Eoin Miller 02 - Old Gold (22 page)

Traffic was going from bad to worse.

The Wolves were playing at home in a few hours, it was an important game and the roads were getting crowded. I almost felt the match-day buzz. It would have been the first time in a long time.

Laura had moved into a brand-new two-bedroom apartment on the corner of Key Gardens and Jeremiah Road. The estate had been called Saint Peter’s Walk back when we first looked at it. It was part of the very same urban renewal program that was driving the problems to new ground in Heath Town. A collection of three- and four-story houses along with apartment buildings, Saint Peter’s Walk wanted to feel like a gated community but without the gates. With the snarling traffic, it took me twenty minutes to do a half-lap of the ring road and find her apartment complex. As I drove I tried to think of tactful ways of addressing the subject of Thomasz Janas. I couldn’t think of a single way that didn’t either implicate me in murder or accuse her of covering up a crime. I decided to give up planning ahead and just wing it. Why change the habit of a lifetime?

I parked around the corner from the apartment building and walked round.

I’d never been inside, but from the outside it looked like everything she was and I wasn’t. Clean, modern, and well appointed. I imagined the usual pastel colors and simple white furniture. A pile of magazines on a coffee table. Maybe a photograph of us somewhere, hidden away in a shoebox. The kitchen would be the sparest room; I was always a better cook than she was. She wouldn’t have a cupboard full of spices or a fridge full of food.

As I rounded the corner, I caught sight of a familiar car. It was the same car that Bull had forced me into on the way to visit the sports club, and Bull was leaned against it, smoking a cigarette. He hadn’t noticed me, and I hung back out of sight.

I tried not to look at him, to turn my attention to the passing traffic, for fear of him feeling my stare. He shifted his weight on the car, and for a moment I thought he was going to turn and look my way, but he merely turned toward the car and opened the rear door nearest the curb. No sooner had he done so than the front door of one of the ground-floor apartments opened and Veronica Gaines walked out.

In the doorway I saw Laura, and the bottom dropped out of my stomach. In fact, the bottom dropped out of my world completely.

Veronica turned and said something to Laura, who extended her hand with a thin smile. Gaines took it in a quick shake before nodding a good-bye and ducking into the car.

Bull walked round to the other side and let himself into the back of the car. After a moment the car pulled away from the curb and vanished around the far corner, back into traffic. Laura looked around as if she felt me watching, then shut the front door.

I was numb.

Laura had let Janas go.

Janas was in hiding.

Veronica Gaines had warned me off the case.

Laura had warned me off the case.

They were both mixed up in it somehow, and now it seemed they were mixed up in it together. What the hell was going on?

Laura seemed surprised to see me.

She stood in the doorway for a moment without speaking before cocking her head to one side.

“I didn’t expect to see you,” she said.

Subtext:
How long were you out there? What did you see?

“I thought I’d surprise you,” I said.

Subtext:
I’m not sure what I’ve just seen, but I’m sure you know I’ve seen it.

She turned and walked inside the flat, leaving the door open for me to follow. The small hallway opened onto a large living room. It was not quite as I’d imagined it. The floor was hardwood, and the furniture matched it, aside from the wooden sofa’s pale-blue cushions. Besides unread magazines, the coffee table held a pile of paperwork and two coffee cups. Her work clothes were slung over the back of an armchair against the far wall awaiting ironing. Next to the television on a wooden entertainment unit was a turned-down picture frame. I wanted to see the photograph, but I’d need to distract her first. The room still smelled of Veronica Gaines’s perfume, and my memory kicked me in the back of the head. It was the same perfume Laura had worn at Bauser’s funeral, and I’d not made the connection.

The silence was broken as some people walked past outside singing football songs.

“You going to the game?” Laura asked as she cleared away the coffee cups.

“No. Becker is, though.”

“He told me you’d found the missing student. Good work.”

“Thanks. He told you the rest?”

She shrugged. It said, I already know.

“So Perry’s going to be allowed to carry on?”

She shrugged again. “Why not?

“I suppose to expose him now would smear the force. Why spill all that blood when you can have a pet commissioner?”

“Something like that.”

She took the cups through to the kitchen, and I heard them clink as she set them down. Then I heard the sound of a kettle boiling and more cups being fetched out of a cupboard.

“Do you have sugar?” she called out.

“No thanks,” I said. While she was in the kitchen, I looked at the turned-down photograph. It was of the two of us a couple hours after the wedding. I was in a casual shirt and dark trousers, and she was wearing a black dress. We were both grinning like children.

My heart skipped a beat at the thought that she still kept the photo on display. Then I drifted to the obvious question. Why was it facedown?

Did she not want Veronica Gaines to see it?

I put it back as I’d found it when I heard her footsteps and turned as she stepped back into the room, holding two fresh mugs of coffee. She handed one to me and then sat on the sofa. I sat next to her.

“Listen, about the other night—”

She had cracked first, but I was losing interest in keeping score.

“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “Bad timing, that’s all.”

She nodded, and we settled into silence again. Familiar. Expected.

I looked around at the expensive furnishings. If not for Gaines’s perfume hanging in the air, I half expected I’d be able to smell fresh paint.

“Nice place,” I said. “The rent decent?”

She shook her head. “No rent. I own it.”

Interesting. She owned the flat just as I owned the house. I thought back to what she’d asked me the other night.
What happened to us?

“So it’s half mine then? Wow, I have better taste than I thought.”

She laughed it off, and we eased back into the seat. I smiled at her, and she smiled back. In my head I was still trying to find a way into it, the correct question to ask. I didn’t want to give anything away.

“Who was the cute woman I just saw you with?”

I watched her eyes as her brain ticked away. She knew. The fact that I knew about Perry’s dirty secrets told her I knew who Gaines was.

“Just a friend. She runs a local community program.”

I just sat there and nodded, watching her reaction. We never could completely bullshit each other. It had been part of what had made us work and what had torn us apart. We read each other better than anyone else.

“Are you getting involved with her program?”

“It’s not really my scene. But she has some good ideas, so I’m helping her out a little. You know, it helps the career.”

“Sounds interesting.”

“It’s really not. I’m already thinking it might be a waste of time. Thinking I might pull out before it becomes too much of a commitment, you know?”

“Just make sure you don’t get dragged in over your head. You could get dragged into something against your will, like me.”

“I don’t believe that,” she said.

“Don’t believe what?”

“The part about it being against your will. I’ve known you a long time now, Eoin, and you never do anything you don’t want to.”

I made a noise of protest, and she put up her hand.

“You quit a job that everybody told you to stay with. You left a marriage that everybody wanted you to work on. You’ve worked for people that all of your friends have told you to avoid. And now you’ve clearly found something else to worry about. None of that was ever against your will.” Laura was peering at me intently, as though reading something written at the back of my eyes. “Why are you here, Eoin?”

“Trying to see if you need my help, I suppose.”

“There you go. Trying to be a knight in shining armor.”

“A knight in rusty armor, maybe.”

“Old gold,” she said.

“What?”

“Wolves’ color, right? A knight in old gold armor.”

I laughed and pretended not to like that. How had she turned this into a conversation about me? Part of my brain was telling me she’d scored again.

“You’re never as hard or cynical as you’d like people to think.” Laura set her drink down on the coffee table and then put her hands on mine. “Don’t worry about me,” she said. “I know what I’m doing.”

That was as close to it as she was going to let me get.

“I hope so,” I said.

Because I sure as hell didn’t.

I needed to think, so I stopped at the supermarket for supplies before driving back home to cook and listen to music.

I put a couple of baguettes in the oven to warm and started a fresh pot of coffee brewing. As John Prine sang “Souvenirs” through my stereo speakers, I chopped and diced. I set some vegetables sizzling in a pan, pulled a pack of pork out of the fridge, and decided which spices to throw in.

The lyrics to the song bounced around my head. They seemed to fit Laura and me perfectly.

I needed to find the notebook, that was still clear. It was what Mary had stolen, and it was what Janas had destroyed my house looking for. If I found it, I could bring him out of hiding. But then what? Laura was involved with Gaines somehow and knew Janas. I couldn’t go to the police. I’d managed to get myself in too deep for that. Was it too late to go to the Mann brothers? Another fine mess I’d gotten myself into.

The notebook wasn’t in my house. It couldn’t be. Janas had known what he was looking for and hadn’t found it. My brain fizzed as I made another connection that should have been obvious. Posada had been broken into, but nothing much had been taken. That was where Mary had met me,
and that was another place the notebook could have been stashed. Had Janas found it?

I turned the meat over in the pan and piled the cooking vegetables on and around it, turning it around with my wooden spoon, hearing the sizzle almost drown out the music. I threw a pinch of turmeric and cayenne pepper into the pan and mixed it all together. It smelled good, and my world full of worries dropped away for a moment, then drifted back into my mind in some sense of order.

Draw Janas out into the open, hand him over to either Gaines or the Mann brothers, then walk away and forget it all.

On the stereo, John Prine gave way to Sugar. Bob Mould was singing about standing on top of the Hoover Dam and making a deal with the devil.

As I turned the heat off below the pan, my mobile rang. Everyone had the number, it seemed, except me.

“Eoin?” Rachel sounded a bit shaken on the other end.

“What’s up?”

“My flat’s been broken into.”

“Hang on a sec.” I pinned the phone between my ear and the crook of my shoulder so that I could continue dishing up the food. “What did you say?”

“My flat. It’s been trashed.”

“Does Mary’s boyfriend know where you live?”

The uncertain silence on the other end was enough of an answer. I set the pan down on the counter and concentrated on the phone.

“Rachel, pack a bag and come round to my place. Now.”

I gave her my address and ended the call. I cut the two baguettes open and split the contents of the pan between them. By the time I’d got the food set out onto two plates and two mugs of coffee poured out, Rachel was at the front door.

“You get a taxi?”

She nodded. She looked shaken, which would have been natural enough after a break-in, but this was worse. She’d put two and two together and gotten the same answer as me.

“He was after the notebook,” she said. “He must think I have it.”

“Do you?”

She gave me a look that told me to stop being stupid.

“Stay here for now,” I said. “He’s already trashed this place, so he won’t come back unless we give him reason to. I’ll figure out the rest later.”

“You want to find the book before he does?”

“Yes.”

“And when you’ve found it, he’ll come for you. What then?”

“You don’t want to know.”

We sat in silence while we ate. The food tasted great, the coffee tasted awful. You can’t win them all. Halfway through the baguette, she looked up at me with a smile, as if she’d just remembered a joke.

“I’ve been doing some reading,” said Rachel.

“What kind of reading?”

“For my project, my ‘you’ project.”

I laughed in spite of myself.

“There was a guy called Warren Zevon who died a few years ago.”

“Yes, I know. He sang “Werewolves of London.” Recorded an album as he was dying. I think I’ve got a copy.”

“OK. But do you know what he said before he died?”

“He said, ‘Enjoy every sandwich.’”

“Oh, OK, so you’ve already heard it.”