No Footprints

by Susan Dunlap

  The outside light came on. The door flew open and Aaron Adamé rushed forward. "I was worri—” He stared at me. "Who the hell are you?”

  "Darcy Lott. Is Varine here?”

  "No.”

  I glanced at my watch. Almost 10:00 am, not late certainly, but late to be just out. "Where is she?”

  He looked puzzled and it was a moment before it struck me that I’d sounded concerned. I’d sounded, I realized, like a friend who’d been expecting to find her home. I’d played this role, or close to it, with Kristi; was I slipping into it all too readily now? Me, the phony friend?

  I scrunched my shoulders. No need to pretend shivering out here. It was plenty cold. "I really need to see her. I can wait or come back. I know it’s late, but this is important.”

  He hesitated. Up on the dais, in his elegant suit, he’d looked older and more imposing. Now, in jeans and a navy World Cup sweatshirt, he barely resembled the descriptions I’d heard: mover, dynamo, financial visionary with guts. He’d been described as leading the leading edge but now he just looked edgy and so tired I was almost sorry to be keeping him standing up. For an instant he even seemed to have forgotten I was there. Finally, he asked, "How is it you know her?”

  "Through Jessica Silverman.”

  "Ah, yes. You better come in. It’s cold.”

  It wasn’t much warmer inside. The place would be a bear to heat. The entry was about the size of Mom’s living room, but there the similarity stopped. The first thing you noticed at Mom’s was the clutter on the hall table. Here there were two narrow ones, but no mail, keys, newspapers, notes, much less, and underneath, an array of shoes abandoned by whoever was living there. It was a room to walk through, as, a glance suggested, was the living room.

  "When do you expect Varine back?”

  "I . . . I don’t know.”

  "Is she okay?”

  "Yes. Probably.” He was moving like a remote-controlled model car on low battery. Everything about him suggested his normal speed was snappy, and even now, worn out as he obviously was, he started each step with a burst but faded before his foot hit the floor. He seemed surprised to find himself in a much smaller version of the living room, dropped onto a red loveseat, and motioned me to the one opposite.

  This little room was set up to be cozier, with bookcases, pictures, an electric fireplace that could have warmed but wasn’t turned on, and a bar caddy from which he did not offer me a drink or take one.

  I sat. "She’s probably okay? You don’t know where she is?”

  "You know how she is.”

  "Yes and no. I mean, I’m not married to her. But you seem worried.”

  He shrugged.

  The last thing I wanted to bring up was the reception, but I had little choice. I euphemized: "I heard comments about her skipping the award ceremony tonight.”

  He sighed. "Don’t people have anything better to gossip about? Don’t they . . .” He sighed again, longer this time. "It’s always like that, people expecting her to be here, to be there, like she’s my boutonniere. She’s entitled to her privacy, her own life. She goes above and beyond and still people expect her to be everywhere! Why should anyone care if she held a glass of wine and shouted over the din tonight?”

  "You were being honored.”

  "I’m honored a lot. That’s what money gets you. Look, I don’t mean to sound like a jerk. But people talk, no matter what. It just makes it hard on Varine.”

  "And you?” I was going to have to roll the dice here. How far could I go without blowing my cover? "Aaron, if this—her not showing up tonight—was nothing out of the ordinary, you’d be saying that. It’s pretty obvious you’re worried.”

  He hesitated—and he had the look of a man who never vacillated. Finally, he leaned forward, elbows on thighs, and looked directly at me. "I just hope I haven’t put her 'on display’—what she calls it—too much. She doesn’t drag me to the Mission, to her studio and, before, I never asked her to get involved in my work. But when I started doing well, there was pressure we hadn’t expected. One local columnist actually told her that either she became part of my entourage, so to speak, or soon her absence would be the story and her private life would be gone altogether. I was naïve. I couldn’t protect her. Of course Varine knows how much my career means. So, we kept trying to come up with the most she could get away with. But . . . it just never ends, does it?” He slumped.

  "Maybe she’s at her studio.”

  "No! I called.”

  "Not answering the phone?”

  "How am I supposed to know? You’re her friend, but don’t tell me she always returns your calls. It’s not like her. Maybe she didn’t—”

  "How long since you’ve seen her?”

  "How long? Not yesterday. Maybe the day before. She was here; I was gone all day, till late, and then I had some guys over late and I just stayed down here. She’s a lousy sleeper.”

  "But in the morning?”

  "Gone.” He shrugged. "I went out for a run and when I got back she was gone. No message. I knew she’d be at her studio.”

  "It seems . . .” I was hunting for a euphemism for distant relationship. "I don’t know her that well, but I have to ask, is that normal?”

  "Hey, it’s how we live. She’s an artist. She’s off in her studio thinking color and shapes and designs. I’m into money and being part of this city. See, your reaction is exactly the problem.”

  "Sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

  He shook off my apology.

  "You don’t have any idea where she is?”

  "She’s always . . . gotten in touch.”

  "Always, before you started to worry?”

  "Of—I don’t know. No, yeah, okay, there was another time she was gone for almost a week, so maybe—” He nodded as if reassuring himself. "This is between us, right? I don’t want to be reading about it somewhere.”

  "Of course.” I shifted to almost face him. "How’d she seemed recently? Have you noticed changes?”

  "I shouldn’t be telling you this. Varine’s very private.”

  "It’s okay.” I knew I should have said: you can trust me or I won’t repeat it, but concerned as I was about him, still, I couldn’t bring myself to lie so totally. If any word he uttered was any help in finding Tessa, no way could he trust me.

  But my assurance was enough for him. "I guess you could say she’s moody,” he said.

  "Do you mean depressed?”

  "She’s never been hospitalized, but there are periods she’s got to be alone. I don’t press her.”

  Never hospitalized? It was a pretty low standard. "Don’t you worry?”

  "Yeah, I worry. How about all the time? Don’t you get it—there’s nothing I can do. I’ve got so many meetings and crises, I can’t keep up with her, with how she’s holding up.”

  "But—”

  "What am I going to do, commit her?”

  "What are you going to do?”

  "Now? I was hoping when the doorbell rang . . . She could be in a hotel.”

  The hotel! The hotel! "Aaron, that’s what I came to tell her. Her credit card was used for a room at a hotel. The Presidential Suite.”

  "She’s there?” He let out a thunderous sigh and sank back in the sofa.

  "Wait. I don’t know. I have to think a minute.”

  "I’ll call—”

  "They’ll tell you she checked in. With a bicycle.”

  "A bicycle!” He shook his head. "That’s so like her, a bicycle in a Presidential Suite! Riding from bedroom to bedroom.” He looked straight at me. "God, I was worried, really worried this time. I . . . Shit, I am so goddamned relieved! You know, she could’ve called. We could’ve had—doesn’t matter. Let’s go.”

  "Wait. I’m not saying she’s there.”

  "Then what?”

  "Someone using her credit card is there.”

  He hesitated, then shook off the whole idea as if I hadn’t spoken.

  "Let me see a picture of her.”

  "What ar
e you talking about? You’re her friend! You know—”

  "Show me the picture!”

  "Behind you, on the shelf there.”

  I turned, reached for the frame, stopped dead. "Omigod!” There she was, standing beside him, her dark hair sweeping down beneath her chin line as it had been on the bridge. She was wearing the red drum major’s jacket I’d hung on to to haul her back over the railing. I pulled the picture closer. "Omigod! This is Varine?”

  "Of course.”

  "Does she have a twin?”

  "No! She’s an only child.” He snatched the frame out of my hand. "Just what is this? Who the hell are you?”

  "I’m trying to find—”

  "Leave! Just get out!”

  "I—”

  He grabbed my shoulders. "Out!”

  "Things could be easier if I went with you.” He didn’t object, which kept me from pointing out that only I knew which hotel we were headed to.

  27

  Adamé wasn’t pleased about going with me, much less having to follow me to the mouse hole to drop off my car for Mac, but like any successful businessman he knew how to make deals and act nice. Declan Serrano notwithstanding, nothing about Adamé suggested he was a big-time financial criminal. But then there’s a reason confidence men are called confidence men.

  But, behind the wheel, he transformed. It was as if all the energy he’d restrained waiting for his wife exploded there. He was on my tail, blinking the lights and motioning when there was a space in the other lane, shooting over without me and slamming brakes to crawl back in behind me. The guy was so close to nudging my bumper it was almost an insult. I kept having to remind myself he was desperate to find out about his wife.

  We hit a red. I was grateful. What I needed was to figure out what the hell was going on.

  Behind me he tapped the horn. When I turned he gave a little "I’m here” wave. The light changed and I moved behind a truck and settled a car length back.

  Varine Adamé in the hotel? Using her own credit card? Duh! Could Tessa Jurovik be an alias of Varine Adamé? Varine who had a studio in the Mission, like Tessa. Varine who craved a life of her own!

  Was Tessa Jurovik merely a long-time alter ego? Was that even possible in a city this size?

  I couldn’t adopt an alter ego; I’d be spotted before the day was through. I’d grown up here. But a woman like Varine who’d only been here five or six years, whose public identity was in the shadow of her husband’s—

  I got out my cell and called the authority. Luckily, he picked up right away. "Mike, if you were less strikingly handsome and had fewer siblings prowling around the city, could you have created an alter ego here?”

  "Me, sure! A lesser man, or woman maybe but . . . You mean the woman on the bridge?”

  "How’d you—”

  "Who else?”

  "Yeah. I think she’s really Varine Adamé, wife of Aaron. The red jacket, Mike, it’s hers. I just saw her in it in a photo.”

  "One of a kind?”

  "Point taken. But—”

  "Are you sure she’s the woman on the bridge?”

  "Same hair, same clothes. But it was a studio portrait, the kind you put in a Christmas card. She’s relaxed and smiling. Her husband’s arm is around her shoulder. She’s not frightened, angry, cold, and snarling at me. So, yeah.”

  "From last Christmas?”

  "Dunno.” I knew I needed to look for flaws in this match. "I found Tessa Jurovik from her pay stub.”

  "Just means some woman earned a salary.”

  "But she was a bike messenger.”

  "Just means some woman rode two wheels. Darce, you ride through the streets and disappear. No one checks the rolls of every messenger service in town.”

  Despite everything I was smiling. This was like the old days, the two of us running a single thought—usually his thoughts that he was willing to share with his kid sister. I’d just about killed myself to make my mark on them. Even now, driving, I could feel the tension from pressing my back against his bedroom wall, my teenaged arms around my knees, me plucking "takes” and rejecting them as too childish, worrying that I was letting the silence settle like a stain on the fabric of my acceptance.

  There’d been safe but obvious comments; I’d disdained them. Maybe I’d learned early on or maybe I just knew that the only route was the most audacious, the one that would bring the supreme reward of a surprised look that said: You’re not a kid anymore. Back then, like now, he’d start talking mid-idea, or I would. Now it was me: "If Varine Adamé created an alter ego in the Mission—Tessa Jurovik—and used it for a quiet life there, low-key, no one from her life as Aaron’s wife would catch on. Possible?”

  "Possible.”

  "But?”

  "For her, it’s not going to be so hard. It’s playacting.”

  "But—”

  "Hang on, Darce, ’cause this is the clincher. Taking another identity’s only a problem when people are looking for you. Her, she’s just playing at this other life, right?”

  "Yeah, maybe.”

  "Yeah—definitely. You figure she’s got this hideaway life in the Mission, to get free of the pressures of her other life. When nobody’s after you, then, look, you screw up and something doesn’t compute, people figure you’re flaky or you’ve got some trouble with a guy, right?”

  Toss in the night at the Mark, with Marc, the sexy bellman, and it made a pretty complete package. "Yeah, a guy. That was Kristi’s first guess for pretty much anything. She liked Tessa—”

  "Because?”

  "Because Tessa was nice to her.” There was a swishing sound on the phone, him, I was sure, nodding knowingly. "And her roommate, Byron, sheesh, she could have carried a grenade launcher on her shoulder and he’d never have noticed. He had no idea whether she was there or not. The landlord—the landlord, Mike, he’s an amateur bagpiper!”

  "Say no more! Arrangement like that, I could have lived there and never been caught.”

  "Caught” was an odd word for a brother we’d been desperate to find because we loved him. Or maybe he didn’t mean us. In which case—

  "What’s hard,” he said as if continuing a thought he’d neglected to speak out loud, "is when the people who are looking for you for the best of reasons get close enough to blow your cover. Then you’ve got to scramble, watch your ass, and make sure you don’t get them caught in the middle.”

  Middle of what? "You talking 'me’?”

  "You once.”

  "You know I would never, ever have done anything to endanger—”

  "Hey, you don’t have any idea what agony it was to know one of you was a breath away and all I could do before I split was make damned sure there wasn’t a trace you—especially you—would connect to me.”

  I couldn’t deal with that at all. Certainly not now. I said, "But you’re back now.”

  Behind me, Adamé flicked his headlights.

  I’d slowed without realizing it. "Mike, I’m almost at the mouse hole to drop the stunt car. Varine’s registered at the Mark Hopkins. Adamé’s taking me—”

  "The husband?”

  "Yeah. He’s not happy about it, but it’ll be okay. Hey, wait, we’re so busy trying to figure out whether or not Varine had a second life, whether it was she who checked into the hotel, I almost forgot about the bridge. All this would mean it’s Varine Adamé who tried to jump.”

  "Yeah,” he said in a what-else-is-new tone.

  Why was it such a shock? There was something else, something deeper gnawing at me. "To me, Tessa’s life began on the bridge. It’s always central to who she is. But Varine Adamé’s got a whole entire other life. For her, Tessa’s like an extra cocktail dress in the back of the closet.”

  Mike, of course, hadn’t seen her on the bridge looking longingly when a horn beeped. He hadn’t been the one pulling her back over the railing. Now, to accept that Tessa had never existed except as an alias . . . it was like she had jumped! "To me, it was Tessa, not Varine, who was real.” I had to swallo
w before I could trust myself to speak. "But why give away all of her clothes?”

  "Clothes for her Tessa persona. Why not? She was going to jump.”

  "I guess.”

  "Darce?”

  "Yeah?”

  "What are you expecting to find at the hotel?”

  "She didn’t check out. So, with luck, her.”

  28

  Outside the mouse hole, Adamé flung open the passenger door of his BMW X6 and I slid in.

  There was a lot he might have asked me about his wife’s last couple days, but he hadn’t. Not so far. Now he jumped lights before they turned green—not so unusual in this city—and ignored yellows. He ran one red entirely, and on the couple that turned half a block away, he hung rights and made sure he got through at the next intersection. The car never stopped until it jolted still by the doors of the Mark.

  The first thing I noticed inside was the Security guy. Would he recognize me without my flashy cocktail dress and spike heels? I hoped—

  But it was his job not to be fooled this easily. Before he could utter an accusing word, I said, "Mr. Adamé’s here to see his wife, in the Presidential Suite. Can you let him in or—”

  "Scatto, Security,” he announced to Adamé, after shooting me a puzzled look. He had little choice but to play along. "Perhaps you’d like me to call ahead, sir.”

  Adamé nodded. "As you wish.” He was striding to the elevator. Scatto and I followed.

  "I’m afraid I owe the hotel for some breakage. Can I get a bill from you, or should I take it up with the concierge?” I said as Scatto watched his phone ring. The man had more important things than me to worry about. I’d have to pay, but now my behavior no longer counted as hooliganism, but rather the exuberance of the well-connected.

  In the elevator, Scatto clicked off and then tried again. At the door he knocked, announced "Security,” and then opened it.