Fay sprung up from the sofa. “Jenny, what are you saying?”
Jenny set her jaw. “Don’t listen to her,” she said to Harros. “She’s misled you.”
“Fay’s helping us.”
“That’s exactly wrong!” Jenny cried. “Fay was the one who stole your daughter’s diary!”
Fay’s mouth hung open. She had talent, all right. “Is this how you thank me, Jenny?!” She gave a glance of appeal back to Marion. Marion wagged her head sadly, as if dismayed at the depths to which Jenny had sunk. “Is this really about Sheila’s death, or is it about you and your guilty feelings?”
Fay had struck a nerve. Jenny’s eyes were liquefying. I took her arm just as Harros was about to loose his thunder on her.
“You want to help, young woman?” he said. “Then we’ll sit down together and you’ll tell me everything. What you did all that day, and the day before, in your kitchen. Who brought what to your party. You’ll tell me the truth, and you won’t wait for me to get an order to scour your apartment. You’ll let us come and do it now.”
“This minute?” I demanded.
“Whenever I’m ready!” he exploded.
I steered Jenny away from him. “Come over anytime,” I said over my shoulder. “We’ll tell you what we know. But you’re going to have to do some listening, too, Mr. Harros.”
His shoulder muscles relaxed a notch. But if Harros was appeased for the moment, his son was not. Abe had circled and was zeroing in on my briefcase again.
“While you’re coming clean,” Abe said, “how about letting us see what you’ve got in there? It’s been glued to your hand like a nuclear trigger.”
“It’s nothing that concerns you.”
“No, I saw you. When I was coming back up the hill, I saw you closing it. Come on, open it!”
Under other circumstances, I might have let him look, just to show him up. I could invent a good reason for the camera. But the audiotape was too valuable. With one hand keeping a grip on the briefcase, and the other crooked into Jenny’s elbow, I had to use my shoulder to push past him.
“Show some respect to your guests,” I said.
Abe jabbed his finger at me. “You’re up to something, Damen. I’m going to find out what it is and I’m going to nail you.”
We marched from the room. Jenny turned to shoot Fay a look. Dugan’s eyes bored into the briefcase. Salzmann looked baffled, the LifeSciencers skeptical. The aunt had a worried expression that fell short of sympathy. Whether it was for us or Harros, I couldn’t say.
Once we were in the parking lot, Jenny jerked her arm away from me. We’d come in her car. She thrust the keys into my hand without a word. I put the briefcase in back and turned the ignition. Jenny jammed herself into the passenger seat as if trying to crush it.
As I spun by on my way out of the lot, I saw Mrs. Harros sitting in front of the building in her wheelchair. For some reason she’d been left outside. Her head bobbed slowly in our direction, though she didn’t really see us. Her neck was tilted at an awkward angle. The wind flailed her hair, and a gnarled hand reached for some object that did not exist.
15
“What do you mean inviting him to my house? Since when do you have the authority?”
Jenny had been silent the whole way back to her apartment. I’d been preoccupied with the events of the funeral. I knew she was angry, but I figured it was at Harros.
She threw the keys on the dining room table. They slid across it and fell off. She stomped into the kitchen, filled the teapot with water, and slammed it down on the burner.
I unpacked my briefcase in the living room. Jenny came and stood in front of me, waiting for an answer.
“What can they find? We’ll have the Harroses on our ground,” I said. “Let them poke around all they want. They’ll have to listen to us while they do.”
“There it is again. Our ground. You don’t live here, Bill.”
“You want to deal with the guy yourself? Be my guest.”
Jenny stamped her foot. “See? I knew you’d leave me to handle this alone. You’re not serious about us.”
I didn’t recall saying either of those things. I tried to get to the real point. “Jenny, I’m sorry I didn’t come down to the burial with you. I had other things to do.”
“What if it was me in that box? Would you even care?”
“Don’t say that. Of course I’d care.”
The teapot whistled. Jenny didn’t move. She just sat there staring icicles at me.
“What is it, Jenny?”
“Well? Are you going to move in or not? You talk about it, but you don’t do anything.”
The teapot was screaming. I got up to turn it off. “What do you want?” I called to the living room.
“You know what I want!”
Either chamomile or a marriage proposal, I figured. I tossed the tea bags into the cups, took them to the coffee table, and sat down. “If we do live together, I don’t think it would be here.”
“Of course not. We’d get a bigger place. I hate these curtains.”
“No, I mean here on the Peninsula.”
“You’re not thinking we’d live in your flat.”
“What’s wrong with my flat?”
“It’s old and mildewy. Besides, the work is down here. The parties, the Frisbee games, people you see in cafes. All your connections.”
“No, no. My work is not down here. I do industrials when I have to, but they’re not my work.”
“You don’t even have a cell phone. It’s still broken from two weeks ago.”
“Yes, and I don’t miss it a bit.”
She folded her arms. “When are you going to get a real job? Or start a real business?”
“I don’t need a real fucking job! I’m doing fine as a camera operator. It’s enough for now. I’m thinking about what I’m going to do next, and no one’s going to rush me.”
Her anger hardened into sarcasm. “Yeah, you’re real good at that. Thinking’
I opened my mouth to say she could be better at it. To say that while I very much wanted to resolve the question of what happened to Sheila, the question of whether or not Jenny and I were right for each other in the long run was one I was not ready to take on yet.
In the end, I closed my mouth. She scowled at the steam curling from the teacups, stood up, marched into the bedroom, and closed the door.
“This tops off a really pleasant day,” I said to no one.
My machines sat mute on the couch. The white curtains stared at me. Jenny was right. They were repellent. I packed up the equipment and went out to the Scout.
I wasn’t ready to drive away just yet. I opened the briefcase again, plugged headphones into the DAT recorder, and listened to what I’d gotten at the funeral home.
After some bumping and rattling, the voices started to come through. They were distant and echoey, but by cranking the volume I could make them out. The first one was McKinnon’s.
“… put into the ground. Too painful. I have to get back to the lab in any case.”
“It’s a tough break.” This was Dugan. “Extraordinarily bad luck. This kind of thing doesn’t happen very often, does it doctor?”
“It’s rare. It takes the right — or wrong — mix of circumstances.”
“Yes. She had an adrenaline injection with her, but apparently it spoiled. What would cause that?”
“Heat. Time.”
“We don’t know how long she would have lasted anyway,” Dugan said.
There was a pause. “Meaning—?”
“I don’t suppose it matters now. Well, I should get back, too.”
“Busy time for us.”
“More than I’d like. Why did you tell the board we’re ready to start Phase I on MC124?”
“Simple. We are. The IND determination is due back from the FDA on Friday. That’ll clear the way to start testing it on human subjects.”