Fidelity (22 page)

“Are the police finished in here?” she asked.

Dewey said, “Yeah, they’re done. They dusted a couple of test spots by the door, but he was wearing gloves. They were hoping maybe he had cut himself going out through that window, but they couldn’t find any blood.”

Ray said, “We’d better figure out what to do next.”

Emily said, “I already have. I’m going to search this house completely. I’d like you to help me, if you’re willing.” She looked at the others. “I would like both of you to go and talk to April and ask her to help you search the office.”

Dewey and Bill looked at each other uneasily. Emily said, “I know about it. She told me. I don’t think she’ll feel comfortable if I talk to her right now, but I can’t let that get in the way because we need her help. She’ll want to find out who killed Phil, so please ask her.”

“Say we do get her to help,” Bill said. “What are we doing? What are we looking for?”

“You’re looking at everything. You and April and Dewey go to the office and check each piece of paper and then set it aside. When you have a pile, put it in a cardboard file box. I’m going to rent a selfstorage bay, and at the end of each day, we’ll take the boxes you’ve filled and move them there.”

He frowned. “But how do we know which things to put in which boxes?”

She tried to be patient with Bill because he was young and brave and had just had a hard night. “April knows the filing system, so she’ll help. But we’ll keep it simple, and use the three categories we already have. There are current cases, alphabetized by the last name of the client. That’s the smallest group. There are old cases arranged the same way, and internal business files, like phone bills and payrolls and leases.”

“Are you closing down Kramer Investigations?”

Emily looked at Dewey Burns. His expression was attentive, but she couldn’t tell whether he cared what the answer was. She said, “I’m just making the next move to fight off this guy. I’m trying to beat him to this piece of evidence he wants. I don’t know what happens when we have it. I suppose it depends on what it is.”

Dewey nodded. “Okay. But tell us again. What, as close as you can figure, is it going to look like?”

“I’m sorry, but I just don’t know. It’s something Phil had. I thought I knew him better than I did, so I can’t tell what form it’s in. It’s a piece of paper, a photograph, an audiotape, a videotape, a computer disk, or maybe a piece of film, or the memory card from a digital camera. All I know is that it would make some powerful man uncomfortable. That’s what the man who broke in said. He implied that it was what got Phil murdered, but that it’s still around, and he wants it.”

“Did the guy say it’s something Phil made, or something he just happened to get his hands on?” Bill asked.

“It could be either. It could be he got it in one form and put it into a different form, or even more than one form. Anything is possible. You knew Phil. He was clever, secretive.”

Dewey Burns was staring into Emily’s eyes with a fresh intensity, reminding her of Phil. She realized it had stopped being their secret now: Phil’s and Dewey’s. Now it was Dewey’s and hers, and it felt as though she had known it for a long time. He said, “We should go over there and get started, and get as far as we can right away.”

The two men began to move toward the door, and Emily followed them. “Thank you, guys. But you know, you could get some sleep first. The security company has men watching the office tonight, so you could start tomorrow.”

“No,” Dewey said. “The sooner we find it, the sooner this will be over.”

He and Bill went out, and Ray closed the door.

Emily said, “You can get some sleep. I’m going to get started here.”

“No. I’m up, so I might as well help. How do you want to search the house?”

“The same way I told them to search the office. We’ll start by moving everything out of the bedroom upstairs, and search the bare room. We’ll search each piece of furniture, too, and then move it down here. When we’re done with that room, we’ll go to the nextmost-likely place, which is that little den off the hallway over there.”

“All the furniture is going to end up in the living room?”

“For a while. It will be going into storage, too.”

“You’re selling the house.”

“When this is over.”

“You didn’t tell me.”

“I didn’t know it until a few minutes ago. I just realized I’m never going to live here again.” She moved to the staircase and climbed to the second floor. After a moment, he heard a drawer slide shut with a bang, and another one slide open.

He climbed after her.

Jerry Hobart showered and changed his clothes to be sure there were no glass fragments sticking to him and to remove the gunpowder residue from his hands, but he knew he wouldn’t sleep. He sat on the bed in his hotel room and looked out over the lights in the San Fernando Valley. It was a clear night, and from his window on the tenth floor he could see the long rows of street lamps stretching off to the west, where they seemed to lose their definition and fade to become only an impression that the valley was lighter than the ridge of mountains to the north or the sky above.

Hobart was frustrated and angry that he could not go back out and find Emily Kramer right away. Now that he had gone to her house a second time, she would be hiding, staying with someone probably, and maybe with an armed guard. Phil Kramer’s office was out of reach now, too. Hobart was not going to be able to go back there.

But he had planted a suggestion in Emily Kramer’s skull, and now he had to hope that the suggestion had stuck with her and started to irritate and intrigue her until she couldn’t keep from acting on it. He still wasn’t sure whether she had known all along everything her husband knew about Theodore Forrest, or had known nothing. If Hobart had to take a guess, he would now bet that Phil Kramer hadn’t told her anything. She had seemed genuinely hurt and disappointed when he’d told her that her husband had been holding valuable secret information about a rich man. Hobart had also noticed that she did not doubt it was true.

Hobart brought back the sight of her standing there beside her bed saying she had just learned that her husband was cheating on her. The way she had blurted it out had surprised her as much as it surprised Hobart. It was as though the interrogation he was conducting was, to her, only a part of a much larger, unpleasant conversation she was having with herself. Saying he was cheating on her had made sense to her for an instant. It had seemed to her to be proof that her husband was in the habit of lying to her. Hobart supposed a detective who blackmailed people might also be somebody who wouldn’t tell his wife what he was doing. That wasn’t a stretch of the imagination. He wondered what Phil had planned to tell Emily when he had his million dollars, or whatever price he had set.

Suddenly Hobart realized he had made a false assumption. Phil Kramer had been cheating on her, and he had not told her where he was going the night Whitley had shot him. Kramer had not been planning to walk in the house with a sack of money and say, “Honey, I’m home. Look what I’ve got.” He had been planning to divorce her without letting her know the money existed, or maybe not come home that night at all. What she had learned about her marriage was why she had looked so defeated. Her hurt had been a bigger feeling than her fear of Hobart. She had known-maybe really just learned that day-that when Kramer died, her marriage had already been over for a while. She had already figured out that if Phil Kramer had been paid off that night, he would have been on his way to the airport.

Hobart couldn’t help including in his memory the fact that she had been naked. He had made her strip because it was a quick way to make progress in an interrogation. A person who was naked among enemies started to feel scared and vulnerable and powerless. For a woman it was worse, because it conformed exactly to a nightmare she’d been having since she was a child. When he met her, he had judged her to be someone who would fall apart and hand over everything Phil Kramer had on Forrest. Now he wasn’t sure she wouldn’t have held out, but he was almost sure she didn’t have what he wanted, at least that night.

But now she had to be searching as hard as she could to find the information he had asked her about. It was almost impossible that she wouldn’t. No woman could find out that her husband had been killed over a secret and not ache to know what the secret was. Certainly nobody could be stripped and threatened and humiliated and not want to frustrate and outsmart the man who had done those things to her.

Hobart could only step back now and wait until Emily Kramer found what he wanted. Even if she found the information right away, he knew he could do nothing more tonight because the police would be out searching for him until daylight. He was eager to have the prize quickly, but he could not afford to be impatient and put himself into more situations like the one at the house. He felt restless and dissatisfied. All he could do was let Emily Kramer search, and wait for the moment when the cops ran out of patience and left her alone again.

Ted Forrest awoke knowing it was late. He could see that the level of the sun was high, that it must be at least ten. He also knew that something had come to him during the night while he was asleep, some idea, some decision. He got up and went into the bathroom. He had not brought any of his toiletries into the guest suite, but the guest bathrooms were always stocked with toothbrushes and razors and combs. He showered and wore the bathrobe from the suite to walk down the hall to the master suite.

When he entered the bedroom, he saw that the maids had already been here. They had made the bed, emptied the clothes hampers, opened the curtains and replaced the flowers on the table. He was aware of these things, and he liked reliability and efficiency in service people. He detested their opposite.

Forrest took a moment to look in the mirror on the way to his closet. If someone had asked him why, he would have had to say it was to be sure he looked the same. It was not that he would have changed, but that he had so many things on his mind that he wondered if they showed. He went into the dressing area of the big closet and dressed in a pair of gray, unpleated pants that had a simple, informal look, a plain blue oxford shirt, and a black cashmere sport coat. He packed a single small suitcase with the things he might need over a period of a couple of days.

He finished his packing, went to the little wall safe where he kept a few good watches and some cash, and took out a thousand dollars for pocket money. He heard footsteps in the bedroom and stood still, preparing himself. He had been trained since he was a small child to exert control over his feelings. This moment was no different from that second when he stood ready with his tennis racket in his hand and his knees flexed and waited to read the green flash of ball coming off his opponent’s racket to streak over the net. Until he knew which way to move, any move was wrong.

She came in and stood six feet away, as always. “You’re packing.”

“Yes.”

“Are you leaving me?”

“I’m going away for a day or two.”

“To get away from me?” She was physically rigid, as though her sense of outrage had tightened her into paralysis.

“To get away.”

“Is that all you’re planning to say to me?” she asked. He could see that her eyes were tearing, and it intrigued him. She must be crying for herself because she felt insulted. Her brain was filled with impressions of undeserved injuries inflicted on her by an uncaring world. She never seemed to be aware that she had done things to precipitate them, and she was always certain she knew what other people were thinking. She was never right.

He exerted self-control. “I hadn’t been planning to say anything to you. I delayed my trip so I would be available for your event last night. It’s over, and now I’ve got things to do. Good-bye.”

He picked up his suitcase, but she held her position, blocking the door to the bedroom. He turned and walked through the bathroom door into the hall. He moved along the hall and down the stairs quickly, hoping to deny her the time to deliver some angry comment, or at least to be far enough away not to hear it distinctly.

Ted Forrest got to the foot of the staircase, across the foyer, and out the door. He shut it behind him quietly so she would not be certain which way he had gone, then walked down the gravel path to the garage. He put his small suitcase in the trunk of the BMW and left the trunk open.

He went through the door to the back room of the garage. When the building had been the stable, that side had been the front of the building, where the carriages and tack had been kept, and the horses had been led around to be hitched. Now it was the workshop, where the gardeners stored their mowers and blowers, the pool man put spare filters and chemicals, and the caretakers stored tools and supplies. Along the back wall there were three workbenches, and above them was a shelf with a row of paint cans in shades matching each room in the house for touch-ups. Forrest took two unopened halfgallon cans of mineral spirits, placed a strip of duct tape over the cap of each to prevent subtle leakage, and set them in his trunk in a plastic leaf bag. Then he took a battery-charged electric drill and a set of bits and put those in, too.

He started his engine, pulled down the long driveway, and out onto the road. He turned off his cell phone and put it into his pocket. He didn’t want to receive calls and create a record of which repeater towers had relayed the signals to him. After a moment he took the phone out again. It would be wise to make one call before he left the area. He dialed the number with his thumb. “Hi. I’m afraid I had to go out of town unexpectedly. I won’t be anyplace where I can be reached by phone, so don’t call. I’ll get in touch the second I get back. Erase this. ‘Bye.”

He turned off the phone again and put it into the glove compartment, so he wouldn’t be tempted to use it on the daylong drive. Maybe he would buy Kylie a present while he was gone. It would have to be small enough to be paid for plausibly by her paycheck from Marlene’s. Of course, the present would depend upon whether she followed his instructions about the message he had just left. He had the four-digit code she used to replay her messages, and he sometimes used it to listen to them. Usually what he heard was vapid voices of fourteen-and fifteen-year-old girls asking whether she was going to this or that, and what she was going to wear. In the past sometimes she had saved a message of his so she could replay it and listen to his voice on her cell phone after she had gone to bed. Later tonight he would check to be sure she had erased his message.