Reeling, I swept past him, past my guests still seated around the patio table, past Neelie and Ruth as they polished up my kitchen. Somehow I managed to get up the stairs and into my bedroom, where I threw myself facedown on the bed and began to bawl.
Like I said. It should have been a wonderful party. Leave it to me to foul things up.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Saturday morning I slept late. I awoke awash in a sea of regret with a hangover the size of a satellite map of Hurricane Floyd. Paul had already gone to his office at the Academy, thank goodness, so he wasn't there to waggle a finger and say "I told you so."
I took three aspirin to deaden the pain caused by whatever was knocking my prefrontal lobes against my temporal lobes and lay down on the sofa until the jackhammering stopped.
Somewhere in all the confusion, two lost thoughts came together with a drum roll and a crash of cymbals. If Nick Pottorff worked for Jablonsky, then maybe Gail Parrish could tell me something about him. Besides, Gail owed me. The last time we'd talked, she promised to call me back, and I still hadn't heard from her.
I waited until ten, then telephoned Jablonsky's office.
The phone rang six times before somebody picked up. "Mutually Beneficial, how may I help you?" The voice was an octave deeper, decades older, and three times more sophisticated than Gail's.
"This is Hannah Ives," I said. "I'm returning Gail Parrish's call."
"I'm sorry, madam, but Gail Parrish is no longer with the firm." The woman spoke with an Oxbridge accent so obviously fake that I wanted to crawl down the telephone line and slap it out of her.
I sat back in the hard kitchen chair, stunned. "But I just talked with Gail last week!"
"Would you like to speak with Mr. Jablonsky, madam? Perhaps he can help." I hated the woman. Instantly. She sounded like Margaret Thatcher, with a cold.
"I don't want to talk to Mr. Jablonsky," I insisted. "I want to talk to Gail."
"I'm sorry I can't be of more help, madam, but they didn't tell me anything at the temporary agency, just that the receptionist had moved to Las Vegas."
"I beg your pardon?" I clenched my fist, trying to keep my voice under control.
"Miss Parrish has moved to Las Vegas," she repeated, slowly and distinctly, as if I had the IQ of a garden gnome.
Las Vegas? Hah! That was a pile of manure. More than likely Gail figured out she was working for a crook. Maybe she quit before the cops could show up with squad cars whoop-whoop-whooping to measure her boss for a bright orange one-piece. But there wasn't any point in arguing. Unless the new receptionist was Jablonsky's wife or sainted mother, there was no reason for her to know any more about the missing receptionist than I did.
I advised myself to stay calm. "Did Gail leave a forwarding address?" I inquired.
"None that I'm aware of," she said. "Shall I put you through to Mr. Jablonsky, then?"
That was the last thing I needed, for Jablonsky to think that Gail and I had become friends. It wouldn't help Gail any, either, wherever she was. "No, no. Don't bother. I'll just call Gail at home."
"Very well," the woman said, barely concealing her exasperation with an "if you knew her home phone number all along why are you getting testy with me" kind of long-suffering sigh. "Is there anything else?"
"No, thank you."
"Thank you for calling Mutually Beneficial," the woman droned, and hung up.
"Suck eggs," I said into the dead air.
I didn't waste any time pulling the Annapolis phone book down from the shelf. I turned to the P's. There were plenty of Parrishes, George, and several Parrishes, Gerald, but no listing for Parrish, Gail, or Parrish, G.
Of course not, dummy. Gail is house-sitting. Unless I could remember the name of the homeowners, I was fresh out of luck.
But Gail had never mentioned the name of the people she was house-sitting for, only that they lived in Eastport and were blue water sailors.
Gail had an ex-boyfriend, I recalled. Even if he knew her present whereabouts, though, it would do me not one damn bit of good, because Gail had never told me his name, either.
One thing I was one hundred percent sure of: Gail had not moved to Las Vegas. She loved Annapolis. She was saving money for a sailboat. I'd never been to Las Vegas, but I'd seen the ads on TV. I didn't think you could do much sailing in the Nevada desert unless you wanted to launch your boat in the Grand Canal at the Venetian Casino and Resort or tack your way around the dancing fountains at the Bellagio.
My hopes were raised when I remembered that Gail had telephoned me the week before and that her number might still be in the memory chip of my telephone. But, alas, when I went to the phone and scrolled through the menu, the number that popped up was Jablonsky's, and I was reminded that she'd called me from Jablonsky's office, not from home.
Other than asking Jablonsky, then, I was running out of options.
I worried about Gail as I ran my Saturday errands. Had she discovered something about her boss that caused her to quit, using a move to Las Vegas as an excuse? Or, more chilling, had she discovered something about her boss that put her in danger? Had the lie about Las Vegas originated with Jablonsky?
The dry cleaners was a short, two-block walk down Prince George Street, but once I'd lugged the cleaning home and hung it up in the closet, I needed a car to take care of the other chores on my To Do list.
West Marine had telephoned to say that Paul's handheld GPS had been repaired and was ready for pickup, so my next destination was the shopping plaza near Hillsmere to retrieve the device. I continued to worry about Gail as I drove, wondering as I wound my way through Eastport if I was unknowingly passing by her house. Was she reading the Saturday paper in that yellow bungalow at the corner of State Street and Bay Ridge Avenue? Doing her laundry, as I needed to do, in the basement of that three-story brick town house at Chesapeake and Americana? I hoped so.
I waited patiently while the clerk at West Marine wrapped the GPS in bubble wrap, then I tucked it carefully into the bottom of my handbag. I drove west on Forest Drive, cutting over on Spa Road to West Street so I could return my overdue library books.
My civic duty done, my good name restored, I cut through the library parking lot and drove out the back along the old railroad right-of-way to Taylor and across Rowe Boulevard to Graul's, the market where I do the bulk of my shopping.
Graul's carries a marvelous assortment of gourmet items I can't seem to live without, and as usual I walked through my front door with shopping bags bulging after spending at least fifty dollars more than I planned. Saturday's "must have" was a round loaf of crusty olive bread, $3.75. I rest my case.
I put the groceries away, listened to my phone messages-only some Congressman's lackey wanting Paul's opinion on a prescription drug benefit for seniors (For!)-then gathered up the laundry, including the dirty linens from last night's picnic, and trudged downstairs to the laundry room.
As I sorted the whites from the darks, I noticed that one of the place mats had a plum-colored ring on it, probably from the base of a wineglass. I pre-treated the place mat with laundry spray, recalling, with embarrassment, how rude I'd been to Dennis the previous evening. Yet, even in the cold, sober light of day, his words still stung: the only thing you 're doing right.
I knew that everyone has a Constitutional right to protection from unreasonable searches and seizures, and I also knew that Dennis, as a cop, had to adhere to higher standards than I would. Yet the evidence I had collected against Steele and Jablonsky seemed, at least to me, much more than circumstantial. It seemed compelling. Still, there was no excuse for my taking Dennis's head off, even if it had been the wine talking. Dennis was my brother-in-law, and my guest. I'd have to call him to apologize.