“We’re both fine. Both hungry. Like you must be.”
Jubal glanced at Dalia and felt a stab of guilt. But only momentarily.
“Love you,” he said again to Claire.
She told him she loved him, too, then hung up.
“That was pretty damned convincing,” Dalia said. “Maybe too convincing.”
Jubal set the cell phone on the chair and lay on his back next to her. “Damm it! Claire found the necklace.”
Dalia raised her head and propped her chin on her elbow. “What necklace?”
“One I was going to give you. Since I left on such short notice for my flight out of New York, I couldn’t get to where I’d hidden it in the apartment. I was sure it’d be safe where it was for a while, though; then I could remove it and give it to you. But obviously I was wrong.”
“Claire suspects you bought this necklace for someone else?”
“No, I played dumb, as if I knew nothing about it, and I think she believed me.”
“My guess is she did. I only heard your end of the conversation, but like I told you, you’re good.” She smiled. “At everything.”
“If I wasn’t good enough just now, we’ve got a problem.”
Still sprawled on his back, Jubal stared at the smoke alarm above the bed. He was pretty sure Claire had believed him, yet there was something about her voice. And she’d been acting strange lately in ways he ascribed to her pregnancy, pretending to find other, smaller gifts and not knowing where they’d come from. It was damned weird. Something seemed to be going on, and he couldn’t quite figure out what it was.
He felt the mattress shift as Dalia slid over to be near him, her body hot against his. She kissed him wetly on the neck. “I know how to solve the problem,” she whispered in his ear.
“Oh? How?”
“Buy another necklace.”
Claire sat by the phone, holding her coffee cup but not raising it to her lips.
Something was wrong. She could sense it. Maybe being pregnant gave you ESP.
She got up, poured a full cup of coffee, and carried it into the living room so she could sip it while sitting on the sofa and watching local news.
When she used the remote, it was already set for Channel One. A slick anchorwoman and a guy in a suit were talking about that serial killer, the Night Prowler. The suit was a cop, and he was assuring her that the police had leads they were following and would soon bring a resolution to the case. By that, Claire assumed he meant solve it.
Then the woman began asking about gifts the Night Prowler had apparently left in his victims’ apartments, often in the kitchen. The candy, gourmet foods, yellow roses, jewelry.
Jewelry!
Claire stiffened, spilling coffee onto the rug.
Oh, Christ! She hadn’t thought of this. She should pay more attention to the news.
She found she was standing but didn’t recall getting up.
Wait a minute! Calm down, for God’s sake. Think about the odds on this. You’re being stupid. You’re being… pregnant!
She went into the kitchen and ran water on a paper towel, then carried it, along with a dry towel, back into the living room. She rubbed the coffee spots on the rug with the wet towel, then patted them with the dry one, standing and using the sole of her slipper to press moisture from the stains.
It was an effort bending over to pick up the towels. Claire carried them into the kitchen, depressed the foot pedal on the plastic wastebasket so the lid would lift, and dropped them in with the trash.
And noticed something green in the wastebasket-an empty chocolate mints box half concealed by crumpled junk mail.
The mints she’d assumed were a gift from Jubal, and that were uneaten when Jubal left town.
The mints whose box she hadn’t thrown away.
Claire felt her throat tighten. If not Jubal, who had eaten the mints and put the box in the wastebasket?
Jubal might really not have known about the mints. Or about any of the other gifts.
Or the necklace.
He wouldn’t have lied to her about something like the necklace. Not Jubal.
The sense of dread she felt was for good reason.
I’m not being an alarmist. I’m not! Pregnant isn’t stupid.
She went to the phone and called the police.
62
“We’ve gotta go with it,” Pearl said. “It’s the pathetic sum total of what we’ve got. And maybe Claire Briggs really is in danger.”
“We all listened to her story,” Fedderman said. He was on the outside in their booth in the Lotus Diner because of his arm, which was still in a plastic cast and a sling. The breakfast crowd had thinned in the diner, leaving behind unbused tables and the strong scent of burned sausage and toast, ignored coffee residue cooking in a pot. “I don’t know about you two, but my guess is she’s got a problem with her husband. He probably bought the necklace for somebody else and she found it.”
“Hidden in her drawer?”
“Like the purloined letter.”
Pearl and Quinn stared at Fedderman. Pearl said, “The purloined letter wasn’t hidden under a bra.”
“She’s been getting anonymous gifts,” Quinn pointed out. “Including food.”
“Or so she says.” Fedderman inserted a finger beneath his cast and tried to scratch an itch, then gave up. “The woman’s a confessed chocoholic.”
“So am I,” Pearl said. “If that’s why you don’t trust her, you don’t trust half the human race.”
“I don’t trust anywhere near half. And Claire’s an actress. How can we know if she’s telling us straight? A pregnant actress, at that.”
Pearl glared at him. “Meaning?”
“Hormones,” Fedderman said.
“Hormones what?”
“Just hormones. If you’d ever had a kid, you’d know what I’m talking about.”
Pearl wished she could reach his injured arm.
Fedderman sipped his coffee, thinking his hormones explanation had carried the argument. “I say we have the local precinct run some extra patrols past her building. There’s millions of single women in New York, and every day hundreds of them place Night Prowler calls, none of which pan out. I don’t see why this Claire woman’s anything special that needs our personal attention.”
“She’s a celebrity,” Quinn said.
“Not much of one.”
“Costarring in a Broadway play.”
“Not for much longer, the way she’ll put on pounds. And every other woman you pass on the street in New York’s an actress. All you gotta do is ask ’em.” Fedderman scratched again at the plastic cast. It was obviously driving him nuts. Pearl was glad.
Quinn looked at Pearl, who was calmly buttering her toast. Apparently, both detectives had had their say about Claire Briggs.
“Renz thinks she’s enough of a celebrity that we have to cover ourselves just in case she’s right,” he said.
“What do you think?” Pearl asked.
“I don’t think we can ignore her story. She fits the pattern. And I know, before you tell me, the problem is that lots of women do. And lots of husbands with twisted senses of humor in this city are giving their wives
