Circles of Confusion (22 page)

"What?" Claire didn't follow her words until the woman pointed at the beeper she wore on her belt. She could remember when a beeper was a status symbol, meant you were a surgeon or something. Now anyone could wear one, including a maid and a robber. "And you're not hurt?"

"No." The woman looked up at Claire. "You must have something he wants. He kept asking where you were."

Those words had been enough to push Claire into action. At any moment the man could return. She had scooped her things into her mutilated suitcase, slipped the painting into her backpack, put her backpack on so that it lay across her chest, and left the hotel via the staircase.

Now Claire sat in 16A, a window seat in economy class. The plane was floating somewhere over the Midwest, but she didn't have time to be distracted by the patchwork of green and tan fields threaded with placid rivers that lay below them. Instead she was trying to decide if any of the other passengers on the plane looked suspicious.

In the airport she had seen a man who looked like Dante from a distance, but on closer inspection he was ten years older and twenty pounds heavier. And twice she had thought she caught sight of Troy, but instead each man had turned out to be a bored businessman in a crisp expensive suit, with a cellular phone in one hand and a calfskin briefcase in the other.

The plane was full, and the economy-class seats were arranged so that Flybees could pack in as many people as possible. Before coming to work for the state, Lori had been a stewardess. What had Lori told her Flybees was known as? Greyhound of the sky? Even when she stood in the half-crouch necessary to avoid banging her head on the overhead bin, Claire found she couldn't see everyone. Her seat- mates, a young couple in love with being in love, didn't look up from their nibbles and kisses.

She didn't even know who she was looking for. Dante? Troy? The acne-scarred man who had nearly knocked her down outside her hotel? A man in a baseball cap, like the man who had chased her through the American Museum of Natural History? A stranger who would refuse to meet her eyes? She tried to remember who she had told about this flight. Charlie, of course. But Claire also had a vague memory of telling Dante about the good deal she had gotten on the ticket price. And hadn't Troy asked her—perhaps, in retrospect, a shade too casually?—about her flight before he left her this morning?

But then again, Troy had been with her while her room was being broken into. Which made Dante a more likely culprit. Claire remembered the intensity with which he had talked about the painting, and the way his mouth had softened when he looked at it, like someone anticipating a kiss. She had actually felt a flash of jealousy of the painted woman. Dante had desired the painting for itself, not for the money it might represent.

But what if Dante were right? What if the painting was worth a fortune twenty times over? That would be enough to tempt any man to steal it, no matter if it were beautiful or not. And if Dante were right, that meant that Troy was wrong. Had Troy deliberately lied to her when he told her the painting was a pastiche? That would explain why he had asked her to sell it to him in Avery's viewing room. But if he had really planned on cheating her, why had he stopped asking her to let him sell it for her?

Her thoughts chased themselves, doubled back and came to the same dead ends. What had Dante called the hallmark of Vermeer's technique? Circles of confusion? For Claire, the question of who was trying to take the painting from her was beginning to overshadow the question of who had actually painted it.

She slid back down into her seat as a new thought occurred to her. Even if all the other passengers on this plane were what they appeared—travelers in search of a cheap fare—there was nothing to stop the hunter from following her to Portland. It would be easy enough to track her down. Claire winced a little, realizing it could be as simple as looking up her name in the phone book.

The painting, it was clear, wouldn't be safe stashed away at home. Whoever was after this painting was serious about it, and Charlie, despite her "Self-Defense for Seniors" classes, would be no match for whoever had neatly hogtied the maid this morning. Claire gave the painting a gentle pat through her jacket as she thought about where to hide it. It needed to be someplace she could get to fairly easily, but also a place others wouldn't be able to easily access. It had to be safe from the elements and from accidental discovery. Nothing seemed quite right, but she finally settled on an idea.

Still, she needed to warn Charlie. Her eyes focused on the phone set into the back of the seat ahead of her. There was a groove for a charge card, and the tiny print detailed outrageous charges. But Charlie—who had left Germany fifty years ago but still had a Teutonic sense of punctuality—would be awaiting Claire's homecoming. Claire's stomach rumbled a little at the thought of something warm and homemade—maybe a roast and mashed potatoes? Hiding the painting was going to delay her at least an hour. She reached for her Visa card.

The phone rang once, twice. Claire looked at her watch, frowning as she calculated the time in Portland. She knew Charlie's schedule as well as her own, and on a Sunday night at 7:15, the older woman would be settled down with a glass of red wine in front of 60 Minutes. Charlie enjoyed the fact that most of the age-spotted hosts were nearly as old as she was, yet they still kept busy exposing evil and wrongdoing.

After the fourth ring, the answering machine clicked on. Charlie's recorded voice sounded crackly and insubstantial as she repeated their phone number—she thought that by not saying their names she kept them safe from anyone who might take advantage of women on their own—and instructions to leave a message at the tone. As she waited for the beep, Claire decided that Charlie must be at the nearby Hoot Owl Market, otherwise known as the Korean Food Museum, since the other customers only stopped in for beer and cigarettes. But Charlie and the owner, with his handwritten and completely unconvincing sign warning Propertees under survallance, had gradually become good friends. They traded recipes—his for Korean barbecue, hers foi sauerbraten—and he had even prevailed upon her to try kimchi. Over time, Charlie had persuaded him to stock real vanilla extract, ultrafine sugar and marzipan alongside cheap plastic lighters and twelve-dollar bags of Huggies. And that was where Charlie probably was now—al the Hoot Owl, asking Mike (as the owner styled himself in America^ just how old the eggs really were.

The beep sounded. "Charlie—it's me. I'll be home about an hour later than I thought. Something has come up that I need to take care of. And I also wanted to warn you to be careful about, about"— suddenly Claire thought of eavesdroppers, of her voice echoing ir the empty living room for anyone to hear—"about talking to people you don't know, okay? And I'll see you real soon." Claire ended with the words that were easier to say to Charlie than her own mother. "I love you."

She slid the phone back into its slot and tried to relax. Her thoughts were too skittery to allow her to focus on the book she had packed five days ago. It was a nonfiction account of how the world would soon be destroyed by plagues unleashed by the overuse of antibiotics. Claire found it hard to worry about the planet's long- term survival when her own in the short term seemed to be in jeopardy. The man across the aisle pushed the bell for the stewardess, who returned a few minutes later with a copy of The New York Times. Claire pressed her own call button.

"Do you have any more copies of the Times?” The woman's makeup was effectively a mask, making her look like a sister to the other stewardesses on board, even though they came from varied racial backgrounds. Lori had told Claire that in stew school they had spent more time learning makeup application than safety procedures.

"Sorry. I just gave out the last one."

"What other newspapers do you have?"

"The Wall Street Journal and the Oregonian."

Claire didn't have the energy to read WSJ, with its conservative editorials that always made her so angry that she found herself talking out loud to the paper. "I'll take the Oregonian."

She started with the Metro section, figuring that most of the front section would be world news a day old, cribbed from the Times she had been reading every day in New York. So the plane was already circling Portland before she read the front page.

***

Woman Killed by Car Bomb Identified

A woman killed Friday in southwest Portland when her car

exploded has been identified as Sonia Wallin, 37. Police say the

bomb appears to have been detonated when she turned the ignition. Wallin was killed instantly. Her car, an older-model Mazda 323, was destroyed.

A Multnomah Village neighbor, who did not want to be identified, said that Wallin was the mother of two girls, ages 7 and 9. The children were at school at the time of the explosion. They are now being cared for by a relative. Neighbors said that Wallin had been divorced for less than a year, and that her ex-husband, Richard Wallin, a former mill worker, was rumored to have been angry over the divorce.

A police spokesman declined to say whether Richard Wallin was a suspect in his ex-wife's death, saying only that he was a "person of interest."

***

Claire's eardrums filled with the sound of her own heart beating fast and hard. From her daily runs, she knew every car in the streets around her neighborhood. And she could think of only one other Mazda 323 in Multnomah Village besides her own. The one she passed every morning on the way to work. The one where the woman behind the wheel was like a Latina reflection of Claire, with her hand stretched out in a wave as they drove past each other. The neighbor's Mazda 323 that was exactly like Claire's—only hers had been parked at the airport for the past five days.

QS10ALL

Claire sat in her car, parked just off Broadway Boulevard, her eyes on her office building. The seventeen-story building was dark except for the first floor and two or three scattered offices where someone had come in to catch up over the weekend. She counted up to the thirteenth floor, but it was dark. Claire didn't know what she was looking for, but she watched the building anyway. In the darkened interior of the car, her breathing sounded loud and a little fast. Her throat was tight and her hands were slick on the hard plastic of the steering wheel.

Maybe the man who had followed her through the American Museum of Natural History had been just another visitor in a hurry. It was even possible that the man who had broken into her hotel room had just been looking for traveler's checks to steal. But there was no way to chalk up her neighbor, blown to bits on what should have been just another Friday, to Claire's overactive imagination. Until now, she had thought someone was after the painting. Now she didn't know what to think. Why would someone want to kill her? And why would they risk blowing up the painting along with her?

She looked at her watch. Thirty minutes had passed since she had arrived. During that time, no one had entered or left the building. The security guard was still in the same position behind the front desk, slouched in his chair and slowly turning the pages of a paperback. To all appearances, everything was just as it should be on a Sunday evening, but Claire no longer trusted appearances. She took a deep breath and got out of her car.

The guard, a big guy in his mid-twenties, looked vaguely familiar. Claire realized she had seen him a time or two, sneaking a smoke outside the back entrance to the building. "Good evening, ma'am." His voice reminded her of whoever had done the voice-overs on Dragnet, old-fashionedly polite and a little world-weary.

"Hi. I'm Claire Montrose. I work on thirteen. In the specialty license plate division. I need to get up to my office for a second. I accidentally left something behind."

"You'll need to sign in." The security guard—his name tag read Bruce—pushed a clipboard toward her. "Then just use your ID badge to get the elevator to take you to your floor."

"That's the thing, see? I drove all the way over here and then realized I left my badge in my other coat." This was true, as far as it went. Claire's badge was in the pocket of the black raincoat she wore to work and had left at home five days before.

"Sorry, ma'am. The rules are pretty strict. Can't let you in without your badge."

"I can show you all my other ID. I've got two with pictures," Claire said, before realizing this would mean having to unzip her jacket, revealing the backpack she now wore across her chest. Bruce would probably decide he had a terrorist action on his hands and tackle her.

"Oh, I know who you are. I see you every Monday. You come in right at seven-thirty just when I'm getting off work—and you're always in a hurry." He shrugged. "But that doesn't matter. The rules say I can't let you in without your badge."

Maybe she could kill him with kindness. "Wow, if you're still here on Monday morning, you must really work a long shift."

"Seven-thirty to seven-thirty. Twelve-hour shift, three days a week. The rest of the time I go to school. Criminology."

"Do you work the whole twelve hours by yourself?" Claire put on an interested expression even though she felt like reaching across the counter and shaking him. The back of her neck itched. Was someone watching her even now, just as she had been watching the lobby only minutes before?

"They don't really need more than one person. I'm just here to check people in and out, but it's the computer that decides where they can go. The whole thing practically runs itself. Having someone here is just—what do they call it? A system redundancy."