“All style and surface,” I muttered to my reflection. But at least I looked less like a skull.
“You all right in there?” Gold called. “The coffee's ready.”
I could smell it as I came down the hallway, a dark, welcoming aroma mixed with the reek of tobacco. My host, now wearing jeans under his appalling bathrobe, was perched on a stool at a pastel-blue Formica counter, stubbing out one cigarette and lighting another. The counter separated the living room from a kitchen that was much like the rest of the apartment: clean enough, roomy enough, utterly impersonal. A small saucepan on the stove was crusted with soupy remains that matched, in color and state of decay, the remains on a bowl and spoon in the sink. Sitting in solitary splendor on the countertop were an expensive-looking coffeemaker, its glass pot filled with the darkest of brews, and an open bottle of Scotch.
I took the other stool and lifted my waiting cup greedily. There was almost as much liquor in it as coffee, and the mixture chased every lingering chill from my body, right down to the wrinkled soles of my feet. I drained the cup and held it out for more. And I don't even like Scotch. Gold, amused, blew out a mouthful of smoke and said, “You're welcome.”
“What? Oh, I'm sorry. Thank you. Thanks for everything.”
He reached behind him for the coffeepot. “My name is Aaron.”
“Thank you, Aaron.”
He nodded, pouring. With his unshaven stubble and his dangling cigarette, he looked like a second-string tough guy in an amateur play. “You're welcome, Little Mermaid. Now, what's the deal here?”
I took a deep breath. Where to start? Now that I had an audience, the story seemed so unbelievable. And so humiliating. Stick to the facts, I decided, and leave the feelings out of it. Keep it impersonal. “It's about Holt Walker. He's Douglas Parry's attorney, and—”
“And your boyfriend, I know. What'd he do, push you off his yacht?”
“No,” I snapped. “No, as a matter of fact, he arranged to have Nickie Parry kidnapped at St. Anne's last Saturday.”
Aaron Gold's cigarette fell from his lips and drowned itself with a hiss in his coffee cup. “Kidnapped? Are you sure?”
“I found the ransom note myself.”
“She was kidnapped last week, and now this week she's blithely rescheduling her wedding date? Wait a minute. Wait just one minute.” He skittered into the bedroom, came back with a small tape recorder, tried to start it, cursed at its dead batteries, and then grabbed a pencil and a legal pad from a drawer under the wall telephone. It was the telephone that alarmed me the most.
“No, you wait a minute!” I protested. “I didn't come here because you're a reporter! You can't write about this, and you can't call anybody! You have to promise me that, or I won't tell you another word.”
Gold sat down again and looked at me, completely deadpan. No hospitality now, no quips. Just a narrowing of the dark eyes below the tousled black hair. “Listen, Wedding Lady, I am a reporter. And you don't have to tell me another word. I can go out the door this minute and investigate the shit out of what you just said. Also I can boot you back out in the rain where you came from. This isn't the Salvation Army. It's my apartment, and I was asleep. Now if you didn't come here to give me this story, why the hell—”
“I came here to hide!”
“From who?”
“From Holt Walker and—and some thug he hired to do the kidnapping! He attacked me once already, and now they're searching my houseboat. And don't yell at me. I hate it when people yell at me!”
“Holt Walker attacked you?” Gold came around the end of the counter and took me gently by the shoulders, staring closely into my face. “There's blood on your forehead. That son of a bitch. That son of a bitch.”
I shook him off. “Would you listen, please? Holt didn't attack me, this other guy did, but it was back at the fund-raiser for Senator Bigelow. I was wearing Nickie's jacket, and it was dark. Theo told me I just fell against a tree, but … Oh, my God. Theo must be in on it, too, or he wouldn't have lied.”
“Who's Theo?”
I closed my eyes and swayed. The whiskey was doing its job too well. “I have to lie down. Now.”
“Sure, of course. In here.” He led me to the bedroom, where the chenille spread no longer covered the tangle of wilted white sheets on a double bed. There were no pictures on the wall, no personal mementos on the dresser, not even a bedside lamp. Just a pile of newspapers on the floor weighted down with an overflowing ashtray and a tiny portable television set. The carpet was apartment-building green, the drapes apartment-building beige. I fell facedown onto the bed, waiting for my queasy stomach to settle. Gold sat on the edge and brought out the inevitable cigarette.
“Do you have to smoke?” I said thickly, into the sheets.
“No, I don't have to. I like to.”
But he returned the cigarette to the pack and took the ashtray out of the room. I used the moment to sit up against the pillows and sort out my thoughts, something I should have done before I spilled the beans about the kidnapping. And to a reporter, yet. But now that I had, what was best to do? I blinked at the glare from the overhead light. Could I use what I knew about Holt to help Nickie somehow, or would it be safer to remain silent? What Holt had done to me was mortifying, but unimportant. The important thing was Nickie's safety. So, enough whining. I had learned the truth about Holt by chance, and now chance had given me an ally, wrapped in a plaid bathrobe. When Gold returned, I was ready for him.
“Look,” I said, in the voice I used to tame ferocious mothers-of-the-bride. “Later on, when this is over, you can have my exclusive story, all right? Eyewitness to heinous crimes in high society, any kind of garbage you want to print. But if you tell anyone now, you could kill Niccola Parry. Do you understand?”
“Of course I don't understand,” said Gold. He sat cross-legged on the foot of the bed, his feet bare and his robe gaping open. “I thought the Parry girl was sick at home. Corinne Campbell said so.”
“I lied to Corinne. I've been lying to everybody. Nickie's being held for ransom, and the note said that if the police hear about it, the kidnappers will cut off her f-fingers.” I stumbled over the words, and felt tears rising. I blinked them back and went on. “Her parents are frantic. Douglas is going to pay the ransom, but they haven't told him when or where. And his closest friend is in on it!”
“Holt Walker?”
I nodded.
“Pretty nasty for you, finding that out.”
I nodded again.
“Well, tell me everything, from the beginning.” He shifted on the bed, and his hands moved restlessly, as if groping for a cigarette. Or a pencil.
“First you have to promise me to keep it secret until Nickie is safe. If you don't, I'll call your editors and tell them you're lying. I'll—”
“Whoa!” He leaned forward and captured one of my hands in both of his. “I promise. Swear to God. One lousy little quote out of context doesn't make me a monster, OK? Of course I'll keep it a secret, if the girl is in danger. Just tell me exactly what's going on.”
I told him everything I knew or guessed, from the scent of cloves in the woods, five weeks back, to the sound of Holt's voice in my houseboat just hours before. And everything in between, from Nickie's pearls to the three business cards to Eddie's house key to that frightful package.
“When you think about it, the business cards sound like somebody from out of town, learning his way around,” he pointed out. “I mean, do you carry cards for your favorite places in Seattle?”
“No, of course not. I didn't think of it that way.” All that snooping around and suspecting Boris, when it was really Andreas, the man from out of town, who had tampered with Nickie's car. The man Holt imported to help with the dirty work.
Gold interrupted this dismal thought. “How much is the ransom?”
“Two million dollars, and the promise that Douglas won't testify about King County Savings. So you see, Keith Guthridge must be behind the whole thing, and Holt is work
ing for him. Guthridge threatened Douglas. I heard it myself.”
“That argument they had at the fund-raiser?”
“That's right. It seems so long ago. Guthridge must have decided to get back at Douglas in the most hurtful way he could imagine. You know that he's Nickie's godfather?”
Gold shrugged. “People do ugly things when they're cornered. And don't forget, Guthridge isn't his own man anymore. You don't do business with organized crime and then walk away. Somebody up the line probably thought this up, and used Guthridge and Walker and whoever else they needed to get it done. Including this guy Theo. Who's he again?”
“The Parry's chauffeur. He said he saw me fall, there in the woods. But I didn't, I was hit from behind by Andreas. So Theo was lying. Holt had me convinced that it was all my imagination, and that Theo would never do anything for Keith Guthridge. But Holt was lying, all along.” I blushed as the unwelcome memories reeled through my mind like a movie, a steamy sex farce with a diabolical leading man and a comically naive ingénue.
Gold stared at the floor, perhaps out of courtesy or perhaps just lost in thought. My affair with Holt was apparently just another piece of the puzzle to him. I wished I could see it that way myself. I finished my tale, and Gold frowned and rubbed a hand across his eyes. My own eyelids were drooping, and my head kept rolling heavily back against the pillows.
“You realize that some of these connections are pretty tenuous?” Gold began. “Theo must be a criminal because you smelled clove cigarettes in the woods. Walker must be a kidnapper because he's rummaging around in your study with a man with an accent. Eddie must be an accomplice because he's the only one with your house key—”
“I didn't say that!”
“You implied it, Carnegie. I'm not saying you're wrong, but let's review the facts for a minute. Just the hard facts, not what you guess or suspect. Number one, Keith Guthridge threatened Douglas Parry about his testimony. Number two, Parry's daughter was kidnapped by persons unknown. Number three, Holt Walker was on your houseboat tonight, for reasons unknown. Number four …”
Maybe it was the Scotch, or the drone of Gold's voice, or just being warm and safe after being cold and terrified. Whatever it was, somewhere between numbers four and five, in the midst of puzzling out the most extraordinary and harrowing events of my entire life, I fell asleep.
I WOKE TO THE SOUND OF SNORING, DISTANT BUT UNMISTAK able, like a tractor idling in the next field. I sat up and groaned, head in hands. Judging by the state of my body, the tractor had run over it with both wheels on the way to harvest the haystack that used to be my hair. My body was one big charley horse, and my hair felt like I'd soaked it in molasses instead of Lake Union.
The lake … Aaron Gold … Holt. Reality flooded in, far harsher than the sunlight filtering through the beige drapes across the room. It was Saturday morning. I was in Aaron Gold's apartment, and Holt Walker was due on my doorstep at one P.M. for our romantic trip to Mount Rainier and Anita Reid's wedding. A scenic drive to the mountain, a gala evening, and a night of sensual delights with the man who had put his best friend through hell and threatened to mutilate an innocent girl. I levered myself stiffly out of bed and scanned the room for a clock. A wristwatch with a scuffed leather band lay curled on the dresser.
I picked it up. Eleven-thirty.
“No. Oh, no!” I hobbled down the hallway to the living room, wailing as I went. “How could you let me sleep this late?”
Aaron—somehow in the night he'd become Aaron instead of Gold—Aaron coughed in mid-snore and jerked upright on the couch. His bathrobe, laid over him as a blanket, slid to the floor. He was still wearing his jeans. “Huh? What?”
“It's eleven-thirty!”
He yawned, screwing his eyes shut and scratching his bare chest with both hands. “So what?”
“So Holt Walker is going to show up at my place in ninety minutes! He doesn't know that I know. Only I'm not sure what I do know. Why did you let me sleep? What am I going to—”
“Stop.”
“But—”
“Stop!” He held out one hand like a traffic cop. “Stop yowling. Wait here.”
I stopped. Aaron stood up and shook his head slowly, then vigorously, like a horse with a horsefly. We were both barefoot, but he seemed even shorter than usual, and certainly more befuddled. His left ear and cheek were waffle-patterned from the sofa cushion, and on the other side his hair stood out in horizontal cowlicks. Some ally. He shambled past me into the bathroom and shut the door. I started the coffeemaker while I waited, and when he returned I headed for the bathroom myself. My hair was past remedy and so were my clothes, still lying in a damp, smelly heap on the tiled floor. I kept his sweatpants and sweatshirt on, and contented myself with splashing cold water on my face and forcing my feet into my cold, misshapen sneakers.
When I emerged Aaron was in the kitchen, wearing a baggy red T-shirt with a Boston Red Sox logo. He looked me over without enthusiasm. “You've got a date with Walker today?”
I nodded anxiously. “At one o'clock. I'm doing a wedding at Mount Rainier tonight, and he's supposed to come with me.”
“Then you'd better go home and change. You look like hell.”
“What are you talking about?” I sputtered. “I can't go anywhere with Holt. He's a kidnapper. He's dangerous!”
“Not if he goes on believing that he's got you fooled. Look, I was thinking about this after you conked out. If Walker is in on the kidnapping—”
“What do you mean, if?”
“Just listen. If he's in on it, then it's important not to let him know that you suspect him. Right?”
“Right.”
“And I take it you don't want to call the cops and have him followed?”
“Absolutely not.” If Nickie was still alive—how dismal it was, to admit the existence of that “if”—then I didn't dare endanger her by overruling her father and involving the police.
Aaron handed me a coffee cup, sans Scotch, and half a bagel. “They wouldn't believe you, anyway, is my guess. What about telling Douglas Parry himself?”
I chewed on the question for a moment, and then on the bagel. It was stale, so I dunked it in the coffee. “I don't think so. He doesn't trust me anymore, and he does trust Holt. Holt could just say that he suspected me of being one of the kidnappers, and he was searching my place for evidence.”
“Good point. So where does that leave us?”
I sat down on a stool, defeated. “It leaves us trying to find out what Holt really was searching for last night, without tipping him off.”
“And the only way to do that is—?”
“Is for me to take him to Mount Rainier, and keep an eye on him.”
“Exactly.”
“But—”
“But what?”
“Nothing.” I was silent then, watching Aaron's dark, stubbly jaw crunching up and down on his bagel and thinking, quite irrelevantly, that he must have to shave twice a day. His plan made sense, but why did I feel so aggrieved, so abandoned? Perhaps an ally wasn't really what I had wanted. Perhaps I'd stumbled through the rain last night looking for a champion, a knight in shining armor to slay my dragons for me. Or just John Wayne. “I cain't let you face that varmint, little lady. You just stay here in the bunkhouse and I'll gun him down for yuh.” Instead I had this unshaven Boston-ian bum, calmly advising me to change my clothes and walk right back into danger because it made sense.
“What are you going to do, meanwhile?” I asked peevishly.
“Snoop around, ask questions, check records. If Walker really is hooked up with Guthridge, there must be some trace of it somewhere. The more we find out now, the more we'll have to tell the police after they let Nickie go. And if you find out anything, you can call my pager and I'll go to Douglas or the cops or whatever.”
I looked up sharply. “You think they'll let her go, then?”
Aaron turned aside to pour more coffee. When he spoke, he didn't look at me. “I covered a kidnapping once, back
east. Spent a lot of time talking to a security consultant. This guy makes a fortune advising high-risk executives. According to him, the longer a hostage is held, the worse the odds are for a safe release.”
“How did it end? The case that you covered?”
He unplugged the coffeemaker. “We'd better get going.”
It was five to twelve when we reached the houseboat. Fortunately for my reputation as a snappy dresser, the dock was deserted. That was unusual for a Saturday, but I figured everyone was out enjoying the weather. The rainstorm had exhausted itself during the night, and now the last shreds of clouds were disappearing eastward, leaving behind a rinsed blue sky and a balmy breeze. The houseboat barely rocked as we stepped onto its deck, and the sun-spangled water all around us hardly looked like the nightmarish abyss I'd been floundering in just a few hours before. I unlocked the door and hesitated, but Aaron strolled right in.
“Nice place,” he said, loud and overcasual. “OK if I look around?”
I realized that he thought Holt or his foreign crony might still be inside. I shook my head in a wild negative, but Aaron ignored me and set off through the living room for the bedroom and study. He returned in a moment and shrugged. “No bears around, Goldilocks. Can you tell if anything's missing?”
I made a quick survey with one eye on the clock. If I'd come back from Ellensburg this morning as planned, I would never have guessed at the invasion of my little domain. There was no scent of burning cloves, this time. And, just like that other night, there was nothing out of place.
“What on earth were they looking for?” I said, more to myself than to Aaron. I flopped down on the couch and looked helplessly around at my normal, pedestrian possessions. My eyelids began to lower like a theater curtain, soft and heavy. The hours I'd spent in Aaron's bed had been fitful, and too few. With the slightest of nudges I could have keeled over and gone back to sleep. Aaron prowled in and out of the room, full of restless energy.
“It must be something they didn't find the first time Andreas was here,” he said, drumming his fingers on table-tops and chair arms. “Something of Nickie's, maybe? No, that doesn't fit; they've already convinced Parry that they have her. You don't suppose Walker really was searching for evidence that you're the guilty party?”
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