Like his curiosity about Caren’s odd phone message. Keith was in trouble. Well-good.
He did not take malicious pleasure in others’ troubles; but Broker was not surprised that Keith Angland had stepped into it. News traveled the cop grapevine.
Keith’s famous control-freak thermostat went haywire after he was passed over for the second time on the promotion exam for captain. His sour grapes took the form of racial slurs hurled at the new police chief.
So Broker could imagine the depth of Caren’s agony; Keith had become a loose cannon. Probably the mayor had ex-punged them from his Christmas party short list.
Still, he was curious. And she had sounded overwrought on the phone message. Too embarrassed, maybe, to talk to her circle of friends, most of whom were police wives.
So call good-old, regular baby-changing Broker in his new life up in the north woods. Broker, never a womanizer, was too steady and old to draw any romantic inferences from the call. She probably wanted him to lobby old colleagues on Keith’s behalf.
Of course, he decided not to pursue it-but-if she called again and actually spoke to him, he would give a good listen.
It was just that he had trouble taking Caren seriously after she married an ambition-driven bastard like Angland.
He folded a pink T-shirt with Pooh Bear on it and placed it on top of the T-shirt stack. With his palms, he plumped the edges of the shirts so they made an even line.
As he reached for a Polarfleece jumper, he did admit to a small amount of satisfaction that Caren would turn to him.
Vindication, maybe.
In the middle of this thought, the phone rang. He reached over, plucked it off the wall mount, and when no one said anything for the first few seconds, he thought, uh-huh, her again, working up the spit to finally make actual contact.
And he said, “Is that you, Caren?”
The silence stretched out a few more seconds and then a clear chiseled voice, pitched between surprise, pique and command assurance, stated with great emphasis: “
The connection from Tuzla was like right next door.
“Jesus, Nina?” he blurted.
“Check me if I’m wrong, but you did say Caren-as in wife number one?”
Broker’s explanation sounded lame. All true, honest, but lame. “That’s right. She called and left a message on the machine. I thought you were her calling again.”
“Hmmm,” observed Nina eloquently.
“Yes, I agree,” said Broker. Then he waited to see if she would take it further. When she didn’t, he asked, “How are you?”
“Fair. How’s baby?”
“Every day she looks more and more like Winston Churchill.”
“I miss that fat little kid, I really do.”
“I know you do.”
“Okay, look, it’s five in the morning here. I’ve been on patrol for six days and I’m beat. Thing is, I weaseled a leave over Christmas. I’m attending a conference stateside…”
“What kind of conference?”
“Sorry.”
He understood. Not a secure line. The meeting proba THE BIG LAW/41
bly dealt with NATO ratcheting up the pressure on nabbing war criminals. It had been in the news.
“How long can you get away?” he asked.
“I’ll come in Christmas Eve and leave on the twenty-eighth.
Best I can do.”
“Sounds great.”
“Broker, you spent a mint on that house and we still don’t have a computer. E-mail would be a lot easier for me here than finding telephone time.”
Broker frowned. “I hate computers. Bad enough I have the TV. Besides, I like hearing your voice.”
“Gawd. I married an analog cavefish. Caren, huh?” she needled.
“Knock it off,” he protested.
“Kiss Winston for me. See you. Love.”
The connection ended. Broker hung up the phone and sat down in the chair next to the table. He leaned forward, rested his elbows among the mounds of infant clothing. Mild rebuke knocked the idle kinks out of his thoughts. Foolish, daydream-ing about Caren Angland and her social turmoil when Nina had been soldiering in the snow.
He carried the folded clothes to Kit’s room, crept in and piled them on her dresser. On the way out, he checked her, bathed in the soft night-light. Definitely Churchill, painted by Rubens. Carefully, he pulled the door shut behind him.
9
Tom had not been given a house key. Ida showed him where she kept one hidden for emergencies, under a flowerpot to the side of the house, next to the garage. But he thought it best to knock. The door of her bungalow in the quiet neighborhood of Highland Park swung open. She wore a long-sleeved pearl sweater that buttoned to the throat. A long, slim gray wool skirt reached down over leather boots.
Her naturally wavy shoulder-length auburn hair was rep-licated in her thick arched eyebrows. The eyebrows framed intelligent brown eyes set wide over smooth cheekbones. A narrow slightly crooked nose. And then-the generous lips teed up on that chin she got from the Wicked Witch of the West in
With a firm grasp on the curious power of her physical presence, Ida Rain disdained wearing all but the barest touches of makeup on her unlined face.
How long could she go on like this. Renouncing age. One more brutal Minnesota winter. Two. Eventually she’d crash on the far side of forty, snowflakes would stick to the corners of her eyes and crack into crow’s-feet. She’d shed smiles and store hurt between the pages of her heart like pressed nettles.
But tonight her husky voice, like her hair, was gorgeous.
An editor to the core, she cut straight to the nut graph: “You didn’t really have battery trouble today.”
Tom grinned and spread his hands.
“You’re on to something, aren’t you?” She reached over and lifted his left hand and inspected it with a cool thumb and forefinger. “And you went out to celebrate.” She rubbed the tips of his fingers and came away with a light gray metal talc. She dropped his hand. It was her way of letting him know she’d suspected, and had now confirmed, that he’d been to the casino. The residue of the coin tray. He resented her knowing smile and cocked eyebrow. He’d forgotten to wash his hands.
“Sally, in the library, told me you snuck a file out of the building. Keith Angland. The bigmouthed cop. I talked to Wanger, and he said you were asking questions about him.
This has something to do with the federal building, doesn’t it?”
“What makes you think that?” he toyed.
“The timing.”
News was their inky Spanish fly. Curiosity itched in her voice. “You’re off your beat,” she probed.
“Just checking something out,” he said tightly.
She waited for more, and when she saw that it wasn’t forthcoming, said, “You’ll tell me first.”
“Of course.”
She nodded and with a brief knowing smile allowed a be-guiling tease to swing in her voice. “Just watch your step, Danny.”
