Thanks, cowboy; that was sweet.”

  “Nah,” he said as he cut more steak, “my thinking was more along the lines of I’d better get her something or she’ll want some of mine. Got you a cup of chocolate, too.” He looked up to find that she was already drinking from the mug and lifted a brow.

  She grinned and licked whipped cream from her lip. “What? It was process of elimination. There’s only one cup of the stuff and you’ve never liked whipped cream on yours, whereas you know I adore it. Besides, you’ve got a beer.”

  Smith leaned in for a brief kiss and smiled when she accommodated him. “Forgiven?” he whispered.

  “Sure,” she said with a nod. “Can I have some steak?”

  Laughing, he fed her a piece. “So, what does the motto mean?” he asked.

  “As near as I can tell, loosely translated, it means: Only a weak man asks.”

  “Can’t get any plainer than that, can you?”

  “Exactly,” Lily agreed. “And think about the picture that goes with it -- the lion standing victoriously over its kill. The strong over the weak, taking what it wants.”

  “Yes, but I’m just trying to figure out if it has any connection to our client,” Smith murmured. “It’s the clubs’ motto, but do they actively encourage its practice among members?”

  “Daddy’s a member,” Lily reminded him. “I could ask him. It’s too late to call him right now, but I’ll take care of it tomorrow. But so what if they do? Encourage the practice, I mean.”

  Smith shook himself from his reverie and looked at her. “Think about it, if the club does, then there could be some sanctioned if not illegal, at least une
thical, things going on. That’s why I don’t think your dad will know anything. ”

  Lily appeared to think about it for a moment. “I guess you’re right. Think there’s like a theft ring or something?”

  “Could be, but I don’t know. I mean, it could just be their motto to attract businessmen who think of themselves as strong and ruthless and want to be among like-minded individuals. They could just like the idea. But if it is encouraged, is our client a lion or a gazelle? Just about everyone we talked to about him described him as harmless; the gazelle.”

  “Ah-ah-ah,” Lily cautioned with excitement in her tone. “Everyone except Mr. Anders. Remember what he called our client? He said, and I quote, ‘Charlie’s the guy with the big ideas, the one who thinks outside the box.’ And isn’t it funny that when asked for an example of this, Mr. Anders came up with the theft at MSI and how big-idea Charlie-bear felt as if the guard was a schmuck who basically screwed himself out of a perfect opportunity?”

  Smith stared at her tensely, feeling as if they were right on the verge of something. “Yeah, Anders said something about Landry feeling like museums were good marks because of lack of staff, right? And Landry is known as a collector. If he were to steal something, it would probably be…what? I’m guessing it’s at the Field Museum, whatever it is.”

  Lily’s smile was huge and knowing. “Oh, I know exactly what it is.” She went back to typing on her laptop. “Feast your eyes,” she said as she turned the laptop towards him, “on the Golddigger’s Folly, one of the most notorious and rarest gems on the face of the earth.”

  Smith looked from her triumphant gaze to the screen and felt his eyes widen.

  Chapter Twenty

  “Well, you’re a pretty little fucker, aren’t you?” Smith murmured as he stared at the large pink diamond.”

  “The color is what’s known as raspberry pink.”