Speak Now (8 page)

“Impressive.” He paused. “Why is it that I’ve never known you to practice?”

“Well,” I held my stance, looking (I hoped) defiant and athletic, “getting the black belt was my goal. After that I sort of…”

“Stopped?”

“Well, reduced the frequency and intensity—”

“When?”

“What?”

“When did you get your black belt?”

I lifted my chin. “A while ago.” He raised his eyebrows. “All right,” I admitted, “I was seventeen.”

“That is impressive, a black belt at seventeen. Luckily my mother raised me to be a gentleman, so I won’t point out how long ago that was.”

Bastard. “The point is, I can take care of myself.”

He finally lost his cool. “Yes, I’m sure I’d feel much better knowing that when some psycho pulls a gun on you you’ll be able to wow him with a rusty roundhouse. Look,” he cut off my response, closing the distance between us to grab my shoulders, “these guys are professionals. They took Cece with no trace, and they’ve made no mistakes so far in dealing with your uncle. They are undoubtedly highly armed and highly alert. You cannot pull a Nancy Drew and save the day. I’m going to go wherever they tell me, do whatever they tell me, and I’m going to give them the money to get your cousin home. That’s all.”

I looked into his eyes and I didn’t believe him. He kissed me quickly and made for the door. If he thought I was going to stand helplessly by and tell him to be careful—like hell I would. “Jack!”

“Charley.” He looked back at me as he opened the door. “I’ll call as soon as I know anything. Stay here. Stay safe.” And he left.

Damn. “Be careful!” I yelled after him.

I looked at the closed door, trying to get my breathing back under control. Then I picked up the phone and dialed. “Brenda? You have to come over right away. With your car.”

Chapter 9

I knew it would take Brenda close to an hour to make it over the bridge and across town to pick me up. I put the time to good use, pacing and fuming and pacing and worrying and pacing and cursing. Why the hell didn’t I smoke?

Finally I heard a knock on the door. “Thank God! You made great time —” I choked back the rest of my words when I opened the door. It wasn’t Brenda.

“Inspector Yahata.”

“Mrs. Fairfax.” The detective inclined his head slightly, and in the time it took him to look up and say my name I swear he made a comprehensive visual survey of me, the room behind me, and probably the hotel hallway in both directions. “Were you expecting someone?”

I had a momentary brain freeze. “Expecting?” I echoed.

Suddenly he was in the room, although I don’t think I actually saw him move. “Are you alone, Mrs. Fairfax?”

Okay, I had to get control of this situation. I had to get rid of him. “Yes,” I said giddily. “Yes, I’m sorry but Jack had to go out, so if you need to speak with both of us, I’m afraid we’ll have to do it another time. I’d be happy to come down to the station. Do you have a station?” I chirped. “Of course you have a station, so if you just tell me where it is, Jack and I can come see you as soon as he gets back.”

The inspector kept his gaze on me as I babbled, and I was starting to feel like a bug being seared under a magnifying glass until he released me with a slight smile. “But it’s you I came to talk to.”

“Me?” Another brain freeze.

“I have a few questions.” The slim notebook appeared in one hand, the glittering pen in the other. “About your husband.”

“Inspector, really, another time would be—I beg your pardon?”

“How long have you known your husband, Mrs. Fairfax?”

“Excuse me?”

The man who noticed everything didn’t seem to take note of my confusion. He continued crisply. “I know you arrived from London on the day you discovered the victim.”

“Have you found out who she is—was?” This was the one topic that could divert my attention from the fact that Jack was probably risking his life right now to save my cousin’s sorry ass.

“I also know that you were married only two days before your arrival.”

“So?” What was he writing down?

“How well do you know your husband, Mrs. Fairfax?”

Was he saying he suspected Jack? “What does that have to do with anything?”

There must have been something in my tone that caused the detective’s eyebrow to raise a nanometer. “In the course of my investigation I have come across certain facts, certain discrepancies, in your husband’s background.”

Oh, great, that. But I really didn’t have time to hear Yahata’s take on the information Harry had already come up with.

“Inspector, my husband’s background has nothing to do with the woman who was in that bathtub.” I stared at him with as much cool confidence as I could muster, but admittedly I wasn’t having much of a day for mustering cool confidence.

“I find it difficult to accept that conclusion without knowing who the woman was. Or, for that matter, who exactly your husband is.”

That was a fair point, but I was in no mood to acknowledge it to the detective. “Jack had nothing to do with that woman’s death.”

“Are you quite sure of that?”

I was quite sure I didn’t want to have this conversation. “Yes.”

“Then I can only ask you to impress upon your husband the importance of sharing any information he might have…forgotten in the shock of finding the body. I would be very interested in anything he might now remember.”

“Fine.” If it would get him out of there, I’d agree to anything.

The detective paused before speaking again, and seemed to choose his words with surgical precision. “Mrs. Fairfax, I urge you to be cautious. Extremely cautious.”

He held my gaze for a moment, then nodded infinitesimally and was gone.

I stood staring at the closed door, which seemed to vibrate slightly behind him. “Great,” I breathed out. “I’ll be cautious. But first I have to go on a ransom drop.”

***

When Brenda finally showed up I was waiting for her on the corner, wearing sensible black clothes and silent black shoes. I hadn’t bothered to tell Brenda to wear something black, because she nearly always did. True to form, she showed up in a loose-fitting black sweater and dark gray pants. Good enough.

“What are we doing? What’s going on?” She was a little breathless, tossing papers, folders, half-empty water bottles, and snack wrappers into the back seat. I swept everything that remained on the passenger seat onto the floor and threw myself in.

“Head for Hillsborough. Hurry!” I strapped myself into the little VW, hoping she’d floor it.

“Not until you tell me what’s going on. Where’s Jack?” Brenda used her most serious I’m-the-teacher-and-you’ll-tell-me-what-you’re-up-to-young-lady voice. I’d gotten her to come over with no explanation, but now it looked like she’d had enough mystery.

“Brenda, just go!” I pleaded. “I’ll tell you on the way!” She hesitated for a moment, then sighed and pulled out into the traffic.

I told her an abbreviated version of events. She kept her eyes on the road, nodding and gasping at appropriate intervals. By the time I got to the part about Jack ordering me to stay at the hotel we were approaching the Seventh Street onramp to 101 South. She slammed on the brakes and pulled over to the side of the road.

“Where are we going?” she demanded.

Wasn’t it obvious? “To Harry’s.”

She nodded, and damned if she didn’t look angry. “Even though he and Jack told you to stay put.”

“Yes.” What did that have to do with anything?

“Charley, I don’t like this.” She gave me a stubborn look. “You have no idea what’s going on at Harry’s. We could show up at the wrong moment and ruin whatever they’re planning.”

“Exactly!” I nodded eagerly, dismissing the second part of her argument. “I have no idea what’s going on and I’ll be damned if I’ll let Harry pull Jack into something dangerous—”

“It doesn’t sound like Harry pulled him into anything. It sounds like he’s a willing participant. And Charley, it sounds like he knows what he’s doing.”

“But—”

“So if you’re worried about it being dangerous,” she insisted over my protest, “don’t get in the way!”

“I’m not going to get in the way!” I hollered.

“Then what are you going to do?” she yelled.

“I don’t know!” I shouted.

We glared at each other.

Brenda was the first to speak. “Oh, hell.”

I took a deep breath. “Yeah.”

She waited a moment, running her hands along the steering wheel. Then she turned to me. “Okay.” She paused. “Okay?”

“Okay.”

“What do you want to do?” She was all practicality now.

“I want to go there.”

“Okay. And then what?”

Damn her. “We’ll watch.”

She nodded. “From where?”

“From down the street, where they can’t see us.” I knew the perfect spot, hidden from Harry’s house as well as the neighbors’ by a grove of eucalyptus trees.

“And that’s all?”

“We won’t go in. We’ll just watch.” Until something happened.

“If I say no, what are you going to do?”

First, never speak to her again. Then, “Take a cab. Or rent a car. Or something. But time is running out and I’m going crazy and I just have to know what’s going on.”

She thought about it, then nodded again. “Okay.” She got on the freeway.

Part of me knew she was right, and that I was being irrational, but when Brenda slipped the car between the eucalyptus trees with Harry’s driveway in clear view, I felt like I could breathe again. At least now I’d know what was happening. I couldn’t stand the thought of waiting impotently by the hotel phone.

The light was starting to fade when we got there. I had no way of knowing whether Jack was still in the house or had gone out to meet with the kidnappers, but I figured I’d either see him leaving or coming back. Unless something went horribly wrong…

“Charley.” Brenda interrupted my thoughts before I could get too far down the Path of Mental Terrors. “Why do you think Harry wanted Jack to help?”

I’d asked myself that question at least a dozen times. “I’m not sure” was the truthful answer.

“But what do you think?” she persisted.

“I think…” How to put it? “I think Harry thinks Jack is not being entirely truthful about his past.” I knew Inspector Yahata would agree with that opinion.

“So? Harry always thinks the men in your life are liars.”

She made a good point. “Right…but in this case he thinks Jack is something more than he says, not something less.”

“Something more? Like a higher rank or something?” She reached into the back seat for a bottle of water.

“Something more like…” It seemed ridiculous to say it out loud. “Maybe a spy or something.”

She digested this. “Why would he think that?”

Reasonable question. I told her about Harry’s digging, and the coincidences he’d found about Jack’s proximity to political upheavals and terrorist crackdowns. It sounded pretty thin, but what Harry had said about Jack being too smart to have had such a weak career had rung true to me, and I pointed it out to Brenda.

She didn’t say anything for a while. She took a gulp of water and offered the bottle to me. I shook my head. “What do you think?” she asked.

“I don’t know.” Wouldn’t I know if my husband was a spy? Is that the sort of thing a woman just knows? Or is it the sort of thing the wife is the last to know? And what exactly did Yahata know?

We waited and watched.

It got darker, and lights began to show at the windows, but we weren’t close enough to see what was going on inside the house. I thought about suggesting I get closer on foot, but figured Brenda wouldn’t appreciate the idea. I didn’t want to blow the fact that despite her initial misgivings she seemed to be getting into the spirit of the thing. At one point she exclaimed “oh!” and started rummaging around in the back seat. Based on the amount of discarded clothes she had back there, we wouldn’t need to worry about getting cold. Eventually she emerged triumphantly with a black beaded evening bag.

“Ta da! I knew it was here!”

I looked at it. “Is this a formal stakeout?”

She opened the bag and pulled out a tiny set of onyx binoculars with inlays of mother-of-pearl. “My opera glasses. I thought they might be useful.”

“Fabulous! What else have you got in there?”

She poked around “My ‘star red’ Chanel lipstick that I wore to
Carmen
last season…ticket stubs…some cash…oh! I thought I lost these earrings!” She pulled out two big clusters of deep red crystals. “Horribly uncomfortable, but gorgeous, aren’t they?”

I had to admit they were. I tried them on.

“Perfect with your basic black,” she told me.

They were horribly uncomfortable. I handed them back. “Anything else as useful as these?” I picked up the opera glasses and swung them open, trying to get my bearings on Harry’s house.

“Just a tin of tiny fruit sucky candies.” She took off the lid and held it out. It was filled with yellow, orange, and pink candies, each the size of a pea. “Want some?” I took a couple and popped them in my mouth. I suddenly realized I hadn’t had anything to eat all day except a croissant for breakfast and about thirty cups of coffee. Then I realized I had to pee.

“Why do you keep your evening bag in the car?” I asked, trying to take my mind off my bodily needs.

“I only carry it to the opera, and I always drive to the opera, and so this way I always know where it is.”

I couldn’t argue with that. The glasses weren’t very powerful, but then we weren’t very far away, so they worked well enough to help me see shadows behind the closed curtains. Multiple shadows. That meant multiple people. So probably Jack was still there, right? I’d told the hotel switchboard to forward any calls to the cell phone, so I knew he hadn’t called to tell me it was all over. If he was still there it meant it hadn’t begun yet. So we’d keep waiting.

Brenda killed time by telling me all about the previous opera season. She and Eileen had gotten a box every season since we were in college, regardless of whether the men that came and went from their lives cared to participate. I went with them occasionally, but didn’t have nearly the appreciation, or fanaticism, that they had. Brenda was in mid-diatribe about the new Ukrainian soprano who’d been a grave disappointment as Dorabella in
Così Fan Tutte
when I grabbed her arm. “Shhh! Something’s happening!”

The garage door was opening.

I trained the opera glasses on the garage. “Start the car!”

Brenda didn’t argue. It was fully dark now, but she didn’t put the headlights on. We saw a black Lexus SUV pull out of Harry’s garage. I focused the glasses on the windshield, trying to see the driver, and caught a glimpse of a silhouette before I was blinded by the SUV’s headlights.

“Is it Jack? Is that Harry’s car?” Brenda whispered. “What should we do?”

“I can’t tell,” I said, squinting but failing to see anything behind the dark glass on the driver’s side of the SUV as it passed us. It turned and headed uphill. It had to be Jack. The driver was too tall for Harry, and if it had been one of Harry’s detectives he would have taken his own car, not Harry’s Lexus. Well, presumably it was Harry’s Lexus because it had come out of his garage and it was just the sort of car he’d own. Which meant, presumably, it was Jack behind the wheel. “Follow it!”

I looked at Brenda and she nodded. “Okay.” She eased out of the trees and kept her headlights off until Jack had turned a corner.

There were hardly any cars on the road so it was easy to keep track of the big SUV as it made its way along the winding hillsides leading to Highway 280. At least that’s where I assumed it was headed. I knew I was right when it turned and picked up speed on the frontage road. He was headed for the city.

It was harder to follow him as we merged into the traffic heading into town. I cursed myself for not having done something useful like breaking into the garage and kicking out the taillight while we were waiting, but it was too late now.

Brenda was fantastic. She stayed close enough so we could see the SUV in the distance, but let other cars come between us and didn’t always stay in the same lane.