Nunn closed his eyes and rested his head against the cool bathroom tiles. He remembered the exact moment he’d seen the magazine at a newsstand. By the time he got around to reading the article, it was two days after Rosemary Thomas was dead.
He put everything neatly away and closed the briefcase. He washed his face and shaved and eased into the same shirt and trousers he’d worn the day before, then gently shook Sarah by the shoulder.
“It’s nine o’clock. You getting up anytime soon?”
Sarah moaned and pulled the duvet over her head. “Go away.”
Nunn smiled. It suddenly felt as if they were an old married couple. “I’m going out for breakfast, a café just across the street. Want to join me?”
The duvet shrugged.
“I take that as a no.”
“I’ll be down soon.” Muffled.
Nunn stared at her a moment, trying to decide what it was he felt. It was like some B-grade movie, his beautiful ex-wife asking him—not her current husband—to escort her to such an important event. But the ache he felt in his heart was all too real and definitely not part of a script.
Nunn settled into a chair with a cup of Italian-roast coffee and a copy of USA Today. He had read through the Life section and started on Sports, but he couldn’t concentrate.
What did Sarah really want? Was her marriage to Ballard coming apart?
Nunn was picturing Sarah from the night before, fantasizing about whisking her off to someplace exotic such as Rio or Bali, when she finally made her appearance. She looked fresh and bright, her hair still damp from the shower. She laid a hand on his shoulder.
“I’m going shopping.”
“For what?”
Sarah straightened, extended her arms. “I can’t wear this to the memorial, now, can I?”
In Nunn’s opinion, Sarah looked spectacular, her extraordinary body in a white, scoop-necked sweater and tight jeans. He raised an eyebrow. “I guess not. Coffee?” He indicated the chair opposite him.
She flapped a hand. “No, thanks. Gotta run.” She executed a delicate about-face, waved, and was gone.
Nunn watched her disappear down the street.
He downed a second cup of coffee, then left the café, walking down North Point to the Embarcadero and wandering up to Grant near Pier 39. It was unusually quiet for this time of day, he thought, but the back of his neck prickled, as if he was being followed. He turned and thought he saw… something… but then there was no one, and he walked on.
A few blocks later he felt it again. This time when he turned, he was sure he caught the shadow of a man. He sprinted after it, but when he rounded the corner, the alley was empty.
Enough, Nunn thought, and headed back to his apartment. He still needed to tie up a few things before the memorial this evening.
He starts the car and follows the ex-wife.
When she goes into a department store, he parks, cuts across the street, makes his way past counters of women’s perfume and makeup, men’s underwear and cologne, keeping the ex-wife in his sights only yards ahead, a few shoppers between them, mostly women, and it’s early, the store practically empty so he’s got to be careful.
He almost swats the bottle of cologne out of the saleswoman’s hand after she sprays him with something he thinks smells like rotten oranges, and she catches enough of the expression behind his metallic aviators to back away mumbling apologies.
Damn it, where is she? Has he lost her? He looks left, right.
There she is.
Half an escalator between them now.
As the ex-wife browses the dress department, he moves to a table of cashmere sweaters, head down, pats and caresses the soft wool as if it were flesh.
Three or four dresses draped over her arm, she disappears into the dressing room. He waits a minute, surveying his surroundings and, when he’s sure no one is looking, darts in.
He spies her legs under a cubicle. She is the only one in the dressing room.
He stands in a room opposite, the door closed, and when she comes out wearing one of the dresses, a short silky number, and twirls in front of the mirror, he watches, holding his breath until she heads back into her room, then he bolts, pushes her forward, locks the door behind them, gets one hand over her mouth, another around her waist so hard the air goes out of her with a gasp, and he whispers in her ear, “Do not make a sound or I’ll kill you.”
A noise escapes her throat: neither scream nor gasp, just the smallest squeak, like a yelping puppy.
“You don’t like the dress?” he whispers.
He gets a hand under the silky fabric, then pushes the straps off her shoulders and tugs the dress down till it puddles around her feet and she is in her panties, and he tightens his choke hold and feels her body tense and whispers so quietly it’s little more than a breath, “Tell him to stay away from the memorial for Rosemary Thomas.”
The ex-wife says nothing, trembles.
“Did you hear me?” His lips graze her ear.
She nods several times, even though his hand is still pressed tightly against her mouth.
“Tell him. Your life depends on it. Do you get that?” His breath in her ear causing more chills.
She nods emphatically.
“You’ll tell the ex-cop to stop, won’t you?”
“I need to hear you say yes,” he rasps as he slightly eases his grip off her mouth and chin.
“Yes,” she says.
“Good.” His hand tightens around her throat and she smells his breath and feels his beard against her neck and tries to turn her head for one look at his face but can’t move and he says, “You’ll tell him.”
Just then she hears women’s voices and is about to call out when he pushes her to the floor and sprints out of the room and the women scream and then he’s walking past shoppers and racks of clothes and pushing past people on the escalator and weaving around the makeup and perfume counters until the hot, damp air hits his face and he keeps walking not once looking back, and not until he is driving along the Embarcadero does he start breathing normally again.
18
THOMAS COOK
Some love-stung lothario had once called her hair a “curtain of flame.” Haile had liked the phrase at the time and thought it so appropriate now, as she gazed at herself in the mirror, that she half expected her brush to throw off sparks. Her beauty drew attention, and most of the time she liked that attention. But not tonight. Tonight she’d prefer no eyes follow her once she arrived at the McFall Art Museum. Instead, she hoped to drift almost invisibly from room to room, a little ghost ship flying its red pennant. Tonight she had to be a huntress, and it would be better, safer, if she went about unnoticed, like some bejeweled old dowager, dripping diamonds and pearls, with a slack neck and smelling like a mixture of camphor oil and Chanel No. 5. She’d even briefly, and absurdly, contemplated wearing a disguise, then dismissed the idea because she knew the guest list would be small, and there’d be no crashing this event. But then, who’d want to crash a memorial service for a woman who’d been executed ten years before? No, she’d have to go as herself, Haile Patchett, flaming hair and all.
But once at the McFall, what then? She considered the options, the method. She’d have to mingle with people, pretend she was there for the same reason as everyone else, to remember poor dead Rosemary. She’d have to listen to stories of how great Rosemary had been, how smart, how clever, all of which, had, of course, made her grim end just that much more tragic. And grim it had certainly been, as Haile imagined it, strapped to a gurney, nameless people inserting needles, someone reading her death sentence in a low, mournful voice. She cringed at the thought of Rosemary’s execution, and how someone would no doubt bring it up and she’d have to stand there, listening.
But at some point she’d drift away, and with any luck no one would find it particularly unusual that she walked from room to room. She’d have to stop and pretend to pay attention to whoever interrupted her ramble, but after a time she could pull aw
ay, and at those moments, just as she stepped back, she could allow her eyes to search for the room.
Briefly, she considered the information she had gotten out of Artie Ruby. That crazy cop, Nunn, had blackmailed her into sleeping with Ruby, hoping to uncover something about Chris’s murder. Instead Ruby had pointed her to a bit of information that would prove useful to her. Apparently, she was not the only one of Christopher Thomas’s lovers who had been involved in the stolen-art racket. The respectable curator of the McFall Art Museum, Justine Olegard, was another. Haile was willing to bet Justine didn’t quit that lucrative little side business once Chris was murdered. It would take some nosing around, but Haile was sure she’d find something damaging in Justine’s office, something that would put Justine exactly where she wanted her, and soon Haile would get the train wreck of her life back on track.
She glanced at the clock. Not much time left, and out the window, one of those dense San Francisco fogs had drifted in. That would slow traffic to a crawl, so she would need to hurry up if she wanted to get there early enough to look around a little before anyone spotted her and came over to talk. Hurriedly, she applied the last of her makeup. This had once been reassuring, but time was beginning to make it a lesson in the things she’d done wrong and now couldn’t change—the thought that always returned to her when she noticed some new crack in her mirrored portrait.
At the McFall Art Museum, Justine Olegard reached for her drink the way others reach for a brass ring. She looked at the little painting that had hung in a dark corner of the gallery for ages, ten years at least. Tony Olsen had made a big deal of its installation, a last wish for Rosemary. Part of the museum’s permanent collection, it was now installed behind a locked glass display case as if it were the Mona Lisa. Here it moldered in obscurity in this quiet room that didn’t see much traffic. She knew the artist was a friend of Rosemary Thomas’s, and the installation was a tribute to her friend, honoring her for all patrons to see.
Museums were haunted by such paintings. They were the naughty kids who were never introduced to guests, and this one now struck Justine as naughtier than most. Something about it was tense, gave off a disturbing little charge. Looking at the waves, you sensed something underneath them, a shadowy presence, silent, stalking, preparing to surge upward toward a pair of struggling white legs. Some paintings truly spoke, and this one did. Its true subject was the dark undercurrent of things, she thought, and the creatures that lurked there. She examined the signature.
B. McGuire.
Belle McGuire.
Rosemary’s friend.
As this night had approached, a night Justine had been dreading, she thought about her time with Christopher. She recalled the many things they’d done together, the tightrope she’d walked between the personal and the professional, and even the legal and the illegal, and how, at certain moments, she’d quite helplessly fallen off. Christopher would have liked this little painting, she decided. He would have liked its deceit, the way it played the one-eyed Jack. He would have admired its skill for betrayal and misdirection, the way it turned the sea into a shadowy back alley. And what about Rosemary? Rosemary, who had always believed that something good could not have something evil at its core? Someone would probably say all of this about Rosemary during tonight’s memorial service, and Justine knew that she would nod and agree while all the time imagining the world beneath the world that this dead woman had never glimpsed—or maybe she did.
Justine walked to the window and looked out over the city.
The white signature spire of the downtown San Francisco skyline was hung in fog.
Sheathed in fog like a knife.
Wrapped in it, like a shroud.
The McFall Art Museum was only a few blocks away now, and Tony Olsen knew that once his limo turned the corner, he’d be able to see its lit windows. The elegant place was also oddly playful in its overall design. The curl of the stairs that wound up to the exhibition floors was almost impish, and the bright colors painting the lobby were like a middle finger lifted at the old-lady interiors of the Uffizi and the Louvre. He had always loved to seed his philanthropy with a sense of mischief. He knew that the kid inside him was a nasty little bastard, and as his limousine turned the corner and the McFall swam into view, he could see his own nastiness on full display. How dark and amusingly impudent, he thought, to use an art museum to memorialize a woman put to death for murdering her husband. Sure, Rosemary had requested it in her last will and testament, but he took no pleasure in what he would normally have found a deliciously inappropriate juxtaposition. Something about Rosemary had actually penetrated his otherwise quite impenetrable character. He had played the mystery man all his life, and most of the time he had played it convincingly. Once a reporter had asked him how he wished to be remembered, and he’d replied, not without accuracy, “As a blur.” But Rosemary had somehow seen through the illusion he had created and lived behind. It was as if she had drawn the cloth up from one corner of the masterwork, seen only that tiny bit of canvas, and yet, with stunning intuitiveness, had grasped the work as a whole.
The limousine stopped abruptly.
“Sorry, sir,” the driver said. “A cat just ran in front of us.”
Olsen glanced out the window and through the light mist saw the cat as it leaped onto the curb, then stopped and looked back at the black car it had so narrowly avoided. It was black with white feet like a dancer’s shoes, and for a moment it stared directly into Olsen’s eyes, haughtily, as if it had proved its point, defied the odds again. But how many escapes were now left to it, Olsen wondered, how many lives, before chance turned the tables at last?
Jon Nunn’s gaze swept over everyone as they assembled in the room. They were like ornaments on some grim tree, each hanging from its own withered limb.
Sarah stood silently beside him. Why had she come? he wondered now. She had no relationship with either Rosemary or Christopher. He glanced over at her stunning, sphinxlike profile and thought of the last time they’d been here together, all those years ago at the fund-raiser for inner-city park programs. She seemed tense, more so than usual, but when he asked her about it, she shrugged it off. Perhaps she had come out of some weird nostalgia, since it was Rosemary’s case that had broken up their marriage. Sarah had always been good at keeping old wounds open, and he supposed she was busy plucking at whatever scabs she’d since gotten from Stan. But Rosemary was a different story. Sarah had not even known her. He shrugged. Maybe she’d just needed a night away from Stan. Who wouldn’t, after all?
19
DIANA GABALDON
The fog laid its frozen hand on the back of Haile Patchett’s neck. The day had been a summer dream of sun and heady breezes, but the fog had rolled in just after sunset, and the air that rattled the palm fronds now was straight out of Neptune’s bait locker, dank and cold, with a whiff of dead things. Ten thousand goose bumps were on her bare arms, her flimsy silk evening wrap no bar to the piercing, unexpected cold that so often rolled into San Francisco.
The museum’s courtyard was scattered with rocks, each the size of a large ottoman, and in her rush to get inside Haile had barely avoided running into one. She cursed under her breath. She’d be on her ass if she wasn’t careful.
She was outwardly cranky but could feel the excitement in her revving up like a Corvette at a stoplight. The invitation had said the gathering was to be held in the big observation room at the top of the tower, but the curator’s office was tucked away, down a short corridor.
She thought she’d let the crowd get started, talking, drinking, before she slipped away.
Haile thought of her time with Christopher Thomas, what she’d expected, all their pillow talk that had amounted to nothing.
The fog glowed ahead, the light from the museum’s entrance softened and diffused. Other people were coming up behind her, vague figures making their way through the courtyard; she could hear murmured snatches of disembodied conversation.
“Jesus, what are we in for
?” a male voice said softly, but whoever he spoke to didn’t answer.
The tower was barely visible through the fog, an unlikely lighthouse, shaped like an upside-down ziggurat of glass and concrete blocks. The fog was thick enough to shroud the lower part of the building, making the low, circular roof look as though it were floating.
Stan Ballard thought, This is insane. I’m insane. What was I thinking?
He stood just outside the museum, wreathed in fog. For one more moment he thought about leaving, then opened the door.
20
THOMAS COOK
One by one the snakes slithered in, and Jon Nunn found himself looking at each of them as if he were trying to pick a face from a line of mug shots. There was Justine Olegard, dressed in black, with a single strand of white pearls and spiked heels, but otherwise quite somber in her appearance. She was talking to two people he didn’t know. Perhaps she knew them. Perhaps she didn’t. It wouldn’t matter to Justine. She was used to glad-handing strangers, talking up the museum, angling for a donation. It wouldn’t surprise him if she managed to pass the cup a little even tonight. Something in Justine never quite turned off. She was like a candle that never sputtered out, though he’d never been able to figure out exactly what her light revealed.
Suddenly, as if summoned, Justine broke away from the two people. She’d probably gotten the message that they were of limited means, or indifferent to art, or had sunk their money into some hospital wing that bore their names and would thus not be making a contribution to the McFall. Whatever it was, it had caused Justine abruptly to lose interest.
Nunn glanced in the other direction, to where he could see Peter Heusen uncomfortably flanked by his niece and nephew, Rosemary’s two children. Rosemary had been convicted when they were still young, and Nunn wondered how they’d fared beneath the burden of having their mother executed for the murder of their father. He couldn’t imagine their uncle providing solace. Something about Peter Heusen added little knifepoints to the air. It was as if he made a tiny slit in everyone he met, which no doubt explained why Ben and Leila looked so uneasy at the moment, both of them glancing about in a way that showed just how quickly they wanted to get away from their uncle. There was something icy in the way they stood a little too far away from him for actual conversation, both quite stiff, though only Ben had his arms folded, the sure sign that he felt himself under attack. Leila’s attitude was just as wary, it seemed to Nunn, so that she appeared less enclosed within a family circle than trapped in a steadily closing vise.
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