by Lowe, Sheila
Grusha Olinetsky spat the words as if they tasted bad in her mouth. “His name is Andrew Nicholson. Incompetent! I do not trust this man to vork for me another time.”
Claudia hesitated. She and Andy Nicholson might work in the same field, but she couldn’t bring herself to think of him as a colleague. Throughout the years she had known him, Andrew Nicholson had made it a habit to inflate his credentials out of all proportion to the truth. It didn’t seem to bother him that he was committing perjury. A few months back, he and Claudia had gone toe-to-toe on opposing sides of a major forgery case. Her client’s attorney had exposed Nicholson’s lies and was now threatening to file charges against him. Andy had been seeking revenge against Claudia ever since, concocting outrageous tales and telling them to anyone who would listen.
Maybe Andy’s luck had run out. Maybe Grusha Olinetsky had found a chink in his armor.
“Tell me more,” said Claudia at last.
She quickly stripped out of the business suit she’d worn for Hard Evidence. Jovanic rolled over and followed her with sleep-bleared eyes as she slid under the covers and backed up against his long, lean body. After a couple hundred nights of practice they fit together like pieces of a puzzle.
A couple of hours later, after they had steamed up the windows, then dozed for a while, Claudia told him about the phone call.
“You’ll never guess who my new client is.”
Jovanic got up and headed for the bathroom, his voice floating back to her. “Is it, ummmm, Michelle Pfeiffer?”
“You wish.”
“Barack Obama?”
“Now you’re just being silly.” She heard the toilet flush and the faucet running; then he was back, diving under the covers and snuggling next to her. She gave his arms a vigorous rub. “You’re freezing.”
“So warm me up,” he said, nuzzling his cold chin against her neck and making her squirm.
She slid a leg over his hip. “You plumb wore me out already, Columbo.”
“You wimp,” he teased. “So, tell me. Who’s the new client?”
“Her name is Baroness Grusha Olinetsky. She runs a ritzy dating club.”
The rude Bronx cheer he gave made his opinion of her new client more than clear. “I know exactly who you’re talking about. She was on some trashy TV show a while back. What does she want with you?”
“To analyze handwriting, of course.” She turned over to face him. “What’s wrong?”
He gave her a skeptical look. “I don’t know, babe. She looked like a sleazy character to me. You might want to think twice before you get involved with her.”
Claudia arched up and gently caught his bottom lip between her teeth, then let go. “I’ve had other sleazy clients and you’ve never complained. Anyway, my job is to analyze handwriting for them, not judge their morals. And check this out—she wants me to come to her office in New York and meet with her. Tomorrow.”
Jovanic’s fingertips halted their lazy journey along her thigh. “New York? What about Annabelle?”
Annabelle Giordano was a troubled young teen who was staying in Claudia’s home for a while. She had been another intended victim of the psychopath. Although she put up a front of fierce independence, the girl’s vulnerability was apparent to Claudia, especially in sleep, when nightmares made her cry out in panic.
“You know I’ll make arrangements to take good care of Annabelle,” Claudia said. “I don’t think that’s gonna be a problem. Are you gonna be a problem?”
He frowned. “That kid clings to you like a life preserver. She’s not going to like it.”
“I know, but maybe it’s about time she started loosening her grip on me a little bit.”
“Now you’re just rationalizing. I can see that you’ve already decided to go.”
Claudia tickled the hair curling across his belly. “Listen, Columbo, in case you’ve forgotten, you’re the cop; I’m the one with the psych degree. I’ll take good care of Annabelle. Don’t worry your pointy detective head about it.”
Jovanic was silent for a long moment before his fingers started moving again, brushing her skin with the lightest of touches. “Why doesn’t this woman just FedEx you the handwriting she wants analyzed?”
“I don’t know, except it sounded like she didn’t want to let the samples out of her sight. Maybe there’s something valuable about them. I’ll find out when I get there.”
“How long?”
“She didn’t know for sure, but at least three or four days, maybe a little longer.” Claudia braced herself for a bigger objection, mildly surprised when he didn’t offer further argument. She added, “Andy Nicholson’s been working for her. Apparently he screwed up—no big surprise—and that’s why she wants to hire me.” The prospect of being called in to fix Andy’s mistakes pleased her immensely. “How could I refuse an opportunity like that? It’s one thing that I personally can’t stand him, but he gives the whole field of handwriting analysis a black eye.”
Jovanic continued to look unhappy. “I think you ought to stay out of his face, babe. That asshole would just as soon put a hit out on you as look at you. He won’t appreciate your scooping up his client.”
“She’s not his client anymore, and I didn’t take her away from him; she called me. Hey, I’m not worried about Andy Nicholson; his only weapon is words.” She began to recite in a singsong voice, “Sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me.”
Jovanic removed his hand and sat up, throwing off the blankets. His scowl sent a clear signal that he didn’t appreciate her lame attempt at humor. He stood up and reached for his shorts, pulled on a T-shirt. “Claudia, for god’s sake, haven’t you had enough shit in your life lately? Do you really need to do this right now?”
She knew he was talking about the discovery of her friend’s body. His words were like a bucket of icy water, dousing her enthusiasm for the job.
What she had gone through had left her feeling that she’d lost any semblance of control over her life. It didn’t matter how much she tried to push away the grotesque images of the bloated body she had stumbled across; they nipped endlessly at the periphery of her consciousness like a little yapping dog. She thought this must be what schizophrenia was like, battling voices that wouldn’t be silenced.
Jovanic had been aware of her depression and anger since the murder, but she didn’t want anyone, including him, to see how nakedly exposed she felt. She’d been there before.
A flash of memory: large hands pulling her where she didn’t want to go; threatening—I’ll hurt you if you don’t do what I say.
As if she hadn’t been hurt anyway. She pulled the covers up around her neck and squeezed her eyes shut, as if doing so would protect her.
“Claudia?” Jovanic was leaning over her and he sounded concerned. He sat down on the edge of the bed, encircling her in his arms, holding her safe.
As if she could ever really be safe.
“Baby, you don’t have to go to New York right now,” he said, letting her know that despite her best efforts, he could see through her with his detective’s eyes. His lover’s eyes.
She wanted to answer that she would call Grusha Olinetsky and cancel the assignment; that she would stay here and let him take care of her. But she knew that if she gave in now, she would never be able to stand on her own again. So instead, she said in a tight voice, “Andy Nicholson isn’t going to hurt me and there isn’t any danger in this job; it’s an exciting opportunity.”
“Did Olinetsky tell you what kind of mistakes Nicholson made?” Jovanic prodded, refusing to let it go.
Claudia lifted a bare shoulder in an elaborately casual shrug. “It doesn’t matter. I’ll find out when I get there.”
Chapter 2
“But why do you have to go?” Annabelle Giordano practically stamped her foot.
“I’ve already told you,” Claudia said, keeping her voice level. “It’s a job I can’t afford to turn down right now.”
Her young ward turned a sullen
face away, arms crossed in a defiant pose that reminded Claudia of herself at fourteen.
“But what’s going to happen to me? You know I can’t go back to the Sorensen Academy after . . .” The girl’s voice began to tremble and she shut her mouth tight, determined not to let anyone see her cry.
Claudia gave her shoulders a quick squeeze, knowing she wouldn’t accept anything that might look like sentiment. “I’ll be gone only a few days. You know I’m not going anywhere without making arrangements for you, kiddo. And we can talk on the phone every day.”
Annabelle shrugged, feigning indifference. “I don’t care. I’ll just go stay with my friends.”
Muzzling the temptation to argue that the gang-bangers Annabelle used to hang out with were not her friends, Claudia said, “I’m going to ask Pete if you can stay with him and Monica so you won’t miss any school. I thought it might even be fun for you two.” Pete was Claudia’s brother. His daughter Monica and Annabelle were best friends and classmates.
“Pete hates me.”
“That’s not true and you know it. He just doesn’t understand some of the things you’ve been into in the past. But he let Monica go to Six Flags with us last week, didn’t he? And it was cool, wasn’t it?”
Annabelle smiled at the memory, but she quickly wiped away the smile. It wouldn’t do to let on that she had enjoyed herself. They had spent the day at Magic Mountain in Santa Clarita at Jovanic’s suggestion. He had expressed the view that after the all-too-real terrors that Annabelle and Claudia had experienced together, amusement park screams would be liberating. Watching Annabelle and Monica navigate the rides like other rambunctious fourteen-year-old girls in the park, posturing for young dudes who played it casual and pretended not to notice, Claudia had to admit that he was right.
“That was pretty fresh,” Annabelle conceded. “But I know Pete won’t let me stay at their house. I could stay here.”
“Here? You want me to leave you here on your own? I don’t think so.”
“What about Joel?”
“As in, you stay here with Joel? Like that’s gonna work. Not! For one thing, it would be totally inappropriate. For another, I wouldn’t trust the two of you not to kill each other.” The moment it was out of her mouth she wished she could take it back. Talk of killing could no longer be taken as a joke.
But Annabelle wasn’t listening. A calculating look had stolen into her eyes. “I could watch him for you,” she said. “I could make sure he’s not hooking up with that girl—his partner, while you’re gone.”
“Alex. His partner’s name is Alex. And no, you’re not gonna keep an eye on him. You’re gonna stay under the radar and out of his face. Got it? He doesn’t need watching and I don’t need you to spy for me.”
The pout was back. “If he was my boyfriend, I wouldn’t want him hanging out with someone who looked like her. Those tight T-shirts she wears, all stretched over her gigantic boobs . . .”
“Annabelle!”
The girl caught the warning tone and backed off with a smug look, satisfied that she’d gotten a rise.
“I’m going to call Pete now,” Claudia said. She pointed a finger at the girl. “See if you can stay out of trouble for the next five minutes, okay?”
“Okay, but I know he won’t let me stay. Pete fuck ing hates me.”
It wasn’t until she had boarded the flight to New York that Claudia was able to appreciate how much the responsibility of caring for Annabelle had been weighing on her. It was ironic that buckling herself into the seat belt gave her a sense of freedom—something that she recognized had been missing for weeks.
Since the murder and everything that had happened afterward, the constant vigilance she’d had to maintain over her emotions had taken a toll. Fighting tears that stung her eyelids without warning. Biting back angry words Jovanic hadn’t earned. She needed some time away from the sidelong glances of appraisal that he thought she didn’t see. The physical space would be therapeutic, she told herself. Some distance from Annabelle’s problems would be a welcome break, too. The girl had a twisted history and she was as immersed in it as she could be.
They had met the previous fall when Claudia was invited to be a guest lecturer at the private school where Annabelle was a student. The headmistress had asked her to design a program of graphotherapy for the girl—handwriting exercises done to music, which were intended to help level out the shaky emotional ground that had taken Annabelle to the brink of suicide. As they’d worked together, the two of them had formed a close bond, made stronger by shared tragedy.
A wave of fatigue washed over her and she leaned her head back against the seat and closed her eyes. She loved Annabelle like a daughter, but there was no denying the girl was a handful. Watching the receding tarmac through the aircraft porthole, Claudia felt a surge of gratitude toward Pete, who had agreed to allow Annabelle to stay with him and Monica despite his misgivings. As a widower, he tended to be overprotective of his daughter, who was innocent for her age, which Annabelle wasn’t.
As the plane climbed to altitude, Claudia’s thoughts shifted to Grusha Olinetsky. The matchmaker had been as slippery as an oil slick, avoiding any direct questions about the mistakes Andy Nicholson was supposed to have made. Why?
She gave a mental shrug. What did it matter why? The new account promised to pay well, she would have some time to herself, and at the end of the assignment, she would enjoy a romantic reunion with Jovanic. And yet . . .
Their parting kiss when he had dropped her off at LAX had a distinctly perfunctory flavor. She wondered whether it was a reflection of his disagreement with her decision to accept the assignment. Or had there been something else on his mind?
Claudia arrived midafternoon at her hotel in Manhattan’s Theater District under skies boiling with thunderheads. After a long day of travel, she was looking forward to a quick shower and a change of clothes before meeting with Grusha Olinetsky.
Opening the door to her tenth-floor hotel room, she was disappointed to find it only slightly larger than a jail cell. She had hoped for something a little nicer. The furniture was institutional and not particularly good quality. The bedspread was an unattractive orange and yellow polyester ribbing with matching drapes. In defiance of the NONSMOKING ROOM sign on the dresser, the lingering odor of cigarettes made it smell like an ashtray.
Maybe if she’d been a client rather than a consultant, she would have warranted nicer accommodations. Claudia plugged in the laptop and hooked into the hotel’s wireless connection to check business e-mails that might have arrived while she was en route. Her friend Kelly, who was an attorney, had tried to talk her into a BlackBerry, but she’d held out. She didn’t want to be that accessible.
While the computer was booting up, she switched on the air conditioner blower to freshen the stale air, and tugged open the drapes. The window gave on an uninspiring view of Forty-eighth Street: construction cranes raising steel I beams up the side of the office building opposite; down on street level, camera shops and pizzerias; a human tsunami flooding the sidewalks.
Unzipping her suitcase on the double bed, she gave herself a pep talk. At least the Internet connection works. And the bathroom has a new-looking marble coun tertop. And it seems reasonably clean.
Not quite trusting the dresser drawers, she left her lingerie in the suitcase and hung up her clothes: black silk suit, gray knit turtleneck dress, a dressy outfit in case she went out to dinner, a few other items she could mix and match. Taking Annabelle and Monica with her on a hurried shopping trip to Nordstrom and Macy’s, she’d spent some of the advance Grusha Olinetsky had paid through PayPal.
It’s the big city. You have to dress the part.
After showering, Claudia touched up her makeup and got into the navy Anne Klein jacket and slacks with a cream-colored shell. She pinned a white enamel fountain-pen brooch onto her lapel, clasped around her neck the gold chain that Jovanic had given her for her birthday, stepped into imitation snakeskin pumps. A quick inspection in
the mirrored closet door told her she looked good. She fetched her briefcase and rode the elevator back down to the lobby, ready for her meeting with Grusha Olinetsky.
The clouds had broken while she was inside and the air was damp with a steady drizzle. Her first visit to the Big Apple in years and she felt about as welcome as a case of measles. If Jovanic were with her, she knew she would be seeing the city through different eyes.
The taxi driver was on his cell phone as she climbed into the backseat, chatting to someone in a foreign language. Listening to his accent, Claudia guessed he was Eastern European. He rang off, asking over his shoulder where she was going as they joined the traffic on Forty-eighth Street.
She read him the address from the Post-it note she’d written it on. “About how far is that?”
“Distance? Mile and quarter maybe. How long? Ten, fifteen minutes.”
She sat back in the seat. The taxi smelled like some kind of meat—lamb, maybe, and onions. Strong, but not unpleasant. Savory enough to make her hungry for something more than the dry turkey sandwich she’d eaten on the flight across country.
The taxi wove through the traffic and turned onto Broadway where the lights were already bright in the gathering dusk. Times Square, the Coca-Cola sign, the endless advertisements, the theaters. It all made her wish again that Jovanic were with her.
“Where are you from?” she asked the driver, to distract herself from her thoughts.
“Belorussia,” he said, flicking a glance at her in the rearview mirror. “You know where it is?”
“Yes, some of my boyfriend’s family come from Minsk. The rest are Croatian.”
The cabbie took a closer look at her in the rearview. His voice warmed up a few degrees. “Minsk is capital of Belorussia.”
“How long have you lived over here?”
“Twenty years.”
“A long time. I’m actually on my way to meet someone from your country.”
“Da? Maybe I know him. I know lot of Russians in neighborhood.”