The Prettiest Feathers (26 page)

Number one on my list was a visit to the massage parlor above the bookstore where Sarah worked. Harry wasn’t there, but Sheila was on duty.

“Harry won’t know nothin’ anyway,” Sheila assured me. “Sarah didn’t like him—never talked to him, except to tell him how much he shorted her check each week.”

“How did you and Sarah get along?” I asked her.

“So-so. She was always floating around in that dream world of hers. Only time she really talked to me was when she wanted something. Like that day she borrowed my blazer.”

“When was that?”

“Not long before she was killed. Her blouse got dirty when she was cleaning the shelves in the bookstore, and she had a date right after work—no time to go home and change. You know, now that I think about it, I never got my blazer back. I suppose it’s evidence or something, huh?”

“I’ll look into it, Sheila,” I said. “Sarah had a date?”

“Yeah. With some new guy, a customer.”

“A customer of yours?”

“Nah. The bookstore. I saw him go in there one time, but he wasn’t the type to frequent a place like this. Too clean. Seemed to have a high opinion of himself.”

“You got all of that out of just one glance?”

She smiled, missing the skepticism. “In this business, you learn to size up a guy pretty fast,” she said.

“What about Sarah? What’d she say about him?”

Sheila lowered her voice, as if confiding a secret. “I could see it in her face, in her eyes,” she said. “They were all lit up, kind of manic, when she told me about her date.”

“Did she tell you the man’s name?”

“John,” she said, shrugging. “John Fox, I think. Or Lamb. Some kind of animal, anyway.”

“Wolf?”

“Yeah. That’s it. But he didn’t kill her.”

I looked up, my pencil poised above my notebook.

“I’m pretty good when it comes to reading a guy. This one wouldn’t have dirtied his hands. I’ll bet he gets manicures twice a week. Besides, if he had killed her, he wouldn’t be hanging around in this neighborhood, would he?”

“You’ve seen him?”

“He had on sunglasses, so it was hard to tell—but the hair was right, and the shape of the head. He drove by this
morning. I’d forgotten to lock my car door, so I went back downstairs to do it. That’s when I saw him.”

“Did he say anything? Do anything?”

“He slowed down, glanced at the store, kept on going. I really didn’t pay that much attention to him. He’s not my type.”

“What kind of car was he driving?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. They all look alike to me. It was a dark color is all I remember.”

I thanked Sheila for her help, then drove over to Fast Eddie’s, the restaurant whose logo was on the sugar packet I found in Sarah’s skirt pocket. I asked a waitress if the owner was in. Without a word, she went to get him. A fat guy emerged from the kitchen, wiping his hands on a Holiday Inn towel.

“Hi,” he said, “I’m Fast Eddie.”

“Have you ever seen this woman?” I asked, showing him the picture I had removed from Sarah’s album.

He stared at it for several seconds, then looked at me and said, “Who are you?”

“Detective Frank, Homicide. I’d appreciate it if you’d take another look at her.”

“Don’t need to. That’s the girl who come in here with Doc.”

“Doc?”

“I don’t know his real name. Doc’s what everybody calls him.”

“Who’s everybody?”

“The women he brings in.”

“He’s a regular?”

“Regular enough. Orders a combination—French roast and Colombian supreme. I’m always glad to see him because I have to make it special. He pays a buck fifty a cup. I’ll pour it all day for that kind of money.”

“How long has it been since you’ve seen him?”

“When he was here with her,” Eddie said, indicating the photo of Sarah.

“How did Doc treat her?”

“It’s funny you should ask that,” Eddie said. “With this woman there was something different.”

“What do you mean?”

“With the others, he always kept his distance, leaning back in his chair like he was pulling away from them. But with her, he reached out and touched her hand.”

“That was unusual enough for you to notice it?”

“I always pay attention to stuff like that—you know, the way people interact. I like to study them. Maybe I shoulda been a shrink, huh?”

“What about her? How did she react to him?”

“I think she dug the guy. She talked a lot, smiled even more. Made a big deal out of the coffee, too—probably because it was his thing. And she gushed over the cheesecake, but everybody does that.”

The whole time I was talking to Fast Eddie, I kept thinking there was something I was missing, or something I should be remembering. It didn’t hit me until much later-after I was settled in at Robert’s apartment, going through the stack of crime scene photos. When I reached the one showing Sarah’s kitchen counter, I took a closer look. There were two packages sitting there.

I picked up the phone and punched in the numbers for the photo lab.

Benny was annoyed. “What happened to the Sinclair crime scene photos?”

“Someone signed them out, I think.”

“Yeah, and I think I’m talkin’ to her,” he said. “Hanson went ape-shit.”

“Sometimes Hanson forgets that we’re all on the same side.”

“What about the polygraph?”

“Benny, I don’t have time to fight with Hanson right now. Besides, all his money’s riding on Purrington. Meanwhile, the real killer is still out there, and I’m the only one looking for him. If I don’t find him, he kills again. It’s that
simple. Benny, I think I’m finally making some headway. I need your help.”

“Don’t put me in this position, Lane,” he said. “I’m not supposed to talk to you. None of us are.”

“So don’t talk to me. Call Fuzzy and tell him what I need to know.”

Silence.

“Listen,” I said, “this is all you have to do. Print photo number one twenty-six again, but this time enlarge it so we can see what it says on the labels of those two packages.”

More silence.

“Please”
I said.

He hung up on me.

Twenty minutes later Robert’s phone rang. I let the answering machine pick up the call, but I monitored it. When I heard Fuzzy’s voice, I reached for the receiver.

“Hi, lover,” I said.

“How ya doin’?”

“I’ve had better days. Did Benny call you?” “Yeah,” Fuzzy said, “but I don’t think this is gonna help you much. All he said was two things.”

“What?”

“French roast and Colombian supreme. Said he couldn’t read the brand. What is that shit? Dope?” “Coffee.”

“Women,” he mumbled, then hung up.

If I’d had any doubt that Chadwick—or Wolf, or whatever he called himself—was a welcome guest in Sarah’s house, it was gone now. She’d laid in a stock of his favorite coffee beans, as if she had expected to be serving him his morning brew. I was more certain than ever before that the good doctor had been her Sunday night date. Just like Pop had said.

By sunset I was starting to feel hungry. I opened Robert’s refrigerator, hoping to find something edible, but the smell was so sickening, I slammed it shut. I didn’t find much in the freezer, either. Just three ice cube trays, two of them empty.

And a small tree.

I backed away, staring at the tiny, imitation pine. It was about five inches tall, with small red berries stuck to the tips of the branches. It rested on a wooden, cross-shaped base that enabled it to stand upright.

“A feather tree,” I said.

Someone claiming to be my partner had been at Wallingford Antiques and purchased an antique feather tree. Was this for Robert? Wolf had called Robert. Or did someone know that I would be staying here? As I grabbed the .32 out of my cosmetics bag, I realized that my whole body was trembling. Robert’s apartment wasn’t safe anymore. Everything that had been so familiar about the place now threatened me.

I was shaking like I did when I was a kid and had a bad dream—when Savvy would hold me tight at night, and Pop always had something to say in the morning. “Whether the source of your fear is real or imagined,” he said one time, “the only power fear has over you is what you allow it to have.”

I walked to the door, slipped the chain in place, then checked out the bedroom. I made sure the locks were secure on all the windows, pulled every shade and drape in the place, then returned to the kitchen.

I was still standing in front of the open freezer when the phone rang. I let the answering machine take the call. When I heard Fuzzy’s voice, I picked up.

“I ordered you a pizza,” he said, “but don’t let the delivery guy charge you for it. I put it on my credit card. The tip and everything. He’s bringing you some Pepsi, too. They don’t deliver beer.”

I could hear somebody knocking on the door. “I think he’s here now, but I’m not wild about letting him in. Something strange is going on, Fuzzy. Stay on the line.”

I put down the phone, closed the freezer, and pulled back the hammer on the .32. Then I opened the door with the chain still in place. It was Special Agent Susan Walker.

“I thought you might want some company,” she said.

Under any other circumstances, my answer would probably have been no. But I didn’t want to be alone, and at least Walker was a cop. I told her to hang on a second, told Fuzzy that everything was okay, then let her in. The pizza guy arrived two minutes later.

“Your current address is just between us,” Walker told me. “I know Hanson’s looking for you, but that’s not my problem. You know that I think it’s bogus anyway.”

I must have believed her. Either that, or I was desperate to trust someone. “Listen. I want you to hear this.”

“What is it?”

“The innermost thoughts of Sarah Sinclair.”

Walker sat cross-legged on the floor while I stretched out on the couch and began reading aloud from a handwritten poem that I had found tucked inside Sarah’s notebook:

“You know, right after Sarah was murdered, Robert told me he was scared,” I said. “Maybe that’s why he started drinking more. Now I’m the one who’s getting scared.”

I told her how it looked to me—that Willoughby and Hanson weren’t investigating anything until they finished with Purrington. “There’s somebody else out there,” I said. “And there’s going to be another victim. We all know that Sarah was seeing this guy Wolf. But we can’t find any Wolf. Whoever killed her was there that night for a date—candles, a little wine. Can you see her spending the evening with Purrington? His victims up north were sexually assaulted and practically hacked to death. Neither Maxine Harris nor Sarah was raped, and both were killed with a surgical precision. The postmortem cutting on Harris was a clinical job. Sound like Purrington?”

“All I can do is talk to Willoughby,” Walker said. “I can’t promise anything.”

“That would be a start,” I said.

I wanted to tell Walker more. I wanted to take her into
the kitchen and show her Robert’s freezer—to educate her about the many identities of the elusive Wolf, to shower her with feathers. But I didn’t know how much influence Susan Walker had, or how far I could trust her.

Walker had been gone for five minutes. I lifted the miniature tree out of the freezer and placed it on the table. It looked like it was made out of plastic, but one touch of the small, delicate branches confirmed what it was. When had our phantom gotten in? Before I fixed the door? No. It was after. Locks didn’t deter him, either. “What are you telling me that I’m not hearing?” I said.

I was getting ready for the shower—had my sweater peeled off and was starting on my jeans—when the phone rang. I thought it was probably Fuzzy calling to say goodnight, so I didn’t wait for the machine to kick in. I picked up the receiver and said, “Hi, sweetie.”

There was a single intake of breath on the other end of the line, then a long sigh.

“You should have followed my advice,” a man’s voice said.

The voice was familiar, but there was a different quality to it. “Robbins?”

“It’s too late now,” he said.

“How did you know where to find me?” I asked him.

There was a click, then a dial tone.

I started checking the phone book, then realized that I had no idea what Robbins’s first name was—if that was even who had called. So I dialed the twenty-four-hour line at the DA’s office. I explained who I was, that Robbins was filling in on the Sinclair homicide, and that I had to talk to him.

“Sinclair is Mandell’s case,” the clerk said. “We don’t even have a Robbins.”

I hung up. There had to be a mistake. Maybe she didn’t know Robbins because he was in white-collar crime. That’s a separate unit. But why wasn’t he at least in her directory?

I fell back on the sofa, staring at the feather tree. I closed my eyes, but then I saw feathers floating through the air like huge, wayward snowflakes. It was one of those illusions that are fueled by exhaustion—when you’re in that half-conscious state, neither asleep, nor fully awake. Then, in a more dreamlike state, I was at a reception in the country outside London. A man with eyes as blue as the sky and a sharp English accent asked, “Would you care for a cup of tea?”