Daughter of Darkness (11 page)

    As soon as Jenny introduced herself, the blonde said, "Oh, yes, you're the one who walks on water." Before Jenny could say anything, the blonde stuck out a hand and said, "I'm Andi Teller. Ted's been telling me about you all morning. And I mean
all
morning. The way he was describing you, I thought walking on water was just one of your many talents."

    Jenny smiled and shook Andi's hand. "Ted's sort of my unofficial uncle. I think he's slightly prejudiced."

    "Well, he sure wasn't exaggerating about one thing, anyway," Andi said. "You're just as beautiful as he said you were."

    Jenny blushed. She'd never been good at accepting compliments, and she didn't like being the center of attention. It put too much pressure on her. And, she was naturally shy. Good looks didn't necessarily make you gregarious.

    "Like some coffee?" Andi said. "I made it, so it's safe to drink. Ted's is like car oil."

    Jenny shook her head. "No, no thanks, I'll just sit down over here if you don't mind."

    "Ted's running late with his sitting." Andi said. "I'll go tell him you're here. That'll hurry him along."

    There was a door in the corner. Andi opened it and disappeared.

    Instead of sitting down, Jenny walked around the reception area. The walls were filled with examples of his portraiture. He made things pretty, Ted did; too pretty, actually. But that was why people paid him so well, because he could deceive them into believing that they were something they were not. The overweight banker became the General Patton-like adventurer; the somewhat worn society matron became the ageless belle of whatever ball she attended. "I make them pay through the nose for their lies," Ted said mockingly to her once. It was the only side of him she didn't care for: the harsh, cynical side. She wasn't sure who he hated most-his clients or himself.

    Fortunately, she rarely saw this side. Most of the time, Ted was the amusing, even dashing artiste who lived his life exactly as he wanted. He was her father-confessor. She'd told Ted things she hadn't even confided to her mother. He could bind you up with his tenderness. He could make you feel all right about yourself-something not even a long line of shrinks had been able to do most of the time.

    The funny thing was, when she waited for him out in the reception area this way, she always got butterflies, as if she was about to have a date she didn't know very well. She knew why. She wanted him to like her, and she was afraid she'd disappoint him in some way.

    Andi came back. "He said ten more minutes, max."

    "Thanks."

    She sat down next to a table filled with magazines about photography and art. A copy of this morning's newspaper lay across several magazines. She scanned the headlines above the fold. The phone rang. Andi answered it and began chatting with somebody. Jenny turned the newspaper over to see what was on the bottom of the fold.

    
DEAD MAN DISCOVERED IN MOTEL

    Jenny had an image of an ax being buried in the precise center of her forehead. The headache was that visceral. She grunted so sharply with the pain that Andi looked up, cupped the phone, and asked, "Are you all right?"

    But instead of answering, Jenny staggered to her feet, grabbed her purse, and hurried to the front door. The bathroom was down the hall. It was a large room with a dusty skylight. The fixtures were new and the paint was fresh. She went into the first of the two stalls and threw up.

    She was terrible at throwing up, and always had been. It terrified her. She felt she was going to choke and die. Her mother had always been there to hold her, to comfort her, to reassure her. But Jenny was too old for that now, of course.

    It took two passes, kneeling next to the new white toilet bowl, to empty her stomach.

    She stood up and walked shakily to the twin white sinks and the long mirror that stretched out above them. She opened her purse and took out a plastic toothbrush holder, a tube of Colgate white, a tiny vial of Chanel Number 5, and a bar of beauty soap. She spent ten minutes working on herself. She wanted to be perfectly fresh for Ted.

    The headache had subsided but not her dread of what she'd read in the newspaper. Twice now a reference to the Econo-Nite Motel had made her head erupt with blinding pain. But why should it? What did she have to do with what had happened at the Econo-Nite Motel? Nothing.

    But she couldn't recall eight days and nights of her life…

    She swallowed two aspirins, then hurried back to meet Ted.

    

    

    Quinlan drove his Mercedes sports coupe to the private airport where the hangar he leased housed his Lear jet. When people swooned at the extravagance of such a purchase, especially for a man whose business rarely took him out of the city, he pointed out that the Lear was nearly ten years old, and that he needed to escape from his work every now and then. He had been known to favor the Caribbean.

    His pilot, a chunky thirty-seven-year-old redhead named McReady, was climbing out of the cargo hold when Quinlan arrived.

    "You think there'll be room for everything?" Quinlan asked.

    "Should be," McReady said. "I've never seen you take this much on a vacation before."

    "Well, I'll probably be staying longer than usual."

    
Much longer
, Quinlan thought. After McReady took him to London, Quinlan would disappear into a clinic where plastic surgery would turn him into a new man. "Quinlan" would never be seen or heard from again. As soon as his last task was finished in Chicago, which should be tomorrow, "Quinlan" would be gone forever.

    "What're the weather people saying?"

    McReady, wiping his hands on his gray overalls, said, "Some storms over the mid-Atlantic. But they don't look like much. Should be an easy go."

    "Great." Then, "I've got something I want to load up myself."

    McReady smiled. "Be my guest. My daughter's got a dental appointment. I'm supposed to pick her up at school and take her. I'll be back here in a couple of hours."

    "No hurry. Everything looks like it's moving along fine."

    McReady nodded and walked out of the hangar, his whistle echoing off the curved steel ceiling.

    Quinlan moved quickly. He had a small gym-style leather bag that he wanted to put in the very back of the cargo hold. He climbed in and began rearranging trunks and bags. When he had cleared out a place against the rear wall of the hold, he slipped the bag in there, then covered it up with the trunks and other bags.

    Eight million dollars in cash. It had taken him four years to accumulate it in various ways. About a third of it had come from his inheritance. His father had been a Los Angeles attorney who'd attached himself to some very powerful studio people. After he'd helped extricate one of them from a difficult-and potentially criminal-tax situation, they'd all pushed some very high-visibility WORK his way. He'd made a lot of money and had left half of it to Quinlan-the
only
thing he'd left Quinlan. He'd been a terrible, absent father. Quinlan hadn't thought much more of his mother, a very beautiful but strictly decorous woman who'd died of a brain tumor. He'd overhead one of the maids laugh one day, "I didn't know she
had
a brain." And cruel as the remark was, he had to agree with it. His mother had been a dope.

    Eight million dollars in cash.

    That was the best way to start a new life. And to inaugurate a new face. The very best way.

    

    

    Most of the private investigators Coffey knew were jerks. They would literally do anything for a buck. Especially since the hi-tech revolution made spying a rather simple process. But the card Margolis had given him at the cab company led him to a surprising neighborhood.

    He had low expectations of International Investigations, Inc. In spite of the imposing name, the place would be a dusty walk-up in an ancient four-story office building. There would be a pebbled-glass door with chipped black paint giving the name of the place. Inside, he'd find a waiting room with a few spindly chairs and some very old
Time
magazines on a scarred and wobbly table. Cummings himself-that was the name on the card-would be dumpy, vaguely unclean, and smell of beer or whiskey. Or both.

    This was Coffey's composite sketch of private detectives.

    So he was surprised when he found that International Investigations, Inc. shared a new one-story, concrete-and-glass office building in part of the city that was bouncing back from urban blight.

    The cars parked in back of the building, in the International section of the lot, also surprised Coffey, a new Mercedes four-door sedan and a silver Jag.
The
silver Jag.

    Coffey parked on the edge of the lot with his motor still running. Whoever had hired this firm to check him out had money. This was not a sleazy gumshoe operation. They probably had indoor plumbing and everything.

    He sat there for ten minutes, trying to glimpse the clientele, when a young man in an Armani suit came out and walked over to the silver Jag. The man's hair was so sun-bleached it was almost white-just as it had been the other night when Coffey glimpsed him by the motel. The silver Jag was a prize, a collectible that could make people gasp. There had never been a car quite so dramatic in the sculpting of its body.

    The young man looked dour. Whatever was troubling him had made him lose appreciation for the gorgeous machine he was driving.

    He got in the silver car and drove away. He didn't even glance at Coffey.

    After a few minutes, Coffey drove away, too.

    

    

    Coffey had just returned from the library-and was making a fresh pot of coffee-when the front doorbell rang.

    He walked through the house, his cats Tasha, Crystal, and Tess trailing him, and went to the front door.

    
Takes one to know one
, he thought, peering out at the woman who stood on his front porch.

    It was easy to spot a male cop, that was for sure. It was the way they carried themselves, with a curious mixture of arrogance and humility-arrogance because they carried the badge, humility because police work was not easy. You failed a lot. Now even the women cops had started to look like cops. This one had curly red hair, wore gray slacks, a gray tweed sport coat, a crisp button-down blue shirt with a small scarf wrapped around her neck. She was looking around the porch and then at the adjacent yards. The combination of arrogance and humility was easy to see on her round, slightly snub nosed face. The hard blue eyes were especially coplike. He wondered what the hell she wanted.

    He opened the door.

    "Hi," she said, "are you Mr. Coffey?"

    He nodded.

    She reached into the left pocket of her tweed jacket and brought out her ID.

    "Hey," he said, trying to act surprised, "you're a cop."

    "Homicide detective, Mr. Coffey. Margie Ryan."

    "Homicide? Wow." He intentionally tried to sound naive and surprised. He was having a little fun with her. He wondered if she knew it.

    "I'd like to speak to you for a few minutes if I could."

    "My house is sort of a mess."

    She smiled. "So's mine." She had a nice, girly smile. The kind that could trap bad guys into believing that she wasn't tough at all. That would be a fatal misperception on their part.

    "I guess," he said, "we could have a game of house mess macho."

    "House mess macho?"

    "You know, whose house is a bigger mess."

    "I'd win walking away, Mr. Coffey. I have a three-year-old and a five-year-old at home." She was obviously getting tired of his stalling. "So why don't we go inside and talk?"

    He poured them fresh coffee. They sat at the kitchen table. The sun was out. In the window was a cardinal, which was soon replaced by a blue jay. There was an autumn haze over everything in the distance. The air would smell sweetly smoky. Coffey wanted to be outdoors. Today would be a good day to rake the leaves in the backyard.

    He said,"I used to be a cop."

    "That's what I understand." In the sunlight angling through the kitchen window, Margie Ryan looked especially vivid, with her red hair and freckles. She wasn't pretty, she wasn't even cute, but there was a vitality in her eyes and mouth that was erotic. At least for Coffey, it was. "I also understand your wife and daughter were murdered."

    "Yeah."

    "I'm sorry. And you drive a cab now?"

    "Right."

    "The cab is why I'm here, Mr. Coffey."

    "God, couldn't we do better than 'Mr. Coffey?' I'm not a kitchen appliance."

    She smiled. "I'll bet you've used that joke a thousand times."

    "Two thousand is more like it."

    She sipped her coffee. "This is good."

    "Thanks. I combine three different kinds of coffee and then put a bit of mocha in it."

    "It works." Then: "Windy City Cab 701."

    "That's mine."

    "A man saw it parked in the lot of the Econo-Nite Motel the night there was a murder. Last night."

    "Yeah, I read about the murder."

    "Were you there?"

    "Yeah"

    "About what time was this?" She'd already taken a pocket-sized tablet from her sport coat and put it on the table. Now she took a red ballpoint from her pocket and clicked the tip out.

    He told her.

    "You were alone?"

    He looked at her. "I don't think you'd ask me that question unless you already knew the answer. Like a trial lawyer."