“On newspapers?”
He cocked his head. “You never think about all the clean white paper at your fingertips. I had to leave so fast I didn’t even have time to grab a book, much less paper. Well, when you’re ready to scream for something to write on, newspaper works just fine. But all I could find in this hole was that sorry stump of a pencil. That’s why I had to ask Logan for a pen.”
He exhaled. “It’s almost out of ink now.”
Julia’s thoughts churned. Those notes meant Eva didn’t have the manuscript. It wasn’t exactly proof of innocence, but it made Kessler’s assumptions much shakier. Why would she want it so badly? Was she frightened by Goldsmith’s ultimatum? More importantly, why did she think Jerome had it? Did she think he’d killed Timson?
Good Lord. Had he? Had Julia’s first instinct been right after all?
Too many questions swarmed in her melting mind. Another blast of wailing trumpets meant the show would be ending soon. She had to get back before the performers returned backstage. She stood and peeled her dress from the back of her thighs. “I have to leave. But I’ll do everything I can to help.”
Jerome pulled himself to his feet as well, stirring a wake of nauseating odors.
Julia reached the door before she thought of it. She turned back to hand him the pen from her handbag, a slim silver Waterman. It had been a gift from a long-ago friend who called himself a writer but would never understand how scraps of newspaper could be enough.
She nearly ran through the Half-Shell’s backstage cavern. She ignored the whistles and grunting laughter. Music caromed off the walls, peppering her temples with its hot tempo. Philip would be wondering what had become of her. She broke into a faster trot. A single thought drummed in her mind to the music’s beat: Wallace knew where Eva was. Wallace knew.
She reached the corridor that led to the carpeted hallway. She spun around the corner and smacked straight into a wall that hadn’t been there before. She’d have been knocked to the floor if the man had not caught her elbows.
“Pardon me,” she gasped, then recognized Martin Wallace.
In an instant she saw. He knew where she’d been. As she dug for breath to speak, he steered her through the unmarked door.
CHAPTER 23
It was an office, beautifully furnished with a settee and two wing chairs facing each other across a low table. A massive desk presided over the far end of the room, beneath a gloomy New England landscape in oils. Two lamps glowed on a sideboard, giving the windowless room a genteel warmth cruelly unlike the clogged heat of Jerome’s cell.
The door closed on the orchestra’s wild thumping. Wallace released her arm.
He knew where Eva was. He’d known all along. Julia slapped him hard across his right cheek.
He rubbed the spot as he poured out whiskey from a decanter on the sideboard. “So you’ve flushed out Mr. Crockett. I assure you it would’ve been better if you hadn’t.”
“You lied to me.”
“I lied to you.” He rested his glass against his chastened cheek.
“You’ve been hiding Eva all along?”
He took a swallow. “I have.”
“I want to see her.”
He touched the damp skin beneath her ear.
Julia leaned away. “I want to know what you know.”
For several seconds he considered. “All right. We’ll talk about it. But not here.”
Julia slipped into the chair beside Philip. If he’d wondered about her long absence, it was far from his mind now. He lifted a forefinger to register her return but kept his narrowed eyes on the stage. Jack was even more absorbed in the show. He sat on the edge of his seat, elbows splayed over the table and hands framing his head, blinkered like a dray horse to focus wholly on what lay ahead.
The orchestra seemed to burst from its corner: trombones poking their snouts into the spotlight, cornets and clarinets squalling in counterrhythms. In the vortex of all that sound, impaled by a shaft of white light, danced a man and a woman. Both wore huge headdresses transforming them into fantastical strange birds with human bodies, all eight limbs painted shades of green and banded with rows of gold bracelets. Their bones throbbed from one erotic posture to another, arms and legs swarming and humming, shoulders ever squared beneath the weight of their bird masks.
The audience had swelled. The Half-Shell was now jammed with watchers, some unable to stay in their chairs. They pounded tables and stomped on the floor to the beat of music and muscles. Their energy inflamed the performances of both the featured dancers and the impromptu ones.
Behind the costumed pair, half in and half out of the stage’s shadows, another couple cavorted. Pablo Duveen and Carl Sweeney drew shrieks of laughter as they mimicked the dancers’ movements. Both men’s jackets were gone, and Duveen’s white dress shirt gaped open to his belly. Slabs of pale flesh quivered as he pranced into and out of Sweeney’s embrace, his white hands graphic claws against the younger man’s black trousers.
As the music reached a crescendo, the masked dancers swung apart. The man sank onto his back on the floor, and the woman kneeled in triumph over his mask, its sharp beak thrusting explicitly between her parted thighs. Beside them, Duveen also tumbled to the floor and pulled Sweeney to his knees, haunches hovering over Duveen’s panting face. The final cornet note screamed, and Duveen waggled his tongue like a randy snake. Julia had never witnessed anything so obscene.
The houselights brightened onto bedlam. Weirdly severed from the masks left lolling on the floor, the dancers flung up their arms to receive the adulation, then followed the sweat-mopping musicians back through the curtains offstage. Duveen and Sweeney retrieved their jackets and slowly made their way through the crowd toward Jay and Edwin, who stood clapping and barking.
Philip sat back with a wry smile, but Jack sat motionless for
