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 away, 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.