Pursued by Shadows (7 page)

“Save your big favours for someone else,” Jane said stiffly, pulling the sheet tight around her. “I can find my own jobs, thank you. Don't feel you have to worry about me,” she added, with forcefulness compounded by wounded pride. “I can look after myself.”

He stiffened as if she had struck him. “Then you'd better start,” he said, his voice expressionless, “looking after yourself, that is. You can always come back when it's settled. Whatever it is. I had no intention of trying to run your life for you, if that's what you thought. I have enough trouble running my own.”

Jane stared at him speechless, rattled at this sudden sensitivity. Her mercuric brain was darting light-years ahead while her subconscious prompted her to destroy what cover she had. “I can't believe you're not already married or whatever.” She turned scarlet in her turn.

He observed her coolly in silence for some time. “Oh, I have a girlfriend who's all set on trying to make over my life,” he said at last. “She's very clever and very pretty. But her conversation always revolves around ways in which Amos can improve. And she makes love like it was some almighty big favour—or maybe a kind of therapy she was handing out. Her own personal contribution to Medicare. Anyway, she's pretty pissed off right now because I wasn't around all weekend,” he said. Suddenly he reached over and grabbed her wrist. “Jane—don't get yourself in too much trouble, will you?” he said. The mockery and the hurt were both gone from his tone. “It's not worth it. Really. You're too good in bed and too funny to throw your life away. Besides, I want you to come back.”

“Don't worry, sweetheart. I'm not throwing my life anywhere.” But her eyes were clouded and troubled as she stared out into the trees.

“Come on,” he said, decisively. “Get your stuff together and toss it in the truck. We're going down to the other end of the lake.”

“What's there?”

“Fewer nosy people.”

“Wait. There's something I have to take care of. I have to get rid of that—”

“Good idea,” he interrupted. “How about you let me put it in the bank for you? It'll be safe. Or get your own safe-deposit box.”

“No,” she said, much too quickly and reddened. “I mean, I don't want to put you in an awkward situation.” She chewed her lower lip nervously. “If they're following me, they'll know I gave it to you. I just have to make a long-distance call,” she said at last.

“Use the phone in the truck. If it's a call to London, try not to be too chatty.”

She shook her head, too preoccupied to see any humor in his remarks. “Just to St. Catharines. It's near Buffalo. I have to get in touch with my little sister. She'll give me a hand. I've rescued her from enough things—she owes me.”

“It would make life easier if we had a picture of her,” Sanders remarked casually at breakfast. He put two more blueberry muffins on the low coffee table in front of the fire and went back for more coffee before settling down in the comfortable chairs they had taken over. The hotel lobby where breakfast was laid out was quiet at this hour in the morning, except for a couple checking out; everyone else seemed to have leaped out of bed with the birds and eaten long before the two of them had tumbled sleepily downstairs.

“Oh, but I do,” said Harriet. She brushed the muffin crumbs off her fingers, reached into her bag, and pulled out an envelope containing an eight by ten of a tall, skinny girl draping herself over the view camera in a clowning, provocative pose.

“I like the picture,” he said at last. “Although it's not exactly standard issue full face and profile.”

“It gives a good idea of her movement and mannerisms,” said Harriet simply.

“Let's try it out, then.” Sanders pushed back his coffee cup and headed for the reception desk. Harriet scrambled to follow.

“Sorry, can't say I have,” the clerk was saying as she arrived, pushing his glasses back up on his head.

“Might someone else have checked her in and out?” asked Harriet.

He shook his head. “Not likely. We don't have that many overnight guests. Not that many rooms in the place. And if she'd stayed here in the last week or so, I'd have seen her for sure. And remembered her. Now if she'd just come one day for lunch or dinner, that's different. Maybe nobody'd recognize her. But overnight—”

“Thanks,” said Harriet. “Now what?” she asked, a trifle belligerently.

“The real estate agent,” said Sanders. “It's a beautiful day. Let us shower and make ourselves presentable and go beard the real estate agent in his—or her—den.”

The real estate agent shifted from indignant to baffled to fascinated in the catching of a breath. “A young woman?” she spluttered, staring at them across her shiny desk. “In the Lake Street house? Nonsense. Not to my knowledge there hasn't been. And if there was it's strange that the owner hasn't mentioned it to me. Very strange. I mean, I don't bother to make appointments with him to show that house. Why should I? It's empty. My God,” she said, and then giggled. “I could have brought a whole roomful of people in on her when she was taking a bath. Look,” she added before Sanders could break in. “Leave it with me. I'll check with Ken and call you. You're staying at the Sherwood?”

Jane Sinclair, dressed in tan pants and a pink sweatshirt, carrying an old, dark blue canvas bag, and wearing a maroon and white checked scarf tied over her light brown hair, left her copy of the
New York Times
beside her half-eaten piece of apple pie and coffee, and sauntered back to find the washroom. It was located in the basement at the foot of the stairs, along with the pay telephone, stacks of soft drink boxes, and the janitor's mop and bucket.

She pushed open the door, and seemed unsurprised to discover that the small room was already occupied by an equally tall young woman with a mop of curly, violently red hair, dressed in black jeans and a black sweatshirt that was decorated with a badly reproduced photograph of Jim Morrison. A faint scent of musty cellar hung in the air. The two young women embraced rapidly. “Hi, Lesley, sweetheart,” whispered Jane and locked the door. “You okay for this ?”

The other young woman nodded and ripped off the red wig, shaking out a mass of glossy, dark brown hair. She set the wig on the paper towel dispenser and both began the serious task of stripping down to their underwear. Without a sound, they donned the other's clothes; Lesley emptied Jane's large canvas bag, except for the newly purchased attaché case, and transferred the contents of her knapsack—two plastic bags and an elegant black leather purse—into it, stuffing them down beside the new case. She picked up the scarf, tied it over her hair, and checked her appearance rapidly in the mirror.

“My car is in the bus station lot,” she whispered, extracting her keys from the pocket of the knapsack.

“I'm parked right beside you,” answered Jane, digging into a small leather pouch for the keys to the rental car. “White-license plate number on the key tag. And this is the telephone number where you can reach me,” she added, pulling a slip of paper out of the pouch. Do you have everything you need?”

“Full kit,” said her sister, patting the now-bulging canvas bag as she slung it over her shoulders. “Don't leave without that damned wig.” Lesley smiled nervously, gave Jane's shoulder a squeeze, and sailed back out with smooth brow and confident demeanour.

The scattering of customers in the restaurant in downtown Syracuse were finishing their lunches and had little interest in the manoeuvres of the young woman with the scarf on her head. She slipped into her booth, finished the pie and accepted a warm-up on the coffee. She left a moderately generous tip and walked out of the restaurant, pausing to pay at the old-fashioned cash register at the front. The man in the car outside the door started his engine as soon as she appeared. The waitress frowned. She had noticed him hanging around and hadn't cared for his looks.

A minute later, the girl with the short red curly hair who had been downstairs on the telephone for a good ten minutes came racing up and beckoned to the waitress, “Is my husband still out there?” she whispered hoarsely. “Skinny, tall guy, wearing a black T-shirt, big green and red dragon tattooed on his arm? He was outside when I came in.”

The waitress walked over to the door and looked up and down the grimy street. “Not a sign of him,” she said, with a look of sisterly complicity. And since no such person existed, that at least was not at all strange.

“Thank God,” she breathed. “How about a cheeseburger and fries? And a Coke.” And she settled down peacefully to eat her lunch.

Meanwhile, the man with the shaggy hair who was following Jane Sinclair had parked his car at the other end of the lot and was standing, uncertain, in the middle of the bus station. His quarry had dived into the washroom as soon as he walked in and had not emerged again. He could swear that, for thirty minutes, he had noted every female who walked out the door marked Women. Somehow, his eyes had skipped over Lesley Sinclair when she had strolled by in her little black city shoes, her black silk shirt, and slightly wrinkled white linen skirt. She tossed her glossy dark brown hair off her face, settled her shoulder bag more comfortably, and headed for the street.

When an attendant came by, the watcher caught him by his arm. “Look,” he said. “My wife's been in there for over thirty minutes. Is there some other way out? Or is she sick or something?”

“No other way out,” said the attendant, shaking his head. “I'll get one of the women to go in and see if she's sick.”

But the only thing the woman found of interest to anyone was a blue canvas bag containing a perfectly good pair of tan pants and a pink sweatshirt lying forgotten in a corner. Reflecting that times were hard and these handy items were likely to be of use to her daughter, she tucked them away in her closet before telling the worried gentleman that there was no sign of his missing wife.

Lesley Sinclair, the dusty wind blowing her hair, had long since collected her suitcase and driven Jane's car from the parking lot; her sister Jane had followed Amos to a silent farmhouse outside Skaneateles. She left Lesley's car in a large shed, parked beside a rusty tractor, and climbed into the back of Amos's pickup. “Do these people know that—” she began.

“Don't you trust me?” he asked and threw a dusty canvas cloth over her.

It was well after lunch before the real estate agent called back with the news that Ken—whoever he might be—was astonished to hear that a young woman was living in his house. He had apparently made a few lewd remarks and then, on second thought, instructed Mrs. Harrison, as his agent, to arrange for said young woman's removal should she indeed be there. “Because, you know, she might not be. People say very strange things sometimes, and you learn pretty quick not to believe everything you hear.”

A sizable group of people was standing on the lawn of the house on Lake Street by three o'clock in the afternoon: the real estate agent, a young officer from the village of Skaneateles's police department, several curious neighbours, John, Harriet, and, finally, the carpenter who had done much of the restoration work on the house, who had happened to be driving by and stopped on general principles. “Mrs. Harrison,” said the police officer to the real estate agent, “maybe if you could open the door for me, I'll check it out for these people. You did say that your friend sounded—uh—like suicide?” he added, turning to Harriet.

Harriet nodded firmly and reached into her capacious bag. “I have the letter here,” she said helpfully.

He shook his head, muttering something that could have been “later,” and then, looking a trifle gloomy, turned to the agent. They opened up the front door and walked in. Harriet glanced at John, who shrugged his shoulders and went through the door after them, followed by Harriet and the carpenter. The neighbours stayed where they were.

The sound of their footsteps felt like the first echoes that had been awakened in the house since the turn of the century. Harriet shivered. As they moved through the reverberating, elegant spaces of the ground floor, the carpenter, who was either immune to atmosphere or determined to play jester at the funeral, cheerfully pointed out a few particularly interesting features that he had restored or created; no one else said a word. The officer investigated the basement on his own, leaving even Mrs. Harrison on the top of the stairs, and then the entire procession moved upstairs.

But there was nothing. A couple of footprints in the dust looked as if they had been made by workmen's boots; a rag in the corner of the master bedroom walk-in closet had traces of paint on it. Harriet wandered into the bathroom while the rest of the party solemnly examined the paint rag. There were two damp bath towels hanging on the towel bar and, sitting on the edge of the basin, a cake of soap, its underside wet. She pushed aside the glass shower door and stared into the bathtub. After a few moments she reached down and picked something out of the drain, wrapped it in a paper tissue, and shoved it into the pocket of her jeans.

By the time John and Harriet wandered reluctantly out of the house, the young officer was deep in conversation with the neighbours. He moved over to intercept them as they came down the flagstone path. “I'm sorry,” he said. “We haven't found a trace of your friend. And none of the neighbours noticed anyone staying here.”

“Staying here?” said a voice from behind them. “When?”

“The last few days,” said Harriet, turning. It was the carpenter.

He shook his head. “I've been working on the house all weekend. Even worked so late Saturday I slept over. I think I would have noticed if someone was living in it.” He grinned lasciviously. “Especially a woman.”

“There you have it,” said the officer. “Thanks, Amos. See? If anyone was there, Amos Cavanaugh would've seen them. And there's been no reports of amnesia victims or unidentified corpses or anything like that in Onondaga or Cayuga counties. I checked before I came over. Are you sure your friend said Lake Street in Skaneateles?” He was a very polite young man.