Ellipsis (17 page)

When I got there, Pearl was regarding her suitcase with a mix of dread and confusion, as though uncertain whose it was or how it got there. She didn't hear me coming till I touched her on the shoulder. “Pearl?”

She started, then looked at me with eyes blurred by apprehension. “Who are you? What do you want? I have no money, if that's what—”

“I don't want your money, Pearl. I'm Marsh Tanner.” I pointed. “Upstairs.”

She blinked and tried to focus through glasses thick enough to make that more difficult rather than less. “Mr. Tanner,” she said finally. “What are you doing up at this hour?”

“Thought you might want some help with that suitcase.”

The old Pearl was finally there. “As a matter of fact, I would. The driver was a beast. He didn't even inquire if I required assistance.”

“Well, I can assist you just fine.” I grasped the handle of the canvas case. “Shall we go up?”

She nodded and I lifted the suitcase and followed her toward the front door. The case was as light as if it were empty. The tag on it read VCV. I asked Pearl if she had enjoyed her time in Vancouver.

“I most assuredly did
not
,” she spat without breaking stride. “They didn't even know I was coming. And they laughed when I told them what I had come
for
.”

“Who are these people? Family?”

She opened the door and held it for me. “My family weren't criminals, thank you very much. I'm talking about the people at Worldview Enterprises.”

“Who are they?”

“They run the sweepstakes I won.”

We climbed the stairs in silence and I set the suitcase down by her door and waited for her to unlock it. “The what?” I asked while I waited.

“The sweepstakes. The one that benefits the World of Peace Program and gives a million dollars to the winner. The form they sent me told me I won. That the money was in an account in my name in the largest bank in Vancouver. It had to be real, it was a legal document. But when I went up there to claim my prize, they denied it to my face. And the bank had never heard of me.”

After Pearl unlocked the door, I followed her into the apartment. “What made you think you'd won?” I asked.

She ignored the question. “Would you put the bag on the bed, please?” she asked, and pointed toward a door that was exactly where the door to my own bedroom was, one flight up. I took the suitcase in, absorbed the frilly neatness of a room that reminded me of the dollhouse my sister had played with forty years before, and placed the bag on the white chenille spread that covered the narrow bed.

When I rejoined Pearl in the living room, she was holding something in her hand. “This is how I know,” she said, and handed me a document of several pages stapled at the top and collected beneath a blue binder.

The print was in a legal-looking font; the heading was
OFFICIAL JUDGMENT, DOMINION OF CANADA, STATE OF BRITISH COLUMBIA
. The design was identical to that of court documents filed by attorneys in litigation or probate. In the place where the title of the cause of action is usually listed, the subhead read, “In the Matter of Pearl Gibson.” The title of the document was “Certificate of Award of Grand Prize.”

It certainly looked definite enough, as definite as legal documents get, that is, but finally I found the catch. On the overleaf, beneath a portion of the blue backing that folded to cover half the front page, was a small notation, in print so small I could barely decipher it, adding the following caveat: “If yours is the winning number, notification of your prize award will be sent in the following format …”

I looked at Pearl. “You thought this meant you won.”

“Of course I did. Isn't that what it says right there?” She pointed toward the words
OFFICIAL JUDGMENT
.

I nodded. “Did you happen to read this part?”

“What part?”

I flipped the blue cover and read her the sentence.

“Let's see that,” she demanded.

I handed it over. She squinted for several seconds, then held it closer to the light, then handed it back. “I can't read that.”

“That's the idea. It means you're not a winner.”

“I'm familiar with the English language, Mr. Tanner,” she said in a voice as tiny as she was.

I gestured toward the magazines piled around the couch. “Is that why you subscribed to all those? So you would have a better chance of winning some sweepstakes?”

“Of course. Why else would I care about those stupid magazines? There's one in there about surfing, for Lord's sake. Do I look like a surfer, Mr. Tanner?”

“I'm not sure. I've never seen you in your bathing suit.”

I didn't get the laugh I sought. “Don't tease me, please. Not tonight.”

I apologized. “These sweepstakes are scams, Pearl.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because it's true. They prey on people who believe what they read and they cost people their life savings, sometimes. Lots of them are run out of Canada. I guess they don't have much of a fraud statute up there. Down here, it's illegal to require you to buy something to qualify for a prize.”

“But don't you think I'd have a much better chance of winning if I—”

“I doubt if some of them even award a prize, if you want to know what I think. Not a million dollars, at least. And even if they do, they can't make you pay money to qualify for it.”

“They couldn't do that, could they? Not give out any prize at all?”

I shrugged. “Just 'cause it's sleazy doesn't mean it can't happen. In fact, sleaze seems to be becoming the norm.”

Pearl sagged to her chair and closed her eyes. “So I'm a silly old fool. Is that what you're saying?”

I listened to her breaths grow rapid and more audible. “Come on, Pearl. Don't let it get you down. You're no more a fool than I am,” I added, then remembered the events of the day and wished I'd given her a stronger endorsement.

“You're being kind.”

“I'm being honest. If you want me to, I'll have somebody come haul all these magazines away tomorrow.”

“That would be nice.”

“So you won't be entering any more sweepstakes?”

She opened her eyes and forced a smile. “I've learned my lesson.”

“One thing I don't understand.”

“What's that?”

“Why was it important that you win a million dollars.”

She regarded the question with gravity. “It wasn't the money.”

“I didn't think so.”

She looked toward the picture on the wall of the pyramids of Egypt, the one taken by Pearl during one of her trips abroad. “It was a way to get attention, I guess. To have people make a fuss over me the way they did when I was young. To be something more significant than a lonely old woman in a tiny little apartment who no one but the mailman knows is alive.”

“I know you're alive, Pearl. And I'm happy about it.”

“You're a sweet man, Mr. Tanner,” she said, then blew me a kiss and asked if I would please excuse her, she needed to get some rest.

Chapter 17

Pain and shame are potent in combination, potent enough to have kept me awake all night, writhing wildly to find a position that wouldn't aggravate my singed skin, employing a series of platitudes and psychic somersaults to evade the guilt of failing to do my job effectively. Chandelier Wells had been cruelly injured, perhaps terminally so, as a result of my inept approach to her care, and that was going to be difficult to live with.

It's a prejudice that's gotten in my way before, my inclination to dismiss the problems of the rich and the celebrated as trivial by-products of raging egos or ungoverned avarice or the public's pedestrian tastes. But over the years I have realized the prejudice is as much a function of my own shortcomings as those of the objects of my inbred disdain, so I should have been able to have put it aside whatever the circumstance and done my job properly. Usually I can, in fact, but this time I didn't. So I made the only resolve I could make, which was to find Chandelier's cowardly assailant before I did anything else.

I gave up the ghost at 6
A.M.
, left the bed behind, plowed through a breakfast of Grape-Nuts and potato-bread toast, and paged through the
Chronicle
without registering much of the news except for coverage of the bomb. The articles didn't tell me anything I didn't already know, except that Chandelier owned several parcels of choice real estate around town and was assumed to have made as much in her business dealings as she had from her book deals. At eight sharp I picked up the phone. It was time to find out if my client was still alive and if I was still in her employ.

After lots of beeps and clicks, Lark McLaren came on the line. “This is Lark McLaren, administrative assistant to Chandelier Wells. How may I help you?”

Within the rote requirements of her job, Lark's voice sounded bleak and defeated, barely able to state her piece. After an instant's sympathy for what she must have been going through, I steeled myself for the worst.

“Lark, hi. It's Marsh Tanner.”

“Oh. Hi.”

“How are you?”

She hesitated, as if the subject were as complex as the Genome Project. “Who knows?” she offered finally. “I certainly don't see how I could be in very good shape, do you, Mr. Tanner?” The words were airy and random, the speculations of a soothsayer.

It was rhetoric best left unanswered. “Where are you? At the hospital?”

“The hospital,” she repeated, made dumb by dread and exhaustion. “Yes.”

“Have you been there all night?”

“More or less. I snuck out to Starbucks at seven for a mocha grande. It was cold by the time I got back.”

“Is anyone there with you?”

“Sally was here for a while. And Meredith came over from the bookstore. But they had to leave so I've been holding the fort since two. Luckily, the enemy hasn't launched another attack.” She giggled at her nonsense, then cut herself off with a groan when she realized that in the world she now inhabited, it might not be nonsense after all.

“How's Chandelier?” I asked.

“Not good.”

“She's alive, I hope.”

“For now she is. If you can call it that.”

“What do the doctors say?”

“They say what they always say—it's too soon to tell.”

“Is she conscious?”

“On and off. Mostly off.”

“Have you talked with her?”

“Briefly. I'm not sure we communicated. I'm not even sure it was her I was talking to. They said it was, but …”

“What did she say? Anything at all?”

When Lark spoke, the words were thick and unwieldy, made awkward by the sludge of grief. “You should see her, Mr. Tanner. She looks like a fish fillet or something, with some kind of clarified sauce and some garnish scattered here and there around the edges. It's disgusting at first, but then of course it's unbearable because you imagine how much it must hurt. She can barely breathe for the pain. Her lungs are burned, inside, from breathing hot gases, and her lips are black and swollen, and … everything is so
hideous
. They say she'll face years of plastic surgery, even in the best-case scenario.”

Lark started crying, not bothering to remove the phone from her lips. “You need to get some sleep,” was all I could think of to say.

“I can't leave her to face it all alone. I just can't.”

“Get Meredith or someone to relieve you for a while. She can send someone over from the bookstore, if nothing else.”

“Everyone else has other responsibilities. I'm the only one whose full-time job is Chandelier.”

“Mine, too,” I reminded her. “I'll be there in an hour. I can stay till you—”

“No,” she interrupted sharply. “Chandelier wants you to keep working. It's the only thing I understood unambiguously.”

“The Berkeley cops are pretty competent, Lark. The odds are good that they'll wrap this up a lot sooner than I will.”

Lark sniffed and sneezed and blew her nose, creating havoc in the phone line. “Chandelier doesn't trust cops, Berkeley or otherwise.”

“Why not?”

“I'm not sure. Something in her past, probably. She lived a rather wayward life in the early days.”

I took a deep breath and defined my duty more clearly. “You're sure she wants me to stay on the job in spite of what happened?”

“That's what she said.”

“Does she think the author of the death threats is the person who rigged the bomb?”

“I don't know. But it makes sense, doesn't it?”

“Maybe, but sometimes good sense is the last thing that's involved in these cases. Did she have any new ideas about where I should look?”

“Not really. All she asked about was the book. Apparently sales of
Shalloon
have skyrocketed. They're going back to press to print another hundred thousand.”

“Tough way to be a bestseller.”

“It's always been tough. For Chandelier, at least. People have no idea what she's sacrificed to get where she is.”

Where she was was in intensive care, but I had the sense not to point it out.

“Tell me about Violet,” I said instead.

The shift surprised her. “Violet? What about her?”

“She was adopted, right?”

“Yes.”

“Even though Chandelier wasn't married at the time.”

“Yes. It's possible, sometimes. If you know the right people.”

“Was it private or through an agency?”

“An agency, I think. I wasn't working for her then.”

“Anything funny about it?”

“How do you mean?”

“Birth parent showing up and making demands for the child or for money. Agency causing problems. Someone claiming Chandelier isn't a fit mother.”