Utterly Charming (6 page)

He nodded. Then he tilted his head. “Will the account bear interest?”

“Yes,” she said.

“And who gets the interest?”

“Probably the person who owns the garage, when you don’t show up in fifteen years,” she said.

The little man smiled. “I like you,” he said. “If Blackstone’s heart weren’t imprisoned, I bet he would too.”

After Sancho left, Nora used her mini voice recorder to dictate the necessary instructions to Ruthie. Then she put the check in the tiny safe that one of her instructors recommended she get (and which she so far had had no occasion to use), so that she could put the check in the bank in the morning. Nora was leery about waiting; she had a horrible feeling the check would vanish in a puff of blue smoke overnight. But she had to trust Sancho, much as she hated to. He was the one who wanted her to guard his case. And if his check did a disappearing act on her, well, she’d tell him where the case was.

Sounded like such a meaningless threat. But she didn’t have anything else. And she couldn’t cash the check today. The bank was only open for a few more minutes, and she didn’t have time to go home and change first. She simply wasn’t dressed to open an escrow account this afternoon. She could imagine the looks she would get, coming in all dusty and tattered and trying to cash a check this large when she had never done so before in her entire banking life. It wouldn’t be pretty.

After she’d finished tending to the details, she went home. She lived in a loft not far from her office, in a building she one day hoped to buy. She had a hunch that downtown buildings would soon be premium housing, although right now, they were considered the next step above shoddy. The loft had a lot of space, and she had divided most of it herself: living room, spacious kitchen with a view of the Willamette River, study/guest bedroom, and a half bath on the first floor. Up a flight of spiral stairs was her bedroom and a large bathroom.

Her black cat, Darnell, who had been sleeping exactly where he wasn’t supposed to be, on the white linen duvet her mother had given her as a housewarming gift, opened one eye as she passed, then rubbed his nose with his front paw, as if in disgust.

“The same to you, pal,” she said as she took off her clothes and stuffed them in a garbage bag.

He sneezed, as if the smoke smell trailing after her was an affront, which, she supposed, it was.

Her other cat, Squidgy, who was also black, watched the entire procedure from the bedroom window. She didn’t get down to greet Nora either.

“Some companions you are,” she said. “I expect a little sympathy.”

Squidgy turned back toward the window, as if sympathy were the farthest thing from her mind. Nora grinned. Cats were cats, and their opinions were always quite clear. These two didn’t like what they were smelling, and they made sure she knew it.

“Guess that’s better than you liking this smell,” she said as she walked, naked, to her bathroom. She took a long hot shower and then spent fifteen minutes applying every lotion she had in the house to protect her skin. She wrapped a towel around herself, drank a gallon of water, and finally changed into jeans and a Powell’s Books T-shirt. Her eyes were still red, and her throat still ached, but she figured she would suffer like that for the next few days.

Using the downstairs phone, she called several garages before she found one with enough space for a VW microbus. Then she went back to her office and got the microbus. It drove like an old Bug that was about to explode. Something weighed the back down and made corners difficult. But she didn’t look. She didn’t want to.

When she got to the garage, she parked outside the makeshift office and went in to call a cab and to fill out paperwork. She signed a year’s lease with an option for renewal, and in return, got a padlock and a number. She drove down the narrow stalls until she found a metal garage door with that number painted on it in white.

It took some effort to pull the door open, and when she did, it squealed. She put her hands on her hips, squinted at the cobweb-covered interior, and hoped it was long enough for the microbus. If not, she’d have to go back to the office. Who did they make these short garages for anyway? People who drove Le Cars?

She got back into the microbus and pulled it into the garage. Then she took the keys and her purse and exited. As she had promised, she didn’t scan the interior, didn’t know much more about Sancho than she had before, except that he liked Hershey’s Kisses, and kept most of the wrappers on the floor.

It took two tugs to pull the garage door down and a bit of work to get the padlock in the place. Then she was done. The cab was waiting for her at the mouth of the driveway, and she took it back to her office.

For a while, she closed her eyes and rested. Then, when she felt the swerves that meant the cab had gotten on the bridges over the river, she opened her eyes, expecting to see a darker twilight because of the smoke. Instead the sky to the west was a brilliant pink with no hint of smoke at all. For a moment she stared at it, wondering how all that smoke cleared out of the air. It must have been windier than she realized. That, and the authorities must have gotten the fires under control quicker than they thought they would.

The cab driver let her off in front of the building, and she climbed the three flights to her office. The corridor was dark; everyone had gone home. As she unlocked her office door, she heard the phone ringing. Without thinking, she sprinted across the floor and answered. As she picked up the receiver, she realized she should have let the service get the call.

“Nora?”

It took her a moment to recognize the voice. “Max? How did it go with Blackstone?”

“Buy me a drink,” Max said. “No. Buy me fifteen drinks and pour me into a cab. I really don’t want to go home.”

That bad. It had been that bad. It had to have been, if Max was worried about it. She swallowed. “All right. Where?”

“Grady’s.”

Grady’s. It had been a favorite Portland escape when she and Max were attending the University of Oregon Law School. They would drive north with a dozen other cars filled with law school students from Eugene and spend the weekend drinking and studying and studying and drinking.

Sometimes she missed those days. Especially after days like today.

She grabbed her purse and drove to the bar, which was in a section of Portland she usually didn’t go to alone.

Fortunately there was a parking spot in Grady’s lot. She went inside. The bar hadn’t changed at all. It was just as seedy as it had been a few years ago, with its name painted over the previous bar’s name in a metallic gold. The windows were filthy, and the air inside was so blue with smoke—of the legal and illegal varieties—that for a moment, she thought she was back in Beaverton. The bar was full, and for the first time, she felt old. Everyone inside had to be at least twenty-one, but they all seemed carefree. She could barely remember feeling like that.

It wasn’t hard to spot Max. He sat alone in what had been Law Student Row, still wearing his three-piece pinstripe. He looked as trim as ever, almost dapper, with a red breast pocket handkerchief that matched his red silk tie. His blond hair had an expensive angle cut. Since she’d last saw him, he had grown a thin mustache, probably in an attempt to look older, but which really made him look like he belonged in a bad World War II movie.

She pulled up a chair, and he grinned at her. His smile didn’t have the power that Blackstone’s did, but it did make her realize how much she had missed Max. He was good-looking in a mild mannered sort of way, which she actually had trouble seeing after looking at the stunner who was Blackstone.

More than that, though, Max had a charisma that made him good at what he did. Everyone wanted to be his friend. Women hung on him. Yet Max had always had time for Nora, had, in fact, always
made
time for Nora. Sometimes she thought he flirted with her, and then she decided he wasn’t. Men who were interested in her always asked her out, and they had never been men she had known from class. They had always been men she’d met at basketball games or in supermarkets. And those men had lost interest so fast, she sometimes wondered if she unintentionally insulted them.

Her father always teased her, telling her that was what she got for dating men whose IQs were lower than hers. Her mother had said that Nora was hiding while she waited for her one true love. Sometimes Nora wondered whether both interpretations were true.

Nora and Max had been the only two members of their class who had come to Portland, and they had promised to keep in touch, which they had, but by phone, not in person. She had often fantasized about him, not just during law school, but after, fantasizing that he would call, not on business, but to ask her out. Max was the only man—until Blackstone—who Nora had ever fantasized about. Ruthie had told her she thought that Max was shy, but who had ever heard of a shy defense attorney? Ruthie had said that some people weren’t shy on the job, but they were shy in person.

Nora wished, just once, that Ruthie was right.

A waitress wearing too much lipstick and not enough blush found her way to the table. Nora ordered a beer, and Max did the same, then insisted on paying for everything. When she protested, he shook his head. “You got me the case.”

“You asked me to buy on the phone,” she said.

“I’ve just made more money for doing nothing than I’ve ever made for doing something,” he said. “I’ll buy.”

He had to shout slightly to be heard over the din.

“Let’s move to a booth,” Nora said. The booths had high wooden walls and their own lights, which meant that she could see Max better and hear him without worrying about what anyone else would hear.

He nodded. They took the only open booth and had to signal the waitress when she came looking for them at their table. After she left, Nora said, “What do you mean, you did nothing?”

He held up a slim hand. “I’m as confused as you,” he said. “Maybe more confused.” He grabbed his beer like it was a lifeline. “I cashed one very large check on the way back from the jail this afternoon, and I verified funds before I did. It’s good. I’m supposed to give some to you. Finder’s fee.”

She had her own very large check waiting to be cashed. She was about to protest when he slid another check across the table. She gasped at the amount. The check Sancho had given her would pay her monthly expenses for fifteen years. This one was big enough for her to invest and live off the interest. “Max—”

“No,” he said. “Don’t argue. After what I saw today, don’t argue.”

She rubbed her eyes, not wanting to ask the next question, but knowing that she would have to. “What did you see?”

“You know where the coroner’s office is?”

“In the basement of the main police station. Why? Did you see something?”

He shook his head. Then he stopped, nodded, and shook his head again.

“Max,” she said. “What did you see?”

He drank the entire beer in one long gulp. Then he slammed the stein on the table, and signaled for another round. She hadn’t broken the head on hers yet.

“Max?”

“I saw,” he said slowly, staring at his empty stein as if he were wishing it was full, “the police forget a crime had been committed. I saw a dead body get up and walk. Your friend Blackstone promises me I’ll remember all of this, but he said no one else will. No one else—except you.”

“Tell me,” she said.

And so he did.

***

When Max arrived at the police station, he pulled into the parking garage behind an ambulance traveling with its lights off. The ambulance parked in front of the double glass doors that led into the coroner’s office. Max found a parking space nearby and kept his gaze on the ambulance. From what he’d heard on his police band radio, he guessed that the ambulance carried the body of a woman found on the driveway of the house where they arrested Blackstone.

Max wanted to catch a glimpse of the body before taking the case. He had made a pact with himself when he became a defense attorney: if the case sickened him, he wouldn’t take it because he wouldn’t be able to provide a good defense. So far in his young career he’d had no problems, but this whole burning of a neighborhood thing had him spooked, more than he wanted to admit.

So he got out of his car and walked toward the ambulance. He was coming up behind it as the attendants pulled the doors open. One of the men stepped inside while the other waited below. Max heard the sound of metal bumping against metal as they took the gurney out.

The body on the gurney was a woman’s, just as he had suspected, and he was surprised to see that she wasn’t in a body bag. Her long black hair flowed freely down the sides. She wasn’t strapped in either, which he thought odd.

The attendants set the gurney down, and one of them bent over to reach for the strap that was dangling close to the pavement.

The body moaned, and the attendant who was still standing sighed. The other attendant stood. “A little soon for that, isn’t it?” one of them asked.

“Soon for what?” Max asked. He stopped beside them as if viewing bodies was a normal part of his day.

The attendant closest to him—a beefy man with a bit of a sunburn and an embroidered name tag that read “Lane”—one of those names which was impossible to tell if it was a first or a last—said, “Dead bodies fill with gas, and the gas moves, and sometimes the bodies make this awful moan as the gas leaves.”

“You’re kidding,” Max said.

“Nope,” said the other attendant, a slender reedy man whose pasty-white skin made him look like a native Oregonian—the kind that never saw the sun. His name badge read “Bill,” answering the mystery question of first or last once and for all. “Sometimes bodies’ll even—”

The body on the gurney moaned again. Hair rose on the back of Max’s neck. Then the body sat up.

“—sit up,” Bill finished weakly.

The body looked right at Max. It—she—it—had stunning gray eyes that he could have sworn were filled with laughter. Then she threw the blanket off her legs and got off the gurney.

“Sit up?” Max asked. “You mean like that?”

“N-N-No,” Lane said.

The woman grinned. She had dark red lips and a silver streak that ran along one side of her dark black hair. She got off the gurney. She was six feet tall and at least forty, maybe older, and stunningly gorgeous in a buxom but expensive Cruella de Vil sort of way. Then she tilted her head, held her hands out as if in apology, and started for the bank of elevators near the double glass doors.