Real excitement.
The kind of thing that happened to TV private eyes all the time but that almost never happened to them in real life.
An honest-to-goodness tail job!
She was going to get his license number and then she was going to follow him and then
And then, because she'd been so excited she hadn't seen it coming, the gray Plymouth drove straight into her. Marcy had been halfway through her U-turn and
There was a great and calamitous ripping and rending of metal, a loud and ugly shattering of glass, and an angry blast of horn that could probably be heard half a mile away.
Only now did March realize what had happened. She'd swerved out into the traffic lane without seeing him coming.
He was big, truck-driver big, and mean, thug-mean, and he fairly tore off his door getting out of the car. He stalked up to her with ape-drooping arms and said, 'You little bitch, I should slap the shit out of you.'
It was enough to make her want to go back to community college and find herself a new line of work.
CHAPTER 34
After Mitch had left, Jill went downstairs to the darkroom and developed some film from an agency shoot she'd done a few days earlier.
As she worked, clipping the film up to dry, she tried very hard not to think about Mitch Ayers. Or how, despite all her words to the contrary, she'd been happy to see him tonight. Even worse, she sensed that he just might be telling the truththat his long and difficult and failed marriage might finally be over at last.
No. Don't get sucked back in.
This was how it went for an hour, yin and yang, to and fro, back and forth. She wanted to see more of Mitch; she dreaded seeing more of Mitch. Mitch was honest and trustworthy; Mitch was selfish and deceitful.
This was one of those times when she wished she'd had more experience with men. In all, she'd slept with five men in her life, one of them (she smiled wryly) who wouldn't take a shower unless she threatened to cut him off from sex. She didn't really have enough experience to know if Mitch's behavior was typical of a man in the middle of a divorce, or whether Mitch was just cynically using her.
She concentrated on work, developing six contact sheets. She had to get back to the client in the next few days. Like most ad men, he believed in starting projects only a few hours before they were due.
She was just choosing shots, marking off the preferred ones on the contact sheets with a grease pencil, when she heard a loud pounding on her apartment door.
She thought of two people: Mitch or the man in the blue Volvo.
This time she didn't have her gun.
She had to go up the stairs to her apartment then back down a different set of stairs to the ground-floor door.
She peered out through the eyehole.
Kate stood there, shivering in the chill wind.
Jill took off all three locks and opened the door.
Slender, regal Kate, who might have been a taller version of Audrey Hepburn if only she weren't such a rubber-faced wise-ass, looked suspiciously subdued. Despite her years as a highly paid runway model, Kate usually opened with a dirty joke or two. But tonight there were no smiles, no joke.
'Have you been listening to the news?'
'No,' Jill said. 'Why?'
'Eric Brooks was murdered tonight.'
'What?'
Kate nodded somberly, drawing herself deep into her cape-like black coat.
'Let's go upstairs. Get WGN on. Their news starts in a few minutes.'
'Prominent Chicago advertising executive Eric Brooks was found murdered in his office in downtown Chicago tonight. Police aren't saying how he was killed or if they have any suspects. Witnesses at the scene at Brooks' office say there was a great deal of blood on the floor and carpet, indicating an act of extreme violence. We'll bring you a live update later in this newscast.'
Jill thumbed OFF on the remote.
The two women sat in silence, sipping at the dregs of Mr Coffee Jill had poured them.
'You saw him tonight, right?'
'Right,' Jill echoed. She felt dazed, unreal. For all that the crime rate was going up in Chicago, she had remained untouched by it. A friend of hers had once been robbed in a parking ramp, while another friend had found evidence that somebody had tried to jimmy open her back window, but the worst of itthe muggings, the stabbings, the shootingshad not touched her.
And now this.
She wanted to feel bad for Eric: that was what she was really struggling with. She wanted her dislike of him to subside so she could feel an appropriate sense of loss, but all she could summon now was rage at violence of this sort, and real sympathy for Eric's wife and children. This was the kind of event that would mark the girls for years, if not for life.
And finally she even felt sympathy for Eric. He had been an insecure and manipulative man but despite that there had been some genuine good times, and because of Eric she'd been able to go on her own as a photographer. His business acumen had given her the money she'd needed.
'What time did you leave?'
Jill didn't realize, until Kate's question had floated unanswered for a few seconds, that her friend had even spoken.
'I'm sorry. What was that?'
'What time did you leave Eric's office?' Even in a simple white button-down blouse and designer jeans, her shining dark hair touching her shoulders, doe-eyed Kate looked gorgeous.
'About seven-thirty, I guess.'
'Maybe you should call the police.'
'Yes, I guess I should.' She shook her head. 'God, I just can't believe it.'
'I had a friend in college, her brother was murdered like this. She said that even years later, she couldn't believe that somebody had killed him. She kept waiting for him to show up on her doorstep one day.'
'His poor wife and kids.'
'And poor Eric. I got the impression from the TV story that they must really have done a job on him.'
'You want more coffee?'
'If you wouldn't mind. I'd just gone out to get something to eat when I heard about Eric on the car radio, so I drove right over here.' She patted her stomach. 'It keeps growling.'
'I've got a stale donut in the cupboard if you're interested. Or a fresh apple.'
Kate grinned. 'Now knowing me, Ms Nutrition, which do you think I'd like? Fresh apple or stale donut?'
'Stale donut.'
Kate clapped her hands together like an exuberant child. 'Correct. Very good guess.'
As Jill prepared another pot of coffee, and set Kate's donut on a saucer, she thought again of Eric's widow and his children. Especially his children.
She said a silent prayer for them.
