The Escape Artist (21 page)

She hesitated another moment before going into the house and taking the stairs two at a time. She hoped Kitty Russo had found more work for her, but it was an unfamiliar male voice on the line.

“This is Noel Wagner,” the man said. “I’m a friend of Jessie Soria’s.”

Kim remembered the name. Jessie’s old boyfriend. “Yes?” she said.

“Jessie told me you do word processing.”

“Yes, I do.”

“Well, do you feel like typing the great American novel?”

“I beg your pardon?”

He laughed. The sound was throaty, as if he were a smoker. “I’ve been working on a book,” he said. “But I write in longhand. Never did master typing. Do you think you could type it for me?”

“I’d be happy to. I charge two dollars a page, double spaced.”

“Sounds good to me,” he said. “I’m in no rush for it. I’ll drop by a couple hundred pages to start you off.”

“I don’t mind picking them up, if you live close by. I have to go out today anyway.” The sooner she could get started on his book, the better.

“Well, that’d be great,” he said. “I’ve been living in an apartment above Kelly’s Music Shop ever since Jessie kicked me out. Do you know where that is?”

“Yes.” She could picture the little music store on East Street. “Is sometime between three and four all right?” She could stop by on the way back from the doctor’s.

“I’ll be here,” Noel said.

She was grinning as she hung up the phone. She immediately picked up the receiver again and dialed Jessie’s number.

“Thank you,” she said, when Jessie answered.

“For what?”

“For giving Noel my name. He just called, and I’m going to be doing some work for him.”

“Great,” Jessie said. “He’s a good writer. All the best alcoholics make good writers.” There was an edge of bitterness to her voice. “But I bet he told you his handwriting is legible.”

“He didn’t say.”

“Well, it’s not, trust me. He’s been through a couple of typists already. Their optometrists ordered them to give him up as a client.”

Kim laughed. “Listen,” she said impulsively. “I’d like you and Adam to come over to dinner tonight. As a thank you for all you guys have done for me. And besides, it’s Cody’s first birthday.”

“Is it really?” Jessie asked. “Well, we’ll definitely have to come then. I’ll check with Adam and get back to you.”

THE DOCTOR’S OFFICE WAS
packed. Dr. Sweeney apparently shared space with a number of other physicians, and seeing the crowd in the waiting room helped Kim relax. There were two other mothers with toddler-aged boys there. Cody would be one patient among many. He would not stand out from the crowd.

There was a short, broad plastic table in the middle of the room covered with toys and books, and Cody was squirming to get out of her lap and join the other children playing with them. The receptionist had given her forms to fill out, so she reluctantly let Cody go, wondering what incredible array of germs those toys were harboring.

After a long wait, a young nurse ushered them into an examining room. She instructed Kim to take off Cody’s shirt and pants, then left them alone. A few minutes later, the doctor walked into the room and shook her hand.

“I’m Dr. Sweeney,” he said. “And this is,” he checked the chart, “Cody?”

“He’s here for a checkup and inoculations. Here’s what he’s had.” She handed him the sheet bearing the record of Cody’s inoculations, but she could see that the doctor was already fascinated by the scar on Cody’s rib cage.

“What’s this?” He ran one finger lightly over the smooth skin and Cody giggled.

Kim licked her lips. They were very dry. “He was born with coarctation of the aorta,” she said, “which was corrected by surgery. I brought those records with me, too, in case you wanted to see them.”

“Yes, I’d like to.” Dr. Sweeney sat down in the only chair in the room and began leafing through the records, while Kim rubbed Cody’s bare back. It was chilly in the room.

Midway through the records, deep lines began to form across the doctor’s forehead, and Kim read all sorts of things into that frown. Her muscles tightened. She was ready to bolt for the door. She vowed to herself that if she and Cody made it through this appointment without being caught, she would come up with a plan of escape from Annapolis that she could put into place at a moment’s notice.

“Who was the surgeon?” Dr. Sweeney turned one of the pages over as though the back of the paper might reveal a name.

“Dr. Farnhager.” The fabricated name popped out of her mouth. It was so silly, she almost laughed.

“Never heard of him,” he said.

“He’s in L.A.” She hoped that would explain the unfamiliar name.

“I used to practice in L.A.,” the doctor said.

Kim’s heart threw an extra beat against her ribs.

“What hospital was he affiliated with?” Dr. Sweeney asked. “I don’t remember his name.”

“I’m not sure how long he’s been practicing there.” She struggled to convey an air of indifference in her voice. “But he has an excellent reputation. We were lucky to get him.”

L.A. If anyone ever requested a time line of where she’d been living when, she’d be in deep trouble.

She had not answered the question about the hospital where Dr. Farnhager practiced, but Dr. Sweeney seemed finished with his interrogation. At least for the moment.

He examined Cody. His manner was very quiet, and she squirmed in the silence. She shouldn’t have written her correct address on the forms she’d filled out in the waiting room. The police would probably be waiting for her by the time she got home.

Cody barely let out a whimper when the doctor gave him his shots. It saddened her that her son was so accustomed to pain and discomfort that he seemed to accept it as his lot in life.

“You can go ahead and get him dressed,” Dr. Sweeney said. “He seems hale and hearty. I’ll give you the name of a cardiologist who can do the echocardiogram on him, but I don’t think you need to rush.”

“Thanks,” she said as he left the room. She dressed Cody quickly, paid for the appointment with a hastily written check, and breathed a sigh of relief when she and Cody were back in her car.

That doctor had been entirely too uncommunicative, she thought as she drove toward town. She had no idea if he’d been merely thinking about a tennis game he had scheduled for that \ afternoon or if he was plotting a call to the police about her. “I don’t know what her story is,” he might say to them, “but it’s obvious that the records she brought me had been falsified.” Or worse, he might be staring right this minute at a picture of her and Cody that had somehow made its way to his office on the front of a flyer or the back of a milk carton.

She needed an escape plan, she thought again. She would buy a fat, black felt-tipped marker to keep in her glove compartment, which she could use to alter the license plate on her car. And she should keep a good amount of cash with her in the apartment rather than having it all at the bank. That way, if she had to leave in a hurry, she wouldn’t lose everything. What would she take with her? That would depend on how much time she had. Under the best of circumstances, she could take the computer and printer with her, but she would have to carry them out to her car under the cover of darkness. At the very least, she would take the portable playpen and the stroller. She wondered if she should keep her duffel bag packed and ready to go.

She found the music shop, and a car was pulling away from the curb in front of the store just in time for her to grab the parking place. She got Cody out of the back seat and walked around the side of the small building, hunting for a way to get to the upstairs apartment.

The only stairs were in the rear of the building, and they had the look of an old metal fire escape. She balanced Cody on her hip for the climb.

Noel greeted her at the door, looking every bit the hard-drinking novelist. His shirttail was half in, half out, and his brown hair was uncombed and falling across his forehead. He wore a distracted-looking smile. She could smell the subtle scent of alcohol and the stronger scent of tobacco as she walked past him into the room.

They were in a small living room with chipped and worn furniture and a carpet so old she could not determine its color. The sound of a flute wafted up through the floorboards from the shop below.

“You must have music here all day long,” she said.

“Yes, I do.” He motioned her to take a seat on the ancient sofa. “And unfortunately I can’t control it. They give lessons. I look forward to the flute, though, actually. Every Monday at three. But the beginning violin lessons…” He shuddered. “Well, I have earplugs.”

She laughed as she sat down on the sofa. Cody immediately tried to get out of her lap, but she held onto him firmly. Who knew what was lurking in the pile of that raunchy carpet?

Noel sat down at a desk in the corner and began stacking sheets of yellow paper into a pile. From where she sat, Kim could see into the next room—a bedroom—and she was staring directly at a computer.

“You have a computer,” she said, surprised.

He glanced at her. “What? Oh, yeah, I do, but I only use it for e-mail and the ‘net. I never mastered typing. Do all my writing longhand.” He smiled at her. “Pathetic, huh?”

She bounced Cody on her knee. “Well, I hate to be selfish,” she said, “but I’m frankly glad you never learned to type.”

Noel returned his attention to the stack of papers, and Kim spotted a picture of him and Jessie on the desk. They were caught in a grinning embrace. Jessie looked so happy that, for a moment, Kim didn’t recognize her. She guessed it had been awhile since Jessie had grinned with such abandon.

Noel noticed her looking at the picture. “Jessie doesn’t call me often anymore,” he said. “Only when she wants something. And it seems she wants to help you out.”

“She and Adam have been very kind to me.”

“Yeah, they’re good people,” Noel said. “Screwed up by the accident, though. They sort of went off the deep end. I wish they’d get on with their lives. Both of them.”

“Well, it hasn’t been all that long,” she said.

“Long enough. I don’t think they’re good for each other.” He looked at her appraisingly. “I’m glad to see that Jessie’s made a friend who has nothing to do with what happened. Maybe she’s finally moving on.”

He loved Jessie, still. That was apparent.

“Here we are.” Noel carried the thick pile of paper over to the coffee table, where he tried to fit it into a cardboard box, without success. The edges of the paper jutted out here and there, dozens of pointed yellow corners, but he seemed to think the fit was adequate. The papers were covered with a disheartening chicken scratch.

“I’ll carry this down for you,” Noel said. “Your hands are full.”

“How soon do you need it back?” she asked as she followed him to the door.

“No rush,” he said. “I’m working on the second part of the book. That will take me a good month, at least. Then I’ll be ready to go back and edit what you type. Okay?”

“Fine,” she said, then added, “although I’d like to be paid each Friday for whatever I’ve finished that week. Would that be all right?”

“Not a problem.”

They climbed down the metal staircase and walked around the building to her car. Kim buckled Cody into his car seat, then took the box from Noel and put it on the passenger seat.

“Call me if you have trouble reading any of it.” He grinned.

“I will,” she said, and as she drove away from Noel’s odd little apartment, she thought she’d probably be calling him a great deal over the next few days.

She made one more stop—to pick up chicken and an ice cream cake for Cody’s birthday dinner—then drove home. There were no police waiting for her in front of her apartment, and she felt silly for having been so worried. The doctor’s visit was behind her, Cody was taken care of, and she had a bundle of work to do with a paycheck promised at the end of the week. She was glad she’d invited Jessie and Adam over to celebrate with her.

Jessie was carrying a wrapped gift, and Adam, a bottle of sparkling cider, when they arrived. “To toast the employed one,” Adam said, holding the bottle in the air. “Told you we’d find you work.” He surprised her by kissing her cheek as he walked into her apartment, as though they were old friends, and she was warmed by the gesture.

Jessie seemed more interested in Cody. “How’s the birthday boy?” she asked, picking him up from the playpen in the middle of the room.

“I’m not sure what I would have done if I hadn’t met up with you two,” Kim said. “I haven’t heard anything back on all the brochures I sent out.”

“Those things take time,” Adam said. “People file them away until they need them. You’ll get some calls.”

“Noel can keep you going for a long time,” Jessie said, bouncing Cody on her hip. “He’s prolific. Lives for his writing.”

Kim heard the bitterness again. “He seems to miss you,” she said.

Jessie shrugged. “He could have me or the booze. Couldn’t have us both.”

Kim nodded. Fair enough.

“What word processing program do you use?” Jessie walked over to her computer, now perched on the coffee table. Kim had moved it to clear the dining room table for her dinner guests.

“Word,” she said.

Jessie bent over to lightly touch the keys with her fingertips. “What else do you keep on it? Do you have any games? Myst or anything? I love computer games.”

“No, sorry,” Kim said. She’d removed the games the day after setting up the computer. “I’m afraid I’d never get any work done if I had games on it.”

“You’re more disciplined than I am.” Jessie gave Cody a big kiss on the cheek and lowered him carefully into the playpen again. “Will you bring Cody over to my house when Victoria has her kittens?” she asked. “Wouldn’t he be fascinated by them?”

“We’ll see.” Kim tried to smile. It was true that Cody would probably love the kittens, but she would rather not see them herself. A litter of kittens was a reminder of things she’d rather forget.

Jessie walked into the kitchen. “What can we do to help?” she asked.

She put Jessie to work with the lettuce and the salad bowl, and Adam with the potatoes and the peeler, while she cut up the chicken. The chicken was an extravagance. She usually ate pasta or rice and beans. But tonight was special.