Four-fifty Sutter was a landmark art deco medical building in downtown San Francisco with a lobby that dazzled the eye with its bold geometric Mayan patterns in gold, bronze, and silver. It wasn’t a surprise that an upscale family like the Skinners would patronize an optometrist here, with a sweeping view of the city from the twelfth-floor waiting room.
“Ms. Lindsay?” a slender young woman with long prematurely gray hair said. She had just exited the back office and stood at one end of the counter with a thick file folder under her arm. Not far away, an older man in a lab coat, with a salt-and-pepper goatee, helped a woman try on frames that appeared to have wings on the side.
“Yes,” Colleen said, setting the office copy of Ladies Home Journal back on the table and standing up, smoothing out her skirt, strolling over to the counter.
“We finally found the order you asked about,” the woman said, holding up a yellow carbon copy of a medical form.
“Excellent,” Colleen said. “May I?”
The young woman handed the order to her. Colleen read it, standing at the counter.
An order for a replacement pair of spectacles for Kieran Skinner, dated November 22, 1967. The day after Margaret Copeland’s body was found in Golden Gate Park. The word RUSH was highlighted with an exclamation mark and a double circle around it.
Colleen’s excitement was offset by the chilling thought of Margaret’s final moments.
“This is just what I need,” she said, handing the order back. “May I have a copy for my records, please?”
“May I ask why?” the woman said, holding the order form with both hands between thumb and forefinger.
Colleen feigned a pleasant laugh. “Oh, it’s a birthday surprise. We’re going to do a roast. We’re gathering a few mementos of the times Kieran kept the family on their toes and this was one of them. He managed to break his glasses the night before Thanksgiving, when the family was due to set off on a ski trip to Tahoe. They actually had to delay the trip and it’s become family lore.” It was such ludicrous BS, she hoped the receptionist might buy it.
“I don’t see why not,” the receptionist said, turning to make a copy at the Xerox copier behind her, the kind of thing Colleen was seeing more and more of. There hadn’t been such machines when she went to prison a decade ago.
The woman placed the copy on the countertop.
“Thank you so much,” Colleen said, reaching for the copy just as the man in the lab coat turned from where he was helping the woman with her winged spectacles.
“I’m sorry?” he said with an air of suspicion. “Who are you again?”
“I’m Carol Lindsay,” Colleen said, “Mr. Skinner’s new secretary.”
“And he sent you down here for a copy of an eleven-year-old receipt?” The man’s incredulous tone bared his disbelief.
Colleen gave a wonderful laugh. “Believe me, I have plenty of other things to do—as I’m sure you do as well.”
The man said to the receptionist, “Perhaps you better verify this with Mr. Skinner first.”
“Certainly, Mr. Park.” She reddened at her obvious transgression. “I won’t be a moment.”
“Absolutely,” Colleen said, taking the copy anyway, keeping it down by her side, and returning to her seat, sitting down. Meanwhile, the receptionist was leafing through the Rolodex on the counter, no doubt searching for Patrick Skinner’s telephone number.
Not good.
Colleen picked up her shoulder bag from the floor by her chair nonchalantly, opened it, slipped the order form into it, then quickly checked her watch, as if taken by surprise. “Oh, no! I forgot to feed the parking meter!” Standing up, she slung her bag over her shoulder and quickly left the office.
“Where is she going?” she heard the man with the goatee say behind her. “Did she just walk off with the copy of that order?”
“Oh, my,” she heard the receptionist say. Then, louder, calling after Colleen, “Miss Lindsay?”
“Call Security,” the man said.
Colleen didn’t dare risk waiting for an elevator. She dashed for the stairwell. One floor down she learned that there was no access back into the building from the stairwell. Next floor, same thing. Damn. She stepped out of her high heels and, holding them in one hand, the banister in the other, she made eleven speedy concentric loops down the stairs in her bare feet to the lobby, hoping that door wasn’t locked as well.
It wasn’t.
Breathing a sigh of relief, she slipped her heels back on and emerged from a gold-paneled door with Mayan sun patterns on it into the lobby. She was winded and filmed with sweat.
She hurried for the exit doors to Sutter Street, not making eye contact with anyone.