Colerain Avenue and let it take him to the center of the city.
He drove past the building slowly. The old two-story structure had been built in an era when it probably hadn’t seemed odd for a commercial building to have a peaked roof like a house, and there had been no compelling reason to build higher, at least in this part of town. But the place was better than it looked: the rooms inside had hardwood floors and big, solid doors, and the red-brick facade was dirty but intact. Varney could see nothing about the place or the streets around it that had changed since he’d last seen it.
He had been here only twice before, with Coleman. The first time, Coleman had warned him. “They’re going to be friendly, and easy to get along with, but don’t let yourself get too comfortable, and don’t mouth off to Mama.”
“Mama?”
“Yeah, and don’t call her that.” Coleman blew out a breath impatiently, in that way he had of signifying that everything he said was something any sensible person should already know but somehow Varney didn’t. “Her name is Tracy. She’s the one you have to pay attention to. She has three sons, Roger, Nick, and Marty, and they’re the ones who run the business. All she runs is them.”
“You mean they’re a bunch of Mama’s—”
“No, that ain’t what I mean,” Coleman interrupted. “Any one of them would cut you just for the fun of seeing you bleed and dance around, and that’s the problem. They can’t trust each other, don’t even seem to like each other much. They’re about a year or two apart in age, so I don’t even know which is older. They all had different fathers, and even God doesn’t know where they are or what became of any of them. The boys each know that the others won’t listen to them, but that they will listen to her. She’s what keeps them from turning on each other. Maybe they like her, or think she’s smart or something. Or maybe she’s just a convenience, so they can work together. I don’t know, and I don’t care.”
Varney had followed Coleman up the stairs and into the carpeted hallway. As he passed each door, he read the sign on it: CHOW IMPORTERS, LTD., RECTANGLE TRAVEL, PINEHILL REALTY SERVICES, CRESTVIEW WHOLESALE. Coleman did not stop until he reached the Crestview Wholesale door. Coleman knocked, then entered, and Varney went in with him.
The woman sitting behind the desk was peculiar. She had the hair, the makeup, and the body of a woman about thirty-five years old, but there was a wrinkling about the pale, almost transparent skin of her bare neck and hands that struck him. It was not so much a contradiction as a warning, like a slight puckering on a peach that told him the fruit had been offered for sale much, much longer than it was supposed to be.
“Sugar!” she shrieked. She got up, tottered around the desk on high heels, smiled, and kissed Coleman on the cheek. “I’m so sorry to make you come all the way here for your money, but Roger and Marty and Nicky can’t get away just now, with all the salespeople already on the road, and—”
“It’s okay,” said Coleman unconvincingly. “I don’t mind a bit.”
She smiled in a way that would have been—and maybe once had been—kittenish, but struck Varney as mentally deranged. “I knew you’d understand.” Then her eyes passed across Varney on their way somewhere else, and she stopped, brought them back, and looked him up and down. “You brought him?”
Coleman nodded, and to Varney it seemed a reluctant nod.
“This is him.” To Varney he said, “Say hello to Tracy.”
“Pleased to meet you,” Varney murmured.
Her eyes seemed to glow for an instant, then to fade again. “Oh, you’re just right,” she said. “A cop would run right over you without even stepping on the brakes because he didn’t notice you were there.” Then she half- turned and said in a stage whisper, “Besides, you’re cute.” She continued the turn and went to a filing cabinet across the room, unlocked it, pulled a thick envelope out of one of the files, and handed it to Coleman.
Tonight Varney could see lights on in the upper windows. He made a quick decision, stopped the car a block past the building, and walked back. He climbed the stairs and knocked on the door that said CRESTVIEW WHOLESALE, then entered. Tracy was sitting at the desk. When she looked up, she took a moment to focus on his face, then stood. “Sugar!” she squealed, and hurried toward him on her spike heels, her arms extended toward him for a hug.
20
Prescott sat in the window of his rented room and watched Wendy Cushner. He knew she was thirty-four, but she had the kind of face that might have been any age from twenty to forty, a small, unlined round face with light skin and a few freckles. She was wearing shorts that were neither revealing nor fashionable, a pair of sneakers with no socks, and a T-shirt that was too big for her.
She was filling a small wading pool with water from a hose, her eyes turned down at the blue vinyl bottom of the pool as though she saw something in the water, or maybe just looked for it there because it wasn’t anywhere else. She didn’t look like a woman who had been left with thirty-four million dollars. She looked like a woman who had just been left.
She and Prescott had a secret that the rest of the people in the world she inhabited did not seem to suspect. She turned off the hose and disappeared into the back door of the low, rambling brick ranch house. A few minutes later, she came out again holding a girl of about four by the hand, and carrying a boy in her left arm who must have been about one. They both had light purple bathing suits—the girl’s with a ruffled skirt around the hips, and Prescott could see that the smaller one’s rear end was padded with a diaper and plastic pants. Wendy held the little boy over the pool, bending at the hips as women did, so the baby could touch his toes in the cool water. The baby started to laugh and began to run in place, only his toes brushing the surface, until his mother lowered him into the water and he spent a moment feeling the cold creep into his suit. His big sister unceremoniously stepped in and sat down with a splash.
As they played, Prescott noted the appearance of brightly colored plastic objects from a small tub by the pool: boats, ducks, a whale, a bucket. Wendy retreated a bit after a few minutes and sat on the back steps, where Prescott could watch her watching her children.
He had been here for two weeks observing her to determine whether she had paid to have her husband shot through the forehead. At first he had been surprised when he had not detected any sign that the Louisville police were doing the same, but he had welcomed the freedom it gave him in his work. He had already eliminated a few of the signs he had been searching for.
Prescott had seen no indication that she had taken a lover. He had followed her whenever she went out, and found himself not at hotels or restaurants or houses but at a wilting succession of supermarket parking lots, a nursery school where she took the older kid three mornings a week, and a couple of shopping malls where she made relatively brief visits to stores that sold children’s clothes and toys.
He had watched her house at night with an infrared scope and listened with an X-phone, an electronic device about the size of a deck of cards that he had plugged into an unused phone jack in her bedroom. Whenever it heard anyone come up the stairs near the room, it silently dialed Prescott’s telephone number.
When he lifted his receiver, he could hear everything happening within thirty-five feet of Wendy Cushner’s bed. He had learned that she went to sleep at ten and was up at five-thirty with the boy, followed at about six-thirty by the older girl. The only visitors were women about her own age, usually with children in tow, her in-laws, a woman who looked as though she might be a younger sister, and an older woman who had to be her mother, Mrs. Hayes.
Prescott had seen no sign that she had yet taken any notice that she was a rich woman. She had a cleaning woman who came in two days a week to wash floors and windows. When he had understood the schedule, he had searched harder for the lover. A woman with thirty-four million could afford a lot of help, but a woman with any calculation at all would know that she could not hide the existence of a man from another woman who cleaned her house each day. Prescott devoted another week to watching, and found no lover.
Prescott tired of watching Wendy Cushner at about the same time that the children got tired of the water. When she scooped them out, one at a time, wrapped them in towels, and took them in, it was a relief to him.
Prescott had examined Wendy Cushner’s credit reports, searched the Louisville and Jefferson County records for any criminal or civil decisions involving Wendy Hayes, and looked for any close relative who might ever have been involved in any court proceeding. He had checked the archives of the Louisville
