Crooked Heart

by Cristina Sumners

  Stepping inside, she saw that the woman at the reception desk was on the phone. Kathryn smiled and lifted a hand in silent greeting before depositing her umbrella, handbag, and attaché case on the nearest chair.

  The woman at the desk was explaining to the caller, with a courtesy so flawless it was really rather quelling, that Carolyn wouldn’t be back until next week. Patricia Clyde warmed up perceptibly at the sight of Kathryn, however; she returned her smile, made an apologetic gesture at the telephone, and lifted a finger to indicate that she would be off it in one minute.

  Ms. Koerney was not their wealthiest client (although if they rated customers in terms of dollars per year of age, Kathryn, at thirty-four, would have been close to the top of the list), but she was one of Patricia Clyde’s favorites. She had won Ms. Clyde’s undying affection by calling one day to ask when she could come in to see Carolyn when she could be assured of “not running into that loathsome man.” As this description precisely tallied with Patricia’s opinion of the firm’s male partner, she had been deeply pleased. She had also been surprised. She had had a vague notion that members of the clergy said only nice things about people.

  She had thereafter defrosted her formidable civility by a couple of degrees when dealing with Ms. Koerney, and had even, after a few weeks, yielded to Kathryn’s repeated entreaties to call her by her first name. Kathryn remained modestly unaware of the magnitude of the conquest she had made, and assumed—incorrectly—that Patricia Clyde unbent to all the Kimbrough customers once she got to know them.

  Having heard that Carolyn was not in, Kathryn knew that her errand would have to wait until another time, but she thought it would be rude to leave before Patricia got off the phone. She therefore studied the upholstery of an armchair near the window, on which sapphire dragons swam through roiling turquoise seas among random eruptions of coral like great anemones. She wondered if she dared put something like this in her library, and decided she probably didn’t.

  Patricia was off the phone. “I’m so sorry—”

  “Yes, I heard you say she’s not here. It’s not urgent, I just thought I’d drop in. I really should have made an appointment.”

  “Would you like to come in next week?” Patricia asked, flipping the page of an appointment book.

  “Yes, thanks. About this time again? It’s about the chairs in the library, Carolyn was quite right, I should have—damn.” This last was delivered sotto voce, and was prompted by the opening of the door to one of the inner offices.

  For a moment George Kimbrough posed, framed by his doorway, inviting admiration of a custom-made suit, a hundred-dollar shirt, and an Italian silk tie. “Doctor Koerney!” he exulted, the facetiousness a dozen times more intimate than the use of her first name would have been.

  “Hello,” said Kathryn without even a pretense of enthusiasm. “I was just leaving, I came in only to make an appointment.” She turned and moved to reclaim her things from the chair by the door, but not quickly enough.

  George caught up with her and dropped an arm lightly across her shoulders. “I’m so sorry Carolyn wasn’t here to meet you,” he said, managing somehow to imply that it was both impolite and inefficient of Carolyn.

  “It’s of no consequence,” Kathryn replied, lapsing into the archaic syntax that George Kimbrough for some reason always prompted in her. She bent to gather her belongings with an involuntary twitch of her shoulders that should have shaken off his arm. Not easily discouraged, he merely slid his hand to the back of her neck and kept it there as she straightened and turned toward the door. She thanked God that both a coat collar and a clerical collar were between his hand and her skin.

  With his other hand he fingered the shoulder of her raincoat. “Ah,” he said appreciatively, “there’s nothing to beat a true Burberry, is there?”—letting her know that he could recognize one without a glimpse of the signature plaid of the lining, something Kathryn couldn’t do. She thought she would never be able to enjoy the coat again.

  She escaped to the sidewalk before she actually started shuddering, but it had been a close call, and she strode down the street as though pursued by lice.

  Halfway down the block somebody said, “Who are you so mad at?” and she realized that one of the approaching pedestrians had stopped in front of her. She looked up from the pavement and saw Tom Holder.

  Her heart gave a little hop, which she diagnosed as embarrassment; at the same time her scowl broke into a spontaneous smile. “Oh, hello, Tom. Nobody. It’s nothing. Wasn’t that the ghastliest meeting you have ever had the misfortune to attend?”

  “It wasn’t that bad,” Holder replied truthfully; in fact, their exchange of notes had been the high point of his week, but of course he wasn’t about to say that.

  “It was unspeakable,” she contradicted, determined not to be too amiable. The tactic backfired; Tom laughed. I’ve got to get away from him, she thought.

  I’ve got to start a conversation, he thought. It seemed too good to be true. He wanted an interesting crime to talk to Kathryn about, and first here came the crime, and then here came Kathryn. Perfect timing. If only he didn’t blow it. He said, “I was on my way to talk to some people. I’ve got a missing person on my hands, and it’s beginning to look bad.”

  “Oh, of course, you’re working, aren’t you? You can’t stand around yattering about committee meetings. I won’t keep you.” She was already going. “See you in church,” she said with a wave of her umbrella.

  So sudden and so unexpected was the disappointment that Tom almost cried after her to stop, and was incapable of making any sensible reply. Damn, he thought, watching her hurry away.

  He had one comfort: She had not gone off like that because she was not interested in his company. Her last speech had been an apology, and she had stepped back out of his path as if she had been intruding on him. She had been embarrassed. Amazing. What on earth for, he wondered. But at least embarrassment beat all hell out of indifference. He turned to resume his original course. Elton Kimbrough Interiors was supposed to be right about here. Ah, there it was.

  His first impression when he walked in was of a beautiful woman with ivory skin and a faultless profile. When she turned from her computer screen to greet him, however, Holder thought her less attractive for some reason, and her cool “May I help you?” made him instantly long for Vickie Baskin. He knew that the polite skepticism of her greeting indicated that she had classified him—in a single, accurate glance—as a person of insufficient means to be a Kimbrough customer. Tom wondered if she thought he was a salesman, and decided not to waste any friendly overtures on her. He identified himself in a businesslike manner, allowing her a closer inspection of his badge and I.D. than Ms. Baskin had deemed necessary, and asked her if she was Patricia Clyde.

  “Yes. We spoke on the phone last night.” Her manner indicated that she was entirely too well bred to say “You woke me up last night.”

  “That’s right,” Holder replied amiably. “You said Mrs. Stanley was supposed to call you to let you know where she had decided to stay. Has she?”

  Ms. Clyde looked at her watch, regarded Holder with what looked like a combination of pity and sarcasm, and informed him that it was seven thirty-eight a.m. in San Francisco.

  “I thought she might have called later last night.”

  “As I believe I told you last night,” uttered Ms. Clyde, icicles hanging from every word, “she knows I go to bed early.” Holder paused a moment to get hold of his temper.

  “All right, then, just let me know when she does call. Meanwhile, maybe you can tell me whether we’re wasting our time trying to talk to her. What we want to know is whether she saw Grace Kimbrough yesterday afternoon.”

  At the mention of George’s missing wife, some flicker of emotion crossed Ms. Clyde’s careful face, but it was frozen over so quickly that Holder was unable to identify it.

  “Yes, I understand that,” she answered repressively, “but I can’t help you.”

  “Well, ca
n you at least tell me whether or not Mrs. Stanley went home after leaving here, before she went to the airport?”

  “Yes.”

  Holder gritted his teeth. “Yes, you can tell me, or yes, she went home?”

  “Yes, she went home,” said Ms. Clyde, a schoolteacher explaining something simple to a dull-witted child.

  “Wonderful. My heart sings. What time did she go home?”

  Ms. Clyde was not amused. “She left here at twelve forty-five.”

  “You’re very sure of that.” Holder was openly skeptical.

  Ms. Clyde’s hackles rose ever so slightly, as he had intended they should, and she proceeded to demonstrate the accuracy of her information. “She was worried about the time. She looked at her watch as she was going out the door, and said she was running late, she should have been on her way at twelve-thirty and it was already a quarter to one.”

  “Now, that’s the kind of information I like to hear,” Tom replied with a smile, knowing it would irritate her. “That’s very useful. O.K., so she went home at twelve forty-five, so she got there, when? About one?”

  “Before that. It doesn’t take fifteen minutes.” Ms. Clyde was observably cross.

  “Would she have been there long? When was her plane?”

  “Three o’clock.”

  “Three o’clock?”

  “Yes.”

  “She was cutting it close, wasn’t she?”

  Again, implied criticism produced corroborative information: “Mrs. Stanley allowed plenty of time, but circumstances were beyond her control. She didn’t know she would have to come back here before she went home to get her bags.”

  “So she’d be in a hurry and wouldn’t be there long?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, the time’s close enough, it’s still possible she saw Mrs. Kimbrough, so we’re going to have to talk to her.” When he got no response, Holder took a card out of his pocket and held it out to her, saying, “Look, here’s my phone number at the station. Call me as soon as you hear from her.” Ms. Clyde sat with her hands folded on the desk and made no move to take the card from him. He put it down on the desk with a snap and said, “Better yet, have her call me.”

  He didn’t exactly slam the door when he went out, he just shut it very firmly.

  CHAPTER 11

  i

  Patricia Clyde watched through the front window as the policeman walked away, and let out her breath as if she had been holding it for some time. She remained perfectly still, staring at the edge of the window where Holder had disappeared from view. Finally she looked down at the card he had left on her desk, but made no move to touch it.

  The door to George’s office opened and he emerged. “I was on the phone. Who was that?”

  “The Chief of Police,” she said.

  “Christ! And you let him go? Didn’t you stop to think I might be just a little bit interested in asking him where my wife is?”

  The sarcasm was wasted on Patricia, who was inured to it. She watched dispassionately as George bounded across the room and out the front door to look urgently up and down the street.

  He returned looking petulant, and having received no answer to his question, repeated it, standing imposingly before Patricia’s desk and glaring down at her.

  Patricia was unimpressed. She inserted a floppy disk into the computer, lying to him without looking at him. “I assumed that if he had anything to tell you, he’d have asked for you.”

  “If he didn’t have anything to tell me, why was he here?”

  Patricia moved the mouse and clicked it. “He wanted to know if I’d heard from Carolyn yet. I haven’t.”

  “Oh,” said George, ever so slightly deflated. “Well, if he comes again, you tell me, all right?”

  “Certainly,” she said, moving and clicking the mouse twice more.

  God, what a bitch! he thought. “Well, I’m going to be in Carolyn’s office for a while, I’ve got to find those notes on the Sorenson job.”

  She didn’t acknowledge this at all, but laid her perfect manicure upon the keyboard and began to type.

  Like a better man before him, George abandoned the struggle. He went into his partner’s office and closed the door behind him. Then it struck him for the first time that it was in his power to fire Patricia Clyde. This thought cheered him considerably. He didn’t know why he hadn’t thought of it before. He began to go through Carolyn’s desk.

  ii

  Tita Robinson’s father made his way across Peller Square in that wetness of air that is just barely too indefinite for the name of rain, remembering that he had heard a British friend call it Scotch mist. He reflected that he could do, at this point, with a little less mist and a little more scotch.

  Normally, he appreciated Peller Square, and was grateful that his accounting firm was located there among the two-story stone and wooden storefronts and the trees planted by some town council long dead. He had grown fond of the huge statue of the panther and that smaller, more recent sculpture not far from it, the life-size bronze student sitting on a small step, reading a bronze book and eating a bronze hamburger. Some people didn’t like it. He couldn’t imagine why; he had laughed out loud when he’d first seen it.

  But he wasn’t laughing now. At Main Street he turned right into heavier foot traffic and began dodging umbrellas. He passed more stone and wooden storefronts, more trees, but without appreciation. Why did these silly people have their umbrellas up in such a light rain, anyway? They were a menace. Why didn’t they just wear rain hats like he did?

  To say that he went on his errand reluctantly would be an understatement, but he saw no alternative. For ten years he and his wife had exercised certain eccentric theories about child rearing, and the results, so far, had been highly satisfactory. One of these theories held that a child is a human being in much the same way that a person of—say, thirty-five—is a human being; it followed that a promise made to a child must be kept with the same diligence appropriate to a promise made to an adult.

  It made no difference that the promise in question was excruciatingly silly, and had been extracted from him while his daughter was nearly hysterical and in the grip of a high fever. It was still a promise. It is to his fatherly credit that although he cringed inwardly when he considered what he had to do, it never once occurred to him that he could merely refrain from doing it, and then lie about it when he got home.

  Storefronts and umbrellas had thinned out. He walked across the broad brick expanse in front of City Hall, ascended the wide steps, pushed through one of the half-dozen sets of glass doors that together constituted the front wall of the building, and recoiled from the subtropical efficiency of the central heating. He was in a spacious lobby, in which a decorator, as expensive as he was unoriginal, had grouped mushroom-hued chairs around a scatter of severely Scandinavian coffee tables, and polished off the job with a discreet forest of Ficus benjamina. The plants were the size of small trees, and stood in wooden tubs with brass rims. There was an air of understated wealth about the place, and a vague, unarticulated comfort crept into his reluctance.

  He glanced around, and headed toward the right rear corner of the room. There the word Police hung suspended in the air, painted in large black letters on an immaculately invisible glass wall. A handle and hinges, likewise suspended, announced the presence of a door; he took a deep breath and pushed it open. Fortunately, the man at the desk appeared friendly and not too busy. It was still with some embarrassment, however, that Jim Robinson introduced himself and began to unfold his improbable tale.

  iii

  Oh, God, the phone again. Yesterday he had not answered it. Yesterday there had been no one in the world to whom he would willingly have talked. But today was different. Today there was just one, one person of all the billions on the globe, one voice he wanted to hear, that he had to hear. It had become a necessity, that too-familiar, that undervalued voice. Surely she would call, she had to call. And this might be her. The phone rang again.

>   But what if it were someone else? What could he say, what on earth could he possibly say? What—oh, God, what if it was George? Four rings.

  He did not know how he had survived that dreadful conversation last night. Trying to act as if nothing was wrong. Acting not only for the policeman’s benefit, but for George’s as well. He was terrified that George had seen through him, that George knew there was something very wrong indeed. Seven rings.

  But what if it wasn’t George? What if it was—eight rings. He snatched the receiver off the hook and covered the mouthpiece with his hand. He listened.

  A couple of seconds’ silence, then a voice, the wrong voice, said, “Hello?”

  He hung up.

  iv

  Tom Holder sat at his desk, working his way through a roast beef sandwich, a large mug of black coffee, and three powdered-sugar doughnuts. Normally he enjoyed his food, but the only thing that had happened all morning was that the pile of negative reports had gotten fatter, and the knowledge that he was getting precisely nowhere had rendered his lunch tasteless. Grace Kimbrough had been missing for twenty-four hours. When the phone rang, he grabbed a tissue and spat out a large mouthful of doughnut and white sugar, dropped it into the wastebasket without regret, and picked up the receiver.

  “Yeah?”

  “Patricia, ah, Clive? On line two, sir.”

  About time. “Great,” he said, and punched the second button on his phone. “Ms. Clyde! Where’s Mrs. Stanley?”

  A hesitant voice, peculiarly unlike the formidable Ms. Clyde’s, said, “I don’t know.”