A Woman’s Eye

by Sara Paretsky

She pushed herself up and positioned the crutches under her arms. It was a moment before he jerked his gaze away from the suitcase and stood, his foot tapping impatiently on the carpet. All around them families were hoisting luggage and positioning toddlers for the charge to the gate. He sighed loudly. “I hope you’re good with your elbows.”

  She laughed and settled back on the arm of the seat.

  His gaze went back to the suitcase. He said, “I thought couriers were handcuffed to their packages.”

  “You’ve been watching too much TV.” She lowered her voice. “Handcuffs play havoc with the metal detector, The last thing you want in this business is buzzers going off and guards racing in from all directions. I go for the low-key approach. Always keep the suitcase in sight. Always be within lunging range.”

  He took a playful swipe at it. “What would happen if, say, that bag were to get stolen?”

  “Stolen!” She pulled the suitcase closer to her. “Well, for starters, I wouldn’t get a repeat job. If the goods were insured, that might be the end of it. But if it were something untraceable”-she glanced at the suitcase-“it could be a lot worse.” With a grin that matched his own, she said, “You’re not a thief, are you?”

  He shrugged. “Do I look like a thief?”

  “You look like the most attractive man here.” She paused long enough to catch his eye. “Of course, looks can be deceiving.” She didn’t say it, but she could picture him pocketing a necklace carelessly left in a jewelry box during a big party, or a Seiko watch from under a poolside towel. She didn’t imagine him planning a heist, but just taking what came his way.

  Returning her smile, he said, “When you transport something that can’t be traced, don’t they even provide you a backup?”

  “No! I’m a professional. I don’t need backup.”

  “But with your foot like that?”

  “I’m good with the crutches. And besides, the crutches provide camouflage. Who’d think a woman on crutches carrying a battered suitcase had anything worth half a mi-Watch out! The little girl and her brother are loose again.” She pulled her crutches closer as the duo raced through the aisle in front of them.

  “We are ready to begin boarding Southwest Airlines flight number seventeen sixty-seven to Phoenix. Any passengers traveling with small children or those needing a little extra time may begin boarding now.”

  The passengers applauded. It was amazing, she thought, how much sarcasm could be carried by a nonverbal sound.

  She leaned down for the suitcase. “Preboarding, That’s me.”

  “Are you going to be able to handle the crutches and the suitcase?” he asked.

  “You’re really fascinated with this bag, aren’t you?”

  “Guilty.” He grinned, “Should I dare to offer to carry it? I’d stay within lunging range.”

  She hesitated.

  In the aisle a woman in cerise shorts, carrying twin bags, herded twin toddlers toward the gate. Ahead of her an elderly man leaned precariously on a cane. The family with the boy and girl were still assembling luggage.

  He said, “You’d be doing me a big favor letting me preboard with you. I like to cadge a seat in the first row on the aisle.”

  “The seat for the guy who can’t wait?”

  “Right, But I got here so late that I’m in the last boarding group. I’m never going to snag one-B or one-C. So help me out, I promise,” he said, grinning, “I won’t steal.”

  “Well … I wouldn’t want my employer to see this. I assured him I wouldn’t need any help. But …” She shrugged.

  “No time to waver now. There’s already a mob of preboarders ahead of us.” He picked up the bag. “Some heavy diamonds.”

  “Good camouflage, don’t you think? Of course, not everything’s diamonds.”

  “Just something untraceable?”

  She gave him a half wink. “It may not be untraceable. It may not even be valuable.”

  “And you may be just a regular mail carrier,” he said, starting toward the gate.

  She swung after him. The crutches were no problem, and the thickly taped right ankle looked worse than it was. Still, it made things much smoother to have Siebert carrying the suitcase. If the opportunity arose, he might be tempted to steal it, but not in a crowded gate at the airport with guards and airline personnel around. He moved slowly, staying right in front of her, running interference. As they neared the gate, a blond man carrying a jumpy toddler hurried in front of them. The gate phone buzzed. The airline rep picked it up and nodded at it. To the blond man and the elderly couple who had settled in behind him, Kiernan, and Siebert, he said, “Sorry, folks. The cleaning crew’s a little slow. It’ll just be a minute.”

  Siebert’s face scrunched in anger. “What’s ‘cleaning crew’ a euphemism for? A tire fell off and they’re looking for it? They’ve spotted a crack in the engine block and they’re trying to figure out if they can avoid telling us?”

  Kiernan laughed. “I’ll bet people don’t travel with you twice.”

  He laughed. “I just hate being at someone else’s mercy. But since we’re going to be standing here awhile, why don’t you do what you love more than diamonds, Investigator: tell me what you’ve deduced about me.”

  “Like reading your palm?” The crutches poked into her armpits; she shifted them back, putting more weight on her bandaged foot. Slowly she surveyed his lanky body, his thin agile hands, con man’s hands, hands that were never quite still, always past ready, coming out of set “Okay. You’re traveling from San Diego to Phoenix on the Friday evening flight, so chances are you were here on business. But you don’t have on cowboy boots, or a Stetson. You’re tan, but it’s not that dry tan you get in the desert. In fact, you could pass for a San Diegan. I would have guessed that you travel for a living, but you’re too impatient for that, and if you’d taken this flight once or twice before you wouldn’t be surprised that it’s late. You’d have a report to read, or a newspaper. No, you do something where you don’t take orders, and you don’t put up with much.” She grinned. “How’s that?”

  “That’s pretty elementary, Sherlock,” he said with only a slight edge to his voice. He tapped his fingers against his leg. But all in all he looked only a little warier than any other person in the waiting area would as his secrets were unveiled.

  “Southwest Airlines flight number seventeen sixty-seven with service to Phoenix is now ready for preboarding.”

  “Okay, folks,” the gate attendant called. “Sorry for the delay.”

  The man with the jittery toddler thrust his boarding pass at the gate attendant and strode down the ramp. The child screamed. The elderly couple moved haltingly, hoisting and readjusting their open sacks with each step. A family squeezed in in front of them, causing the old man to stop dead and move his bag to the other shoulder. Siebert shifted from foot to foot.

  Stretching up to whisper in his ear, Kiernan said, “It would look bad if you shoved the old people out of your way.”

  “How bad?” he muttered, grinning, then handed his boarding pass to the attendant.

  As she surrendered hers, she said to Siebert, “Go ahead, hurry. I’ll meet you in one-C and D.”

  “Thanks.” He patted her shoulder.

  She watched him stride down the empty ramp. His tan jacket had caught on one hip as he balanced her suitcase and his own. But he neither slowed his pace nor made an attempt to free the jacket; clutching tight to her suitcase, he hurried around the elderly couple, moving with the strong stride of a hiker. By the time she got down the ramp the elderly couple and a family with two toddlers and an infant that sucked loudly on a pacifier crowded behind Siebert.

  Kiernan watched irritably as the stewardess eyed first Siebert, then her big suitcase. The head stewardess has the final word on carry-on luggage, she knew, With all the hassle that was involved with this business anyway, she didn’t want to add a confrontation with the stewardess. She dropped the crutches and banged backward into the wall, flailing for purchase as she sl
ipped down to the floor. The stewardess caught her before she hit bottom. “Are you okay?”

  “Embarrassed,” Kiernan said, truthfully. She hated to look clumsy, even if it was an act, even if it allowed Siebert and her suitcase to get on the plane unquestioned. “I’m having an awful time getting used to these things.”

  “You sure you’re okay? Let me help you up.” The stewardess said. “I’ll have to keep your crutches in the hanging luggage compartment up front while we’re in flight. But you go ahead now; I’ll come and get them from you.”

  “That’s okay. I’ll leave them there and just sit in one of the front seats,” she said, taking the crutches and swinging herself on board the plane. From the luggage compartment it took only one long step on her left foot to get to row 1. She swung around Siebert, who was hoisting his own suitcase into the overhead bin beside hers, and dropped into seat 1-D, by the window. The elderly couple was settling into seats 1-A and 1-B. In another minute Southwest would call the first thirty passengers, and the herd would stampede down the ramp, stuffing approved carry-ons in overhead compartments and grabbing the thirty most prized seats.

  “That was a smooth move with the stewardess,” Siebert said, as he settled into his coveted aisle seat.

  “That suitcase is just about the limit of what they’ll let you carry on. I’ve had a few hassles. I could see this one coming. And I suspected that you”-she patted his arm-“were not the patient person to deal with that type of problem. You moved around her pretty smartly yourself. I’d say that merits a drink from my client.”

  He smiled and rested a hand on hers. “Maybe,” he said, leaning closer, “we could have it in Phoenix.”

  For the first time she had a viscerally queasy feeling about him. Freeing her hand from his, she gave a mock salute. “Maybe so.” She looked past him at the elderly couple.

  Siebert’s gaze followed hers. He grinned as he said, “Do you think they’re thieves? After your loot? Little old sprinters?”

  “Probably not. But it pays to be alert.” She forced a laugh. “I’m afraid constant suspicion is a side effect of my job.”

  The first wave of passengers hurried past. Already the air in the plane had the sere feel and slightly rancid smell of having been dragged through the Altera too many times. By tacit consent they watched the passengers hurry on board, pause, survey their options, and rush on. Kiernan thought fondly of that drink in Phoenix. She would be sitting at a small table, looking out a tinted window; the trip would be over, the case delivered into the proper hands; and she would feel the tension that knotted her back releasing with each swallow of scotch. Or so she hoped. The whole frustrating case depended on this delivery. There was no fallback position. If she screwed up, Melissa Jessup’s murderer disappeared.

  That tension was what normally made the game fun. But this case was no longer a game. This time she had allowed herself to go beyond her regular rules, to call her former colleagues from the days when she had been a forensic pathologist, looking for some new test that would prove culpability. She had hoped the lab in San Diego could find something. They hadn’t. The fact was that the diamonds were the only “something” that would trap the killer, Melissa’s lover, who valued them much more than her, a man who might not have bothered going after her had it not been for them. Affairs might be brief, but diamonds, after all, are forever. They would lead her to the murderer’s safe house, and the evidence that would tie him to Melissa. If she was careful.

  She shoved the tongue of the seat belt into the latch and braced her feet as the plane taxied toward the runway. Siebert was tapping his finger on the armrest. The engines whirred, the plane shifted forward momentarily, then flung them back against their seats as it raced down the short runway.

  The FASTEN SEAT BELT sign went off. The old man across the aisle pushed himself up and edged toward the front bathroom. Siebert’s belt was already unbuckled. Muttering, “Be right back,” he jumped up and stood hunched under the overhead bin while the old man cleared the aisle. Then Siebert headed full-out toward the back of the plane. Kiernan slid over and watched him as he strode down the aisle, steps firmer, steadier than she’d have expected of a man racing to the bathroom in a swaying airplane. She could easily imagine him hiking in the redwood forest with someone like her, a small, slight woman. The blond woman with the violet eyeshadow. She in jeans and one of those soft Patagonia jackets Kiernan had spotted in the L.L. Bean catalog, violet with blue trim. He in jeans, turtleneck, a forest green down jacket on his rangy body. Forest green would pick up the color of his eyes and accent his dark, curly hair. In her picture, his hair was tinted with the first flecks of autumn snow and the ground still soft like the spongy airplane carpeting beneath his feet.

  When he got back he made no mention of his hurried trip. He’d barely settled down when the stewardess leaned over him and said, “Would you care for something to drink?”

  Kiernan put a hand on his arm. “This one’s on my client.”

  “For that client who insisted you carry his package while you’re still on crutches? I’m sorry it can’t be Lafite-Rothschild. Gin and tonic will have to do.” He grinned at the stewardess. Kiernan could picture him in a bar, flashing that grin at a tall redhead, or maybe another small blonde. She could imagine him with the sweat of a San Diego summer still on his brow, his skin brown from too many days at an ocean beach that is too great a temptation for those who grab their pleasures.

  “Scotch and water,” Kiernan ordered. To him, she said, “I notice that while I’m the investigator, it’s you who are asking all the questions. So what about you, what do you do for a living?”

  “I quit my job in San Diego and I’m moving back to Phoenix. So I’m not taking the first Friday night flight to get back home, I’m taking it to get to my new home. I had good times in San Diego: the beach, the sailing, Balboa Park. When I came there a couple years ago I thought I’d stay forever. But the draw of the desert is too great. I miss the red rock of Sedona, the pines of the Mogollon Rim, and the high desert outside Tucson.” He laughed. “Too much soft California life.”

  It was easy to picture him outside of Show Low on the Mogollon Rim with the pine trees all around him, some chopped for firewood, the ax lying on a stump, a shovel in his hand. Or in a cabin near Sedona lifting a hatch in the floorboards.

  The stewardess brought the drinks and the little bags of peanuts, giving Jeff Siebert the kind of smile Kiernan knew would have driven her crazy had she been Siebert’s girlfriend. How often had that type of thing happened? Had his charm brought that reaction so automatically that for him it had seemed merely the way women behave? Had complaints from a girlfriend seemed at first unreasonable, then melodramatic, then infuriating? He was an impatient man, quick to anger. Had liquor made it quicker, as the rhyme said? And the prospect of unsplit profit salved his conscience?

  He poured the little bottle of gin over the ice and added tonic. “Cheers.”

  She touched glasses, then drank. “Are you going to be in Phoenix long?”

  “Probably not. I’ve come into a little money and I figure I’ll just travel around, sort of like you do. Find someplace I like.”

  “So we’ll just have time for our drink in town then?”

  He rested his hand back on hers. “Well, now I may have reason to come back in a while. Or to San Diego. I just need to cut loose for a while.”

  She forced herself to remain still, not to cringe at his touch. Cut loose-what an apt term for him to use. She pictured his sun-browned hand wrapped around the hilt of a chef’s knife, working it up and down, up and down, cutting across pink flesh till it no longer looked like flesh, till the flesh mixed with the blood and the organ tissue, till the knife cut down to the bone and the metal point stuck in the breastbone. She pictured Melissa Jessup’s blond hair pink from the blood.

  She didn’t have to picture her body lying out in the woods outside Eureka in northern California. She had seen photos of it. She didn’t have to imagine what the cracked
ribs and broken clavicle and the sternum marked from the knife point looked like now. Jeff Siebert had seen that too, and had denied what Melissa’s brother and the Eureka sheriff all knew-knew in their hearts but could not prove-that Melissa had not gone to Eureka camping by herself as he’d insisted, but had only stopped overnight at the campground she and Jeff had been to the previous summer because she had no money and hadn’t been able to bring herself to sell the diamonds her mother had left her. Instead of a rest on the way to freedom, she’d found Siebert there.

  Now Siebert was flying to Phoenix to vanish. He’d pick up Melissa’s diamonds wherever he’d stashed them, and he’d be gone.

  “What about your client?” he asked. “Will he be meeting you at the airport?”

  “No. No one will meet me. I’ll just deliver my goods to the van, collect my money, and be free. What about you?”

  “No, No one’s waiting for me either. At least I’ll be able to give you a hand with that bag. There’s no ramp to the terminal in Phoenix. You have to climb down to the tarmac there. Getting down those metal steps with a suitcase and two crutches would be a real balancing act.”

  All she had to do was get it into the right hands. She shook her head. “Thanks. But I’ll have to lug it through the airport just in case. My client didn’t handcuff the suitcase to me, but he does expect I’ll keep hold of it.”

  He grinned. “Like you said, you’ll be in lunging range all the time.”

  “No,” she said firmly. “I appreciate your offer, Jeff; the bag weighs a ton. But I’m afraid it’s got to be in my hand.”

  Those green eyes of his that had twinkled with laughter narrowed, and his lips pressed together. “Okay,” he said slowly. Then his face relaxed almost back to that seductively impish smile that once might have charmed her, as it had Melissa Jessup. “I want you to know that I’ll still find you attractive even if the bag yanks your shoulder out of its socket.” He gave her hand a pat, then shifted in his seat so his upper arm rested next to hers.

  The stewardess collected the glasses. The plane jolted and began its descent. Kiernan braced her feet. Through his jacket, she felt the heat of his arm, the arm that had dug that chef’s knife into Melissa Jessup’s body. She breathed slowly and did not move.