SWF Seeks Same

skullcap, was behind the counter, methodically setting out velvet-lined display cases glittering with diamonds.

Allie smiled at him. “Remember me?”

He tilted his head, narrowed his eyes. “Ah, sure, the gold chain. l trust you spent the money well.”

“I did, but I could use more to spend just as well. I brought some other jewelry. Will you look at it? Make an offer?”

“Of course. That’s my business. Just let me finish setting out these displays.”

While Allie waited, he made several more trips to the room behind the curtain and emerged with diamond jewelry on display trays.

He held up a long forefinger, as if to say “One more” and spent several minutes behind the curtain.

Allie thought he might have forgotten her, but finally he emerged with another black velvet case and placed it in the display window. He stepped back and brushed his hands together briskly, as if slapping dust from them after hard physical work. Maybe he’d been doing heavy construction behind the curtain.

“Now,” he said, smiling, “let’s have a look at what you’ve brought me.”

Allie scooped the jewelry from her windbreaker pocket and laid it on the glass-topped counter. All of it. More gold chains, the rings, gold-link bracelet, wrist-watch. All tangled together from being jostled in her pocket as she walked.

“Ah,” the jewelry merchant said. He studied the rings and set them aside, then he sorted through the twists and kinks of the remaining intertwined jewelry. “Interesting. The watch runs?”

“My husband says it keeps perfect time.”

“Of course. Or you wouldn’t be selling it.” He slowly and carefully lifted and examined each piece, then set it gently in the scale’s basket, made notations on a folded sheet of white paper. The last piece, the gold bracelet, he lifted and then placed back on the counter. He said, “I’m sorry, miss.”

Allie was confused. “Sorry? You don’t want to buy?” Then she saw the man’s sad dark gaze focus over her right shoulder.

“I’m sorry, too,” a deep and gentle voice said.

She whirled and was looking at Sergeant Kennedy. A somber but alert uniformed patrolman stood next to him. Two more blue uniforms were just outside the shop’s door. Two more serious, apprehensive faces, peering in through the glass at her like ritual masks. And they really were part of a ritual—the one that had been in her nightmares since the night Sam was killed.

In a rush she realized it must have been the gold chain with Mayfair’s initial that had raised suspicion and drawn them here, probably photographs of her the police had circulated among shops like this. The police worked in ways that mystified civilians. And now they were actually arresting her, thinking she was Hedra. Or did they think Hedra was Allie? Did it really matter anymore? Hedra, Allie … The two personalities were finally and irrevocably linked. Merged. She was ready to accept that she was the weaker and less fortunate of the two components and would soon fade and no longer matter. Like a Siamese twin doomed from the moment of conception. The way Hedra had planned it.

Allie was under arrest for murder. This was how it felt.

But what was she felling? She couldn’t be sure. Was this actually happening? Was it?

She heard the shrill Whooop! Whooop! Whooop! of a siren in the distance, forging through congested traffic. It sounded like an exhilarated beast closing in for the kill. She was having difficulty breathing. Standing. Her legs began an uncontrollable trembling and she feared she might wet herself.

“Just relax now,” Kennedy told her soothingly, smiling. “I’m going to read you your rights, dear.”

Chapter 33

LAWRENCE gathered up the breakfast dishes while Hedra read the Times. She was absently chewing on a piece of toast with strawberry jam on it, smiling.

So the police had arrested Allie. Charged her with murder. The story was no longer front-page news in the Times, but Hedra had been following the case in the papers and on TV and was waiting and watching for this inevitable development. She was sure the coverage in the Post would be more detailed, and probably on the front page, complete with photographs and a rehash of the murder. After breakfast, she’d go out and buy several papers and learn all she could. She used a forefinger to wipe jam from a corner of her mouth and licked the finger.

There was a clanking roar behind her: Lawrence running the garbage disposal. The roar became a growl and then ceased abruptly.

Lawrence said, “Shit! Fucker’s stopped up again.”

Hedra swiveled in her chair and watched while he probed the disposal with a wood-handled ice pick. Stabbing at whatever was caught there as if he were chipping ice. Something in the disposal smelled like rotten eggs; she wished he’d get the thing unclogged as soon as possible. Phew! It was getting stronger.

Lawrence was a twentyish black man with the face of an aesthete and the body of a twelve-year-old boy. He was wearing only his white Jockey shorts, and he looked ridiculous standing there playing plumber.

He bent to reach beneath the sink, punched the red reset button, and the disposal rattled and roared again. He turned on the tap water to wash the mechanism free and beamed at Hedra as if he’d accomplished something important.

She said, “Well, aren’t you some pumpkin?”

He looked unsure about how to take her remark. Instead of answering, he busied himself again with the breakfast dishes, rinsing and scraping them before propping them in the dishwasher. Now and then the knife he was scraping with screeched against the surface of a plate, like a creature in pain.