down, onto her legs…
She reached down with one hand and pulled it back up. 'Go answer the phone,' she grumped, not moving her head.
He grinned and headed for the kitchen, and picked the phone up on the sixth ring. Dispatch. 'I've got a call holding from Michael Bekker,' the woman said. 'Put it through?'
'Yes.'
There was a click, a pause, and then Bekker said, 'Hello?'
'Yeah, this is Davenport.'
'Yes, Lucas. Will you be free tonight, late?' Bekker's voice was low, friendly, carefully modulated. 'I've got classes, then a dinner, but I've found something in my wife's papers that I thought was interesting. I'd like to show it to you…'
'Can you tell me on the phone?'
'Mmm, why don't you come over? Somebody'll have to anyway, and I'd prefer it be you. That other policeman… he's a bit thick.'
Swanson. Not thick at all, although any number of Stillwater inmates had made the mistake of thinking so… 'All right. What time?'
'Tennish?'
'I'll see you then.'
Lucas hung up and padded back to the bedroom. The bed was empty, and water was running in the bathroom. Cassie was bent over the sink, using his toothbrush. He winced, then reached out and touched her bottom.
'Hi,' she said through a mouthful of bubbles, looking into the mirror over the sink. 'Done in a minute. Breath like a dinosaur. And I gotta pee.'
'I'll run down to the other bathroom,' he said. He went down the hall, looked back to make sure she wasn't following, opened a drawer, took out a new toothbrush, peeled the package, removed the brush and hastily stuffed the packaging back in the drawer. He was smiling when he looked at himself in the mirror.
Back in the bedroom, he found the sheets and blankets in a pile on the floor, while she lounged in the middle of the bed.
'Hop in,' she said, patting the mattress beside her. 'We're right on time for a nooner and we're not even up yet. Ain't it great?'
After Cassie left, in a cab, he spent the rest of the day fooling around, unable to focus much on the case, making call-backs, driving around town, checking the net. He walked past Bekker's house again, and spoke to a neighbor who was raking the winter gunk from his lawn. Stephanie had once had a cocker spaniel, the neighbor said, and when Bekker had had to walk it in the winter, he'd take it up to the corner and then 'kick the shit out of it. I saw him out the window, he did it several times.' The neighbor's wife, who had been splitting iris bulbs, turned and said, 'Be fair, tell him about the shoes.'
'Shoes?'
'Well, yeah, the dog had bad kidneys, I guess, and he used to sneak up to Bekker's closet and pee in his shoes.'
Lucas and the neighbor started laughing at the same time.
In the evening, an hour before Cassie went on at the Lost River, she and Lucas walked down the block for a cup of coffee. They sat across from each other in a diner booth, and Cassie said, 'Ultimately, you're not flaky enough for me. But it'd be nice if we could keep it together for a couple of months.'
Lucas nodded. 'That'd be nice.'
At five after ten, he walked up the steps to Bekker's. Lights blazed from several of the ground-floor windows, and Lucas resisted the temptation to go window-peeking again. Instead he rang the bell, and Bekker came to the door, wrapped in a burgundy dressing gown.
'Is that your Porsche?' he asked in surprise, looking past Lucas to the street.
'Yeah. I have a little money of my own,' Lucas said.
'I see.' Bekker was genuinely impressed. He knew the price of a Porsche. 'Well, come along.'
Lucas followed him into the study. Bekker seemed skittish, nervous. He would try something, Lucas decided.
'Scotch?'
'Sure.'
'I've got a nice one. I used to drink Chivas, but a couple of months ago Stephanie…'-he paused on the name, as if calling up her face-'Stephanie bought me a bottle of Glenfiddich, a single malt… I won't be going back to the other.'
Lucas couldn't tell one scotch from another. Bekker dropped ice cubes into a glass, poured two fingers of liquor over them and handed the glass to Lucas. He looked at his watch, and Lucas thought it odd that he would be wearing a watch with a dressing gown. 'So what'd you find?' Lucas asked.
'A couple of things,' Bekker said. He settled behind the desk, leaned back with the scotch and crossed his legs. They flashed from the folds of the dressing gown like a woman's legs from an evening dress. Deliberately, Lucas thought. He thinks I might be gay, and he's trying to seduce me. He took a sip of the scotch. 'A couple of things,' Bekker repeated. 'Like these.'
He picked up a stack of colored cardboard slips, bound together with a rubber band, and tossed them across the desk. Lucas picked them up. They were tickets to shows at the Lost River. He thumbed through: eight of them, in three different colors.
'Notice anything peculiar about them, Lucas?' Bekker asked. Using his first name again.
'They're from the Lost River, of course…' Lucas rolled the rubber band off and looked at the tickets individually. 'All for matinees… and there are eight tickets for three different shows. All punched, all different shows.'
Bekker mimed applause, then held up his glass to Lucas, as if toasting him. 'I knew you were intelligent. Don't you find you can always tell? Anyway, the second woman who was killed worked for the Lost River, correct? I went to a couple of evening performances with Stephanie, but I had no idea she was going in the afternoons. So I began to wonder: Could her lover…?'
'I see,' Lucas said. A connection. And it seemed to let Bekker out.
'And I also found this,' Bekker said. He leaned forward this time, and handed Lucas several letter-sized sheets of paper. American Express account sheets, with various items underlined in blue ballpoint ink. 'The underlined charges are for tickets at the Lost River. Six or seven times over the past few months, on her personal card. A couple of them match with the matinee dates and the charge amount is right. And then, on four of the days, there's a dining charge, and none less than thirty dollars. I'd bet she was taking somebody to dinner. That restaurant, the Tricolor Bar, I've been there once or twice, but not in the afternoons…'
Lucas looked at the papers, then over the top of them at Bekker. 'You should have shown these to Swanson.'
'I don't like the man,' Bekker said, looking at him levelly. 'You, I like.'
'Well, good,' Lucas said. He drank the last of the scotch. 'You seem like a pretty reasonable guy yourself. Pathology, right? Maybe I'll call you on one of my games; you could consult.'
'Your games?' Bekker glanced at his watch again, then quickly looked away.
What's going on? 'Yeah, I invent games. You know, historical strategy games, role-playing games, that sort of thing.'
'Hmph. I'd be interested in talking sometime,' Bekker said. 'Really.'
CHAPTER 14
Bekker shut the door behind Lucas and dashed upstairs, leaving the lights out. He went to the window over the porch and split the curtains with an index finger. Davenport was just getting into his Porsche. A moment later the car's lights came on, and in another minute it was gone. Bekker let the curtain fall back into place and hurried to
