Liddy hung up and sat, wiping her eyes with the red T-shirt. Incongruously, not thinking at all, she whimpered, “I’m from upstate too.” Then she inhaled, closed her eyes and thought, That’s it. I remembered and my part is done. Get packing. Climb out of this.
At Kerri’s end, the ice cream and apple pie had turned to mush. They’d lost interest in it. Kerri stared at once-hot sugary goo congealing as Alex scribbled notes.
“Ear stud?” he asked.
She explained that part of Liddy’s interview.
“Whoa,” he said.
Kerri kept staring at the pie mush. “I don’t know what to make of this.” Their shoulders were touching. She picked up her phone; stared at its screen holding Sasha’s picture of the Hudson. “Except…the feeling just got stronger that everything points to this, like a compass needle.”
“So what next?” Alex was in his phone too, scrolling back, back, through Carl Finn’s Facebook posts.
“I want to know more about him.” Kerri tapped his phone.
“Curious there’s no pics of Sasha.”
“She may have complained, which was her undoing. Or maybe – oh hell – maybe we’ve been making the wrong guess all along because...” Kerri gripped her brow as if it hurt. Alex put his arm around her.
“I’m back to thinking of Ben Allen,” she said. “He recently broke up with his wife...infidelities abounding… Remember Becca saying she’d suspected maybe some guy with a jealous wife or girlfriend?”
On her phone Kerri showed Alex ShadowFace, enlarged from Becca’s selfie. “That look like any of those men?”
“Finn, I think, but still…”
“I know. Circumstantial.”
She leaned on his shoulder, closed her eyes. “My head hurts bad.”
He drew her closer, kissed her brow. “You’ll think of something,” he said quietly. “In the meantime…” He inhaled. Didn’t need to say the words, they had been in the air since he’d walked in the door.
But they came out anyway. “Can I stay?”
The question evoked memories of waking up anxious, leaving separately (“sneaking out,” Kerri had called it), coming into the squad room as if nothing, avoiding each other’s eyes so obviously that others guessed, then rumors spread and all hell broke loose. Cops were the worst gossips.
Kerri snickered as if something was funny. “No, you can’t stay. I have a headache.”
Alex rose, nodding. “We have to think.” His arm went back around her. “Get serious sleep, tackle these things with clear minds.”
At the door Kerri leaned into him, murmuring sorry about the headache.
He reached behind her neck, pulled free the ribbon he’d tied there, and put it to his lips. “Mm, smells sweet.”
He kissed her again and left, holding the ribbon.
22
Suddenly, things were moving fast – exciting, really – with swept-away red teddy bears and the crying young blonde pushed down under the tumult of movers coming and going and a dining room table that wouldn’t fit in the padded freight elevator. By three o’clock on Monday, August 18th, Liddy and Paul’s furniture was trucked to the loft. When the dust settled, Paul went to his lab while Beth and a workman helped Liddy set up her easel and draftsman table and art supplies in her new studio with its shelves and blue-upholstered window seat and bright birch floor – Charlie Bass’s old floor had only needed a good polish. The alarm guy came too to wire the studio separately, so the top sash could open with the alarm still on to let out toxic turpentine fumes.
They spent Monday night at The Mercer, a hip hotel with loft-like rooms and a four poster bed. On Tuesday, August 19th, they moved in officially to their new home. Paul kissed Liddy and left two hours later for his lab while she spent the rest of the day unpacking sheets and towels and putting clothes in drawers and closets and then plates and glasses in the old Spanish armoire which looked wonderful in the kitchen.
Around six, a red-bowed Williams and Sonoma espresso machine with little cups arrived from Beth. Lab assistants sent a big plant – ha - just what the place needed; another friend Ben Allen sent a nautical-themed lamp; and Carl Finn sent a carton of California champagne with a note that said, Here’s to this celebration and amazing celebrations ahead. Cheers to you both on your great new adventure.
Now Liddy was happy – thrilled, actually. She’d gone three nights with good sleep and no nightmares. Paul had been practically euphoric their celebratory night at the Mercer – he’d ordered champagne; his love had been wild and driving – and that ebullient feeling carried over into the chore of settling in. On the next day Liddy found a supermarket on Wooster and a bakery on Spring Street; hung pots and pans over their cook top; sprayed the plants (no ghosts, oh joy), went out again and found a Victorian glass lamp for the living room. It wasn’t heavy, wrapped in its package, so Liddy browsed more; stopped before Pete’s Old Books, and gazed into the window. There, near the front, was a DVD of Vampire Island, the movie Charlie Bass had been in.
There was something loving about the way it was displayed. The movie hadn’t had much success but there it was, in front with current and classic hits, a whole stack of them with one copy facing out. Had Charlie Bass frequented this store? Been a friend? Was this a tender monument to an actor who had lived just doors away?
Liddy went inside and bought a copy. The owner was out but a young assistant told her yes, Charlie used to come here, hang out. “He was always over there in the corner reading.” The young man pointed to a battered chair. “Really a sweet guy. We miss him.”
Liddy left with the DVD.
Still felt so ebullient that she bought two fat pastrami sandwiches wrapped in aluminum foil and walked – a bit painful but good exercise - the six blocks to Paul’s lab; walked past grad students working at lines of microscope-studded counters to Paul and Carl’s workstation. They had a long counter to themselves.
“Brought lunch,” she smiled as Paul in his white coat looked up surprised from a mouse cage; then Carl feet away in his white coat turned from talking to a third man not in a white coat.
“Oh,” Liddy said. “Hi Ben.”
Ben Allen, Carl’s friend more than Paul’s, gave her a quick smile. “Hey, Liddy, congrats! You’re all moved in, I hear.”
She thanked him for the lamp; he gave another easy smile that somehow went with his usual outfit: a blazer over an old polo shirt with jeans and scruffy cross trainers, which she saw as he rushed from behind the counter to greet her. When was the last time she’d seen him? May? No – she had a dim memory of him coming to the hospital. With his floppy dark hair he looked younger than forty-two. There was something else about him she was trying to remember…
“I brought sandwiches,” she told him awkwardly, putting them and the lamp package on the counter. Also awkward was seeing Paul and Carl turned away from her, muttering tensely. “Just two,” she told Ben, touching her bulging deli bag. “Sorry, I didn’t know you were here.”
He waved a hand as if nothing. “Just heard Paul’s selling his boat. Came to say I’m in pain – I won’t be able to borrow it anymore.”
“Buy your own?” she suggested - and he laughed easily. “Funny you should mention it, the thought crossed my mind.” He turned. “Just what I need, right Carl? More headaches, upkeep and expense?”
Carl gave a tense smile, went back to his discussion with Paul. They seemed to be arguing about a white mouse in a small cage with a blue stripe on its fur. The blue stripe meant it had survived its first experiment. Other mice scratched around in cages stacked further down the counter, some with red stripes, meaning they had survived more than one test and were up for more. Mice with purple stripes were sprawled in their cages still alive but not for long. Their brains would wind up in cross sections on the researchers’ office monitors.
Liddy hated what they did and suddenly regretted having come. Neither Paul nor Carl had mentioned the sandwiches. She felt as if she were intruding.
But Ben saved th
e moment.
“Hey,” he said, chucking her arm. “That video you took of us doing the Long Island Regatta? You were going to send it to me.” Then he caught himself; looked contrite. “Oh sorry, your memory...”
Liddy assured him with her own apology. She was getting better and should have remembered. “Here, I’ll send it to you now.”
Out came their two cell phones, and she sent him the video. “Awesome, thanks,” he said; then turned again to Paul, Carl, and their mice.
“Hey, you geeks, want to take a break? See some sailing?”
Liddy grabbed the sandwiches, and minutes later the four of them were in Paul and Carl’s shared office behind the counter: two desks, screens, monitors showing dissected rodent brains, stacks of papers, science journals, and more mouse cages. The room smelled of mice and antiseptic.
Paul thanked Liddy for the sandwiches, looked at his inside its foil, put it on his desk. Carl gave a brusque, “Yeah, thanks,” and bit into his as Ben Allen hooked his phone up to one of the monitors and turned the light down.
Next, male hoots and hollering as waves splashed and wind blew and the three of them grinned and struggled with the rigging and bringing her about. “We’re gaining, do not lose this!” Carl Finn yelled in the video; and Ben, standing next to Liddy, said, “Guess you’re done with regattas, huh?”
“Definitely,” she said. “Second time I got seasick and skinned knees. Just give me a rowboat on a smooth lake.”
Then she thought, funny how I remembered that day. It just…came. On the monitor the boat listed wildly, came dizzyingly close to tipping, and for a moment she even felt seasick; put her hand on a counter to steady herself. It came back to her too that Ben had been thrilled at the near capsize. “Adrenalin, adrenalin!” he’d shouted. In a flash Liddy remembered him getting splashed with freezing water and loving it. She wracked her brain for something else that nagged about him. No dice.
Carl and Paul were engrossed in the video. In the dimness Liddy felt suddenly alone in all this maleness…but there was something else. Some tension she felt between Paul and Carl, just watching them, their body language.
She tugged at the elbow of Paul’s white coat and said, “I should go.”
“Okay,” he said, unresponsive, looking neither at her nor the video.
She left feeling troubled; hurt, actually. Almost forgot the lamp package she’d left on their counter, ran back for it, and heard Carl again.
“Do not lose this!”
23
Sketching helped banish hurt, so back in her studio she googled Charlie, found a photo of him she liked, and lost herself in his sad features. Minutes later his dark, mournful eyes stared out at her from her sketch. She stared at it for long moments; felt him there with her, with the shelves and cozy-for-reading window seat he had created. He’d been a kindred spirit, she realized, and wished she had known him.
Paul was home by eight, but touchy and fretful that their deadline was looming. He barely noticed the bouillabaisse Liddy had made, but she soothed, reminded him of his favorite line from their poor days: “Without deadlines, nothing would get done.”
“That was before the big time,” Paul groused, poking at a shrimp. “Carl was on me today about the time lost to the move.”
His euphoria lasted for two days? Now that the move was done he’d gone immediately back to tension? “Don’t let Carl dictate how you feel,” Liddy urged. “You’re just as brilliant.”
He left the table muttering about doing more work at home. Liddy sighed and straightened up as Paul went to the living room with his computer. Then in her studio she rolled out new canvas, slit it with her box cutter, cut it neater with her long sharp scissors, then stapled it onto wooden stretchers. Bang! Bang! went her staple gun, the sound making her feel better, telling her that she was really back on track with her painting. Final move-in things could wait, be done gradually. Tomorrow or the next day she’d finish her Rawlie-the-space-warrior painting and the woman-running-in-rain watercolor, then start new projects that were overdue; two publishers had emailed to complain.
While priming a canvas she stopped, frowning a little, and turned to face the living room.
It had been awfully quiet out there. Usually, if Paul worked at home, he’d be sporadically on his phone with Carl or one of their assistants comparing lab notes they’d made during the day, discussing chemical structures, modification compounds, anesthetic activity on tadpoles then - oh good, move the new one up to mice.
There’d been nothing. No sound that she had heard.
Because she’d been so preoccupied?
She went out to look.
Saw Paul standing at the dimmed window, slightly bent with his back to her, peering through the telescope.
“Hey,” she said quietly, almost tentatively though she wasn’t sure why. He said “hey back” but didn’t straighten. She crossed the living room with one lamp lit, stood next to him and looked down. Below, the street was a dazzling nightlife stage, busy with partiers, traffic, happy drunks running from bars and restaurants to dance and live music clubs. The sound was muted by the double-pane glass.
“Takin’ a break from work?” she asked in the same hesitant tone.
“Yup.”
“Get much work done?”
“Half. I’m tired. So damn tired.”
She noticed that the angle of his ‘scope was aimed higher than the street; tilted up to what had to be windows across the way.
“Looks fun. Can I have a peek?”
“Sure,” he said a bit tightly, tilting the telescope back down to the street before he stepped aside for her.
Why did he do that?
She looked in, adjusted the eyepiece, swept the ‘scope over the street scene. Then she raised the barrel to the angle he’d had it at, and found herself looking into someone’s bedroom. The bed was wildly rumpled, empty for a moment and then it wasn’t, with a naked man and woman climbing back into it and somehow still managing to keep the sex going. He was holding her up by the buttocks, pounding away as he threw her back onto the bed and fell on top of her. Wow, look at him go. He must be on speed or something…
Enough. Liddy looked back to Paul and attempted levity.
“What do you bet they fell out of bed.”
“Who?”
“That couple having wild crazy sex.”
“I didn’t see anyone having sex.” He was back on the couch, his tone announcing that he was concentrating, couldn’t be disturbed. He shifted; scowled harder into his computer.
Liddy stood, uncertain, bursting to say something profound or funny like the old answered prayers thing: you get what you’ve been wanting - and it comes with side effects. Soho was full of distractions for nose-to-the-grindstone types like them. But still, Liddy thought again, Paul had gotten his wish! They were all moved, back on track, and she was sleeping well and feeling happy – pretty much, though she hadn’t been too sure of that since her visit to the lab.
She exhaled and let him work. Returned to her studio where she re-capped her primer and put her staple gun and box cutter on a high shelf, her long sharp scissors on her draftsman table. Then she washed up, called a soft good-night to barely a grunt back, and went to bed.
24
She felt bad. Was trying to sleep when Paul came to bed too.
“You awake?” he whispered after a minute.
“Yes.”
He exhaled hard. “Sorry I was in a foul mood tonight.”
“I understand.”
“I should be totally happy – and I am except for…”
“I know, the research.”
He was silent, just a dark profile on the pillow next to her. Then he said, “It’s not that.”
She turned her head to him.
In the dimness she saw him take a breath. “Something else,” he said, and swallowed. “Carl was seriously grim this morning, worse than usual. Finally he told me.” Another deep breath. “Before I got there the police came to visit him,
asking questions about that missing coed. They’d been to question Ben, too, but seem more focused on Carl.”
Liddy stared at him.
“It was a female detective.” Paul’s voice speeded up. “That night at Chez Pierre you said you’d gone to tell the cops you’d maybe seen that girl. You mentioned the detective you talked to and said, ‘she was nice’ so it must have been the same one.”
Liddy almost laughed. “There are many female detectives, why assume-”
“I’ve assumed, okay? It’s too much of a coincidence, and Carl said he recognized her. They were showing her on the news, she’s the last and only cop left investigating that case –now bothering Carl and it couldn’t come at a worse time.”
“This is crazy.” A tremor crept into Liddy’s voice. “What…are they asking him?”
“She. Her last name is Blasco. Sound familiar?”
No reply, but the heart was thudding. “What possible connection…what did she…”
“Got nowhere. Asked Carl if he’d known that missing girl Sasha and he said no; said she acted pleasant enough, but he couldn’t figure why the hell she came to question him. Then he asked me if you had anything to do with it. Of course I said no - but Lids, this isn’t good. We can’t have this.”
It took a second; then it hurt. “Who’s ‘we?’ You and Carl, or you and me?”
“Us too.” Paul’s voice rose. “Hell, the research is our future.”
The heart throbbed, but she frowned. “Why would Carl connect me with this?”
“He remembered your sketch, had seen that girl’s picture in the news.”
“That’s ridiculous! Sasha Perry’s been all over the news!”
“Right, but why would a cop be coming after him?”
This was an ambush. Liddy tried to control her breathing and Paul went grimly silent. A long, bitter moment passed; then: “Have you ever realized,” she said tremulously, “that we know nothing about Carl? What he does in his off hours – God, his women alone, he’s like a collector, and his violent breakup with his wife? ‘Cassie wouldn’t tolerate my long hours,’” she mimicked. “That’s a lie! He screwed around and was rotten to her and knows we know and keeps repeating that lie. Is he delusional or just a pathological liar?”
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