by R. J. Jagger
Pound.
Pound.
Pound.
“Hold on.”
She ruffled her hair, grabbed her glasses and staggered for the door. Standing there was the last person she expected to see.
Taylor Lee.
The woman handed her a large cup of coffee in a disposable cup. “Peace offering,” she said.
Jina took a careful sip.
It was hot.
Just what she needed.
“Sorry about last night,” she said. “I was mostly drunk. I don’t know if that was you or not in the cab. I was trying to shake your tree and see if you’d admit it.”
“It wasn’t me,” Taylor said.
“Okay.”
“Honest.”
“I believe you.”
“What we need to do is figure out who it was,” Taylor said. “They’re the ones who stole the scroll. Like I said before, it could be my fault because I told someone what was going on, namely Mark Creighton.”
Jina remembered the conversation.
She also remembered the man.
Creighton was one of the upper-echelon partners in Bender, Littlepage & Pierce. Jina never liked him, not because he was a womanizer, although that was part of it, but because he was also a silent partner in an organization that operated a number of whore houses, both here in Denver and up in Central City.
“I talked to Creighton this morning,” Taylor said. “He swore up and down that he never told anyone about the scroll. He never repeated our conversation to anyone.” A pause then, “I believe him. He’s partially scum, we both know that, but he’s not a very good liar. If he’d been lying, I would have picked up on it.”
Jina made a face.
She had to use the facilities.
Not in three seconds, now.
“I’m going to shower,” she said. “Make yourself at home.”
Twenty minutes later she emerged from the bathroom with damp skin wrapped in a white bathrobe, toweling her hair, to find Taylor in the kitchen with her jacket off and sleeves rolled up, flipping pancakes in a frying pan.
“Another peace offering,” she said.
Jina sat at the table.
“When you make peace, you don’t mess around.”
Taylor smiled.
“No, I don’t.”
Jina fumbled through the cabinets until she found the syrup, then said, “If it’s true that the leak didn’t come from your end then it came from mine. The only person I told about the scroll and in particular the fact that it mysteriously arrived from a purported client was the university professor, Blanche Twister.”
Right.
Taylor knew that.
“We need to focus on her, right now, this morning,” Taylor said.
Jina considered it.
She knew that Twister wasn’t behind any theft, because there had been no real theft. Still, it would be valuable to know if she was the woman in the cab because if she was then Taylor wasn’t. That meant Taylor was clean. Knowing whether Taylor was trustworthy or not was worth knowing.
She looked at Taylor and said, “Let’s do it. But how?”
“Just use the same trick you tried with me,” Taylor said. “Tell her you saw her in the cab and see if she admits it.”
“Okay.”
“Get dressed, we’re wasting time.”
70
Day Three
July 17
Thursday Morning
Coffee, the sweet aroma of coffee, that’s what Wilde woke to Thursday morning, that and the rustling of movement in the kitchen. At first it confused him, then he remembered that Alabama had moved in. He took a shower, wrapped a towel around his waist and headed for the kitchen as he combed wet hair back.
Alabama grinned at the sight.
“I have half a mind to yank that towel down,” she said.
Wilde scowled.
“Don’t even think about it.”
“Okay,” she said.
When Wilde stepped over, she yanked it down with a cat-quick move he never saw coming.
His jaw dropped.
He grabbed the towel from her hand and re-wrapped it.
Alabama laughed and said, “Lighten up, we’re going to see each other naked now and then, living together. Now we have it over with, at least as far as your part of it goes.” Then she pulled her shorts down and her blouse up, wiggled her body and then turned around in a few circles before putting everything back in place. “Those are the panties you bought me. There, we’re even. Don’t you feel better?”
He paused.
Then laughed.
“Well, I guess we got it over with.”
“Yes we did.”
She poured him coffee, scooped four piping hot waffles onto a plate and set them on the table next to butter and strawberry jam.
Wilde sat down and dug in.
“Delicious.”
“The food or me?”
He smiled.
“Both.”
“Right answer,” she said. “You’re learning.”
As the food began to jump-start his brain, he thought about last night, which had been both good and bad. On the bad side, he spent a full hour walking in the dark through the eerie building trying to find Nicole and/or Raven.
He found nothing.
When he checked to make sure Raven’s car was still around, it wasn’t. He got worried that Raven would go home and catch Alabama in his bedroom, so he abandoned his search for Nicole and headed that way.
That was the bad part of it.
The good part of it was that Alabama did as she was supposed to, namely keep the window open and drop down if she heard anything. It turned out that the window had already been left half open by Raven, so it wouldn’t arouse suspicion when he got home and found it that way.
That was the good part of it.
Even better though was that just before Raven came home, Alabama came across what she was looking for, namely camera-club photos of Jessica Dent. “There were thirty or forty pictures of her,” she said. “I just took these five.”
When Wilde looked at them, there was no question.
The woman in the photos was Jessica Dent.
“So he knew her,” Wilde said.
“Yes he did.”
“We have our connection.”
“Yes we do.”
“All the time he sat in my office handing me the case, he led on like he’d never heard of or seen Jessica Dent at any time in his life,” Wilde said. “That speaks volumes, doesn’t it?”
Alabama nodded.
Yes.
It did.
At that point in the night, Wilde’s brain and body gave out. He had to get home and get some sleep.
Now it was morning, a morning filled with coffee and waffles.
Wilde picked up the plate and continued eating as he headed for the bathroom.
“Where you going?” Alabama asked.
“Getting dressed.”
“What’s the rush?”
“The rush is Nicole.”
“What does that mean, that you’re heading back to that warehouse area to look for her?”
“That’s exactly what it means.”
“I’m going with you,” she said.
Silence.
“I said I’m going with you,” Alabama repeated.
“I heard you.”
“And?”
“And what?”
“And, where’s the argument?” Alabama asked.
“There isn’t one.”
“Does that mean I can go?”
“It looks that way.”
“Good,” she said. “We’re going to need flashlights. Do you have any?”
“Negative,” he said. “We’ll pick some up on the way.”
A beat went by.
Then another.
And another.
“Hey, I just thought of my reward, if we find Nicole,” Alabama said.
Wilde groaned.
“Don’t e
ven tell me.”
“You don’t want to hear it?”
“No.”
“Too bad,” she said, “because here it is. My reward is going to be a threesome with you and Nicole.”
“Forget about it.”
“Don’t you think it would be fun?”
“That’s not the point.”
“You did it with that Asian woman,” she said. “What was her name?”
“Zongying.”
“Right, Zongying,” Alabama said. “You two did it with her. I’m just as pretty, don’t you think?”
Wilde headed for the closet and pulled one of his six grey suits off the hanger.
“No threesomes,” he said.
“Why not?”
“Because I’m your boss,” he said.
“No you’re not,” Alabama said. “You only think you are. We’ve already been over that part of it.”
“Well, one of us is the boss of the other one,” Wilde said. “What that means is no sex. End of discussion.”
“You’ll give in,” Alabama said. “Get used to the idea.”
“No I won’t.”
Three minutes later he stepped out of the bedroom, dressed except for one thing. Alabama picked that one thing off the rack—the hat—and put it on Wilde’s head, perfectly tilted.
“There, complete,” she said.
“Let’s go.”
They headed for the door.
“You know, it’s the guy who is supposed to wait for the girl, not vice versa,” she said.
Wilde groaned.
“This is going to be a long day.”
“Actually, not,” Alabama said. “The threesome will make it go by fast.”
71
Day Three
July 17
Thursday Morning
Zongying was still asleep when Durivage woke Thursday morning. He opened his eyes briefly, then closed them and replayed the incredible passion of last night. His life had changed, how big and how far was yet to be determined, but a change had come.
Zongying was someone he needed in his life.
A Denver woman.
Not a Paris woman.
That complicated things, but not to the point of failure.
He kissed her imperceptibly and headed for the shower.
Last night could have been worse.
He’d managed to wrestle the knife out of Dawson’s hand early on, before his face got beaten into a Frankenstein look-alike. The ear bled profusely during the fight and for quite a while afterwards but in the end wasn’t serious.
A scar, that’s all he’d have.
Leaving the scene, he drove to a roadside payphone on Santa Fe and called Zongying. She met him with the Packard and then followed him for thirty miles south, halfway to Colorado Springs, where they ditched Dawson’s Nash on a mountain switchback.
All the time they were invisible.
No one unexpected came along when they shouldn’t have.
He decided to not keep the knife for a souvenir after all and threw it in a ravine.
They drove home.
Cleaned up.
Drank whiskey.
Had drunken sex.
And passed out.
That was last night.
Now it was morning.
When Durivage got out of the shower, Zongying was still unconscious in bed. He left a note on the kitchen table—Back soon—took the Packard and headed over to Capitol Hill, parking two blocks from Grace Somerfield’s house.
Then he strolled down the street towards it.
The Colorado sky was flawless.
Two magpies jumped off a Ponderosa pine and flew overhead.
His goal was to slip back into Grace’s house but the nosy noses of too many nosy neighbors put the brakes on the idea. Just as Durivage was strolling past, a woman came down the driveway of the house next door with a Schnauzer on a leash. Durivage made a split-second decision and said, “How you doing?”
“Good.”
“Did they catch anybody yet?” he asked, nodding towards the victim’s house.
The woman came closer and looked around as if to be sure no one was eavesdropping.
“They have a suspect but haven’t arrested her yet.”
“Her?”
The woman nodded.
“Yes, a woman,” she said. “I would have never thought it myself, not in a million years. Her name’s Night Neveraux. That’s a strange name, isn’t it? Night—it even sounds like a killer’s name, all dark and everything.”
“Why is she a suspect?”
“The rumor is—and you didn’t hear it from me—that someone saw her coming out of the back yard Saturday night and got her license plate number. The cops searched her house but didn’t find any of the stolen items. That would have been enough to arrest her, in my opinion, just the fact that she was in the back yard on the night in question. But the cops seem to have a different view of it. All we can do is hope she doesn’t kill anyone else while they’re pussy-footing around.”
“Let’s hope,” Durivage said.
The dog tugged at the leash.
“Hold on,” the woman told it. “You’re French. Did you know Grace?”
“No, why? Was she French?”
“No, she’s American, but she loved Paris,” she said. “She’s been there—oh, I don’t know—six or seven times, maybe.”
Durivage stretched.
“It’s a nice place,” he said.
“So I hear.”
Durivage headed for the first public phone, found Night Neveraux's address in the directory, and eventually made his way to a small brick standalone house on Ogden Street between 9th and 10th. The street was lined with cars on both sides. He had to go all the way to 14th before he found an open slot, then doubled back on foot on the opposite side of the street.
The windows were up.
Fans were blowing.
Suddenly two women came out of the house.
One was a gorgeous blond.
The other was a raven-haired beauty with deep Mediterranean skin, possibly Italian or Greek.
Durivage dropped down, ostensibly to tie his shoe, and disappeared behind a beat-up Chevy. When he came back up the women were sitting on the front steps sipping coffee. His instinct was to drop back down but that would be abnormal. He had no option but to walk. He kept his face straight ahead, paying them no mind, but could feel their eyes taking him in.
Just keep walking.
Keep walking.
Keep walking.
He didn’t look back, not for a full block. When he finally did, he saw something he didn’t expect.
The Mediterranean woman was right behind him.
Not more than a step behind.
Before he could completely turn, the woman closed the gap and pricked the point of a knife into his back.
“Do you want to die?” she asked.
“No.”
72
Day Three
July 17
Thursday Morning
It took a half hour for Jina and Taylor to get to the university, then another half hour waiting for the professor, Blanche Twister, PhD., to finish the class she was teaching. They caught her just outside the door and walked across campus with her.
“Tuesday night, someone showed up at my apartment pretending to be my client and wanting the scroll,” Jina said. “The man was a fake. Someone was pulling his strings. You’re the only person in the world that knew the scroll came from a mystery client.”
Twister stopped in mid-step.
“Are you implying that I initiated some kind of charade to steal the scroll from you?”
The tone was indignation.
Jina didn’t back down.
She didn’t have time.
Everything was coming to a head at noon.
“I followed the so-called client when he left my apartment,” she said. “He went to a public phone and made a call. Later, a cab swung by and picked him up. In the back of that c
ab was a woman. That woman was you.”
Twister tilted her head.
“I don’t know who’s playing games with you, if in fact someone is,” she said. “What I can absolutely assure you of is that it isn’t me.”
She walked away.
Jina looked at Taylor and said, “What do you think?”
“I think she didn’t look as startled as she should have.”
They headed back to the car.
The sky was nice.
The air was warm.
The buzz of students brought back memories of carefree days.
The contrast was palpable.
“If she’s behind the charade, we’re not going to get it out of her,” Jina said. “She’s too smart.”
73
Day Three
July 17
Thursday Morning
A pack of stray dogs loped past as Wilde brought the roadster to a halt and killed the engine. The weed-infested dirt streets and the ragged buildings were just as abandoned as last night but not as eerie. The goal was to find Nicole even if that meant going through every single inch of every single structure.
He looked around and got his bearings.
Then he pointed and said, “You take that building, that one, that one, that one and that gray one over there.”
“We’re splitting up?” Alabama asked.
He nodded.
“Meet me back here in one hour even if you’re not done yet,” he said.
She held her wrist up.
It was barren.
“No watch,” she said.
He gave her his and said, “One hour. When you look around, don’t get fancy. Watch out for broken glass, especially if you have to climb through a window. Watch out for falls, don’t walk on anything unstable.”
She ran a finger down his chest.
“If I get a boo-boo, will you kiss it?”
Wilde ignored it.
“You know what?” he said. “On second thought, splitting up isn’t a good idea. Just stick with me.”
“Why?”
“Just in case Raven’s around,” he said. “I don’t want you walking into a lair.”