“Now we’re at the height of our practice. Trikonasana, triangle pose.”
Alice tried to keep her mouth shut, concentrating on the deep nasal breaths that were supposed to help her control her heart rate, release toxins, and center her thoughts on the present. She bent her right knee at a ninety-degree angle and spread her arms like an eagle, aiming her right fingers between her big and second toes and her left toward the sky. Her legs and arms quivered. She felt her heart racing. She did not, however, feel her past and future float away. She did not feel her worries leave her body.
Instead, she felt the oppressive heat of the 105 degrees and 40 percent humidity and the sour taste of regret for believing that a Bikram yoga class could help her escape from her reality, even momentarily.
She knew from experience that Otto, the teacher who’d affectionately been dubbed “the yoga nazi,” would not allow her to leave the room. This, after all, was the man who once asked a frazzled student to name a pose, only to say in response: “That’s right. Standing head-to-knee pose, not stand-in-my-front-row-and-check-out-your-hair-in-the-mirror pose.”
Despite the quick, cold shower after class, she could still feel heat escaping her body when she returned home to find Willie Danes waiting for her. This time, he had not remained at the curb. He was fiddling with a BlackBerry just outside her apartment door.
“Another workout, huh?”
She immediately wondered whether all this exercise made her look guilty. She had found a body, after all. Her life had been turned upside down by information that didn’t add up. Exercise was a form of escape for her, but would a cop like Danes see the trivialities of her daily routine as a sign of callousness?
“If you need something from me, Detective, you’re always welcome to call.”
She had meant to sound helpful, but the words came across as prickly.
“Didn’t want to inconvenience you, Miss Humphrey, but I do have a few more follow-up questions. Do you mind?”
She heard her father’s voice: Do not talk to them any more without a lawyer. She remembered Jeff’s advice: Three simple words: I want counsel. She stood with her key in the door and prepared herself. Just tell him you don’t want to talk to him right now. Tell him you think it’s best if you have an attorney involved.
But when she turned and looked him in the eye, she couldn’t do it. She knew any mention of a lawyer would immediately terminate the cordiality between them, however artificial it might be. They would officially be antagonists. It would be her versus the police. And they had power and information, and she did not. She knew she was innocent. She had nothing to hide. “Sure, Detective, come on in.”
This time, she took a bar stool at her kitchen counter. No more sitting low in the corner with a cop staring down at her.
“Have you ever heard of a girl called Becca Stevenson?”
She shook her head. “Is she connected to the man I found in the gallery?”
“She’s a fifteen-year-old girl from Dover, New Jersey. She’s been missing since Sunday night.”
“Oh, sure. I saw something about that in the newspaper a couple of days ago.”
“You don’t know her?” He handed her a photograph. She had dark eyes and a freckled nose. Her dark curls were blowing in the wind, but her pink cheeks looked like they’d be warm. She smiled as if she were trying to hide the tiny snaggletooth on the left side of her mouth.
“Pretty girl. No, I don’t know anything about her. Why?”
“We’ve had some leads come up, but I’m afraid I can’t discuss them.”
Alice could see only one possible connection. “Wait. Do you think she’s the girl from Hans Schuler’s photographs?”
“No, we don’t.”
“So—”
“I’m sorry I can’t share information with you, Miss Humphrey. But you said if we had any questions—”
“Yes, of course. I understand.” She understood this was a one-way street.
“So, just to be clear, you’ve never met or been in the same room or spoken to Becca Stevenson, the girl in this photograph?”
She didn’t like the way he asked the question, as if he were nailing her down for the record. As if he were ready to prove she was a liar. But she knew the truth, and she knew how it would look if she tried to avoid answering. “That’s right.”
“All right. Now I also wanted to talk to you about ITH, the company that was backing the gallery.”
“Uh-huh?”
“You say you’ve never heard of the company before?”
“That’s right.”
They were back on familiar territory, but how many times were they going to ask her to repeat the same information?
“Do you have any thoughts about what ITH might stand for?”
“I don’t know. I’ve tried digging around online, but I never found anything.”
“All right. And, just to be clear, you say you never met the man you knew as Drew Campbell before?”
She tried to hide her frustration as she described, once again, the series of events that had led to her first meeting with Campbell, her meeting with him at the gallery space, her acceptance of the job, and eventually her discovery of the body. She realized she must have sounded remote as she walked him through these facts, but she had recited them so many times that they hardly seemed real anymore.
“And you’re sure your father didn’t have anything to do with the gallery?”
“My father? Um, no, of course not. Why would you ask?”
“Just looking at all the possibilities here. Your father is a man of means. He is part of the broader art world—”
“So is, I don’t know—Brad Pitt, but I don’t think he had anything to do with Drew Campbell or the Highline Gallery.”
“There’s no need to get testy.”
She reminded herself why she had allowed him into her apartment in the first place. She was innocent. She was helpful. And she had nothing to hide. Innocent, helpful, forthcoming witnesses do not get angry.
“I’m sorry, Detective. It’s just—well, it’s a long story, but I’ve gone to great lengths to be independent of my family. Part of me thinks I wouldn’t even be in this situation if I hadn’t gone to those lengths, so I apologize if this is a touchy subject. My father and I had a kind of falling-out last year. If you’ve looked him up on the gossip pages, you might be able to figure out why.”
“I’m sorry, too, if I’m dredging up something for you.” They were both continuing their roles in this charade of civility. “But I have to ask: You spent nearly a year turning down your father’s offers of financial assistance, and then, lo and behold, a man you’ve never met before comes forward and offers you this golden opportunity to manage a gallery for a wealthy older man who would remain completely anonymous and allow you to call all the shots.”
“I realize it sounds ridiculous in hindsight, but—”
“It never dawned on you that the man cutting the checks might be your father?”
She felt herself flinch at the suggestion and wondered whether that blink she felt internally had manifested itself for Danes to witness. “No,” she finally said. “It didn’t.”
“ITH. Didn’t your father win an Academy Award for a film called In the Heavens?”
These questions were taking them into subject areas she never imagined. She knew Danes was wrong. Her father wouldn’t start a business and hire a man to draw her into it, just to force his help upon her. Would he? And even if he would, how did that explain Drew’s death? Or these questions about a missing girl in Jersey?
“I’m sorry, Detective. I don’t think I can help you any more.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying I don’t want to talk to you any more outside the presence of counsel.” She pictured Jeff, and then heard her father’s voice once again. It’s not about book smarts. It’s about stature. It’s about the ability to read a situation. To know what to say and how and when to say it. “My lawyer’s name is Arthur Cronin. Please call him if you need to discuss anything further with me.”
“Cronin, huh? That’s with a C, right?”
She had already thrown back two fingers of scotch when the phone rang. She let it go to her machine. “Miss Humphrey. It’s Robert Atkinson again, with Empire Media? I’d really like to talk to you—”
She picked up the phone and screamed over the screech of her machine. “Please stop calling me. I don’t want to talk to you. If you call my home again, I’ll seek a restraining order.”
She slammed the phone back onto the cradle as her cell phone began to chime. She was tempted to hurl it across the apartment, but checked the screen to see it was Jeff.
“Hi.”
“You okay?”
“Yeah. I finally filled my dad in on everything, then went to Bikram. I’m a little wiped out, is all.” She wasn’t ready to talk to anyone yet about Danes’s theory of her father’s involvement.
“I did some digging around with the corporate filings for ITH. I still don’t have an actual person who’s pulling the strings, but I did manage to get the name of the attorney who handled the incorporation.”
“That’s good, right?” She felt the panic beginning to subside. ITH could mean anything. Her father had made seventeen films in his career. The matchup of the letters was just a coincidence.
“Hopefully. The papers were filed in 1985, which I guess would make sense if this is an older guy who’s been using this corporation for other projects over the years. I thought I’d give the lawyer a call and see if I can get some basic information as a professional courtesy. His name’s Arthur Cronin. His office was closed for the day, but I’ll give him a ring first thing in the morning.”