Yesterday's Shadow (31 page)

“My shut mouth.”

A part of his mind, the moviegoer's mind, heard her and marvelled. Quentin Tarantino wrote dialogue for everyone to use. “I don't have a hundred thousand, just like that. I'm not that rich—”

“What do you do, Mr. Baker?”

He gave her his honest stare, at which bankers are expert. “I'm in the second-hand car business—”

“Where?”

“In the States. A small town in—in Wisconsin.” The lies were weak, but he had known occasions when truth had been weak. Or sounded so.

She looked around the apartment, then back at him. “You're lying, Mr. Baker.” She opened her handbag, took out a small folder. “These were on the desk downstairs—I took one.” She read from it: “One-bedroom serviced apartments, three hundred and twenty dollars a night, plus GST.” Then she looked up at him. “A second-hand car salesman in a small town in—where? Wisconsin? You can afford something like this? You've been here—how long? You're lying, Mr. Baker.”

“You're lying, too.” He was no longer self-contained; he was having difficulty keeping his temper under control. “You wouldn't keep your mouth shut—”

“I'm honest, Mr. Baker. Or I have been up till now. Not that it's got me very far—” She had another moment of bitterness; but he was outside it. “All I want is the hundred thousand and you can go back to wherever it is, your used-car yard, and you'll be safe. And I'll be comfortable, me and my children.”

He had been leaning forward, but now he sat back in the upright chair. He looked at her steadily, for the first time taking her in whole. He was not reassured by what he saw. She would never keep her mouth shut; she was too poor, too bitter, to do that. He was enough of a chauvinist to be convinced that only one woman in a thousand could keep her mouth shut. This one wouldn't: she would talk to a
friend,
maybe even a cop—Inspector Malone? Even if she kept her mouth shut, the ante would be upped: another hundred thousand, two hundred thousand, it would go on and on. Give a woman money to spend and she could never stop. Trish had been like that; and Bernadette and even Lucille. He had never had any confidence in women and sometimes cursed his weakness for them.

“I can find out what you really do, Mr. Baker. They would of taken down your particulars up there at Police Centre. All I have to do is call Inspector Malone—he'll always talk to me—” There was a peculiar note to her voice that he couldn't fathom. “I can do it—”

“He's your old boyfriend, you said—what guarantee would I have you wouldn't tell him I was the guy you should have fingered?”

“You'd have to trust me.”

“A blackmailer?” He was regaining a little control, but he wasn't sure what he could do with it.

“Don't start calling me names.” Primly again. “I did you a favour, Mr. Baker. You owe me.”

“How would I pay you? I don't have a hundred thousand dollars here with me. You'd have to trust me to send it to you, to your bank . . . Do you know what happens when large amounts of money, like a hundred thousand, arrive in someone's bank account? The bank has to report it to some government office—I'm not sure what it's called here. So it can be traced whether it's money that's been laundered, drug money, stuff like that.”

“How do you know so much?”

“Because I'm a businessman. If you were in business, you'd know it, too.”

“We could find a way—” He had put her off-balance.

She shifted on her chair. “You could start paying me now, while you're here.”

He laughed, even if it had to be forced. “You think I carry that sort of money with me? I'm an honest businessman, Mrs. Jones, not some under-the-counter jerk. I have some travellers' cheques, but I rely mostly on my credit card.”

“I want to be paid,” she said doggedly; her elocution slipped a cog or two: “I done you a favour.”

“
I'm leaving here tonight, I'm going back to—to Wisconsin. I'll be out of sight, out of mind—” He didn't believe that, but he tried to sound convincing.

He could see that she was wavering; but he hadn't frightened her: “That's what you think. They know you killed the Ambassador's wife. She was important—they're not gunna let up on you. They'll tell the FBI or the Wisconsin police about you—”

“So what are we going to do?” He had leaned forward to press his points, but now he sat back, gathering reins.

“We'll work something out. I'll get your address from the police, I'll write you—”

“You think they'll give it to you—someone who's up on a murder charge?”

“I'll get it, don't worry,” she said, but she had lost her confidence. “In the meantime, what've you got?”

“What?”

“How much money have you got on you?”

He laughed again, this time without forcing it. “Christ, that's a comedown, isn't it? A hundred thousand and now you'll take pocket money?”

“More than that,” she said. “All your cash and your travellers' cheques. How much?”

“You're a bushranger, you know that? Mrs. Bloody Ned Kelly.”

But all at once he wanted to be rid of her, wanted time to think how to deal with her. He got up, looked in his wallet and took out two hundred-dollar notes. Then he went into the bedroom, got two five-hundred-dollar cheques, came back and signed them. He handed them and the money to her.

“A bank might query where you got them from—”

“I'll cash 'em, don't worry.” She took the money and the cheques and put them in her handbag. Then she stood up, the rough edge of her voice gone again now: “I'm not being malicious, Mr. Baker. I'm just trying to even things out—”

“Who with?”

She smiled, shook her head. “Just the world in general. I'm not a communist or a socialist—I'd
love
to be rich. But the gap between rich and poor is getting bigger every day—” She patted her handbag and what she had just put in it. “This'll close the gap a little.”

“No, you're getting even—”

She held up a hand, almost as if she might put her fingers to his lips. Then she opened her handbag, took out a slip of paper and handed it to him. “I've written my address there. And my bank—I have an account, but I don't think there's anything in it but bank fees. I'll give you time to get home to Wisconsin and your—you're not a car salesman, are you?”

“No,” he said with his honest stare. “Actually, I'm in insurance.”

“Well, whatever. I'll give you two weeks and if I haven't got the hundred thousand by then, I'll be going back to Inspector Malone to tell him you're the man I saw coming out of Mrs. Pavane's room the night she was murdered.” She looked around the apartment. “Nice place. You should see where
I
live.”

Then she opened the front door, smiled at him again with the pretty mouth and was gone. He shut the door, refraining from slamming it; then from the doorway of the apartment opposite the cleaning woman stared at him with all the antagonism of—what had she called it?—the gap between the rich and the poor. The bloody no-hopers wanted to take over the world without working for it.

He went back into the living room and stood at the window again, staring out at the windowed cliffs and, buried somewhere in their depths, the site where he had first met Trish Norval and the whole fucking disaster had begun.

He stood there for almost ten minutes, mind working, stumbling over itself, trying to find a pattern. He had to be out of the country before they could get the court order for him to have the DNA test. Once back in Canada there might, just might, be some way of avoiding a court order issued in a foreign country; he would embarrass Walter by asking him. He could not raise a smile at the thought.

The immediate danger was Delia Jones. With her pointing the finger, an extradition order could be issued; Canada would not say no to that. Then he reached for the phone book, found a number, punched the buttons:

“May I speak to Mr. Farro?”

II

The day after the funeral Billy Pavane came back home to the big house on Ward Parkway. The day was overcast and a wind, coming ahead of the tornadoes in the south like a messenger, was bending the magnolia trees that Billy's mother had so carefully protected and nurtured. Occasionally a windowpane rattled, as if ghosts were trying to get in.

“I'm sorry, Dad. I was hoping to make it yesterday, but we were cleaning up after a fire—”

Stephen Pavane, ill at ease with his son but delighted to see him, said, “Fire? What sort of fire?”

“A forest fire. I'm a ranger, Dad. With the National Park Service. Up in Washington State, I've been with them a year—”

There was an awkwardness between them; three years' separation there like a long dinner table at which each was afraid to change his position. “Billy—” It was like an echo, a sad voice calling someone else. “I'm glad you're back.”

His son had grown, filled out, was a big boy—no,
man
. He had some of the Pavane handsomeness, but his mother was there in him, too: the soft dark eyes, the cleft in the chin, the look of caution. Stephen had tried to give him the best, as he had been given by
his
father. Norma had sent him east to Phillips Exeter, Yale, vacations in France and Italy. She had come from Virginia and it had been as if she were intent on rubbing off the rough Mid-West edges before they appeared. Stephen had objected to none of it; but the boy himself had seemed to resent all the wealth that had paid for it. Or not the wealth: just the means by which it had been obtained. Billy had become a conservationist at Exeter, which, as Stephen tried to explain to Norma, was like sending a boy to the Vatican to learn to be a communist. Jasper County Land had made its money with no concern for conservation and that had been the beginning of the deep rift between father and son. Billy had come and gone from the house after his mother's death, sometimes for a week, sometimes for months. Then three years ago he had walked out after a blistering row and there had been only intermittent phone calls, always short, since then. He had never asked for money, never said more than that he was doing okay. Stephen had lived with a hurt that
he
had never confessed to anyone, not even Billie, his new wife.

“You haven't had much luck, have you? Losing Mom—and now—”

“I'm still coming to terms with it.”

“Will you go back to Australia?”

“I've decided to.”

“What was she like? I saw a photo of her—someone sent me a copy of the
Star
, when you got the appointment. She was a looker.”

“Yes, she was that. She had personality, too. You'd have liked her, I think—” But he sounded dubious.

“You think I might've compared her to Mom?” He shook his head. “I wouldn't have done that. Mom wouldn't have minded you marrying again. What was she like—besides the looks?”

He looked even more dubious; he tried to hide it, but failed. He stared out the tall windows at the sky darkening in the south. “I'm not sure—”

The young man frowned in puzzlement. “Something went wrong? I read about—about the murder—”

Was Billy, his closest relative, the one to confide in? Or was that gap too wide? “Billy—”

“I'm called Will now. My girlfriend doesn't like Billy.”

“Oh.” As if his son had been totally alone out there in the wide world. “Is it serious?”

“Yeah. She works in the Service, she has a degree in botany. We've been together for some time. She's three months pregnant. You're gonna be a grandpa.”

It was the moment that, like a musical chord in a sentimental movie, brought them together. Stephen put out his hand and Will took it, shook it firmly. There was no embrace, not yet. Three years was too big a gap to cover in one leap.

“Congratulations—Will.”

“You, too. You'll like Robyn—she's English, went to Oxford, like you. Her old man teaches at Berkeley—” He grinned. “No, she's not a radical. She's a conservative, like you.”

“
A conservative conservationist?” He grinned in return.

“I'm sorry I never met—Billie. The little bit on her in the
Star
said she came from Oregon.” His grin widened. “People from the north-west are different. They'll tell you that all the time.”

Was now the time to confide? He took the risk. “She wasn't from there. She was an Australian. I didn't know—”

Will Pavane waited. He had learned patience; or control. Once he had been headstrong, flaring up like a lightning strike; but that, it seemed, had all been buried. Robyn, if it was she, appeared to have had a settling influence on him.

“I've kept it quiet—partly for my own sake, partly because of the position I now hold. The FBI have been working on it—the police back in Sydney keep coming up with stuff—”

“I don't want to know, Dad, if you don't want to tell me—”

“It's not that.” He suddenly realized he
did
want to tell him; that there was no one closer to him than this stranger come home. “I'll tell you everything when I know what there is to tell—”

“Is that why you're going back to Australia? To see what more you can find out?”

“I'm not sure. I'm not sure I want to know any more—or anyone else to know—” Then he changed the subject, looked around him. “While I'm away, do you want to bring Robyn back here?”

Will, too, looked around him. The big living room had all the evidence of the Pavane wealth. The Monet, the Bonnard, the Eakins on the walls; the Sevres porcelain in the cabinet in the corner; the Louis XVI furniture on the Aubusson carpet: it was a drawing room rather than a living room. His mother had tried to revive what she believed the original Pavane clan had left behind in France; though, truth be known, they had been lower-class artisans and not Sevres or Louis XVI fanciers. They had brought nothing with them from France and taken nothing down the Missouri other than a French lower middle class talent for making money and keeping it. Will, and his father, had never been comfortable in the room. But he knew that his father was talking about more than this room, this house.
Do you want to bring her back to what you'll inherit?