THERE WAS COFFEE waiting by the time Calliope made it to the kitchen the next morning. Not a good sign. Tom’s way of starting any kind of touchy conversation involved a preemptive peace offering.
She filled up a cup and took a drink, keeping her eyes on the mug. “Thanks.”
“No problem.” Tom picked at his acoustic guitar while his own coffee cooled in front of him.
The guitar was another bad sign; he expected a fight. He’d unconsciously pick up the instrument whenever things got tense, as though using the rigid body as a shield.
“You didn’t have to get up—”
“It’s no problem,” he interrupted. He turned his attention to the guitar strings. “I was already awake anyway.”
It was a simple enough comment, but gave Calliope all the context she needed. “Yeah. I’m sorry about the phone call last night.”
Tom’s eyes, barely visible behind lowered lashes, flicked over her clothes. “I assume Josh made it back into town all right?”
Calliope shook her head. “No, he—” She paused, processing what she’d seen. “Wait, what?” She scowled. “What’s wrong with my clothes?”
“Nothing.” His eyes were blue and steady and beautiful and, at that exact moment, annoyed her. He reached for his coffee and took a drink, looking at nothing in particular over the rim of the cup. “You look nice.”
Calliope glanced down at the skirt she had on beneath her usual leather jacket. “You—” She cut herself off. He hated it when she analyzed him. “I’ve got a meeting with Lauren.”
He dropped his hands and his attention to the guitar strings. “Ah. Lauren.”
Calliope set her own cup down, hard. “What?”
“Nothing.” He tuned a string. “Josh’s wife, right?”
Calliope’s face and chest were hot, her hands cold. “Yes.”
Tom strummed a test chord. “I’m . . . sure that will be tough.” He glanced up and caught her expression—raised a hand in a gesture of surrender. “Hey, it’s none of my business.”
“You’re—”
“I don’t have any right to comment on late-night phone calls with old boyfriends.”
“We work—”
“Yeah,” he said. “I know.”
The tone in his voice—tired the way DMV workers and court bailiffs were tired—stopped her, drained the heat out of her chest. It was the sound of someone who had stopped listening, simply to protect himself.
And Calliope felt exactly the same way.
The kitchen was quiet, except for a few tuneless chords.
“I’m sorry, Tom.”
He searched her face, looking for the anger that usually accompanied this particular dance. His shoulders relaxed. “Hey, don’t worry about it; it’s a bad morning. I get—”
“I should never have asked you to move in.” She walked out of the kitchen, her voice echoing strangely back at her. “Pack your stuff. Get out of my house. I’ve got to go. I’m late.”
The house was quiet as she pulled the door shut behind her.
The air around the corner of Bush and Taylor changed when Vikous arrived.
It was a distinctly unmagical place—everything from the streets to the sidewalks to the head-down pedestrians colored in various shades of gray—but for a moment, the air changed: filled with a hush stolen from a magician’s audience, thick with the sound of a daydreaming crowd.
A bus roared past a double-parked garbage truck, clouding the air with diesel smoke and timetables, and then he was there—hands jammed into his pockets, leaning against the cheap, painted façade of a three-story building as though he had been there all along—maybe he had been there all along, unnoticed. Pedestrians blinked, wondering what they’d been thinking about just then. A few checked their wallets as they walked by.
He was bundled in several layers of clothing under a threadbare trench coat, a hooded sweatshirt pulled up to cover his head and most of his face. Black eyes, shining like coat buttons, watched the building across from him. Watched the Jeep pull up outside. Watched a scowling Calliope Jenkins get out, unlock the door beneath a sign that read WHITE INVESTIGATIONS, and go inside.
By contrast, no one was watching Vikous. Passersby failed to acknowledge his presence even when forced to step around his (unusually large) feet. He didn’t bother making apologies; did not in fact seem to see the other people on the street any more than they saw him. He watched the door Calliope had entered and for several minutes—almost a quarter of an hour—that was all he did. At 8:42, he pushed himself away from the building façade, shifted his shoulders underneath his coat, muttered something that might have been “time to get to work,” and started across the street.
He’d made it four steps past the curb when a police car pulled up in front of the White Investigations office. Two uniformed officers got out and went inside. Two minutes later they emerged, Calliope (looking even more grim) walking between them, got back into the car, and drove off.
“Great.” Vikous watched them go; it might be accurate to say he stared. “Just . . . great.”
Thirty-five minutes later, Calliope walked into Lauren Hollis-White’s private office, under escort. Two men standing off to the side turned toward the door at her arrival. She ignored them and walked directly up to the woman’s desk.
“Lauren.” Calliope’s jaw was tight, her eyes bright. Lauren herself looked drawn and pale, but unsurprised by Calliope’s entrance.
She extended her hand without standing. “Calliope.” Her eyes flickered. “I like that skirt.”
“Thanks,” Calliope said. “What the fuck’s up with the cops?”
Lauren blinked, her arm still extended up and out at an awkward angle. She withdrew her hand and sat back. “It wasn’t my idea.” She looked over to the two men who’d been watching the exchange. Her voice was clipped and tense.
The younger of the two stepped forward. His dark, curly hair was trimmed neatly and his face was friendly in a sad sort of way. “We apologize for bringing you down here this way, Ms. Jenkins. I’m Detective Darryl Johnson and this is Special Agent Walker.” He indicated the lanky, spare-framed man behind him. “We understand that you left a message with Mrs. Hollis-White’s office this morning indicating you had information regarding her husband?”
Calliope nodded. She’d called early, during her drive to the office, knowing she’d get Lauren’s answering service. “Is there a problem? I was supposed to—” She stopped. Lauren, staring out the window, had let out a strangled sound somewhere between a gasp and a sob. Her eyes were wide and damp. Calli turned back to the detective. “What’s—”
Agent Walker moved forward. “Miss Jenkins, Joshua White’s body was found at approximately six A.M. this morning, just outside the city limits of Harper’s Ferry, Iowa. Foul play was involved.” The corners of his mouth tugged down, as though he’d bitten into something that had gone foul. “No offense, but we were wondering what you knew about it.”
Calliope dropped into the chair behind her desk and sighed. Afternoon sunlight forced its way in through the dirty window across the room and lit up dust motes floating in its path before it fell, exhausted, across the worn carpet. She glared at the patch of light, then at her skirt. She had no idea why she’d worn it; she’d had no illusions that it would help when she met with Lauren, even before everything she found out this morning.
“Josh wanted me to tell Lauren that he was hung up on a job and wouldn’t be back when he expected. He definitely didn’t sound like he was in any kind of trouble.”
“You and Mr. White both work in the same private investigation agency, Ms. Jenkins?”
“We are the agency.”
“I see. And do you know the nature of this new contract?”
“No. Josh handled it. I only knew he was headed out of town and when he thought he’d get back, which was last night. I can check the office for records but I think he had everything with him—it was very short notice. Are you absolutely sure—”
“Don’t you have family in that area of the country, Miss Jenkins?”
“ . . . What?”
“You’re familiar with the area Mr. White was found in.”
“What? Harper’s Ferry? Not really. It’s hours from my family’s place, and I haven’t been back there in ten years.”
“Was Mr. White? Had he been in the region before?”
“Yeah. He grew up around there. We drove there, once, a few years ago.”
“What was the nature of that visit?”
Calliope stared at her desk and the stack of envelopes she’d dumped across it when she’d opened the office that morning—bills and junk mail. There was only one message on the machine. Calliope hit the playback.
“Calli, it’s Josh.”
The connection was abysmal, even worse than it had been last night. “Listen, things have gotten a lot more complicated. It’d probably be better if you didn’t tell Lauren about what’s going on, at least until I figure everything out.”
Calliope stared at the machine. The next few seconds on the message were choked with static and nearly inaudible to her, smothered under the too-loud sound of her own breathing and the thump of her pulse. She started to lean closer, turning her head and lowering her ear toward the speaker to pick out anything she could, but the static suddenly cleared, leaving the recording so clear she could make out the rasp of Josh’s stubble against the mouthpiece. “ . . . get hold of him and he’ll be able to explain most of this to you. I’ll see you soon.”