by John Lutz
She climbed out of bed, pulled her nightgown off over her head, and examined her nude body in the full-length mirror on the back of the bedroom door. She was still able to disguise her pregnancy with the right clothes, the right costuming in Hail to the Chef, but she knew it wouldn’t be long before she’d have to remove herself from the cast. She wanted to do it herself, and not force Fred Perry, the director, or Chris Jackson, the playwright, to inform her when it was time.
She decided again that she enjoyed being pregnant, despite the many complications. Stretch marks—who cares? Morning sickness—so what? She smiled in the mirror and patted herself on the belly before padding barefoot into the bathroom to shower.
Claire was careful climbing into the high-sided porcelain tub. Lifting one leg high and balancing on the other was becoming noticeably more difficult every day, and a fall could be disastrous for the baby.
She pulled the plastic curtain closed, adjusted the water to warm, and luxuriated in the shower. All her senses seemed more alive these days.
Back in the bedroom, after drying off with a fresh towel, then combing her wet hair, Claire opened the third dresser drawer to find a pair of panties, and her eye fell on a glint of silver.
She pulled the drawer open farther, nudged lingerie aside, and saw what looked like a silver clasp for a chain, maybe to a necklace or bracelet. When she moved a bra at the back of the drawer, there behind it was a beautiful ruby necklace.
Claire was astounded, and after her initial surprise, pleased.
The necklace had to be a gift from Jubal, one he hadn’t had time to present to her properly, so he’d hidden it in the drawer for later. Odd, though, that he’d chosen her lingerie drawer. But he knew she was dressing casually these days and seldom wearing a bra, and the necklace had been in the very back of the drawer.
Or maybe he’d intended for her to find it. A surprise. Like some of the other surprise gifts he’d engineered lately.
She glanced at the bedside clock radio. It was almost nine-thirty, eight-thirty in Chicago. Jubal would be awake, not yet at the theater but possibly at breakfast.
Claire was chilly after her shower, so after holding up the necklace to admire it, she slipped on a pair of panties, then her robe and slippers, and went into the kitchen to put on some decaffeinated, doctor-approved coffee. She realized she was still holding the necklace. Her craving for chocolate had suddenly abated. She smiled. Jewelry could have that effect on a woman, even pregnant.
She got the coffee brewing, then put on the necklace and fastened its clasp behind her neck. It felt cool against her flesh. She checked her reflection in the dark, mirrored door of the microwave oven and approved.
When there was about an inch of coffee in the glass pot, she interrupted its flow from the brewer to pour a warm but too-strong quarter of a cup. Then she sat at the table with what she thought of as an espresso and used her cell phone to call Jubal’s.
Jubal was kissing Dalia’s left nipple when he heard the opening notes of the William Tell Overture.
“What the hell was that?” Dalia asked, pushing his head away.
It took Jubal a few seconds to refocus his mind and give her an answer. “Cell phone.”
“I thought it was the fucking Lone Ranger.”
Jubal scooted away from her on the mattress, rolled heavily onto his side, and reached for his sport jacket draped over a nearby chair. Locating the phone and digging it out of an inside pocket took more time than he wanted, more overture.
“Yeah?” he said into the phone. Too early for manners, and his sleepy mind couldn’t quite shake thoughts of Dalia. Thoughts and possibilities.
“Jubal?”
Jesus! Claire!
“Hi, Claire.” Sideways glance at Dalia. “I was just thinking about you while I was getting dressed to go out for breakfast.”
“I called about the necklace.”
Necklace? No, no! He couldn’t think clearly. Had to answer her. And without a meaningful pause. “Necklace?”
She laughed. “Don’t sound so guilty. I think you know the one I mean. It’s a ruby on a silver chain. Elegant. Perfect.”
“You, uh, found a necklace?”
“In my dresser drawer, hidden among my lingerie.”
“Hidden?”
“Well, it was way in the back of the drawer.”
“I don’t know anything about—”
Jubal understood then what must have happened. The necklace had come loose from where he’d taped it to the outside back of the drawer above her lingerie drawer. Dalia’s necklace. And as luck would have it, it hadn’t dropped to the floor or bottom of the dresser but had snagged on something and fallen into the drawer below. Or maybe she hadn’t pushed the drawer the necklace was taped to all the way closed.
Either way, she had the necklace.
He thought about lying, but he was committed now to an earlier lie.
Jubal knew when not to push. If he reversed his field here and took credit for the necklace as a gift to Claire, she might sense something was wrong. He decided his best course was to continue playing dumb.
“I’m tempted to pretend I meant this necklace as a gift,” he said, “but I have to be honest with you. The sad truth is I know nothing about it.”
Dalia knew he was talking to Claire and was staring at him from her side of the bed. She puckered her lips and sent an air kiss his way.
Damm it, Dalia!
“Jubal?”
“Honestly, Claire. We bought the dresser secondhand. The necklace must have belonged to a previous owner. Or still belongs. It’s probably just paste, maybe a kid’s necklace, or it wouldn’t have been left there.”
“I don’t think it’s paste. It looks pretty good. And I think there’s a tiny silver stamp on the clasp.”
“Real or not, Claire, it isn’t from me. I wish it were.”
She was silent.
“You do believe me, Claire?”
“Of course I do.”
“Show it to me when I get back. If it’s high quality, we’ll see if we can find out who it belongs to. And if we can’t…finders keepers.”
“Okay, Jubal.” A beat. “Any problems with the play?”
“No, I slipped right back into it. Born for the part. Any part.”
“No news yet on the sitcom?”
“Nothing yet. I told you, they had two more auditions to consider.”
“That’s right, you did. Love me?”
“Love you.”
“I’ll let you get to breakfast.”
“What? Oh, yeah. How are you? How’s the baby?”
“We’re both fine. Both hungry. Like you must be.”
Jubal glanced at Dalia and felt a stab of guilt. But only momentarily.
“Love you,” he said again to Claire.
She told him she loved him, too, then hung up.
“That was pretty damned convincing,” Dalia said. “Maybe too convincing.”
Jubal set the cell phone on the chair and lay on his back next to her. “Damm it! Claire found the necklace.”
Dalia raised her head and propped her chin on her elbow. “What necklace?”
“One I was going to give you. Since I left on such short notice for my flight out of New York, I couldn’t get to where I’d hidden it in the apartment. I was sure it’d be safe where it was for a while, though; then I could remove it and give it to you. But obviously I was wrong.”
“Claire suspects you bought this necklace for someone else?”
“No, I played dumb, as if I knew nothing about it, and I think she believed me.”
“My guess is she did. I only heard your end of the conversation, but like I told you, you’re good.” She smiled. “At everything.”
“If I wasn’t good enough just now, we’ve got a problem.”
Still sprawled on his back, Jubal stared at the smoke alarm above the bed. He was pretty sure Claire had believed him, yet there was something about her voice. And she’d been acting strange lately
in ways he ascribed to her pregnancy, pretending to find other, smaller gifts and not knowing where they’d come from. It was damned weird. Something seemed to be going on, and he couldn’t quite figure out what it was.
He felt the mattress shift as Dalia slid over to be near him, her body hot against his. She kissed him wetly on the neck. “I know how to solve the problem,” she whispered in his ear.
“Oh? How?”
“Buy another necklace.”
Claire sat by the phone, holding her coffee cup but not raising it to her lips.
Something was wrong. She could sense it. Maybe being pregnant gave you ESP.
She got up, poured a full cup of coffee, and carried it into the living room so she could sip it while sitting on the sofa and watching local news.
When she used the remote, it was already set for Channel One. A slick anchorwoman and a guy in a suit were talking about that serial killer, the Night Prowler. The suit was a cop, and he was assuring her that the police had leads they were following and would soon bring a resolution to the case. By that, Claire assumed he meant solve it.
Then the woman began asking about gifts the Night Prowler had apparently left in his victims’ apartments, often in the kitchen. The candy, gourmet foods, yellow roses, jewelry.
Jewelry!
Claire stiffened, spilling coffee onto the rug.
Oh, Christ! She hadn’t thought of this. She should pay more attention to the news.
She found she was standing but didn’t recall getting up.
Wait a minute! Calm down, for God’s sake. Think about the odds on this. You’re being stupid. You’re being…pregnant!
She went into the kitchen and ran water on a paper towel, then carried it, along with a dry towel, back into the living room. She rubbed the coffee spots on the rug with the wet towel, then patted them with the dry one, standing and using the sole of her slipper to press moisture from the stains.
It was an effort bending over to pick up the towels. Claire carried them into the kitchen, depressed the foot pedal on the plastic wastebasket so the lid would lift, and dropped them in with the trash.
And noticed something green in the wastebasket—an empty chocolate mints box half concealed by crumpled junk mail.
The mints she’d assumed were a gift from Jubal, and that were uneaten when Jubal left town.
The mints whose box she hadn’t thrown away.
Claire felt her throat tighten. If not Jubal, who had eaten the mints and put the box in the wastebasket?
Jubal might really not have known about the mints. Or about any of the other gifts.
Or the necklace.
He wouldn’t have lied to her about something like the necklace. Not Jubal.
The sense of dread she felt was for good reason.
I’m not being an alarmist. I’m not! Pregnant isn’t stupid.
She went to the phone and called the police.
62
“We’ve gotta go with it,” Pearl said. “It’s the pathetic sum total of what we’ve got. And maybe Claire Briggs really is in danger.”
“We all listened to her story,” Fedderman said. He was on the outside in their booth in the Lotus Diner because of his arm, which was still in a plastic cast and a sling. The breakfast crowd had thinned in the diner, leaving behind unbused tables and the strong scent of burned sausage and toast, ignored coffee residue cooking in a pot. “I don’t know about you two, but my guess is she’s got a problem with her husband. He probably bought the necklace for somebody else and she found it.”
“Hidden in her drawer?”
“Like the purloined letter.”
Pearl and Quinn stared at Fedderman. Pearl said, “The purloined letter wasn’t hidden under a bra.”
“She’s been getting anonymous gifts,” Quinn pointed out. “Including food.”
“Or so she says.” Fedderman inserted a finger beneath his cast and tried to scratch an itch, then gave up. “The woman’s a confessed chocoholic.”
“So am I,” Pearl said. “If that’s why you don’t trust her, you don’t trust half the human race.”
“I don’t trust anywhere near half. And Claire’s an actress. How can we know if she’s telling us straight? A pregnant actress, at that.”
Pearl glared at him. “Meaning?”
“Hormones,” Fedderman said.
“Hormones what?”
“Just hormones. If you’d ever had a kid, you’d know what I’m talking about.”
Pearl wished she could reach his injured arm.
Fedderman sipped his coffee, thinking his hormones explanation had carried the argument. “I say we have the local precinct run some extra patrols past her building. There’s millions of single women in New York, and every day hundreds of them place Night Prowler calls, none of which pan out. I don’t see why this Claire woman’s anything special that needs our personal attention.”
“She’s a celebrity,” Quinn said.
“Not much of one.”
“Costarring in a Broadway play.”
“Not for much longer, the way she’ll put on pounds. And every other woman you pass on the street in New York’s an actress. All you gotta do is ask ’em.” Fedderman scratched again at the plastic cast. It was obviously driving him nuts. Pearl was glad.
Quinn looked at Pearl, who was calmly buttering her toast. Apparently, both detectives had had their say about Claire Briggs.
“Renz thinks she’s enough of a celebrity that we have to cover ourselves just in case she’s right,” he said.
“What do you think?” Pearl asked.
“I don’t think we can ignore her story. She fits the pattern. And I know, before you tell me, the problem is that lots of women do. And lots of husbands with twisted senses of humor in this city are giving their wives anonymous gifts just to throw a scare into them as a joke.”
“Some joke,” Pearl said. “Really fucks us up.”
“We’ll look over the Briggs apartment, give Claire some instructions, then put a nighttime stakeout on her building starting tonight. We’ll work in shifts so we can all get at least some sleep.”
“We’ll be doing nothing but waiting for Egan to drop the hammer on us,” Fedderman said.
Quinn thought he might be right, but he didn’t see that they had any choice. And in truth, he didn’t so much mind concentrating their efforts on Claire Briggs. Something was going to break soon; he knew it in his mind and his gut. Almost thirty years as a cop told him something was going to break. And Claire Briggs might be the reason. Maybe Fedderman was right about her being an actress and able to take them in, but Quinn was sure one thing about Claire wasn’t an act. She was genuinely terrified.
So, they’d establish their stakeout and wait and wait. And maybe Quinn’s gut would be right again.
And if it wasn’t…
Quinn didn’t have much time to agonize over the possibility.
Pearl fell asleep holding a Styrofoam cup half filled with cold coffee. She was behind the steering wheel of the parked unmarked down the block from Claire Briggs’s apartment building. The car’s windows were down and the damp, close night had permeated the interior and left a film of condensation over glass and metal. That and the bitter aftertaste of too much coffee had put Pearl in a lousy mood.
She awoke with a start and a curse as she realized the cup had tilted and coffee spilled onto her thigh. The sudden action caused her to drop the now-empty cup to the floor between her feet.
Stakeouts. She’d always disliked them. She licked her lips. They felt gummy. She was glad she couldn’t smell her own breath. Stakeouts.
The Briggs apartment was a high corner unit, and Pearl had a fix on its windows. Claire had left the street-side blinds open as instructed. If a light came on in the kitchen or anywhere else, even a faint one, Pearl should be able to see it. Late as it was, the windows in all but four of the other apartments were dark. Pearl glanced at her watch—three-seventeen.
She felt some relief; she’d dozed of
f only about ten minutes ago.
Not that anything figured to happen. Claire Briggs’s story was only slightly more credible than those of so many other callers who’d contacted the police lately. It was odd how a killer like this affected a certain kind of woman. Loneliness probably made some of them pick up the phone and tell someone on the other end of the line anything that would create interest, draw attention. Loneliness was such a powerful driver of single women.
It’s as if we—
Pearl sat up straighter as she saw one of the building’s street doors open and a man emerge. He paused and looked around, then adjusted his cap, pulling it low as if a wind might blow it off, though the night was calm.
She watched the darkly dressed man walk along the deserted sidewalk, in the opposite direction from where she was parked. Probably, she told herself, he was a tenant. Or a late-night poker player. An insomniac out for a stroll. A guy who worked odd hours, though that didn’t seem likely.
Yet here she was working odd hours.
It wouldn’t hurt to talk to him, listen to his story. She wasn’t here just to sit in the muggy night without moving, like a human mushroom.
Anyway, there was something about the way the man was walking, with a deliberate casualness, his shoulders slightly hunched, now and then glancing off to one side or the other.
Pearl realized she was feeling more and more that the man was acting as if he might have something to hide, slinking along in his dark pants and shirt and wearing what looked like a blue or black baseball cap pulled so low on his forehead.
Slinking?
Yeah, slinking.
When he was almost to the corner, she started the engine.
But when she pressed her foot down on the accelerator, something was wrong. There was back pressure. The car lurched forward and the right front tire dug into the curb, causing the steering wheel to come alive and jerk from her grip violently enough to bend back her thumb.