There were no tables at Stella’s, only a long narrow bar. Sloane sat on a black plastic-covered barstool, tossed Jane’s keychain next to her, and rubbed her shoulders. Gary’s sofa had seen better days. Every few minutes, she glanced up at the other regulars’ reflections in a grimy mirror. They were a stoic crowd, eating their lunch while they drank a noontime nip, never maudlin or offering more than a head nod as a greeting or farewell.
“Your usual?” a voice seasoned with tobacco and age asked. It was Mel, Stella’s granddaughter and current proprietor. She was an old-school barkeep with a perpetual tan and flaxen hair out of a bottle cut close on the sides and spiked on top. Sloane came to Stella’s for Mel’s low-key personality and her discretion. She placed a setup and glass of water in front of Sloane.
“Yeah. Thanks.” Sloane had returned from an early trip to Manhattan, where she had tracked down Jane’s PO box at an upscale mail shop off Fifth Avenue. And the only thing she could think was why weren’t the Wests’ investigators able to find them? Stake out the mail shop. Find Jane. It made no sense. Unless Harold had lied. But he hadn’t. She could read a person’s tell. Well, everyone’s except for Jane’s.
She rubbed her thumb over a pendant attached to Jane’s keyring, a silver Tree of Life with intricately carved roots, limbs, and leaves. Two branches held a transparent bead with a five-sided star at its center. A pentagram. She had admired it since she was little, but Jane never let her play with it.
“Here you go, doll. One hot pastrami with fries.” Mel set down a plate and leaned against the bar. “I heard what happened yesterday. Lunch is on the house.”
“You don’t have to do that, Mel.”
“I know. But I’m going to.” She winked. “Let me know how I can help.”
Sloane kept her head down, ate her lunch, and replayed the events of Harold’s murder in her head. Their meeting. Who knew about it? His nephew. What the hell was his name? Charlie. That’s right. What did he know? Did he benefit from their deaths?
She smeared her fries in a ramekin of ketchup and thought about the shooter. Who was he? How’d he get in the building? And how the hell did he shake off her first kick?
She thought about Harold. He had seemed genuinely kind and to have cared about the Wests a great deal. Enough to get her to come to Denwick. He knew about Jane’s past. Hell, all she had were some old journals she found when cleaning out Jane’s apartment. She read the leather books from cover to cover. She had hoped they would hold a history of Jane’s past. Clues. But instead, they were records of every patient Jane had in her psychology practice and all the criminals she had profiled for the FBI. The only entries about Sloane were instances Jane had had to calm her. Jane called it her escalating anger.
“You done here?” Mel asked, bringing Sloane back.
She pushed her plate away. “Yeah.”
Mel turned, grabbed a whiskey bottle off a shelf behind her, poured a double, and slid the tumbler across the bar. Then she picked up the empty plate.
“You got a second, Mel?” Sloane asked.
“Anything for you, doll.”
“I took a photo of the shooter.” She pulled up the man’s picture on her phone. “Have you ever seen him before?”
Mel squinted at the screen. “No. Never seen him.”
“Could you ask around?”
“Text me the picture.” She rapped the bar with her knuckles. “Oh yeah, the missus says you need to come to dinner again. You know she likes to have the young ones around.” She laughed a throaty laugh.
Mel was Sloane’s best and most trustworthy informant. She had ears and eyes spread out across the five boroughs. So if she didn’t recognize the shooter or know someone who did, he wasn’t local. Her phone rang. No phone conversations at the bar. House rules. She gulped her whiskey, laid a twenty for a tip, and gave Mel a nod goodbye.
Outside she answered, “West speaking.”
“Hey. It’s Jac. The CSIs are done at your place. You know they don’t clean up, right?”
“Yeah, I know.”
“We got contacts for bioremediations. I can put in a call for you.”
“No thanks. I’ll take care of it.” The afternoon sun glared off the concrete, and she dug through her tote for her sunglasses. “Have you identified the shooter?”
“Nothing yet.”
“No fingerprints? DNA?”
“The ME’s backed up, but they’re working on it. And before you ask, we’re jammed up with the Canadian consulate and Mr. Huxham’s next of kin.”
“Any leads?”
His voice rose. “You know I’m not gonna tell you that.”
“Are you at least looking at the Wests’ will and the beneficiaries in Denwick?”
“We don’t even know who the shooter is.” His voice calmed. “You know we gotta rule out local before involving the Canadian authorities.”
“You’re wasting time, Jac.”
“And you might hold more sway if you were back on my team. But right now, I need you to stay out of it. Remember, he tried to kill you, too.”
“C’mon, Jac.”
“I mean it, West. You need to be careful until we know you’re safe. I’ll call you when I know something.”
Sloane rounded the corner and walked the two blocks home.
Gary and a couple of his associates stood on the stoop. When she approached, they stopped talking. “The cops are gone,” Gary said. “I took the tape down and tossed the cat back inside. But your front door ain’t shutting.” He flicked a cigarette butt onto the sidewalk. “I got a guy coming to fix it tomorrow, ahight?”
“Yeah. Thanks. And thanks again for last night. You’re a regular Martha Stewart. The extra quilt was the perfect touch. And Bear loved her satin pillow.”
The other guys fell about laughing. Gary threw up his arms. “What’s so funny? I’m a good host.” He followed Sloane up the stairs. “You felt at home, right?”
“Yeah, Prence. First class. The homemade crumpets with our tea were”—she kissed the tips of her fingers—“delicious.” She could still hear the guys howling in laughter as she walked down her hall.
The apartment smelled like homicide—a mixture of body fluids and forensic chemicals. She opened the bay window. Bear appeared at her feet, leaped onto the window seat, and meowed.
“Don’t worry about any of this. I’m cleaning up right now.” She scratched Bear’s chin until she purred and curled up in the afternoon sun.
Sloane laid Jane’s mail from her secret PO box on a side table next to the sofa. She stared at her mother’s armchair, soaked with Harold’s blood. Her face flushed hot as she kicked the chair on its side and shoved it into the hallway. Then she slammed her front door shut, but it swung open, hanging askew on broken hinges. She kicked it repeatedly until it jammed into its frame, shutting out the chair, blocking out the murder. Sliding to the floor with her back against the wall, she buried her head in her knees.
The bastard killed an innocent man. A kind, thoughtful man. For what? And Jacobson was wrong. Harold was not an unfortunate victim caught in the crosshairs of some vendetta against her. But he was right about one thing. She was in danger. Because whoever hired the shooter only got half of what they paid for.
Over the next four hours, Sloane cleaned her apartment with a stack of torn-up T-shirts and a bucket of diluted bleach. Harold’s blood had splattered as far as the kitchen and as high as the ceiling, and a film of fine black dust left by forensics covered every surface from the front door to her desk.
After removing all traces of the crime scene, Sloane took a hot shower and wrapped up in a thick cotton robe. She opened a diet soda and sat on the velvet sofa. The setting sun illuminated the reproduction of Morisot’s The Garden at Bougival . Its effulgence emphasized the delicate brushstrokes that made the painting dance. Sloane was a child the first time she noticed the movement. She had brought a science project home and needed her parents’ eyes and hair color.
Jane said, “We’ll have to make something up for your father’s features.”
Sloane cried, “I don’t want to lie. If I don’t tell the truth, my experiment won’t be valid.”
Jane walked around her desk and held Sloane in a tight embrace, swaying them side to side in front of the Morisot as if they were two of the dancing flowers. “You aren’t lying if you don’t know. I could tell you something fantastical about witches, Demons, and other mythical beings or about a boring man from California. But instead, I’m telling you the truth. I simply can’t say, pet. Someday, you’ll understand. But not today.”
Bear pawed at Sloane’s leg, and she returned to the present.
“Hey. You hungry? Me, too. Let’s have some dinner and go to bed. Tomorrow we identify the shooter.”