Kaleidoscope (26 page)

“That's all right. Something may jump out at me.” He discreetly looked at the clock he could see over Arthur's left shoulder. It was almost one-fifteen, and he hated to keep Sasha waiting. “I'll call you in the
next day or two.” He stood up and Arthur followed suit unsteadily.

“I'm deeply grateful to you, Chapman.”

“That's all right, Mr. Patterson. I hope you won't be disappointed.” Arthur nodded thoughtfully, barely able to consider that. Chapman
had
to find them. “I should warn you as well, this could be an expensive project.” Arthur looked up at him then with a wintry smile. “I've got nothing else to spend it on now, do I?”

Chapman smiled at him. It was a difficult question to answer, and he walked him quietly to the outer office, shook his hand, thanked him for coming, and then hurried back to his office to lock the slim file in the safe, and head out the door at a dead run. Sasha was going to kill him.

Chapter 15

John Chapman flew out of his office building on Fifty-seventh Street, and raced the two long blocks west, glancing at his watch, and catching his reflection in shop windows. Tiffany … I. Miller … Henri Bendel … it seemed to take hours to get there and he knew how she hated him to be late, but he couldn't hurry Arthur Patterson out of his office after all. The man was ancient and he was dying, and Chapman was intrigued by the case. But he also knew Sasha wouldn't understand that.

She was twenty-eight years old, sinew from head to foot, and every ounce of her was disciplined to perfection. She wore her blond hair pulled back so tight that it looked as though it were painted on her head, her green eyes had a Slavic til, and she wore her lips in a constant pout, which had seduced him from the first time he'd seen her. They had met at a friend's house, a ballet buff, who raved about how talented she was, and how extraordinary she'd been as a little girl. And now she was even more so as a big one. The daughter of Russian émigrés, she had studied for years at the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, and then gone on to Juilliard
as a young girl, where she'd been a star already in her early teens. At twenty she had been invited to join the American Ballet Theatre. And at twenty-eight, she was not a prima, but she was a fine dancer with a solid career to be proud of. She indulged in the jealousies of her troupe, and it irked her not to be one of the prima ballerinas, but in truth she was too small to be more than one of the corps of dancers. She had the consolation of being very good, and she told John that every chance she got, when she wasn't complaining about her feet or the fact that he was late coming to meet her. But even though she wasn't easy to get along with, for months, John Chapman had found her enchanting … her discipline, her intense routine, her talent coupled with her tiny face, her feet that seemed to move on butterfly wings when she danced, the huge green eyes … there was something very special about her.

“You're half an hour late.” She glared at him halfway through a cup of borscht, when he breathlessly reached her table at the Russian Tea Room. The atmosphere was precisely as it had been for the past fifty years, and they both loved blini and caviar. Besides, it was close to where she rehearsed, and they met there half a dozen times a week, for lunch or after rehearsals, or even after performances, late at night, for a quick bite before they went home to his apartment. She lived with four other dancers, and it was impossible to talk, let alone make love in the West Side walk-up that was always filthy and drafty. But her green eyes were looking up at him in reproach as he apologized and sat down. “I was thinking of leaving.” She looked like an angry child and he realized, as he always did, how much he loved her.

“I'm glad you didn't.” He gently touched her hand, and smiled at the familiar waiter. He was an old Russian who chatted with Sasha in her maternal tongue. She had been born in Paris, but still spoke Russian with her parents.

“I was hungry.” Her eyes bore into his mercilessly. “That's the only reason why I waited.”

“I'm sorry. I had an important case. The head of a major law firm needed some help, I couldn't shove him out the door.” He smiled placatingly at her, wondering how long it would take him to get back in her good graces. Usually, not long, her anger was hard and quick to burst into flame, but generally it abated fairly quickly. “I'm sorry, darling.” He touched her hand again, and she looked only slightly mollified by his contrition.

“I had a very difficult morning.” She looked petulant, and more beautiful than ever.

“Something wrong?” He knew how she worried about her feet and her legs and her arms … it was not easy being a dancer. A pulled muscle, a torn ligament, and her life could be changed forever.

“They were trying to introduce a new choreographer, and he's impossible. He makes Balanchine look lazy by comparison. This man is mad. You cannot dance the way he asks you.”

“
You
can.” Chapman smiled proudly at her. He thought her a remarkable dancer. And this time, she smiled at him. He was almost forgiven.

“I'm trying. But I think he's trying to kill us.” She sighed and finished her borscht. She didn't want to eat too much before rehearsal that afternoon, but she was still hungry. He had just ordered blini, and she was tempted but that was too heavy for her when she was
dancing. “Maybe I'll have a salad.” She told the waiter in Russian and he nodded and disappeared as she told John about her woes of the morning. She asked him nothing about his case. She never did. All she ever thought of was dancing.

“Are you rehearsing tonight?” he asked with eyes full of understanding. He was a kind man, and he didn't mind their life revolving around her work. He was used to that. His ex-wife had been a writer, and he had sat patiently for seven years while she churned out mysteries that had eventually become major best sellers. He had respected her as a woman and a friend, but it hadn't been much of a marriage. Everything had come second to her work, even her husband. She had been a difficult woman. The whole world had to come to a shrieking halt when she started a book, and she expected John to protect her from any possible interruption. And he had done a fair job of it, until the loneliness of his life with her overwhelmed him. Her only friends were her characters, every plot she wrote became real to her, and she wouldn't even speak to him while she was working. She worked from eight in the morning until midnight, every day, and then went to bed, mute with exhaustion. In the morning, she'd start again, but she didn't talk to him over coffee because she was already thinking about the book. It had been lonely being married to Eloise. She wrote under the name of Eloise Wharton. And when she wasn't working on a book, she was either in a major depression because she wasn't working, or she was on tour in thirty cities in forty-five days, pushing her latest epic. He figured out before he asked her for a divorce that they spoke to each other on the average something like thirty hours a year, which was something less
than what he needed for a happy marriage. They loved each other, but she loved her work more. And he wasn't even sure how much she understood when he left her. She had been deep in a book, and there had been only the vaguest of answers as he said goodbye and closed the front door behind him. It was a relief, oddly enough, he discovered that it was less lonely being alone than being with her. He could play the stereo, sing when he liked, have friends over who made as much noise as they wanted. He went out with other women. Life was fine. And the only thing he regretted was that they had never had any children. He and Eloise had been divorced for five years, and he was only now starting to think about getting remarried. In fact, he had been thinking about it a great deal lately.

Sasha had nodded in answer to his question about rehearsal. “
We
are rehearsing until eleven.” She still spoke English like someone who had learned it as a foreigner, and yet she had no clearly discernible accent.

“Can I pick you up?” His eyes filled with hope, and he told himself that he was not repeating the same pattern. He was not leading his life entirely around Sasha's dancing. Besides, she was so much more alive than Eloise had been. She was so vital, and exciting. Eloise lived in a dark room, with a single light burning over her head, haunted by imaginary people. And she hadn't changed in the last five years. She had only become more successful. She was one of the most successful mystery writers in the country. The new Agatha Christie,
The New York Times
had hailed her, and
Publishers Weekly
agreed. She was forty-one years old,
and she lived in a world of fantasy. Not like Sasha … not at all …

“Thank you. I'll be at the stage door at eleven-ten.” And he knew she meant it. She had the precision of a surgeon. “Don't be late.” She frowned and wagged a graceful finger.

He smiled at her, and touched her knee under the table. “I won't. I'm not working tonight.” All he wanted to do was read the file Arthur Patterson had left him, and that couldn't take him more than an hour, possibly even less. In fact, that was what he was afraid of, that there wasn't anything in it of any real substance. “I'll just look over the files on this new case.”

“Don't get too interested.” She frowned at him. He had done that before, and been an hour late after a performance. She wouldn't tolerate that from him, or anyone in fact. She didn't have to. As she pointed out to him regularly, she was a
real
artist.

“Do you want me to take you back?” He looked hopeful, like a schoolboy anxious to please her. It was something about him that had pleased every woman he'd been involved with, even Sasha, although she didn't admit it to him. She never told him how much she loved him, or how much she liked his company. It was beneath her to say those things, and he didn't need to know them.

“I'm meeting some of the others in five minutes, John. On the corner. I'll see you tonight?” She stood up, tiny and exquisitely erect, her back like a beautifully sculpted slab of marble, and one eyebrow raised over the olive-green eyes. “On time, yes?”

“You're a tyrant.” He stood to kiss her and watched her go, as he sipped his tea, and then paid the check.
Something about her
always
left him feeling unnerved and excited. As though he wanted more, as though he couldn't get enough, as though she would never let him possess her. It was as though she danced away from his grasp each time he reached out for her, but in some ways he liked it. He liked chasing her. He liked everything about her. She was so much more alive than Eloise, and the endless numbers of women attorneys and ad execs he had taken out in the five years since he'd divorced her. Sasha was entirely different.

He walked back to the office, more slowly this time, thinking of Sasha at first, and then of arthur Patterson and the three women he wanted him to find. It was an odd story and he couldn't help wondering if there was more to it than Arthur was telling. There was a piece missing to the puzzle somehow, maybe even several of them. Why did he want to bring them back? What did it matter if they met now? They were grown women, having led separate lives, what could they possibly have in common? And why did Arthur Patterson feel so guilty? What had he done? Or what hadn't he done? And who were these women's parents? John's mind whirled over the questions as he walked along. He was good at what he did because he had an uncanny knack for seeing the pieces that were missing and then finding them, like the proverbial needle in the haystack. He had found more than a few, and had been crucial in several major cases. His most astounding work had been in the field of criminal law, and he was respected by attorneys and courts all over the country. Arthur Patterson had come to the right place. But John Chapman wondered if he could find the missing women.

He took the file home with him that night and pored
over the little that was there. It was pathetic how little there was, though. Arthur had been right. There wasn't much there to help him. Only what he had said in the office. There were all the clippings of the trial, which John read first, intrigued by the unspoken elements of the story. Why had Sam Walker really killed his wife? Was it premeditated, as some thought, or a crime of passion? What had the woman done to him, and who was she? In a way, he didn't need to know those things, and yet the questions intrigued him. He read reviews of several of Walker's plays, and remembered seeing him once as a little boy. All he remembered was that it was an impressive performance and he was very handsome. But more than that he didn't remember.

There was a brief note in Arthur's trembling hand, explaining that he and Sam Walker had been buddies in the army. There was a list of the places they had been, and a description of their first meeting with Solange, which was surprisingly lyrical for a man his age, and one who had written nothing but legal documents and briefs all his life. And John wondered if therein lay some of the answers. Perhaps Arthur had been in love with her. Or perhaps it didn't matter. The facts were still the same. Sam had killed Solange for whatever reason, leaving their three children orphans.

The eldest had gone to relatives at a Charlestown, Mass., address, an Eileen and Jack Jones, and Arthur knew she had gone to Jacksonville from there, because she had told him so when she'd come to his office in 1966, seeking her sisters' addresses. Arthur had mentioned in a footnote that she had been less than cordial. He said too that she mentioned having been in juvenile hall in Jacksonville, and John wondered if she
had gone afoul of the law as a young girl. If so, she may have done so again, and he might be able to find a rap sheet on her. That would make her easier to find anyway, especially if she was sitting in prison somewhere. But at least he could tell Patterson he'd found her.

The second one had gone to one of arthur's partners, who had then died, and the widow was God knows where, remarried to God knew who. That one was a healthy project. He'd have to start with the Gorham files at the firm, and pray they'd had to contact her for something in recent years, maybe a trust or some other lingering detail of the estate Arthur knew nothing of since he was not one of Gorham's trustees … and then there was the baby.