She wandered over to the far side of the room and brushed one of the heavy curtains aside. The view was completely obscured by the hulking brick building next door, the only place to look over the dim alley below. As Vivian watched, a cat jumped from a garbage bin and scurried down the street, hot on the heels of something small and quick. Vivian wished she could open the window and get a bit of fresh air. It was stuffy in the apartment, the air cloying and dusty. Her stomach was starting to turn at the task of rifling through a dead woman’s things—especially since it felt like the woman had only stepped out briefly and was going to burst through the front door at any moment and catch them.
A loud clang rang out behind her, and Vivian jumped. She turned to see Charlie bending to retrieve something from the floor in the kitchen. He stood upright again, the handle of a saucepan clutched tightly in one hand.
“Sorry,” he said with a shrug. “I opened the cupboard door, and it just slid out.”
“Be quiet,” Vivian admonished, finger to her lips. “We’re going to get caught.”
He nodded and worked the pan back into the cupboard in perfect silence. The ticking of the hall clock was almost deafening to Vivian’s ears. She made her way to the magazine rack on the other side of the chair, brushing the intricately crocheted antimacassar on the arm with her fingertips as she bent down to retrieve a handful of magazines. Had Marjorie crocheted this herself? Vivian shook her head. That seemed highly unlikely.
Charlie disappeared down the short hallway, and now his hushed voice carried back to her.
“I don’t see any signs of a family,” he said. “No photos.”
“No,” Vivian agreed. “Nothing.” There were no photos or identifying personal possessions in plain sight at all. It was odd but not unheard of. A lot of people in the city had distanced themselves from their families for one reason or another, and it was especially true among those in show business.
“Wait,” Charlie called from the hall. “I may have something here.” His voice was calm but insistent, and Vivian rushed to the hall, the magazines still clutched in her hands.
He was holding up a small notepad.
“It’s blank,” Vivian said, staring at the clean, white sheet of paper.
Charlie smiled. “Yes, but there are still the indentations of the pencil on the pad underneath. If I rub the pencil across the paper like this…” He set the pad on the surface of the telephone nook and hunched over it, lightly brushing the side of the graphite tip against the paper. Vivian began to see white marks pop against the swath of gray. “We may be able to see what the last note she made said.”
“What is it?” she asked, excitement welling inside her. “What does it say?”
The excitement on Charlie’s face peaked and then dimmed, the corners of his mouth drawing down after only a few strokes of the pencil. His brow furrowed, and he held the notepad up so that Vivian could see it.
“What’s that?” she asked, considering the muddle of swirls and angles on the paper’s surface.
“It’s a doodle,” Charlie answered, unable to hide the disappointment in his voice. “Look’s to be a shark,” he said, squinting at the drawing. “Or one of those fish with teeth. What do you call them?”
“A piranha,” Vivian said. “Couldn’t that mean something? A nickname or something?” Vivian imagined a swarthy character named the Piranha sending Marjorie threatening letters.
“I doubt it,” Charlie said. “I’ve never heard of anyone like that, but make a note of it.”
Vivian nodded thoughtfully. Charlie wandered off down the hall, poking his head into Marjorie’s bedroom. Vivian looked down at the magazines still clutched tightly in her hands, relaxing her grip and glancing at the titles. Ladies’ Home Journal, Pictorial Weekly, Popular Mechanics, Ladies’ Home Journal again… Vivian blinked. Popular Mechanics? She walked back into the sitting room and dropped the rest of the magazines into the magazine rack. One missed and fell to the floor, but she didn’t bother to pick it up.
Vivian scanned the pages of the incongruous periodical as each flicked past her thumb, looking for any type of clue. Popular Mechanics was undoubtedly a strange magazine for Marjorie to have, but Vivian noticed nothing out of the ordinary—until something caught her eye on the bottom of page 93. More precisely, it was the lack of something that caught her attention. Three neat squares had been cut out of an ad for radial tires—three squares that directly corresponded to what should have been an S, a G, and a T in the ad’s copy. Vivian’s stomach fluttered. This was the “something” she would know when she saw it. Quickly, she flipped through the rest of the magazine and found two more pages that looked as though they’d been chewed on by very precise, literate moths.
Charlie didn’t look up as Vivian entered the bedroom. His head was bent over a little black leather-bound book, his brow furrowed in concentration.
“Did you find something?” she asked.
Charlie didn’t answer.
“What’s that?” Vivian nudged his elbow.
Charlie looked up, slowly focused his eyes on her, and said, “No, it’s nothing.” Then he shut the book and shoved it unceremoniously back into the nightstand drawer, shutting it with a thump and turning back to her.
“Well, I did,” Vivian said, giddy with excitement. “At least, I think I did.” She held up the magazine, open to page 93, and peered at him through one of holes. “I would never have guessed that Marjorie was the Popular Mechanics type.”
Charlie snatched the magazine from her hands and flipped through it. “Did you find any other magazines like this? With letters cut out?”
Vivian shook her head. “This one was wedged between two Ladies’ Home Journals,” she said. “Why would she cut the letters out like that? I mean, I’ve seen in the movies that people do that for ransom notes or…” Vivian gasped. “Do you think Marjorie was blackmailing someone?”
Charlie eyed her, his face expressionless. “I think that may be exactly what she was doing.”
Vivian furrowed her brow. “But I thought Marjorie was the one being blackmailed. That’s what Bill Purdy said last night anyway.”
“Maybe he got things confused,” Charlie said. “Or maybe he was intentionally misleading you.”
“Misleading me? Why would he do that?”
Charlie shrugged. “To throw you off the scent if he was somehow involved,” he said. “This is quite a turn of events. Any ideas who Mrs. Fox would be blackmailing?” He riffled through the rest of the issue as he spoke, noting the two other pages with missing letters.
“I haven’t a clue,” Vivian said. “Do you think the police missed this?” She smiled, pleased with herself. She’d found something important. She had been helpful after all—even Charlie had to recognize that.
“I think they did,” he said. Then he rolled the magazine into a tight cylinder and tucked it inside his suit jacket.
“You’re taking it?”
“Of course,” he answered.
“But that’s evidence,” she said. “Shouldn’t we give it to the police?”
“So you’re a Goody Two-Shoes all of a sudden?” Charlie raised his eyebrows at her.
“I’m getting nervous about being in here,” Vivian said, rubbing the goose bumps on her forearms. Charlie remained still, deep in thought. “Charlie,” she tried again. “I think—”
“You’re right,” he said suddenly, head snapping up. “Let’s go.”
“Really?” she said, relieved. She hadn’t expected him to give in so easily.
“I think we found what we needed,” he said, avoiding her gaze. He stepped out into the apartment’s hallway, and she heard his footfalls heading toward the front door. Instead of following, Vivian hurried to the bedside table and snatched up the little black book Charlie had been so engrossed in when she entered the room. She considered it for a moment and felt the unexpected he
ft of it in her hands.
It was a pocket-sized Bible—the kind little girls get at their first communion. She had just stuffed it safely into her jacket pocket when she heard Charlie’s steps grow louder again. He was coming back into the bedroom—and quickly. He rushed in, stopping just inside the doorway. His eyes darted around until they lit on the closet in the far corner.
“Come on,” he said, taking her hand and jerking her along with him.
“What’s going on?” She tried to yank her hand free, but Charlie held it fast.
Without answering, he disappeared into the darkness of the bedroom closet and pulled Vivian in behind him. He pulled the door almost completely shut, leaving only a crack of gray light.
“Someone’s coming, but Trask said there wouldn’t be police here for an hour,” he said, his voice low.
“Trask?” she repeated, but Charlie just widened his eyes and held a finger to his lips. The closet was tiny, the air stifling. Vivian found herself pressed against Charlie, his holster pressing uncomfortably into her arm. She tried to shift her stance, but that only brought them closer together.
“What do you mean Trask told you the police wouldn’t be here?” she whispered into his chest. “What’s going on?”
Then Vivian heard the click-thump of the front door unlocking and felt the hair stand up on the back of her neck. Someone was coming. The front door swung open with an ominous creak. Vivian sucked in her breath and held it. She heard nothing for a long moment except the pounding of blood in her ears, then the floor creaking under shuffling footsteps. Someone lingered just inside the front door. Her mind flitted over what Charlie had just said. The police weren’t due for an hour. So if they weren’t in the front room, who was?
Her mind ticked over the short list of possibilities and settled on the most unwelcome. Who else but the murderer who’d tried to kill her at the masquerade the evening before? Bile rose in her throat. Oh God, it was Walter. Walter was real. Walter was here. Walter would find them in this closet, and it would be curtains for both of them—like shooting fish in a barrel. She pressed her cheek into Charlie’s chest and shut her eyes. If she had to die, she didn’t want to see it coming.
Then there was another set of footsteps—these quicker and lighter. Two other people were in the apartment now. Walter had a friend? Could there be a pair of murderers?
The intruders didn’t speak, but Vivian heard the floorboards creak under their weight as they moved about the front room, and then the sound of one body falling heavily into the stiff chair near the radio. Vivian waited, anxiety twisting her guts, for them to notice that someone had been in the apartment. Then with something akin to horror, Vivian remembered the magazine she’d dropped next to the magazine rack. Panicked, she looked up. “I left—”
Charlie placed his free hand over her open mouth. Vivian’s eyes had yet to adjust to the dim light of the closet. She tried to glare at him, but he was just a featureless shape in the darkness, even at this close range. How dare he shush her like a child? She placed her palms on his chest to push him away. But then a floorboard creaked in protest near the bedroom door, and they both froze, listening.
There was a long, agonizing silence. Vivian’s back was to the closet door, but she could tell from Charlie’s pinched expression that he could see the man in the bedroom doorway. There was another creak, and then the footfalls receded toward the sitting room.
“What did Trask want us to pick up again?” The man’s voice was slightly muffled as he moved away from them.
Trask? Had she heard right? Vivian sighed in relief against Charlie’s palm still clamped over her mouth. She and Charlie were not about to be murdered. Arrested for breaking and entering possibly, but not murdered.
Vivian heard the click of the radio’s power knob. The muffled roar of a crowd floated toward them as the announcer welcomed them to a live broadcast of the football game between Northwestern and Minnesota.
“Some letters or something,” the other man replied.
“Shouldn’t we get to it? Probably just in the bedroom back there.”
Vivian felt Charlie’s body tense under her palms.
“What’s your hurry? We don’t need to be back for a couple hours. We could listen to the whole first half.”
There was a pause and then the scraping of wood on wood as the formerly reluctant policeman pulled another chair up to the radio.
“What do ya think Northwestern’s chances are?” one of the policemen asked the other.
Charlie gave Vivian a warning look and took his hand away from her face. She hitched in a great gulp of air, immediately regretting it as she gagged on the thick scent of mothballs. Her hands still rested on Charlie’s broad chest, but she didn’t move away. There was nowhere to go inside the tiny closet. Besides, his solid nearness was comforting.
Vivian glanced up, but Charlie’s eyes were still trained on the crack in the doorway. Her eyes traveled down to stop almost involuntarily on his lips. That kiss—she’d been thinking about it all day, despite her every resolve not to. But now, being in such close quarters, she couldn’t help but think of how easy it would be to pop up on her toes right now and repeat it. She was acutely aware that there wasn’t an inch of her body not in contact with his.
She shifted uncomfortably and realized she could feel the solid lump of the little Bible in her front jacket pocket pressing against Charlie’s hip. She moved again before he had a chance to notice it too. He looked down on her with a frown of disapproval, and she scowled back. A fur coat tickled the back of her neck, and she brushed it away with an irritated flick of her hand.
Vivian raised her eyebrows at Charlie in a question: So what now? They were stuck. Trapped in a dead woman’s closet by a pair of policemen.
Charlie sighed. He glanced at the door and then back to her. Vivian’s eyes had adjusted now, and she could see the reality of the situation dawn on him as well. He raised one eyebrow in response, his shoulders rising in a halfhearted shrug. She clenched her fists against his chest in frustration. Charlie’s eyes narrowed. He glanced down at her hands, and then his eyes slid slowly back up, pausing at her mouth before locking with hers again. One corner of his mouth quirked up as his hand brushed down her side, his palm coming to rest on her hip.
It was a subtle move, but its effect was immediate on Vivian. She melted into him and lowered her forehead to his chest. She hitched in a breath, taking in the smell of him—a hint of spearmint chewing gum under the musky citrus of his aftershave. She slipped her hands higher over the woolen lapels of his jacket, her head still bowed. Then she brushed the tip of one index finger lightly against the side of his neck. He started slightly at her touch, as if it had surprised him, and then she felt his other hand glide around her waist to rest at the small of her back.
Vivian didn’t move, didn’t breathe. She was almost glad for this ridiculous predicament, because it meant she couldn’t talk. And if she couldn’t talk, she couldn’t say anything to ruin the moment. His warm breath ruffled the hair at the top of her head, and she shivered—all of her nerves on fire. His hands moved lower to cup her bottom, pressing her into him. She lifted her head at the urgency in his touch to find Charlie’s face, his mouth, was inches from hers.
She slid both hands up to clasp together at the base of his neck and held his gaze, stroking his neck with her thumbs until his mouth twitched into a smile. There was a clank from the hall, and Charlie’s head jerked toward the sound. He tensed, automatically alert. His grasp tightened, his fingertips digging into Vivian’s flesh. They stood silently, not breathing for a long moment, listening for any sign that they were about to be discovered.
Vivian waited for the closet door to be flung open behind her, for the policemen to be standing there, guns drawn. But there was nothing except the announcer barking excitedly from the radio: “Wildcats recover the fumble!” The crowd roared, and the policemen grunted ap
proval. The radiator in the hall clanged fully into life with a screech, and Vivian let her breath out in a long exhale of relief. She smiled and used her fingertips to gently nudge Charlie’s chin back in her direction. She raised her eyebrows again in a silent question: Well?
Charlie’s half-closed eyes flicked down to her mouth again, the smirk returning to his lips. He leaned down until his forehead touched hers and rested it there a moment. Then he inched forward and nudged her nose with his. Vivian lifted her chin and nuzzled into him, the sandpaper of his cheek stinging her lips. She stood on tiptoe to reach the soft spot where his neck met his ear and breathed him in again. Now she smelled the soapy clean scent of the pomade in his hair. Her lips wandered and found his earlobe. Impulsively, she pulled it quickly into her mouth and released it. He sucked in his breath sharply in a mixture of surprise and pleasure. She dragged her lips back down his cheek and then finally, decisively, caught his mouth with hers.
They fumbled silently in the darkness of the closet, mouths hungrily searching, hands roaming. Then Charlie lifted her up, and Vivian squeaked in surprise as her feet lost contact with the floor. She leaned too hard against him, making both of them lose their balance. They stumbled, and Charlie’s back hit the wall of the closet with a thump. He dropped Vivian to the floor, and she had to grasp a handful of mink coat to stay upright. Charlie held one finger to his lips and cocked his head to listen. Vivian held her breath, heart pounding.
But there was no sound from the other room except the roaring crowd from the radio speakers. The policemen hadn’t heard anything. Thank God for ninety-yard touchdown runs, Vivian thought.
Charlie blinked and shook his head as if to clear it. He leaned down again, grim-faced and businesslike this time, positioning his lips next to her ear. He whispered so quietly that she almost couldn’t make out the words: “We have to get out of here.”
The Darkness Knows Page 19