Till took a deep breath and let it out. There was no reason to hold anything back now, and he had no right. “She also felt that at some point you two had to separate. You would never find a woman who could tolerate having someone like her in your life. If she was around, you wouldn’t even look. The same was true for her. The reason she left was the danger, but the killer wasn’t the only thing she needed to escape.”
Eric Fuller was silent for a few seconds, his body leaning forward in the seat and his eyes on the dashboard. It looked to Till as though he might lunge toward him. His face was reddening, and looked almost swollen, and Till could see moisture welling in the blue eyes. “She didn’t even think it through and prepare. She left everything—her half of the restaurant, her half of the house, everything we had built together.”
“She thought you had more right to it than she did, and there was no way to hold on to things like that and disappear. I know you’re mad at her tonight, but I can tell you that she cared about you and wanted to be sure that her trouble didn’t destroy you.”
He leaned back in the seat with his eyes closed and rubbed his forehead. “God. I’m sorry. It’s just that everything is happening at once. To be honest with you, I’m afraid. I’m just out on bail. Nobody dropped any charges. I don’t want to go to jail for the rest of my life. Jay told me about the advertisements. I keep wondering what happens if Wendy doesn’t see them. What if she’s living in another country? I could be convicted of murder, and she would never even know it. I could get the death penalty.”
Till drove in silence for a few seconds. “That’s one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you. I need to know anything you can tell me that might help me figure out how to reach her.”
“I don’t know. When she was missing at first, I called everyone we knew, searched our house and our restaurant for any clue about where she might have gone.”
“Was there any other city she ever talked about where she wanted to live someday?”
“Here. L.A. She was the one who chose it as the place to start the restaurant.”
“Is there anywhere that she said she wanted to go on a vacation, but you never did?”
“Oh, God. Everywhere. When we were really young we were too poor to go anywhere, and when we were older, we were too busy. At one time she wanted to go to France, but it was mainly so I could apprentice in a great restaurant. When we were in school in Wisconsin, we would talk about Tahiti in the winter and the Rocky Mountains in the summer. We were never serious about any of it. She could be anywhere.”
Till said, “I told her that if she wanted to stay hidden, she should never try to get in touch with anybody she knew again. But that’s not an easy rule to follow. If she weakened and decided to talk with someone, who would she choose?”
Fuller shrugged. “The person she would choose is me.”
“That’s what I thought. That’s the other reason why I wanted to talk to you right away, tonight. What you’ve got to understand is that six years ago people like me gave her lots of sensible advice and tried to talk her out of it, but she was the one who was right—there really
He drove Eric Fuller to the house that he had once shared with Wendy Harper. When Fuller got out, Till handed him a business card. “If she calls or writes or tries to get in touch with you in any way at any time of the day or night, you’ve got to call me immediately. And if you notice any kind of surveillance on you, I’ll come and check it out. It may just be the cops, but if it’s somebody else, I’ll arrange a surprise for them.”
“Why would you risk your life to help me?”
“Maybe I’m not helping you. Maybe I’m helping her.”
After that night, Till waited a month for an answer to the advertisements he and Jay Chernoff had placed in magazines and newspapers. At the end of the month, he paid a visit to Garden House, even though it wasn’t the day of the week when he usually came. He drove past the house five times at ten-minute intervals, parked in the lot beside a supermarket, and walked a half mile to the house, searching the neighborhood harder than usual for any sign of change. Later that evening, he took Holly to a movie, then had a long, serious talk with her and left her at her door.
When he got home, he called Chernoff. “Jay, Wendy’s not coming in. It’s time for me to go after her.”
9
SYLVIE LOVED the evenings at the dance studio. The studio’s exterior was deceptive. It was one of the best ballroom dancing studios in the city, but it was on a block that contained both a plumbing- fixture showroom and several middle-class houses, on the upper level of a long wooden building that consisted of two galleries of suites.
Tonight was Tango Night, and she and Paul were especially good at the tango. Eight years ago, they had gone to Buenos Aires and spent two months studying with the noted dance mistress Renata Gomez La Paz. The dance mistress was less than five feet tall and bony and was reputed to be in her seventies, but she had worn a black leotard, high heels and a scarlet skirt to demonstrate the steps to her disciples. Her makeup was thick, with blood-red lipstick and dark eye shadow. Her hair had been dyed coal black and tied in a bun. Enormous gold hoops hung from her ears, and on each of her hands had been three glittering diamond rings. Sylvie had kept thinking that, given her age, the diamonds were antique, probably the kind that would not be found anywhere again.
When Senora Gomez La Paz spoke, she bit her words with bared teeth. Although Sylvie did not speak Spanish well, she knew that the senora had said she danced like a cow. Paul had lied to her about it, but Sylvie had not minded. That was part of it, wasn’t it? The tango wasn’t about cuddling. The dancers held themselves in tension. The dance was about lust and jealousy and suppressed hatred.
The experience had conferred on her and on Paul an implied authority at the dance studio. They had learned the dance from one of the legendary choreographers in Buenos Aires, not from some little cutie in Van Nuys who had learned it as an elective class at Oklahoma State.
Paul backed the black BMW into the lot and parked it nose-out, far from the others. Then he leaned suddenly toward Sylvie in the shadowy car and kissed her. She leaned to him, letting the kiss go on for a long time. It was hard and passionate, not exactly affectionate. Then Paul was out of the car, around the back to open her door. He offered his hand to help her out, and she took it, placing the lightest, most graceful touch on the back of his hand as she stood.
She moved toward the building, heard the car door slam shut and then Paul’s long, rapid strides to catch her, and felt his hand on her waist. Already she was excited, ready. As they climbed the stairs to the upper gallery she could hear the music behind the door at the end of the walkway. Paul took a half-step ahead in the last yard to swing the door inward for her, and she stepped inside. Sylvie was conscious of making an entrance. She strutted across the polished floor and tossed her black-fringed shawl over a chair negligently, knowing that all of the other dancers were watching her movements and watching Paul hover at her shoulder attentively, maybe possessively. She held herself erect, able to emphasize her height and slenderness when she stood with Paul, because he was a few inches taller. She dressed for Tango Nights the way Senora Gomez La Paz had dressed, knowing that on Sylvie, the costume was elegant and exotic.
She had already completed her survey of the other dancers in the room by looking at the mirrored wall where Mindy stretched at the ballet barre. Mindy lifted one leg to the barre and rested it there and then touched her forehead to her knee. Mindy raised her blond head and gave a flash of bright white teeth and a long welcoming gaze in the mirror, but her eyes didn’t seem to be focused where they should be. Sylvie half-turned her head to follow the trajectory of Mindy’s stare off the mirror to Paul. Sylvie raised her right foot to the seat of the chair where she had draped her shawl and examined her shoe, as though she had not seen.
Mindy had made a foolish miscalculation. She had a pretty little figure that stayed in shape because she had to work as an aerobics instructor during the day. She had a cute round face with wide blue eyes and bleached teeth and hair. She undoubtedly got plenty of attention from older married men every day, but she had made a misguided assumption in picking out Paul. Mindy had no idea who Paul was. She had no idea who Sylvie was.
Paul had a very thin waist, fine features, a complexion that was smooth, and big eyes with long lashes. The look was probably what the attraction was for Mindy. She was like those teenaged girls who had crushes on boy singers who looked like other teenaged girls. Paul seemed docile and unthreatening: He was the sort of man who
