“Your decorator picked those.”
“So?”
“This stool was yours long before you bought this fancy penthouse.”
I glance around the room a moment, then cross the floor until we’re about six feet apart.
“How did you know?” I say.
“About the stool?”
I nod.
“Men are control freaks,” she says.
“Go on.”
“When a woman decorates a room, the man insists on keeping something from his past.”
“And you guessed the stool?”
“It was easy enough.”
“Tell me.”
“It’s always the thing that looks completely out of place, because straight men can’t decorate for shit. But it’s not about the stool, Dr. Box.”
“No?”
“It’s about your identity.”
Her eyes scan the living room a moment. Then, with great confidence, she looks me in the eyes and says, “This stool is the only piece you contributed toward decorating the room.”
“You think?”
“I know!”
“What about the photographs?”
“They don’t count.”
“Why not?”
“You don’t like them.”
“Oh really? I don’t like them? Then why are they on my wall?”
“You put them there hoping to impress people.”
“ What?”
“But they don’t impress people.”
“No?”
“You know this already. You hesitated to tell me about them. You said I might think you were creepy.”
“I only said that because-”
I decide not to complete the sentence. For the second time in five minutes I’ve caught myself starting to defend a group of photos I can’t stand. This eighteen-year-old has me pegged. No psychologist in Manhattan could have done a better job of analyzing me.
“Do you think I have issues?” I ask.
“You’ve got more issues than Kleenex has tissues.”
“That’s an old joke.”
“You’re an old man.”
“Old- er. Old-er. Not old.”
She shrugs. “I like the stool, Dr. Box.”
“You do?”
“Ask me to call you Gideon.”
“Please,” I say. “Call me Gideon.”
“Thank you, Gideon,” she says, warmly.
I know where this is leading. She hopes by being nice to me I’ll pay for her cancer treatment. Or maybe get her into a clinical study. The suitcase still concerns me. She couldn’t possibly expect me to let her stay here, could she? And how could I trust her? She and Cameron obviously broke into Chris Fowlers’ house after I left. What sort of people would do that?
People like me. I broke into his home first.
But why would Willow and Cameron steal from the Fowlers?
Because they thought they were stealing from me. Because…
I take a deep breath.
“Willow, I’m sorry for the way I treated you and Cameron last Thursday.”
“At the Firefly?”
“And after.”
Willow studies my face a moment, then says, “I understand you wanted some pussy. That makes sense. You also seemed to get off on humiliating me and trying to provoke me, which probably has something to do with your childhood. What I don’t understand is why, after fucking us, you robbed us at gunpoint.”
I say nothing.
“You hit me!” she says. “You threatened and terrified us.”
“Yes. I’m sorry.”
“Is this just you, needing to prove how powerful you are? Bullying a couple of teenage girls?”
“I think it’s more complicated than that.”
She nods slowly, then says, “Breaking into Chris Fowler’s house and stealing his identity is even more complicated, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Did you know his wife was murdered?”
“ Excuse me?”
“Chris Fowler’s wife, Kathy.”
“She’s been murdered?”
“Shortly after three p.m. last Friday.”
I do the math in my head.
“Don’t worry, you’re safe,” Willow says. “As I recall you were in the trunk of a Mercedes at the time.”
I recall it too, and it’s terribly embarrassing. There I was, Dr. Gideon Box, world renowned surgeon, curled up in the trunk of my rental car, nursing wounds I received from a brawl in a strip club parking lot. Apart from my embarrassment, I wonder how much DNA evidence I might have left at the scene. I tidied up before leaving Chris’s house, of course, but not the way I’d clean a crime scene.
“Do they know who killed her?”
“Getting nervous?”
“A little. Aren’t you?”
“Why would I be nervous?”
“The bedding, vacuum cleaner, and whatever else you took.”
“They’re saying the husband did it.”
“Chris? Wasn’t he in the Caymans?”
“They think he hired a contract killer.”
“Did someone confess?”
“I don’t know. This is just what people are saying.”
I pause.
“You said your father’s a lawyer?”
Willow cocks her head and gives me a strange look.
“I’m not asking you to pay for my cancer treatment,” she says.
“You’re not?”
She shakes her head.
“Then-”
“What am I doing here?”
“Yes.”
“You said you might be able to help me. I was wondering what you had in mind.”
“Is your father in a position to pay for treatment?”
