with that room, we’ll go to the nextmost-likely place, which is that little den off the hallway over there.”
“All the furniture is going to end up in the living room?”
“For a while. It will be going into storage, too.”
“You’re selling the house.”
“When this is over.”
“You didn’t tell me.”
“I didn’t know it until a few minutes ago. I just realized I’m never going to live here again.” She moved to the staircase and climbed to the second floor. After a moment, he heard a drawer slide shut with a bang, and another one slide open.
He climbed after her.
22
Jerry Hobart showered and changed his clothes to be sure there were no glass fragments sticking to him and to remove the gunpowder residue from his hands, but he knew he wouldn’t sleep. He sat on the bed in his hotel room and looked out over the lights in the San Fernando Valley. It was a clear night, and from his window on the tenth floor he could see the long rows of street lamps stretching off to the west, where they seemed to lose their definition and fade to become only an impression that the valley was lighter than the ridge of mountains to the north or the sky above.
Hobart was frustrated and angry that he could not go back out and find Emily Kramer right away. Now that he had gone to her house a second time, she would be hiding, staying with someone probably, and maybe with an armed guard. Phil Kramer’s office was out of reach now, too. Hobart was not going to be able to go back there.
But he had planted a suggestion in Emily Kramer’s skull, and now he had to hope that the suggestion had stuck with her and started to irritate and intrigue her until she couldn’t keep from acting on it. He still wasn’t sure whether she had known all along everything her husband knew about Theodore Forrest, or had known nothing. If Hobart had to take a guess, he would now bet that Phil Kramer hadn’t told her anything. She had seemed genuinely hurt and disappointed when he’d told her that her husband had been holding valuable secret information about a rich man. Hobart had also noticed that she did not doubt it was true.
Hobart brought back the sight of her standing there beside her bed saying she had just learned that her husband was cheating on her. The way she had blurted it out had surprised her as much as it surprised Hobart. It was as though the interrogation he was conducting was, to her, only a part of a much larger, unpleasant conversation she was having with herself. Saying he was cheating on her had made sense to her for an instant. It had seemed to her to be proof that her husband was in the habit of lying to her. Hobart supposed a detective who blackmailed people might also be somebody who wouldn’t tell his wife what he was doing. That wasn’t a stretch of the imagination. He wondered what Phil had planned to tell Emily when he had his million dollars, or whatever price he had set.
Suddenly Hobart realized he had made a false assumption. Phil Kramer had been cheating on her, and he had not told her where he was going the night Whitley had shot him. Kramer had not been planning to walk in the house with a sack of money and say, “Honey, I’m home. Look what I’ve got.” He had been planning to divorce her without letting her know the money existed, or maybe not come home that night at all. What she had learned about her marriage was why she had looked so defeated. Her hurt had been a bigger feeling than her fear of Hobart. She had known-maybe really just learned that day-that when Kramer died, her marriage had already been over for a while. She had already figured out that if Phil Kramer had been paid off that night, he would have been on his way to the airport.
Hobart couldn’t help including in his memory the fact that she had been naked. He had made her strip because it was a quick way to make progress in an interrogation. A person who was naked among enemies started to feel scared and vulnerable and powerless. For a woman it was worse, because it conformed exactly to a nightmare she’d been having since she was a child. When he met her, he had judged her to be someone who would fall apart and hand over everything Phil Kramer had on Forrest. Now he wasn’t sure she wouldn’t have held out, but he was almost sure she didn’t have what he wanted, at least that night.
But now she had to be searching as hard as she could to find the information he had asked her about. It was almost impossible that she wouldn’t. No woman could find out that her husband had been killed over a secret and not ache to know what the secret was. Certainly nobody could be stripped and threatened and humiliated and not want to frustrate and outsmart the man who had done those things to her.
Hobart could only step back now and wait until Emily Kramer found what he wanted. Even if she found the information right away, he knew he could do nothing more tonight because the police would be out searching for him until daylight. He was eager to have the prize quickly, but he could not afford to be impatient and put himself into more situations like the one at the house. He felt restless and dissatisfied. All he could do was let Emily Kramer search, and wait for the moment when the cops ran out of patience and left her alone again.
23
Ted Forrest awoke knowing it was late. He could see that the level of the sun was high, that it must be at least ten. He also knew that something had come to him during the night while he was asleep, some idea, some decision. He got up and went into the bathroom. He had not brought any of his toiletries into the guest suite, but the guest bathrooms were always stocked with toothbrushes and razors and combs. He showered and wore the bathrobe from the suite to walk down the hall to the master suite.
When he entered the bedroom, he saw that the maids had already been here. They had made the bed, emptied the clothes hampers, opened the curtains and replaced the flowers on the table. He was aware of these things, and he liked reliability and efficiency in service people. He detested their opposite.
Forrest took a moment to look in the mirror on the way to his closet. If someone had asked him why, he would have had to say it was to be sure he looked the same. It was not that he would have changed, but that he had so many things on his mind that he wondered if they showed. He went into the dressing area of the big closet and dressed in a pair of gray, unpleated pants that had a simple, informal look, a plain blue oxford shirt, and a black cashmere sport coat. He packed a single small suitcase with the things he might need over a period of a couple of days.
He finished his packing, went to the little wall safe where he kept a few good watches and some cash, and took out a thousand dollars for pocket money. He heard footsteps in the bedroom and stood still, preparing himself. He had been trained since he was a small child to exert control over his feelings. This moment was no different from that second when he stood ready with his tennis racket in his hand and his knees flexed and waited to read the green flash of ball coming off his opponent’s racket to streak over the net. Until he knew which way to move, any move was wrong.
She came in and stood six feet away, as always. “You’re packing.”
“Yes.”
“Are you leaving me?”
“I’m going away for a day or two.”
“To get away from me?” She was physically rigid, as though her sense of outrage had tightened her into paralysis.
“To get away.”
“Is that all you’re planning to say to me?” she asked. He could see that her eyes were tearing, and it intrigued him. She must be crying for herself because she felt insulted. Her brain was filled with impressions of undeserved injuries inflicted on her by an uncaring world. She never seemed to be aware that she had done things to precipitate them, and she was always certain she knew what other people were thinking. She was never right.
He exerted self-control. “I hadn’t been planning to say anything to you. I delayed my trip so I would be available for your event last night. It’s over, and now I’ve got things to do. Good-bye.”
