The Woman (16 page)

“That the same deal if she contacts you instead of me?”

“From what I can tell, you listen to a lot of rumors, but you don’t spread any. So, yeah, if I hear from her, I’ll ask her to agree to your sitting in.”

Clark offered his hand through the car window and said, “Chief. You didn’t answer my question. Was this guy you just found in the surf shot the same as Cynthia Leclair?”

“Exactly, head and heart, but keep it under your hat, although it appears most of the town may know by now.”

“Small town, Chief.” They both nodded.

Chapter 24

A few minutes after noon, downtown Portland, Oregon, came into view, the sun overhead a jagged bright spot on the Willamette River. Linda had decided she would stay in the northwest area of the city known locally as Nob Hill. But first she bypassed the exit for downtown. She wanted to shop in Nordstrom’s Department store at Lloyd’s Center, a major shopping mall, east of town.

In the making of Nora Jean Larick, Cynthia had morphed a different hairstyle and lipstick colors onto Linda Darby’s face using a picture of Linda wearing a black cardigan sweater over a white blouse. Linda easily matched that outfit in Nordstrom’s, and left the store wearing it. She had also bought a large colorful purse as Cynthia had suggested in her letter. The kind of purse she had never before carried. Still, after looking at herself holding it in the mirror she liked it. She would wear this outfit in the morning when she went to the bank.

Linda needed no reminder that hers was a dangerous endeavor, yet the prospect of dressing up and acting out being someone else filled her with excitement. She hadn’t done that since the high school plays she acted in which were among her fondest memories. She had lost her virginity in the backseat of a Chevy to a senior who had the male lead in her first play. That double experience had filled her with thoughts of an acting career and, after all, everyone knew a young starlet could not be a virgin. Now, these many years later, she wasn’t just acting, she was trying to stay alive.

* * *

Linda’s room in the Silver Cloud Hotel in the Nob Hill section was a pleasantly appointed room with a 42-inch plasma television, wifi, and well-insulated walls. The hotel had an exercise room where she could jog on a treadmill. It wasn’t the beach, but it would have to do. She would use the treadmill late at night when there were no other guests in the exercise area.

An hour later, she left the hotel dressed as Nora Jean, including hoop earrings like the pair Cynthia had cropped onto her picture as Nora Jean. Hoop earrings were among the items which drew people’s eyes away from a woman’s face. Despite the help offered by this distraction, Linda felt incapable of carrying off her charade.

In the next block, she stopped to sit on a bus bench. She closed her eyes, breathed slowly, and fought back against her insecurity. She had no real choice. Tomorrow she would have to go to the bank. Cynthia had left more information there so she had to make it work. She got up and continued walking, continued projecting herself as Nora Jean, continued letting people, strangers, see her as Nora Jean. With each passing she gained some confidence, damn little, but it helped.

After a few blocks, Linda settled on a more brazen walk than she used for herself. Each foot placed more in front of the one behind. This enhanced the sway of her hips, which in turn accentuated the movement in her butt. The walk the swells in the early 1900s called the cakewalk. She paused at every shiny window to look at her reflection, seeing herself again and again as Nora Jean.

As a young single woman, Linda had briefly lived in downtown Portland. Perhaps some of her friends from those days were still around, but she doubted it. They had been mostly kooky artists, writers, and college grads looking for the mythical high-paying, low-working jobs capable of funding their party lives. Those days were before the black fingernail polishes and multicolored hairdos she saw adorning so many of today’s loitering street people. She had lived long enough to now realize what all older generations came to know: each generation of young people thinks they invent antisocial behaviors, with the truth being they only alter the manner in which each generation manifests its rebellion.

She hadn’t been in Portland for more than a few hours at a time in many years, but the city hadn’t changed all that much. The downtown area near the Willamette River had been glamorized, but then Portland had always been a cool big city.

At this hour, traffic was light and the pedestrian count low. She kept a casual pace, like the others ahead of her and coming the other direction. Distant music came to her as she turned at the next corner. The base notes most discernible. Then it was gone. Perhaps the door on a club had closed. Or the street musicians had collected enough in tips to pay for tonight’s room. Mostly, however, she saw the quiet faces of office workers and store clerks. Their gaits reined in after faster-paced days.

In the distance, she could see the high-rise Koin Center with its illuminated blue dome. The building’s array of lit windows contrasting the night sky as might diamonds loose on a jeweler’s black cloth.

In the next block, Linda noticed a strong looking, attractive man crossing at the approaching intersection, coming to her side of the street. His eyes traveled her length, and then away before coming back for an encore ogle. As he stepped up onto the sidewalk on her side, about twenty yards in front of her, he glanced across the intersection to her left. Then he moved toward her. She darted into a bookstore on her right and watched as he passed without looking at her. A minute later, she stepped back out of the store and glanced to her left. The man had turned around and was now walking the same direction. She quickened her pace and in the next block she entered the Nob Hill Bar & Grill on Twenty-third and sat in a vacant booth along the window, putting her large colorful purse against the wall, the strap flopping over to touch the glass.

A moment later that same man entered, looked right and left, then walked up to her table.

“My apology, I didn’t mean to startle you out on the street. It is simply that, well, I was out alone to find a place to dine. May I join you?”

“No,” Linda said, “perhaps another time.”

“Well, then, if you will give me your number, I’ll call and invite you in a more proper manner.” He reached into his pocket and withdrew a small portfolio, prepared to write down her number.

“Do you live alone?” Linda asked.

“Why yes,” he said, his body appearing to percolate a fresh rush of interest.

“My name is . . . Nora. Nora Larick. Give me your card, and leave it to me to call you some other time.”

His face sagged, but he extended his hand, holding his card. “I’m Nathan. Until then,” he said, refreshing his smile. “Goodnight, Nora.”

He turned and left, leaving Linda to wonder if he was simply a man on the make or another henchman who would be waiting outside. Linda put his card in her purse. He was a contact in Portland. Put another way, he was the only person in the entire world who knew Nora Jean Larick.

After a few minutes, a tall middle-aged waitress, with fingers long enough to suggest she suffered from Marfan’s syndrome came to her table. “If you’d like to know, that fellow’s a local. He comes in here maybe once a week, usually alone. I think he lives nearby. Seems like a decent sort.” Linda thanked her and ordered a cheeseburger and fries, and to offset the accompanying rush of calories she added a diet coke. She smiled at the thought of how silly it was to think a diet soda would somehow miraculously counterbalance a session of pigging out.

While eating, she looked out onto the sidewalk, making eye contact with passersby. She needed to confront her sense of panic that each person who looked her way would yell faker or imposter. Before tomorrow’s trip to the bank, she wanted to develop a higher level of comfort with herself as Nora Larick.

Chapter 25

Under the spur of the alarm clock, Linda nearly leapt from her bed. Then the phone rang, “Ms. Larick, your 6:30 wake-up ma’am. Please enjoy your day in our beautiful city.”

Ms. Larick.
She said to herself.
Get used to it, girl. This just might be you forever.

She found comfort in the simple thought of having a forever, under any name.

The sun crested the building across the street and rushed through her window. She had purposely left the blackout drapes open so that, along with the alarm and the wake-up call, she would rise early enough to get to the bank when it opened. She prayed the contents of that box would explain the insanity that had destroyed her quiet life.

Cynthia, please tell me what this is all about and how the hell I can end it.

She started some coffee using the small pot, the pouch of grounds and the filter placed in the room for guests. Then turned on the television and found the news channel. On her drive to Portland she had kept the radio on the news the whole way, half expecting and fully fearing a public announcement: “Linda Darby is wanted for questioning with regard to a murder on the beach just north of her home in Sea Crest, Oregon.” But no such announcement had come. She had killed in self-defense. Still, she felt like a fugitive. She had shot a man to death and, apparently, no one wanted to ask her about it. Then again, no one knew she had been the shooter, no one except whoever had taken the gun she left under the step near Clark’s house. The missing gun carried her fingerprints and the prospect for a matching ballistics examination.

She had read that in the 50s the overwhelming majority of murders in America had been solved, but in modern time, despite the massive gains in the collection of crime scene evidence, less than half were now solved. She prayed that she would be in that new majority. The killers who had never been called to account for the deaths caused at their hand.

She knew that Clark had not been satisfied with the story she had given him about what happened to her that night on the beach. But, she felt she could trust Clark. Truth being, that night she had little other choice than to trust Clark. Besides he owed her his own life. She also hoped that Chief McIlhenny would never think of her as a suspect. Still, there was the suspicion that would be generated by her disappearance from Sea Crest. On that score, it would help if she returned to Sea Crest, but doing so would put her where those trying to kill her were looking to find her. She could call Chief McIlhenny. Tell him she was scared. That she took off and would be back after all the craziness had stopped. That with all he had on his mind, she didn’t want him worrying about her as well. But then, Ahab had told her not to trust the local police, which meant don’t trust Chief Ben McIlhenny.

She would let the decisions about that wait until she knew more, until she had perused the contents of the safe-deposit box.

Linda had always considered Cynthia Leclair to be sweet and thoughtful, a too-good-to-be-true surrogate mother. Now she knew there was much more to Cynthia than she had ever imagined. Cynthia had told her that she managed SMITH & CO. for Mr. Smith, an absentee owner. She now realized that had been Cynthia’s way of creating an outside authority with a policy against visitors, while it had been Cynthia who had not wanted visitors. The records, Chief McIlhenny had said, showed Cynthia owned the company. Cynthia had said they did boring research. Well, no one kills everyone in a business that does boring research, and steals their computers, including their back up disks. A company doing boring research uses regular mail service, which SMITH & CO. never used. What research could be so horrible that Cynthia wouldn’t talk about it? What research could be so terrible that others would torture and murder people to learn the fruit they picked?

The bank would not open for twenty minutes and right now each minute passed like an hour. She was ready. She had fussed with her hair long enough to make it look at least similar to the style Cynthia had used in the ID picture. And she had practiced signing as Nora Jean Larick for an hour the night before. Cynthia had been right. Her Nora Jean Larick signature was very close to the way Cynthia’s expert had put down after studying Linda’s own handwriting. She wanted to get on with it. Get it over with. Still, she didn’t want to be at the bank where she could be watched while waiting for the doors to be unlocked.

She spent most of the twenty minutes pacing the room, listening to the news between trips to the mirror to check and recheck her hair. Her makeup. Her Larick smile. She needed to project the errand-running manner of a calm person, not the panic of a woman running from murder.

No. Not murder. Damn it, girl, get this straight. Self defense, the right of every citizen.

She stared at the clock on the night stand between the two double beds. She could feel her tension mounting with each round of the second hand. Still, she didn’t feel just right about her appearance. With a now practiced hand, Linda tucked her hair behind one ear to fully reveal her hoop earring. The picture Cynthia had used to create Nora Larick had been at a time when Linda had put on a few extra pounds, which had mostly shown in her face. Her face was a bit thinner now. She reasoned that Nora Larick could have lost a few pounds since the picture was taken so, so what. That thought made her feel a little better about the likeness.

The automatic closer drew her room door shut as she walked down the hall toward the elevator. The bank was not that far. She would moderate her pace sufficiently to allow her to reach the bank a few minutes after it opened.