Marten.”
“All right, Marten,” Parker said. “What do you want to talk about?”
“We could talk about Gonor,” Marten said. “When will the robbery take place? Where are the diamonds now? Where will he take them after the robbery?”
Parker shook his head. “You’ve got to know better,” he said.
Marten seemed unruffled. “You don’t want to talk about that? Very well. Would you care to talk about Mrs Carol Bowen instead? Who is no longer at Herridge House in Boston, Massachusetts?”
Three
1
Claire’s head hurt. That’s what woke her up, the pounding of it behind her forehead, up behind her eyes. A real killer of a headache, so that her first conscious thought was I must have drunk too much. But then through the pain came more consciousness, and awareness, and memory, and she thought, I didn’t drink anything yesterday. That made her open her eyes, and she saw she was in a place she’d never been before.
She wasn’t frightened at first, just bewildered. Continuing to lie there on her side, head cradled by the pillow, covers pulled up around her neck, she looked at the slice of room she could see, the gray wall and the brown kitchen chair and the closed old-fashioned-looking door, and she wondered, Where am I?
Her clothing was on. She suddenly realized that. She was in bed with the covers pulled up, but underneath the covers she was fully dressed. She was wearing everything but shoes.
She sat up abruptly and looked around, and it was a room she didn’t know, a large bedroom with old furniture in it: the brass double bed she was in, two dressers, a vanity, night tables, and two more brown kitchen chairs. The bedside lamps had pleated pink shades. The windows had white curtains and dark green shades, the shades halfway down. Gray-white daylight poured through the lower half of the windows. Two windows, both along the wall opposite the bed.
There was no one else in the room. Claire listened, and there was no sound from anywhere in the house.
Where was she? How had she gotten here?
It was hard to think with this pounding headache, hard to make sense out of anything. She bent her head and massaged her temples, and that seemed to work a little. She continued to massage gently and tried to think.
Where had she been last night? Where had she been at all yesterday?
She’d gone to a beauty parlor yesterday afternoon, downtown on Franklin Street, she remembered that. And then she’d gone looking to buy a fall, but she couldn’t find anything she really liked that matched her hair color. She’d gone back to the hotel, hoping Parker would be there today it was nine days today or at least a message from him, but there had been nothing. She hadn’t felt like dinner alone in a restaurant so she’d ordered something from room service, and while she’d eaten she’d looked at the paper to see what movie she wanted to sit through tonight or if there was anything at all bearable on television.
Had she gone to a movie? She couldn’t remember any movie, couldn’t remember any television either. What had she done after dinner? The last thing she could remember was eating dinner sitting on the chair at the writing- desk, the dishes spread out on the desk, the paper propped up against the wall in front of her. And feeling tired. And waking up here.
Drugged? Could that be the reason for this headache and the vagueness of her memory of last night? It had been a different waiter who’d brought in her dinner, but that hadn’t meant anything at the time; there were several different waiters she’d seen in the last nine days.
But that was what it must have been. She could remember eating dinner, not noticing any odd tastes about anything, and then growing very sleepy. Sitting at the writing-desk, the dishes in front of her, food left uneaten and she growing sleepier and sleepier.
Had she gotten up from the desk and gone over to stretch out on the bed? She couldn’t remember exactly. It seemed as though she’d done that, or at least had wanted to do it, but she couldn’t remember whether or not she’d actually made it out of the chair and over to the bed.
She rubbed her head. If only the pain would stop. She couldn’t think; she couldn’t concentrate.
Who would do this?
She looked at her watch. It was still running and it showed twenty-five minutes past four. Past four? It must be afternoon; she must have been asleep nearly twenty hours.
She pushed the covers off and slowly put her legs over the side of the bed. She was very shaky, nerves all ajangle. The pain in her head was worse when she moved, so she moved slowly, gingerly. Also, she didn’t want anyone to hear her and know she was awake. If there was anyone around to hear.
Standing made her dizzy. She kept one hand on the wall and tiptoed in stocking feet over to the door. It was locked. Gently she turned the knob, easily she pulled, and the door was locked.
The windows? She took the long way around, always keeping next to the wall, one palm flat on the wall for support. She reached the first window, remained leaning against the wall beside it, and bent her head to the glass to look out.
Second floor. A lake, with partially thawing ice, looking very cold and very bleak. Mountains beyond the lake, also cold, also bleak. A scruffy brown yard between the house and the lake, with a few bare-branched trees and some woody bushes. A dark, squat boathouse, and beside it a concrete deck.
A key grated in the door behind her and she spun around, suddenly terrified, losing her balance and almost falling, but leaning against the wall instead. Staying there beside the window, she watched the door open and a man come in.
It didn’t surprise her that he was one of the three who had been at the beginning of all this, before Gonor had shown up.
He looked at her and said, “You’re awake. Good.” Then he frowned, studying her across the room. “Something wrong?”
She shook her head. She couldn’t find anything to say, and she was terrified of what he might do.
