While Other People Sleep

by Marcia Muller

  Strange sea creatures appear. They're brightly colored: red, blue, gold, vermilion. They dart and weave among the green tendrils, uttering unworldly cries that echo off the glass.

  I watch, both fascinated and afraid.

  Now comes a procession that silences the sea creatures. A series of faceless women draped in filmy teal-blue cloth. They drift among the sea creatures but don't touch them.

  Each woman carries a bottle of wine and a glass.

  Sorry, they murmur as they drift close to my hiding place.

  Sorry, sorry, sorry …

  Thursday

  Keim's on line one, Shar.”

  “Thanks.” I picked up. “Charlotte, where are you?”

  “Detroit Airport, about to board my flight home.” She'd spent the week shadowing the traveling businesswoman from Chicago to Minneapolis to the Motor City.

  “Still nothing?” I asked.

  “Nothing at all. This woman works too hard to fool around on the road. The client must be paranoid.”

  “You call him yet?” The client, Jeffrey Stoddard, wanted oral reports on a daily basis.

  “I tried, but he wasn't home. I'll try again on the in-flight phone—”

  “No, I'll call him and you can fill him in on the details when you get back.” Keim, like so many fans of high technology, loved to talk on the airliner phones and had previously run up her expense account to an unjustifiably high level.

  “Okay,” she said. “I guess if I get bored, I'll have to call Mick—on my own nickel, of course.”

  “Don't stand up in the aisle while you're talking.” That practice has always struck me as a particularly obnoxious way of calling attention to oneself—“I haven't a minute to waste,even at 33,000 feet. I'm important!”—to say nothing of an annoyance to those who aren't impressed with the airborne dialer's need to stay connected.

  “Exactly like last night?” Neal asked.

  “Yes.”

  On both Tuesday and Wednesday Ted had driven directly from the pier to Neal's bookstore, idled at the curb down the block, and tailed him home.

  “He must suspect me of something. But what? And what cause have I given him?”

  “Does he ever quiz you about where you've been, what you've been doing?”

  “Never, but that's no surprise, considering he's been following me.”

  “Does he display unusual curiosity about your phone calls or mail?”

  “No, but… lately he's been rushing to answer the phone every time it rings. And my mailbox key disappeared two or three weeks ago; I suppose he could've taken it. He claims the locksmith doesn't have masters for that type of key, so it can't be duplicated.”

  “… Right.”

  “So where d'you go from here?”

  “Well, I'll follow Ted one more time, to make sure this is a regular pattern. After that… We'll talk about it.” The intercom buzzed. “Got to answer another call.”

  “Ms. McCone, Kelly at Richman Labs. We have the results on the items you dropped off for testing on Tuesday. No latents on the bag, the bottle, or the Post-it note. The seal on the bottle wasn't tampered with, and the wine tested negative for contaminants. An IBM Wheelwriter 1500 was used to type the note.”

  A common typewriter available for public use in copy shops and libraries. The results were exactly what I'd suspected.

  “Mick, will you come to my office? I've got a new assignment for you.”

  In a couple of minutes he appeared, carrying a Pepsi and a half-eaten salami sandwich, the former of which he set on my desk. I frowned and shoved a coaster across to him. He then set the sandwich down, smearing mayonnaise all over. “Sorry,” he muttered, swiping at it with the side of his hand and eyeing the case file.

  I said, “This investigation's for Anne-Marie, so give it priority. One of her important clients is divorcing and suspects her husband has hidden a substantial portion of their communal assets. We're to find out where.”

  “Probably an offshore or Swiss bank account, in which case it's nearly impossible—”

  “Unless we gather evidence that, when presented in court, will tend to show he's misappropriated funds. You'll be going into the field to dig up that evidence.”

  His face brightened considerably. Mick's computer expertise kept him largely confined to the office, and he relished the occasions when he could—as he termed it—play real private eye.

  “Here's the file,” I went on. “You'll find the subject's home address on the preliminary information sheet. I've already learned that he's due to fly to L.A. this afternoon for a meeting of one of the corporate boards he sits on. Overnight trip, returning tomorrow around noon. I've also called Sunset Scavengers and found out that his garbage pickup is scheduled for tomorrow morning.”

  “What's his garbage got to do with—”

  I smiled, feeling deliciously wicked. “It has everything to do with it. You are to follow him to SFO this afternoon to be certain he makes his flight. Then you are to go to his house and steal his garbage.”

  “What!”

  “After that you will pick through it for clues to the assets’ whereabouts.”

  “Gross!”

  “I told you when I hired you—private investigation is not glamorous.”

  “Mr. Stoddard, Sharon McCone at McCone Investigations. Charlotte Keim called me shortly before boarding her return flight from Detroit; she's come up with no evidence that your friend is doing anything on the road but working. Do you wish to terminate the investigation?”

  “Hang on a second.” Stoddard sounded winded, as if he'd been out running. “All right, now, what did you ask me? Terminate the investigation. No, I don't think so. I know she's got somebody on the side, and it's only a matter of time till he shows himself.”

  “Of course we'll be glad to continue the surveillance, but I must warn you: given your fiancée's upcoming travel schedule, our expenses could be very substantial.”

  “It's worth it. I'm not going to marry somebody who's being unfaithful to me before we make it to the altar. She's fooling around out on the road, and pretty damn soon she's going to be down the road.”

  Something wrong there, I thought as I hung up. The needle of my built-in lie detector was all over the chart. I'd warn Keim about that, suggest she set up a meeting with Stoddard so she could personally assess the situation; Keim's instincts—she called them “shit detectors”—were almost as good as mine.

  “Shar, Clive Benjamin on line one.”

  “Thanks.” Oh, God! The gallery owner wouldn't be calling me unless the bogus McCone had resurfaced in his life. “Yes, Mr. Benjamin?”

  “Ms. McCone, I thought you ought to know that the woman who impersonated you apparently lifted the spare key to my apartment. She was here last night in my absence. Drank some very expensive wine and took one of my pieces of sculpture. She left your card on the coffee table.”

  Christ!

  “The sculpture—is it valuable?”

  “Not really. It was a gift from a grateful but not very successful client.”

  “Did you call the police?”

  “… No. To tell you the truth, this is a very embarrassing situation, and I'd just as soon not call attention to it.”

  “I hear you. It's embarrassing for me, too. Did you have the locks changed?”

  “First thing this morning.”

  “Good. Will you describe the missing sculpture to me?”

  “It's small, perhaps a foot high and a foot and a half long. A supine figure of a woman, with a pedestal supporting her at the small of her back. White … well, I won't bore you with the technique the artist uses. The woman's nude, her chest is opened to expose her ribs and organs, and the top of her skull is missing. It's titled Autopsy.”

  I felt a wrenching in the pit of my stomach. “No wonder your client's not very successful.”

  “The piece is actually one of his better creations.”

  “Well, if I come across it, I'll see it's returned to you.”


  Autopsy.

  My God. Had she seen it, liked it, and taken it on a whim? Or was there something more? Did she know Benjamin had been in touch with me and returned to his apartment in order to send me a message?

  Thursday night

  What the hell …?” I muttered as my knee banged into something in my front hallway. It was after nine, and I was in a thoroughly bad mood. I'd followed Ted through the same routine, then returned to the pier to eat half a sandwich left over from lunch while clearing up more of my seemingly endless paperwork—with thoughts of Clive Benjamin's grotesque missing sculpture and the woman who'd taken it preying around the edges of my mind. I fumbled for the hall light, looked down as I fiddled with the alarm's keypad.

  Packages. A couple of stacks of them. Left by UPS, no doubt, and brought in by Michelle Curley, young caregiver of cats. I examined the labels: Macy's, Crate & Barrel, Williams-Sonoma, Nordstrom's.

  I hadn't shopped at any of those stores since before Christmas, hadn't placed any mail or phone orders, either.

  “What's the bitch done to me now?”

  I hauled the packages to the sitting room, where I dumped them in the middle of the floor. Ralph and Allie wandered in from their respective sleeping places, sniffed at the new additions to the household, and sauntered off to their food bowl.

  “Nice to see you too!” I snapped.

  They ignored me.

  I followed them to the kitchen for a knife and returned to the sitting room, sat on the floor, and began opening. From Macy's I'd received a cashmere sweater in my correct size and favorite shade of green. Crate & Barrel had sent a place setting of my flatware. Williams-Sonoma had supplied a trio of wine vinegars in the flavors I most liked. And Nordstrom's mail-order department had somehow divined that I used Paris perfume.

  It had all been charged either to my store accounts or to my MasterCard. I'd have to expend a lot of time and effort straightening this out.

  Rage rose up in my throat and I clenched my teeth against shrieking. Then a heavy atmospheric pressure seemed to be bearing down on all sides of me, making it difficult to breathe. Get a grip, McCone. This isn't worth hyperventilating over. Besides, she's now committed the kind of fraud you can put her away for.

  When I felt better I got up and took myself to the kitchen, where I replaced the knife in its drawer and poured myself a big glass of wine. The cats followed me back to the sitting room, Ralphie lying beside me on the couch and Allie jumping on its back, where she could butt against my head.

  “Yeah, sure. You've eaten, so now you can acknowledge my existence.”

  Ralphie yawned and Allie began to purr.

  All right, McCone, concentrate. What do you know about this woman?

  She's my height, weight, and body type, but she doesn't have the same skin tone and her hair color is probably honey blond. She isn't shy, isn't picky about sleeping with a stranger upon the first meeting. She's a blatant and convincing liar. She's angry enough that her body language communicates it to a casual observer. She's bold enough to enter Clive Benjamin's and my homes and go through our possessions during an absence whose duration she couldn't be sure of. She's pretended, at least to me, and perhaps momentarily believed, that she's sorry for her actions.

  Which probably meant she was subject to extreme mood swings and was emotionally, if not mentally, unstable.

  This latest intrusion into my life—how had she accomplished it? The packing slips enclosed with one order indicated it had come in by phone, so probably the others had, too. But how had she gotten the charge-account numbers?

  Of course. I kept my credit-card bills in the old-fashioned pigeonhole desk in my home office—the desk whose drawers had been standing open on Sunday night. Easy to copy the information for future use.

  But didn't they ask questions that would verify you actually were the credit-card holder when taking a phone order? No, not when the merchandise was to be sent to the address shown on the account.

  Well, what about caller ID? Didn't the number you called from come up on their computer screens? Probably, and if so, that was a potential lead.

  Okay, the woman had the presence of mind not to leave any evidence; the expertise to break into my home unobserved when the security system wasn't armed; the nerve to remain there for a fair amount of time; the foresight to make note of my possessions and credit-card numbers—

  Suddenly I felt cold; my flesh rippled unpleasantly. What else was in that desk?

  She'd gotten enough information to throw my life into total chaos: all the numbers without which we can't carry on, but which make us vulnerable if they fall into the wrong hands. My particular numbers included credit cards; Social Security; driver's, pilot's, investigator's licenses; passport; employer's ID; mortgage and PG&E and Pacific Bell and AT&T and CellularOne accounts. Hell, she even had my frequent-flier numbers!

  I shook my head, remembering how on Sunday night I'd congratulated myself on keeping all my important papers in the office safe. By that I'd meant my birth certificate, pink slip for the MG and company van, tax returns, will, and the wills of my mother and brother John, who had both made me executor. But I'd kept my whole life here in the house, where the woman could peruse it at her leisure.

  What else?

  I opened one of the desk's cubbyholes and saw my personal Rolodex. Oh, God, she probably had the phone numbers and addresses of all my relatives and friends! If so, she had numbers that were unlisted, that I'd promised to keep private.

  I tugged at a couple of drawers that had been partially open that night. Inside were letters and cards from people I cared about, letters and cards from Hy. She might even have read the private and intimate things my lover had written me!

  What kind of investigator was I? How had I missed the obvious on Sunday?

  Well, for one thing, I'd been put off balance by the violation of my home, the traumatization of my cats. I'd just returned from my first solo departure from a Class B airport.

  No excuse, McCone. You're dropping the ball all over the field on this one. You've allowed your heavy workload and Ted's problem to get in the way of your professionalism. Start treating yourself the same as you would a client.

  I shut off the lights and went to the kitchen for a refill of wine, then thought to check the answering machine. Two messages. One from Hy, I hoped.

  On Tuesday and Wednesday there had been brief messages from him, but I hadn't been able to reach him either at his hotel or RKI's Buenos Aires office. Last night's said he would be leaving in the morning to check out a client's facilities in the southern part of the country. “Don't know where I'll be staying yet,” he added, “so I'll try to catch you when I can.”

  Our repeated failure to get through to one another didn't really bother me, even though I badly wanted to talk with him. Hy and I had probably spent more time playing telephone tag than most couples, but from the first, we'd connected on an emotional level that transcended both time and distance. Now, I felt hopeful as I pressed the play button.

  “Sharon, Jeff Riley again. One of the other linemen told me he saw a woman who sounds a lot like the one I talked to hanging around Two-eight-niner this afternoon. The plane seems okay, but I'll ask around, see if anybody else noticed her.”

  “Ms. McCone, this is Cecily at Eddie Bauer Customer Service. The nylon jacket you ordered is out of stock in the tan, but we have the blue. If you'd like to change your color choice, please give me a call at our 800 number.”

  I'm lying flat on my back, bound at the ankles, waist, and shoulders. My arm is extended to my side and … oh, yes, that's a needle stuck deep in the vein, attached to a tube that glows a deep blackish red. Funny, it doesn't hurt at all, but I'm tired, so tired …

  A nurse in a teal-blue uniform leans down, her face close to mine, and asks, “How are you?”

  She doesn't really care; I can tell from her tone. I look up and see a mirror image of myself.

  I ask, “What are you doing to me?” and she replies, “T
aking a blood sample.”

  “Blood sample? You're taking my life!”

  She smiles and glides away.

  Friday

  … And the guy brings home a lot of takeout, only he never finishes it, so his garbage is full of cartons of rotten Chinese and pizza that— Shar, have you heard anything I've said?”

  “What?” I frowned at Mick.

  “I thought so. Where're you off at this morning?”

  “Another galaxy, I guess. You were saying … ?”

  “Basically that I've gone through the guy's disgusting garbage and come up with a couple of promising leads.”

  Oh, right—the hidden-assets case. “Such as?”

  “Envelopes from CBIC Bank & Trust in the Cayman Islands and Swiss Bank's private banking department here in the city.”

  “Just envelopes?”

  “Yeah, but they've given me two places to start. Almost made it worth pawing through used Kleenexes and food with green stuff growing on it.”

  “I hope you wore rubber gloves.”

  “You bet I did.”

  “Listen, why don't you talk with Keim about this? She might be able to give you some insight—”

  “I already tapped into Lottie's financial expertise, and I think I know where to go from here. I should have my report on your desk by Monday noon, latest.”

  “Good.”

  Mick looked disappointed. “Make that eleven fifty-seven.”

  Automatically I said, “Eleven fifty-seven will earn you a steak sandwich at the Boondocks.”

  “I'd rather it earned me a talk with you about what's wrong.”

  His concern over my distracted state both surprised and touched me; sometimes I felt I'd spent years giving to Mick and receiving little in return. Now, apparently, that was changing. For a moment I was tempted to tell him exactly what was going on.