“Precisely. Kessler gave him one week, but Wallace talked him up to two. He has two weeks to find what he so carelessly misplaced, or Kessler sends in his troops.”
“It’s not funny.” Julia protested the frivolous language. “Eva’s missing, Philip, not misplaced. She could be in danger.”
“Danger?” Philip tapped off his ashes. “I doubt it. Unless Wallace is more cold blooded than even I suspect, nothing about his demeanor last night suggested he feared she was in mortal peril. I think she simply gave him the slip, as he said.”
He sat forward. “Think about it. Maybe she’s simply on a walkabout, for reasons of her own. Or she’s bolted to join her paramour. Crockett has vanished too, remember? Maybe the two of them are holed up together, hoping to ride out the storm. Regardless, she can’t go far without money or passport.”
No passport. That meant no champagne, no shipboard dinner, no triumphant arrival at Le Havre. “How do you know that?”
“I don’t. I’m just repeating what Wallace said.”
Julia’s brief hope of Eva’s escape sank as fantasy gave way to reality. “Walkabout” was Philip’s airy gloss on the situation. The fact remained that she now had no way to reach Eva, no way to speak with her and hear her account of that night. Wherever she was, Eva was not safely hidden under Wallace’s care.
Wallace. The lovely glow of their last hour together dimmed. Why hadn’t he told her any of this? She’d asked him directly, and he’d assured her he’d protect Eva. Nothing to worry about. Was that mere bravado? The male impulse to shield women from bad news? Did he really think she’d bruise so easily? Eva’s disappearance gave her a great deal to worry about, yet his deceit, even by omission, was troubling too.
During her silence Philip refilled their empty cups. He lifted his to his chin but for several seconds simply contemplated her over its rim. “I take it, from your face and from your questions,” he said, “that your friend did not share this information himself last night?”
Her cheeks flooded. That realization had been rising in her thoughts as well, cold and rank as a marsh fog.
He sighed. “Trust is like glass, you know. Once broken, it can never be mended.”
Julia scowled and turned in her chair. She remembered the deep solicitude in Wallace’s eyes as they’d traveled home, his eerily somber What will you have me do, Miss Kydd? As if honoring her wishes were all. His face, full of respect and deference, was not the face of a liar. Her trust was cracked, perhaps, but not broken.
Yet if he’d told her the truth, if Eva was still in his care and safe from danger, then he’d fabricated the story he’d told Kessler. It would be fantastically bold, as well as risky, to hoodwink the New York Police Department in such a high-stakes matter. Wallace was no fool, especially if he was about to launch himself into public service. No, Julia had to admit that any romantic interests he hoped to pursue with her paled in comparison to his civic responsibilities to Kessler. Wallace was smart and ambitious; his priorities must lie with his career, not a brewing dalliance (however delightful) with Julia. Kessler would get the truth, not her.
She set aside her cup and saucer with a hasty clatter. Wallace’s deceit was not her first concern. She had a more urgent new truth to face: Eva had disappeared, and every hour she remained missing deepened Kessler’s conviction of her guilt. Unless she could find Eva herself and learn what had happened that night, Julia’s only hope of helping her evade Kessler’s grip was to present him with a plausible alternative suspect. Her instinct’s favorite candidate, Jerome Crockett, remained elusive, which left her with few options. Best was to follow the spider of interest that had traveled her spine at Coral Goldsmith’s news that her husband had lied about his alibi.
Arthur Goldsmith’s disappearance that night might be as innocuous as Coral suspected—a taxi ride to his office sofa. But he’d witnessed Timson’s violent resolve to keep the manuscript, and he’d seen where he’d put it. Beyond Eva, no one had more stake in the fate of that manuscript than Goldsmith. His anger had been righteous, frightening in its suppressed fury. He had paid for that novel; by rights it belonged to him. And he had raged out into the night, alone, during the very hours Leonard Timson had been shot.
Julia’s forgotten cigarette smoldered nearly to her fingers. With a start she ground it out. She would have to come up with a pretext to talk with Goldsmith. However contrived it might be, she needed to sustain the ruse long enough to gauge his temperament, to see if she could imagine—or convincingly portray—him as Timson’s murderer.
CHAPTER 19
Arthur Goldsmith rose when Julia was shown into his third floor office above West Forty-Second Street. He buttoned his fawn-colored jacket over a turquoise shirt with a white collar and deep-emerald tie. The ensemble, paired with his olive skin and gleaming black hair, carried a Mediterranean élan, as if he had just stepped from his yacht off the coast of Capri. The eminent publisher greeted her with a mix of curiosity and condescension. Julia accepted this. She deserved as much, given the flimsy reason for her appointment. She carried her blue leather portfolio, posing as a prospective designer in search of commissions.
She accepted the brief grip of Goldsmith’s hand and followed its courteous sweep toward a pair of tight-backed upholstered chairs facing his desk. She crossed the room with languid care, chin high and shoulders relaxed. Her frock suited her beautifully, a cream silk day dress edged in pale pink with a low suede belt. Its fluid skirt moved with every sway of her stride. She’d worn her finest pair of Italian street shoes, pale-rose suede and snakeskin with silver buckles.
Anything? She turned, alert for some inkling of interest. Coral Goldsmith’s astonishing claim of
