With a glum sigh, she drew the flash drive from her jacket and inserted it into a plastic packet that was slightly larger than a tea bag. She sealed that in another plastic bag, making it airtight. Once she was certain the seal was watertight too, she reached for the Styrofoam Sonic cup resting in the dashboard holder and removed the lid. Then she stuffed the baggie inside and used a red straw to push it into the cherry-limeade, careful to cover it with the crushed ice that kept the drink cold.
She wasn’t naïve in any sense, but the back of her mind had held a child-like kernel of hope that as soon as she started looking she’d find something so massively diabolical it would remove Dominic from the FBI’s suspect list entirely. Of course that hadn’t happened, and the morning with Jackie had been a total bust as well. After that, she’d spent hours following up Dokowski’s timestamp trail on documents dealing with fielding neutron and gamma-ray detectors, which had nothing to do with Dominic and exposed no trails of evil whatsoever.
Resigned to this one action, Willa climbed out of the car, cup in hand, and went inside the AutoZone. Men in car dealerships and auto parts stores seldom paid attention to the women who came into the showroom or into the shop—unless they looked or dressed like one of the Pussycat Dolls. Since she wasn’t gussied up like a sex-kitten chanteuse, the beefy, bearded guy behind the service counter gave her a single glance and stuck his head back in the Car & Driver magazine he’d been reading.
She made her way to the aisle that held an array of glass cleaner, windshield wipers and dashboard protectors, without anyone asking her if she needed help. A moment later, she rifled through a selection of snow and ice scrapers, choosing a red one with a brush on one side. She tucked it under her arm and went around the corner to the next aisle where a squat man in a knit cap perused the selection of gaskets, a cell phone at his ear.
“I don’t want to have brunch with your mother,” the guy grumbled. “Because I always have to pay. …. Why can’t she come up here for lunch. …. If the Blue Window’s good enough for us, it’s good enough for her…”
Willa stood in front of the air filters and watched the man move farther up the aisle. A second later, she heard the bearded guy at the front of the store as he greeted someone, she heard the brief, friendly exchange one local merchant had with another local merchant, and she heard the undercurrent of impatience in Dominic’s voice.
The dude in the cap was impatient too. He swore into his phone, “Shit, Shirley, why don’t you just get to the point?”
Yeah, that’s what Willa wanted to do too. Get to the point. Get this all over with. Get back to the life she had where the only person who hated her was Alicia. She could deal with Alicia hating her—there were clear psychological reasons for Alicia’s hatred—but having Dominic hate her now was unbearable. It sickened her.
Ice crunched inside Styrofoam, a few feet behind her. “Willa? Is it really you?”
Willa swallowed back a bubble of nausea and turned around. Dominic had a crocodile smile on his big face, and a cup, exactly like the one she had from Sonic, in his hand.
She managed to give him an equally fake grin and raised the bar by standing on her toes to kiss his cheek. “Hi!”
He sneered. “Are you having car trouble?”
“No. I think I need a new air filter.” When she bent forward to have a look at a K&N Highflow air filter in a red-orange box, she set the Sonic cherry-limeade on the low shelf beside air filter cleaning kits.
”Do you want a hand to figure out which one?”
“Thanks, Dominic.”
“What are friends for? What kind are you driving these days? Still have that old Chevy pickup Miles drove?”
“I have a Volkswagen Jetta.”
“That’s got, what, a two-point-five liter engine?” He reached out, took a square box off a shelf, and put the cup in the empty space he’d just made. His canines looked a little sharper when, still smiling, he leaned closer, lowered his voice and said, “There’s your damn root beer. Where’s my Cherry-Lime?”
Willa cut her eyes to the guy in the beanie. He stood at the end of the aisle, still grumbling into his phone. “Near your right foot,” she said softly. “The drive’s inside. Think you can work out how to use it with the e-reader I gave you?”
“I’m not an idiot. And this clandestine spy crap is ridiculous.”
“Yes it is, but do you want to take a chance?” Willa pretended to read a list of compatible air filter replacements. “I can see you socially, considering we have a history, but—”
Dominic snorted.
“You have clearance already, and this way you have access without anyone knowing. You have my secure copy of the evidence, and my e-reader. Digital tracking of the image copies will trace any viewing back to me, just like it’s supposed to.”
“This is all bullshit,” he hissed through his teeth and shoved the filter onto the shelf.
“I’ll give you a pre-paid, disposable cell phone tomorrow.”
“Are you serious? And how are you going to get a phone to me, replace the pickles on my Big Mac with a freakin’ phone?”
“It’ll be in a Starbuck’s cup. I’ll throw it in the back of the Trujillo’s delivery truck. It should blend in with the rest of the trash you’ve got stored in there already.”
He glared at her.
She rolled her eyes. “I’m joking,” she said, “but have you ever cleaned that truck out? I swear you’ve had the same garbage in there since 1998.”
“People carry around all sorts ridiculous of baggage, don’t they? Toxic shit always has to wash back to shore. Kee-rist, all this because I went on a couple of crummy dates with Jackie Grafton.”
She moved down the aisle a little. “I’ve really missed our chats about the bunnies you dated before your wife. I can’t wait to get together sometime so we can talk about—”
“The good ol’ days. Yeah, I’ll be sure to have you over soon for a barbecue.” His laugh was as bogus as his smile had been. “You’ve got this all planned out, don’t you?”
Willa took another air filter off the shelf, looked at it and put it back. “Yes,” she said very, very softly, “God, yes.”
“Oooh, you’re scaring me.”
She turned and faced him and pointed to another filter on a higher shelf. “You know what?” she said at a normal volume, “I think that’s the right one. Could you get that down for me?”
He set his jaw and reached for the red box she’d indicated.
“You should be scared, dipshit,” she muttered when he’d handed it to her.
“So you keep telling me.” Dominic snorted. Then his baby blues narrowed slightly, brow wrinkling. “Gosh, Willa,” he said brightly, “you know you don’t look so good. You feeling all right? Have a bad night?”
She glared at him. “Vodka, Astro? I can’t believe you did that. I can’t believe you let me think it was juice.”
“Hey, I didn’t lie. I’ve never lied to you,” he smirked down at her, “I just didn’t tell you everything.”
Willa wanted to hit Dominic with the snow scraper she still had tucked under one arm, but that would feed into his anger and her fear. She took the root beer from the shelf and put the air filter where the cup had been. “Let me tell you something,” she said quietly. “Pissing me off isn’t going to make me let go. The more annoying you get, the harder I’ll bite down, and the more difficult it’ll be to try and pry me off your ass.”
“So you’re a little pit bull now, is that it?”
She plastered a sweet smile on her face, leaned towards him and murmured, “You have no idea.” Still smiling, she tucked the snow scraper into his elbow. “Now, I need you to help me look for patterns. Anything—formulas that recur, repeated dates, times, words, names, phrases, particular abstract ideas.” She took a step back. “Wow, this is puzzling, isn’t it? None of these filters are right. Guess I’ll have to go to the dealer. Thanks for your help. I’ve got to run, but, hey, let’s do dinner this week. I’d really
like to see Kyle again and get to know Lesley better.”
Dominic made a small sound of disgust.
“I’ll talk to you soon.” She turned and hurried out of AutoZone. She took a drag of icy cold root beer through the red straw sticking out of the Styrofoam cup as she ducked into Bealls Department store next door. Hidden by a sales banner plastered over the front window, standing behind a display stacked with hideous golf shirts, sucking up root beer, Willa peered through the plate glass and watched Dominic dart through oncoming parking lot traffic to get to his Cherokee.
It was dark outside, but the lot was illuminated by high streetlamps. She saw him set the Sonic cup on the SUV’s roof. He put a palm flat against the side of the white Jeep and stood there for a little while, eyeing the beverage. She was close enough to make out the four-letter word he used five times before he grabbed the drink. He jerked the straw out and started to pry off the lid.
“No. Don’t. Wait. Get in the car,” Willa mumbled. “Open it in the car.”
For once the power of telepathy worked. Dominic yanked open the Cherokee’s door and climbed inside.
9
Willa had waited in the parking lot near the Otowi Building. Himesh Chandra pulled into the space between a blue Ford Explorer and an old red Chrysler Neon. He climbed out of his champagne-colored Lexus and took his briefcase out of the trunk. She was behind him before he turned around, startling him with a hearty, “Hello, Dr Chandra!”
“Oh! It’s you,” he said, a hand to his heart.
“I was hoping to run into you.” She gave him a warm smile and offered her hand.
Without smiling back, he shook the tips her fingers. “So you’re back. There were two men asking about you the other day, so I’m not surprised.”
“I won a fellowship.”
“That is a surprise. How very nice for you.”
“Do you have a few minutes? I’m on my way to the badge office, but I’d love to ask you a few questions and see if you’d be at all interested in collaborating on my project.”
“We can speak as we walk to the entrance, but I really don’t have much more time to offer. Why don’t you come to the public library Sunday evening, after my Astronomy lecture on the Lyrid meteor shower? Seven o’clock. We can discuss then whether I’d have any interest in your work.” Abruptly, he turned and began walking towards the smoked glass building, his pace brisk.
Willa was half a step behind. “Thank you. I will come.”
He slowed marginally, saying, “Oh, my condolence on the loss of your husband,” and then sped up.
She was a single pace behind. “Thank you. How are your wife and your children?”
“My son has won the State Science Award for the second year in a row. He’s quite gifted. I tell you, he is bound for early entry to Harvard!”
“That’s exciting. I imagine you must be very proud.”
“Indeed I am.”
Willa fell into step beside him. “You wouldn’t happen to know where Harold Dichter’s office is?”
He let out an audible impatient exhale. “No. I don’t keep tabs on him.”
“You don’t?”
“No.”
“Oh. I thought you would know. You always seemed to be such close colleagues, like you and Jackie Grafton were. Did you see Jackie was arrested?”
Willa had timed the question well. His stride faltered slightly. “Oh, yes,” he said. “Her. The lab assistant. Well, what do you expect with the way she lived with such loose morals? Some little man came to my house and asked me for a donation to bail her out. He came to my house.” Chandra clucked his tongue. “As if I’d donate to a cause like that. That woman made her own bed.” He reached the automatic door and paused momentarily to shake her fingertips again. “Goodbye, Dr Heston. Have a pleasant day and please be on time for the lecture Sunday. I do so hate when tardy people spoil my oration.” With that, he hurried inside and passed through security.
“You can bet I’ll be there,” she said, watching him clear the metal detectors.
Willa spent the rest of the day reading and re-reading police reports. She searched and re-searched for patterns in classified documents until words, symbols, and graphs had bled into a palette of artist’s colors. It was after six when she left her office in the NSSB. She ran for forty-five minutes, in a temperature just above freezing that finally turned the rainbow in her brain into dull slush that drained away. She returned to the apartment sweaty, hungry, and ready for some cartoons to numb her brain for a while before she dove back into the document pool.
She unpinned the house key she’d secured inside her sports bra and nearly tripped over the florist delivery that had been left on the rubber mat at the front door. Perspiration dripped off her nose when she bent to pick up the paper-wrapped arrangement. She tore the top of the cellophane and tissue, exposing three pure white Easter lilies and their perfume, and gagged.
Any other floral scent, like cloying honeysuckle, bitter marigolds, or the Titan Arum—the flower that bloomed once a decade and smelled like rotting meat—was preferable to the stench of lilies. Since Miles, lilies were, and would forever be, funeral flowers.
Breathing through her mouth, Willa pulled the attached card from its envelope. Despite the stink and another gag, Willa smiled.
Thinking of you and your lovely hair.
Maybe the shoe-ruining vomit-o-rama hadn’t been so bad after all.
Ten minutes later, the lilies ‘displayed’ in the downstairs bathroom, Willa reached for the shampoo in the upstairs shower.
Thinking of you and your lovely hair.
Clear as day, she saw John Tilbrook’s crooked grin, and she smiled again before guilt set in, but the twinge of self-reproach lasted two seconds—about as long as it took for her to pump out the sputtering remains of the purple-hued shampoo from the now empty bottle. She tossed her remorse and the spent container out of the shower. Plastic clattered across tiled floor.
There were those moments she still heard Miles singing in his tone-deaf baritone, heard his asking if she wanted more coffee, his morning wake-up cry of ‘Up-and-atom, Chuck,’ which had been his last words as well. His smile, well, that was something that had faded from memory. The one facial expression of Miles’ she never forgot had been his last. He’d looked at her with such ‘what the hell was that’ disbelief, and then died.
That was something impossible to not remember.
Miles’ death had been a sudden trip into the surreal. The time after his demise had been an even more far-out experience. People held funny expectations about losing loved ones, about widows, about the grieving process. For a long while, she been stuck thinking about what she should feel, or should do, or should act, or should want, and when all the shoulds were supposed to happen, as if there was a schedule or timeline she had to stick to.
Shoulds and shouldn’ts. Her mother and Isabel were big into those. ‘You should feel blessed for the time you had. You should get out. You shouldn’t mope about. You should be more understanding with Alicia. You should think about dressing more appropriately for the funeral.’
Willa had a new one for them, and they’d love it: You shouldn’t be thinking about a man you hardly know when you’re naked.
She had wondered sometimes what idiotic monarch decreed there had to be rules for widows, especially the wearing black and spending an x-long period in mourning thing. The whole should thing was a problem when it came to living, not dying. When you got down to it, death was the one perfectly natural should in life. Willa had begrudgingly accepted that. Life was always surprising, full of new learning experiences and things one had to embrace, accept, or go insane. If she could accept death, maybe she could learn to like lilies.
Thinking of you and your lovely hair.
Smiling again, this time without any ripple of guilt, Willa grabbed the squat bottle of two-minute purple conditioning treatment from the soap rack. Like the shampoo, this bottle sputtered and spit its remaining dregs too. She rubbed thick v
iolet cream into her palms, and worked the emulsion into her hair.
Miles had been the last man she’d loved, the only man she’d loved, and, if her mother were to be believed, the last man she’d ever sleep with. Well, she’d certainly blown that final proclamation out of the water a mere eighty-three days after Miles died. There’d been a time or two she’d wanted to describe that frenzied, reckless evening to her mother, in graphic detail, so she’d shut up about her theory of widows over a certain age.
Willa snorted. What was it Mom had said last Christmas? It was something like, ‘Face it, cupcake, you and your sister are past your prime. Grow old gracefully. Stop wasting your time fighting the inevitable with all this obsessive exercise. It’s a fact of life. You’re going to get old and flabby and infirm, and no one likes an old whore. You had your time like I had mine, so move over and let someone else have a chance to shine.’
All right, fine. So the last time she’d had sex was eons ago, she wasn’t exactly in the springtime of her days, but she wasn’t decrepit. She was young enough and obviously ready, so very ready, to saddle up, to really, truly saddle up again. John was the first guy to fully generate her curiosity, her interest. Willa felt wholly wide-awake now, alert to the inner workings of her body and exactly what she’d been missing. Widow guilt was long, long gone. For two days she’d had been feeling regular spasms of lust.
Willa froze for a moment. Was it lust?
Or was it … desperation?
Oh, for God’s sake, there was no reason to be desperate. The sex after Miles died had been about desperation, crisis management. Now was totally different. Regardless of Mom and her conservative fifties-housewife mindset, being a widow did not mean the end of a healthy sex-life or an end to romance.
Yeah, you just keep telling yourself that. It’s what desperate people say.
With an exasperated huff, she shut off the water and jerked two towels from the railing on the other side of the frosted glass shower screen. Wrapping one towel around her head like a turban, she dried off and reached for the lavender waffle-weave robe draped across the toilet.
For Your Eyes Only Page 15
