No Footprints

by Susan Dunlap

  Still, Tessa . . . How could she not have called—

  What made me think she hadn’t?

  I called Security.

  A woman answered.

  "Scatto was getting me a printout of the phone records for seventeen oh one. I thought they’d be here by now.”

  "Your name?”

  Name? Not mine! I couldn’t use Serrano’s. "Varine Adamé, of course. I don’t want to complain, but I have been waiting.” I held my breath. Would she even question me or was there a goon squad already heading up here?

  "I’m sorry, but we’ve a situation on three that’s going to take—”

  "Of course,” I said. "I understand. But this is a situation of some urgency.”

  "I don’t—”

  "Just the call list. Please.”

  "But—”

  "My husband is, right now, being honored at City Hall. Of course I’ll tell him about your help when he gets here.” I paused to let that settle in.

  It was a moment before she said, "Here’re the numbers. You ready?”

  I scrambled for a pen and copied down one local and a long distance number at an area code that told me nothing. "That it, just the two?”

  "Yes. Oh, and, Mrs. Adamé, I see here there’s still a question about your plans. Will you be checking out in the morning or would you like to move to another room? We do have another party coming in.”

  Tessa never checked out! She could be unlocking the door right now! I’d scoured the city and she’d been right here all along! She could walk in any minute and—

  "Mrs. Adamé?”

  "Yes, tomorrow. I’ll be leaving. But I don’t want to be disturbed tonight.”

  "No, certainly not. Have a good night.”

  She was still here! I was so relieved, so excited. She’d be okay. Whatever her problems, we could handle them. Now the worst possibility—I wanted to laugh—would be the one Mike had thought of, that I might bring her to dinner.

  But where was she? Was she still planning to jump? She could have rented—hell, stolen—a car and be doing a farewell drive around the city. She could be down the hill in Chinatown gorging herself on delicacies that usually require a party of four to finish, or sipping noodle soup slowly in a spot below sidewalk level. She could have just decided to go to the movies.

  I looked around the living room, checking around the furniture, between the seat cushions and, in the dining area, scanning the floor. Nothing.

  But she was still a guest here. There had to be something.

  Unless she just didn’t bother to check out. Was I looking for detritus of her night before the bridge—or was I on the hunt for a sign she’d be back? That’s what this room needed to tell me.

  The phone rang. Again! The hotel phone, this time. Who knew I was here? Whoever was on the other end—Serrano, someone from Security—no good would come of answering.

  According to Serrano’s theory, if secrets were to be hidden in the lesser bedroom—and they weren’t—then there should be nothing in the main bedroom but a king-sized bed. I pushed open the door.

  It looked like a hurricane had hit. Sheets, blankets, comforters had been flung into swirls on the floor. More bedclothes than seemed possible to have covered one bed. The bed was down to the mattress cover. Broken glass glistened like white-on-white ornaments a couple feet from one of the bedside tables.

  What in hell had happened here? I leaned back against the wall, unwilling to step farther, as if the clumps of sheets still held her misery, as if the luxury of this room merely increased the irony, the huge bed her aloneness.

  I edged to the closet. She’d had the bike with her. That’s what the desk clerk told me. She’d ridden it the night before she tried to jump. Now her Spandex biking clothes were here but the bike itself was gone. She’d’ve changed for the bridge. So now, she, in her white shirt and black pants, along with the bike, was out there somewhere.

  Omigod. Was that a knock?

  But not Tessa! She’d have a key.

  A voice called something I couldn’t make out.

  Hide?

  Hide? Or bluff? What was my best option?

  Now I needed to make every half-second count. I waded through the sheets to the bedside table, scanned around it for anything that might have dropped.

  Another knock.

  I headed to the far side of the bed; the sheets were like quicksand.

  I could hear the door opening.

  I made for the doorway where at least my ankles wouldn’t be cuffed with cloth. Options for handling Security flashed and were gone. I walked slowly into the living room.

  "Room service!”

  Did Security really expect me to fling open the door for that old ruse?

  The lock clicked. The door opened.

  He wasn’t what I’d expected. Not a burly guy with a burly gun. He was holding a large tray with two layers of metal dish covers. He had the look of . . . not a professional as much as a man who knew the ropes and had climbed over them, or under them, often enough to end up entangled, but was clever enough, always, to step free. He was thin in a forgot-to-eat way, mid- to late twenties, dark, gorgeous, and surprised. "Oh, I am so sorry,” he said in a vaguely French accent. "Please excuse. I thought that she . . . They said she had not checked out. I wanted . . . Please excuse.”

  "You wanted?” There was more than just meal delivery going on here.

  "I am sorry. I will—”

  He was looking past me into the bedroom. He was inching away. I shot around him and shut the door to the hall. "I’m not going to report you. I’m her friend. Trust me. If she had this good a night here, I’m happy for her.” I was happy for her. And relieved.

  He shifted the tray. It must’ve weighed twenty pounds.

  "You can put it down. Help yourself if you’re hungry.”

  "I’m not allowed to stay—”

  "Oh, please! Two glasses, silver for two, food enough to keep you till sunrise.” I couldn’t help but grin. "And isn’t that a bit of cream on your lips? Is it standard procedure here for room service to double as food tasters?”

  I expected him to protest, but he offered the kind of smile that invited me into the conspiracy. He was, I suspected—but no, I couldn’t afford to stereotype him. How often had Leo stopped me mid-sentence with the question: Do you know that? How often had he said: Don’t assume. I went with what—Marc, his pin said—had said. "You’re expecting her back?”

  "Expecting? No. I expect nothing.”

  Was that his philosophy or his answer? "What did she say?”

  "About today? Nothing. She . . . but you are her friend? She gave you her key. You are meeting her, yes?”

  "Not exactly.”

  He leaned back against the wall and eyed me in a way that said we were on level ground now. He didn’t glance at the debris of the previous night behind him.

  The head of Security might open the door any moment. I reconsidered Marc’s opening statement. "Were you expecting her to be here or not? It’s kind of hard to tell. You were surprised to find me, right? I don’t blame you.”

  He considered for a minute. "Why do you—”

  I shook my head. "You first. Then I’ll tell you. Was it something she said?”

  "No. She said almost nothing. I was here till sunrise. I thought I’d be fired but—” he shrugged. "All those hours, we hardly spoke. We”—now he looked toward the bedroom—"but not all night. We ate. She was not like others. I have seen the rich, the ladies with credit cards they will not have for long, les femmes vengeresses. They order the most expensive. Their goal is to go through money like . . . ” he snapped his fingers. "They rip the sheets, they spill, smear, stomp caviar into the upholstery. They wish to destroy. But she,” he said wistfully, "was not that way. She wished to savor. She’d ordered the best of everything. She tasted each bite, each sip. We did not finish the bottle. She left”—he smiled—"a tip of such size the maid was afraid to take it.”

  "She said nothing about the next day
?”

  "Only that she wished it would not come.”

  "How so? Romantically? Fearfully?”

  "Comment? She said there was something she had to do. Unavoidable, that was the term she used.”

  "Unavoidable how?”

  Something bumped the hall door. Marc went stiff.

  "How?”

  He was getting nervous. But so was I. I was in a lot more danger than he. "Unavoidable how, dammit?”

  "A contract. She tried to break it, she couldn’t.” He hoisted his laden tray.

  "What kind of contract?”

  "She couldn’t escape it. She had to go—”

  The door started to open. The suit behind it couldn’t have been anything but Security.

  I’ve been in a lot of action movies; I know the options for the cornered: discuss, divert, destroy. Discuss is fine if you’ve got a chance of talking the big guy out of hitting, cuffing, or killing you. Which I did not. The guy in the doorway didn’t fill it, but he had a look that said he’d know all the answers before I could think up the questions. Destroy him? Not hardly. Which left only one option. I was sorry but . . .

  As the door opened I grabbed the tray out of Marc’s hands, tipped it onto Security, and ran for the stairs.

  25

  In movies heroes confuse and elude capture by running not down, but up the stairs. But there wasn’t much "up” from here. I went down. I’ve choreographed enough stair fall gags to know how to stay upright and move fast in high heels. I grabbed banisters, whipped corners, and all but skipped the landings.

  After four flights I checked the hall, stepped out, made my way along till I came to a distant staircase, and continued down. I was small potatoes, to be corralled to pay for china and effrontery. Still, I didn’t leave the stairs at lobby level. I kept on going and ended up wandering through the basement and out onto the street through the garbage bins.

  I’d go home, change my look, and figure out how to monitor Tessa’s possible return. I couldn’t bear the idea of her walking into the lobby and my not knowing.

  From Nob Hill cable cars go in all directions—every one but mine. The zendo wasn’t far, but the walk straight down in spike heels was plenty long enough. A lesser woman would have tipped onto her snout. I cut through Chinatown, up Grant Avenue. The sidewalks were empty. Shadows turned dark to black. I was relieved when I reached Pacific and turned right toward home, across Columbus.

  Cars shoot down this wide one-way thoroughfare, whipping through lights to swing toward one of the approaches to the Bay Bridge. This late, if they’re going out of the city, they’re going fast. Columbus is too wide to make a dash across it. My feet ached but I made myself stop and check.

  I let a single van pass and was just about to start for the zendo when I spotted the vehicle pulling up outside it. A black unmarked car.

  It could have held my brother John. But if he was going to nag about the rhubarb pie, he’d do it by phone—again.

  Which left Declan Serrano.

  The guy could only be trouble.

  I waited.

  He turned off the lights and sat.

  I could have kicked him. It would have eased the pain in my feet.

  Get out, you cockroach! Don’t just sit there!

  The wind, which I hadn’t noticed when I ran out of the hotel and hurried down the hill, now iced the sweat on my neck and slid under the collar of my inadequate coat.

  Don’t just sit there in your warm car.

  I moved into a doorway and peered out at him.

  He started the engine.

  I let out a sigh of relief.

  But the lights didn’t come on. He was just running the heater!

  I picked over my options like avocadoes in the deli section. When they’re all too hard, you take the softest and just hope for the best. I pulled out my phone and dialed Macomber Dale, hoping he’d calmed down since the ruckus he’d caused at City Hall. Hoping he wasn’t in the cop shop waiting to be booked.

  "Dale here.”

  "Hey, Mac, it’s Darcy Lott. I need a ride to pick up the junker for tomorrow’s shoot. I’m freezing on a street corner.” I had a hundred things I wanted to ask him, but not at this moment.

  In seven minutes flat he was at the curb. Declan Serrano was still parked in front of the zendo.

  "Thanks,” I said as I slid in, kicked off my shoes, and stuck my feet against the heater vent.

  "Sure.” He pulled away from the curb. "Where we going?”

  I gave him the cross streets and directions.

  His only response was to veer left toward the Embarcadero and roads south. He was peering ahead like driving took all his concentration. I applauded that—good for traffic; good for eliciting straight answers.

  "Mac, what happened with Aaron Adamé tonight?”

  "I don’t know.”

  You don’t know? "Mac, you shoved the guy—the guest of honor!”

  "I did not!”

  What! "I saw you! Half the city saw you. You and I were supposed to be there tonight to make nice and we’re sure not—”

  "That’s what I was doing. We were talking movies, Adamé and Harriet Knebel and me. I was talking up the movie, talking up you, telling him about the stunt driving and how you even saved a woman from jumping off the bridge. Saving a life, you can’t get nicer than that! I know how to deal with these arty types. I’ve cut deals. I was working them. And then, bingo, he’s pushing me aside and suddenly everyone’s on me.”

  "You didn’t touch her? Harriet Knebel?”

  "What do you think I am? She’s an old lady!”

  "You’re saying he shoved you?”

  "Damn right! The asshole!”

  "And then?” I was glancing at the passenger side rearview.

  "He went racing out like there’d been a bomb scare. When I caught up with him he was standing outside and suddenly I’m taking the rap. Like they all thought I’d attacked him!”

  I took a deep breath, but it didn’t calm me down much. "Maybe what you’re saying is the whole truth, but you’re used to getting what you want and getting it pronto—”

  "He fucking shoved me!”

  "Pull over.” We were a block away from the garage.

  He eased to the curb. "Did I pass?”

  "What?”

  "Focusing in turmoil, like you told me! Couldn’t’ve done better yourself, right?”

  "What you just told me, was that true?”

  "Sure, but—”

  "Be at my place at 9 o’clock tomorrow.” I slammed the door and Dale shot off down the empty street. I stepped back into the shadow of the nearest building before crossing to the garage.

  Just in time to see Declan Serrano’s car whip by.

  I laughed. I wished I could catch the scene when the cockroach pulled Macomber Dale over. Who’d be the most outraged?

  But by then I’d have the junker out of the garage and be out of the Mission.

  26

  The garage, known in the family as the mouse hole, was a shabby and cluttered box pressed between bigger commercial boxes that may have changed owners, made, sold, or stored different stuff over the years. There were no visible signs, not even subtle indicators by the mail slot, as to their current incarnations.

  Mom and Dad had had a flat across the street before John was born. They’d kept a car here. When they moved out to the Avenues—a mile from Sea Cliff but hundreds of thousands of dollars beneath it—they passed the rundown garage on to a brother-in-law, and he, later, to another relative and, somehow, back to us. After a while the mouse hole had become not a convenience but more like a grumpy cat in a household that once had had mice. We kept it no matter how inconvenient because you never know.

  Inside was the junker—the stunt car—next to stacks and jumbles of stuff various Lotts deemed worthy of keeping. The car was pointed out.

  Odd.

  Oh, wait, one of the film techs had worked on it this morning and parked it. A guy more considerate than any of us Lotts.


  From habit I glanced under the hood, drove out, locked the garage door—not that anyone with any small bit of ambition couldn’t get in—and headed south out of the city.

  Considerate parker or not, the tech had left the car with a new squeal, the kind of thing a conscientious driver would take in to his mechanic and a junker driver just hoped didn’t erupt till the heap was in the wrecking yard. (There actually was a tow lot/wrecking yard a couple blocks from the mouse hole, an arrangement that had benefitted both wreckers and Lotts over the years.) I was moving slowly, watching the cross traffic, checking the rearview.

  I swung by Mom’s house. No one was home, but Mom keeps a closet of emergency clothes for her offspring in need. We take; we leave. I left my cocktail dress and grabbed a plain black one, sandals, and an old leather jacket I’d gotten a deal on in an L.A. resale shop. It’d been years since I’d seen it. My hair I pulled back in a twist so tight I was almost looking at my ears. If Aaron Adamé was home too, he might still recognize me but his first thought wouldn’t be: the woman with the guy who attacked me.

  Sea Cliff is an anomaly in San Francisco, a couple block residential loop preserved between big segments of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, a spot so exclusive many locals have to look at a map to find exactly where it is. It could be a bit of Scarsdale or a wealthy Chicago suburb with a view of the Golden Gate. Substantial homes sit in the middle of substantial lawns. Grass in San Francisco is like evergreens in Miami. I wondered if these folk had to send their gardener out of town to learn how to mow.

  In pretty much any other neighborhood, houses were right behind the sidewalks. Here, though, there were walks leading up the inclines to the doors. Here, unlike in other neighborhoods, cars were not bumper-to-bumper by every spot of curb. I eased the car near the Adamés’ walk, closed the car door, not surprised that it no longer locked, and headed to the door, rang the bell, and waited. Inside, there was a dim glow. No car was visible, but it was likely in a garage behind.