help.” Emily waited for April to reply. Seconds passed, and then the loud buzz let her know that the electric lock on the door was being held open for her. She tugged the door open and hurried inside. She couldn’t help looking behind her one more time, half-expecting to see the spectral figure in the act of reaching for her before the door swung to. She waited until she heard the click before she left the small lobby, turned the corner, and went up a couple of steps to the carpeted hallway.
The unwelcome thought came to her that she was walking in Phil’s footsteps. He must have walked along this hallway often, stepped on this carpet. She kept down the mixture of hurt and anger and went on. When she found the apartment and reached up to knock, April opened the door. It made Emily remember apartments where she had lived, first alone and then with Phil. She could always hear someone coming toward the apartment door from the time they set foot in the lobby-something distinctive about the direction of their footsteps, and something audible in their intention, too.
April was wearing a pink sweatshirt and a pair of pink sweatpants, running her fingers through long blond hair tangled from sleep. “Come in.” She turned away, and Emily saw that ACTRESS was spelled out across the rear of the sweatpants.
Emily stepped inside and closed the door. The living room was furnished sparsely with cheap furniture that was small enough for a woman to drag in alone and assemble, a few framed photographs of pink camellias and yellow daffodils vastly enlarged. There were magazines on the seats of each of the stuffed chairs arranged in homage to the television set, and Emily could see that April had not yet cleared the table from her breakfast. “I’m really sorry to bother you.”
“You said there was a fire?”
“Two fires, both at the same time. My house and the office were both destroyed. I don’t know if the person who did it was trying to make me run outside in the dark where he could kill me, or just trying to scare me. A man came to my house a couple of nights ago and wanted something that Phil had. He said it was information about a powerful man. When I said I didn’t have it, he was going to kidnap me. Dewey came to my house and scared him off.”
“I’m sorry,” April said. “I heard that part of it, and I almost called you, but I wasn’t sure you’d want to hear from me.”
“Ever since Phil was murdered, I’ve been looking for something that would explain it-maybe a case that got out of hand, or some personal dispute. After that man came, I had Ray helping me tear the house apart looking for this evidence, and had Dewey and Billy doing the same at the office.”
“I feel bad,” April said. “Dewey asked me to help search the office, but I just couldn’t. It was just too much for me.” She was crying now. “I want to let this part of my life be over. I’m sorry for what I did to you-what I took from you. If I had it to do over, I wouldn’t. I thought a detective agency would be exciting, and then I thought I loved Phil. Now I know I was stupid.”
“April, I didn’t come to browbeat you about Phil. You didn’t do anything to me. You weren’t the first. If there was a home wrecker, it was somebody twenty years ago. What I want isn’t to-“
“I know.”
“What?”
April shook her head. Her face began to crumple again. “I thought I was the only one ever, and that we had fallen in love. That was what he said.”
“Oh. I’ll bet. What made you change your mind?”
“Ray Hall.”
Emily was shocked for a second, then realized she shouldn’t be. “Ray talked to you about Phil? When?”
“After you and I talked. He made me see that it wasn’t the way I thought it was. He told me there had been other women, that Phil had told them that same kind of story.”
“I guess we all believed him. Look, April. I think you’re right to want to put this in the past as soon as possible. I’m not happy about what happened between you and Phil. But now Phil is dead. He emptied our bank accounts, which means he was planning to drop me, and he didn’t leave any money to pay the people who worked at the agency. I think that means he planned to leave town. I need to know some things, and I have to ask you.”
“Oka Y”
“Was he planning to run off with you?”
April looked uncertain. “I’ve thought of that, but I don’t know. I don’t think so. He didn’t ask me if I wanted to go away with him.” She stared at the coffee table in front of her knees, as though she were trying to make out the small print in one of the magazines on it. “As I looked back on it since he died, I realized something. I don’t think I would have gone. I thought I was in love with him, but I must have been wrong.”
“I understand.”
“Lately I’ve been growing my hair out and saving money for a great stylist-Adrian Nolfi. I made the appointment months ago for him to do me at the Beverly Hills shop, not the one in West L.A., where you get his assistants. Phil knew that. He didn’t say, `Don’t make the appointment,’ or anything.” She paused and looked up at Emily. “I guess he was leaving me, too.”
“I don’t feel angry at you or blame you for what happened anymore,” Emily said. “Phil had figured out all the ways of getting women to do what he wanted before you were born. I don’t think he cared very much about whether he told us the truth.”
“That’s for sure,” April agreed. “I just feel really bad about it.”
“Right now I’ve got a terrible problem, and you might be able to help me.”
“What can I do?”
“The man who broke into my house still thinks that Phil left me some information about a powerful man, and he wants it. There’s no question in my mind that he’ll kill me for it. I think the fires last night were either a first attempt to kill me, or a way of getting me outside into the open. I’m more terrified than before.”
“I thought the information was burned up.”
Emily’s heart began to beat faster. She could sense April was lying. Did it mean she had the evidence? “I wish I could be sure one way or the other. Before the fires, I had already searched just about everywhere in both the house and the office. Ray, Billy, Dewey, and the police all searched. I keep thinking it has to be somewhere else, someplace Phil could have driven to that nobody knew about.”
“It’s not here.”
Emily studied April’s face. She seemed to be aware enough and guilty enough to want to help. Emily said, “Did he ever talk about having a special project in the works, or say he was about to come into money, or anything like that?”
“I don’t think so. He was always the same. He never said much about what he was doing, even when we were in the office and it was the normal thing to do.”
“Did he ever give you anything-a box or container of any kind-and ask you to keep it safe for him?”
“No,” she said quickly, then looked uncomfortable. “Oh, wait. He did, I guess. It was a long time ago, though. Maybe six months. It was a box.”
“What was in it?”
“I don’t know, really. He told me not to look inside. It was one of those boxes like fancy stationery comes in. He put it … um … under my bed, and told me to just forget it was there.”
“You looked, though, didn’t you?”
“At first there was just a case file, and he had it hidden under the stationery. He added things once in a while. There was a manila envelope, a couple of cassette tapes. Then he would slide the box back under the bed, and we’d forget about it.”
“Where is the box now?”
“I don’t know. One time when he came over, he just picked it up and took it with him.”
While April had been talking, Emily at first pictured him stopping here for a minute to take her out to a restaurant or something, but when she said “came over,” the image changed. He was in the bedroom with her. It had to be early afternoon, when they could pretend to be out to lunch, so they had the blinds closed to keep the sun light out. They were both naked because they had been here in the afternoon having sex. Phil must have looked at his watch, got up and put on his pants and then knelt down to pick up the socks he had tossed there, and pulled the box out from under the bed. When he drove back to work with April, he said nothing about the box, just took it with
