Shuffle: A Novel Part 25

"Haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming night."

She breathed out, slowly. "Right," she said, voice quivering with adrenaline. "So we have to stop him."

"Which apparently means that I have to score some s.e.xy lingerie."

"Hey, I said seduce, not..."

"Yeah, yeah, Prudence von Panties-in-a-twist, don't worry. I'll get ready. Call me when he's released."

Callie hung up and I felt my heart constricting in my chest. What was I supposed to say to Arbor? I bit my lip, put away my mother's letter and returned the box to the closet. Then I took stock of my outfit.

"Not your best effort, Wild the Younger."

I started throwing tops and skirts out on the bed, emptying my dresser drawers. A... ahem... full seduction this would not be. But seduction still means s.e.xing it up, and that meant trying to cover my girth in the most flattering possible way.

(Side note... Can Death get it on? Does the Grim Reaper kiss with tongue? Also, what the h.e.l.l am I doing pairing orange plaid with pink stripes?) I needed to bring in the big guns. Someone who owed me a favor. I got on my phone again.

"Britta? Hey... I need your help."

"I literally cannot believe you're doing this."

Britta stepped back, curling iron in hand. "I mean, going for it with Arbor? You're like my hero."

Tootles ran between my feet, yapping his tiny head off. He curled up against Britta's shin, barking at the wall as though he were trying to scare away an intruder.

"He won't go inside the house, right?" I asked.

"Nah. He gets a little nuts sometimes, but he won't p.o.o.p himself or anything. I think he sees ghosts. In other news, you look freaking fabulous."

Nervously, I turned around and stared at myself in the mirror. "Holy c.r.a.p."

I did. Britta had done an amazing job. My outfit was understated, for me, but still bright and definitely in my style. The shirt was from Britta's closet. A tiny bit tight around the upper arms, but my blessings looked amazing in it. My hair was held in check by a cute headband, shredded cloth flower near my ear. It fell like a gorgeous red waterfall over my shoulders, gelled and curled to perfection.

"Thank you so much," I said.

"Send me the dirty pictures. Just kidding."

"Ha ha."

Britta packed up her makeup and hair-wrangling equipment in a large and rather intimidating looking tackle box a the kind serious fisherman use to store all their flies. She clipped Tootles's bejeweled pink leash onto his collar and left, walking back to her house in the crisp air.

The sun was going down. I waved at her from the front porch, shivering a little. I felt fragile. Like I couldn't touch myself, or allow the wind to get in my hair for fear of ruining what Britta had created. My phone rang. I hesitated for a couple seconds before answering.

"He just left," said Callie. "I'll be there in five minutes to pick you up."

"I'm ready."

I hung up and went back inside to retrieve my coat and my purse. In exactly five minutes, I heard the sound of tires on gravel. Callie beeped her horn once and I ran out, grabbing my keys and locking the door behind me.

"Hey." I tumbled in beside her. She wasn't driving the squad car this time, just Mom's old Lincoln. And she was in plain clothes. But I could see the outline of Buster, strapped to her hip.

"Wire me up," I said, brightly, concealing my nerves. I think I sounded optimistic. And definitely not terrified.

"Wow, little girl." Callie got a good look at me, and her eyes went wide. "Awesome. Hot. You're going to knock his socks off. Catch him with his pants down." Her eyes narrowed and she pointed a finger at me. "But not literally."

I held up my right hand. "I promise. No necking or heavy petting."

She held up a wiry doohickey and a battery pack. "I'm not sure where we're going to stick this, though, with your shirt that tight..."

"If you put it in my purse and I hold it over my shoulder, will you be able to hear?"

Callie shrugged. "Worth a try."

She swiveled in her seat and adjusted some things on the wire, tuning it to a radio frequency and performing a couple of sound checks with the big black box on the dashboard.

"This is exciting," I said. "No more fake spy equipment. I've graduated to the real deal."

"What?" asked Callie, distracted.

"Nothing. Never mind. How was Arbor, by the way? Did he say anything?"

She frowned as she stuffed the battery pack into my purse, wrapping the tiny microphone around one of the straps so that it hung just under the edge of the mouth.

"No," she muttered. "It was weird. He just sat there. Gave polite, concise answers to all our casual questions. Where were you on the night of such-and-such. Why all the unexcused absences from school. Blah blah blah. What were you doing on the Fourth of July. There's no record of an Arbor Vitae Damo da Rosa coming into the country in the last six months, by the way."

There wouldn't be. Or would there? Does Death fly commercial?

"Anything else?"

"He refused to answer anything directly related to the murders. Just said that he had no pertinent information, and requested to be released. Finally we had to let him go."

Callie finished her adjustments, put in an ear piece and did a final sound check. Then she sat back. She looked off into the distance, beyond the white fence and the bluff at the end of our backyard to the flat, brown plains.

"It was so odd... I know this sounds paranoid, Evi, but he wouldn't look directly at me. It gave me the w.i.l.l.i.e.s."

"How do you mean?"

She bit her lip and started the engine, backing us out of the driveway. "It was like his eyes were always a little out of focus. Like he was looking at something slightly above my head."

"And to the right?"

"Yes!" She snapped her fingers. "That's it exactly! Does he always do that?"

I shrugged. "Pretty much. I've gotten used to it."

"Huh." She frowned. "I asked Toby about it. He was there too. Wanted to take over the interrogation himself, but I wouldn't let him. Anyway, he didn't notice it."

"Bizarre."

"Look, we can still abort," said Callie. "You're sure he's not dangerous?"

"One hundred percent positive." My voice might have wavered before, but it didn't now. "Trust me," I said. "Please."

We were quiet on the drive out, past the cozy residential greenery of downtown and the rusty gas stations near the freeway. The long bare stretch of Division Street brought us finally to the mounds of dirt, construction equipment, and muted gla.s.s of the condominiums at 1313 Wyndham Court. The potted ferns were menacing as we came up the drive. Like a silent escort into h.e.l.l.

Callie parked in the lot. I noticed Arbor's Benz among the other sleek, expensive cars.

"Don't you need a permit?" I asked, as we got out. She just raised her eyebrows at me and flashed the badge pinned to the inside of her coat. "Oh, right."

We pa.s.sed newly planted flowerbeds on the bright, even concrete path to the front door of the building. No doorman on duty this time. I pushed the buzzer for unit number 601. Callie tapped her foot nervously. I held my breath.

The speaker crackled and hissed; Arbor's deep voice came through. "Come up, Evangeline."

"How did you know...?"

But the front door was already buzzing. Callie caught it and opened it for me. She nodded and I slipped through first, leading the way to the bank of elevators on the right.

On the way up, Callie ran through the drill. She would stay in the hallway, listening on her earpiece. It was my objective to weasel any information I could out of Arbor, including what he'd done with the shoes and the book. If everything went according to plan, we'd have at least one new lead on the killer.

If everything went horribly wrong, Buster would take care of it.

Callie patted the bulge at her hip, and I gulped audibly.

"Remember, keep your purse on your arm," she said. "At least waist high. If you set it on the ground, I won't be able to hear."

"Okay. What if I'm forced to put it down? You know... if the social situation requires it?"

"c.r.a.p."

The elevator door opened and we stood in the hallway for a few moments as Callie muttered to herself. Finally she grabbed my arm and whispered, "If everything's okay, pretend to look in your purse for a mirror or a stick of gum or something and whisper a code word to me."

"Like..."

"I don't know. Banana."

"And if everything's not?"

Callie's face was grim. "Scream," she said.

I drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. "All right."

Callie found a table in the hallway on which to set her big black spy box, and promptly plugged in her earpiece. It would not only let her listen in, but would also record anything that my microphone picked up.

I went up to number 601 and knocked. Waited for what seemed like forever as Callie pressed herself flat against the wall, hand at her ear.

Arbor opened the door. "h.e.l.lo, Evangeline."

"How did you know it was me?"

Arbor shrugged. "I answer every buzz that way."

"Liar."

He stepped aside and let me in. The purse was over my right shoulder, heavy, pendulous, and uncomfortable. I gripped the straps with my left hand, holding it in place. My palms were slippery with sweat on the faux leather.

"Actually," he said, "I was hoping it was you."

He led me across the black and white room to a couch, and we sat down. I looked around at the modern art and the clean, white walls. The condo barely seemed lived in.

"No family pictures," I said, gesturing to the coffee table, the mantle. "We... Ellen and I... thought maybe you'd hidden them for the party. But there aren't any at all, are there? No parents."

Arbor was silent.

"And you can't tell me why."

"You are correct," Arbor said, carefully.

"I suppose that means I could figure it out for myself. Great." I sighed, and gritted my teeth. My chest was bound up in anxiety. "I think I know who you are," I said. "But I have no idea what your role in this is. Why you took that book. Those shoes."

"That is generally the point of secret keeping."

We stared each other down for a few moments. His face was emotionless as always, his eyes focused over my right shoulder. It was like there was a wall between us. I wanted desperately to break through and find the real Arbor on the other side of it. The one I'd glimpsed sometimes, as if I were just tall enough to peek over...

"Look," I said, clutching the purse to my stomach so that my words would be clear on the other end of the microphone. "I came here to seduce you into spilling information." I could almost feel Callie groaning out in the hall.

"I did notice that you've chosen to highlight your physical loveliness today," said Arbor. Flat. Emotionless. But what was happening behind that blank exterior?

"Callie and I need to catch the real killer," I continued. "I could play games and stuff, try to confuse you with feminine wiles, but the truth is I don't really know how to do that. And I doubt you'd fall for it." All the nervousness that I'd felt over this "seduction" situation was washing away, like silt down a mountain stream. It felt good to be honest with him, even if he couldn't return the favor.

"The killer's not going to stop. The message for the police, which I'm sure you know about in that mysterious way you have of just knowing things a the poem he left on Quentin's thumb a made that clear. So I'm just asking straight out. Can you tell us anything?"

Arbor stared at me. I don't know what I was hoping for with my speech, but I guess a reaction would have been nice. Instead he inched closer to me on the couch. A burgundy sweater was rolled up over his lean, muscular forearms, skin almost glowing in the soft light of the sunset. His knee brushed mine, and I felt faint.

He ran one of his hands up my bare arm and over my collar bone. White hot touch. Softly, his other hand went to my purse. He moved it out of the way, down to the floor, and closed the gap between our bodies. My heart raced as he dipped his head and nuzzled my neck. He breathed in deeply, as though he were trying to consume me with his senses.

He was still lavender in the rain.

I pulled him closer, fingernails skating over his back through the thin sweater. His hand brushed on of my b.r.e.a.s.t.s and he kissed me on the chin, the cheek, until his lips were at my ear.

Softly, so that there was no chance of the microphone picking it up, he whispered, "Who says that the killer's leaving messages for the police?"

I froze. He pulled away.

"Who else would they be for?" My voice cracked.

He got up off the couch and stalked to the other side of the room, clearly frustrated with himself. There was no answer, no indication that he'd heard me. He stared at one of the paintings. Black and white rectangles, almost touching across a span of blank canvas.