That’s when Tina’s eyes, despite the innocent smile on her face, glazed with tears, and Milo knew that whatever she’d planned was history now. Penelope put down her fork and stroked Tina’s wrist. “If it means that much to you, then, sure, I’ll sleep with you.”
Tina laughed again, pitifully, and shook her head. Milo said, “It’s nothing like that.”
Not letting go of Tina, Penelope raised her eyes to him. “Well, then, Milo. Maybe you should tell me.”
She’d said it very coolly, and Milo answered, “In a sec.” He mopped his lips with his napkin and went to the kitchen for another bottle of wine.
As he worked on the cork, he heard whispers from the living room, then a loud, “ What? ” That was Penelope. By the time he returned, Tina had dried her tears and was holding on to Penelope’s wrist, though she wasn’t crying either; she was staring at her flavorless food. Then she glared at Milo. “Tell me.”
“I don’t know much,” Milo said, clutching the bottle and staying well away from the table. “London, the Rathbone Hotel. If he’d just disappeared, that would be one thing, but someone shut off the hotel cameras. Anything’s possible.”
“Anything?”
“Kidnapping is the theory.”
“Or murder?”
He hesitated.
“Well?”
“It’s possible, but there’s no sign of that.”
She held onto his eyes. “Who?”
“No one knows yet. People are working on it.”
“You?”
“I’m looking into it.”
She stood then, and Tina, still leaning forward, watched her. Penelope seemed to want to say something as her cheeks flushed, but nothing came out. She walked to the foyer, hesitated, then continued and, after collecting her purse and figuring out the complicated locks on the door, walked out of their apartment.
She returned an hour later. By then, Milo had packed the dishes into the dishwasher and the leftovers into the refrigerator, while Tina remained at the table drinking half the bottle of wine. She kept saying, “I did it all wrong,” and each time Milo said, “There’s no right way to do it.”
Penelope buzzed from the street, saying only, “It’s me,” and when she arrived with her blond hair cowlicked on one side, it was obvious that she’d been drinking. “Can I come in?” she asked but was already walking past Tina into the living room. When she saw Milo, she said, “Hi,” and dropped onto the couch. She took a long, loud breath. “I don’t have any other friends I can talk to about this.”
She didn’t talk about it at first, though. She threw her purse onto the floor and stretched out, putting her feet up, her soiled heels resting on a pillow.
“I like this neighborhood,” she told the ceiling lamp. “There’s a terrific bar down the street. I forget the name. You know it?”
“It’s great,” Milo said as he went to one of the chairs.
Penelope remained fixated on the lamp. “I could sell our place and get something here. How much would a one-bedroom cost?”
“A lot.”
“I should be able to get that much for ours.”
“You know,” Milo said, “he could be all right. Could be just fine.”
“He might be,” she agreed, “but he wouldn’t come back to me, would he? I kicked him out.”
“He told me he thought he could patch things up.”
“You said that before.”
In the silence that followed, Tina found fresh glasses and poured wine for everyone, forgetting that Milo wasn’t drinking. Penelope placed hers on the floor beside her purse. “Milo,” she said. “I forgot to ask why.”
“Why?”
“Why did someone kidnap my husband from a London hotel room?”
“When we find out who, we’ll know why. And vice versa.”
“It’s the Chinese, isn’t it?”
“Maybe. No one knows.”
She slowly sat up, looking groggy, muttering, “The Yellow Peril. Is that racist, Tina?”
Tina sat next to her without bothering to reply.
Penelope tried to fix Milo with her gaze, but she seemed to have trouble focusing. “You’re going to London?”
Milo shook his head. “Better people are working on it.”
“Alan said you were the best.”
That didn’t sound like Alan Drummond. “He was exaggerating.”
Penelope chewed on her lower lip, then looked over at Tina as if she’d only just noticed her. She gave a small smile and turned back to Milo. “You do have some idea. I can see that. I can’t see much, but I can see that.”
“Maybe,” he admitted, because what he could see was that he had a small window of opportunity. She’d gotten over her shock, and she was at least tipsy. “You can help, though.”
“Me?”
“Tell me everything you know about what he was working on.”
She looked again at Tina, perhaps wanting assistance, but Tina remained in her corner of the couch, waiting. Penelope said, “You don’t want to go to the roof?”
“If the Company’s listening, I won’t have to repeat it to them later.”
“And the Chinese? What if they’re listening?”
When he didn’t immediately answer, Tina said, “Ironically, Milo only worries about the CIA.”
Penelope nodded at that. “Well, I already told Tina-right in this room, so I guess you’ve already heard it,” she said to the walls, grinning conspiratorially. Then she sighed. “Alan wouldn’t tell me anything-secret, you know. He was obsessed; I know that. He made a lot of phone calls and worked off of his desktop.”
“Calls from the landline?”
She shook her head. “One of his cells.”
“Can I take a look at his computer?”
“I’ll give you the keys and you can go get it now. The password is ‘intrepid.’ With ones in place of the i ’s.”
“You didn’t overhear any of the calls?”
“Just one. But he was speaking German. I don’t know German. He knew that.”
Milo waited.
“He went to D.C. on day trips.”
“Often?”
“Once that I know of, but he hid that from me, so if I discovered one used train ticket there were probably more. Back in the middle of April, he was gone for three or four days. Wouldn’t say where.”
“You didn’t hear any more of his calls?”
“He was very good at closing his office door,” she said. “But there was a visitor.”
“When?”
“Beginning of the month?” she wondered, shaking her head, then nodded. “A Wednesday. I’d gone out for groceries, but our local place was closed-inventory, or renovations; I don’t remember which. I came back, and he was having Scotch with a Latino-looking guy. Alan was flustered, I could tell, but he introduced us. Hector Garza.”
“Did he have an accent?”
Penelope shook her head. “Sounded midwestern to me. When he left, Alan said he was giving Hector a work reference.”
“So Hector used to work in the department?”
“Computer technician. That’s what Alan said.”
“Young? Old?”
