No Footprints (14 page)

But she won't if she doesn't have to, she'll make that clear. She won't demand money. She's not passing judgment. It's just that after the last twenty-four hours everything's changed. She'll make her deal and pedal off.

She's not a fool. The meeting place has to be hidden from view, but she's chosen carefully. No one will be lurking in the shadows beside the Ferry Building, and yet there will be people within shouting distance. She can shout, attract passersby, shine light on what's happening; she can destroy the whole plan if she has to.

Or she can elicit the gift of a ticket, at which point she'll roll her bike onto the ferry, roll it off in Tiburon, and then pedal north into the rest of her life.

Police flashers were lighting the damp pavement like early Christmas decorations. Brakes were squealing, squad car doors flying open. What had gone down inside was more squabble than serious. But we'd had the mayor and a supervisor shot in City Hall years before, and no one has forgotten. Any melee here is big stuff.

Out of one of the cop cars popped the last person I wanted to deal with: my brother John. If he spotted me, it'd mean an hour of questions, badgering, me hanging around, and him proclaiming he wasn't at liberty to divulge anything whatsoever to the likes of his kid sister. And when he discovered that the asshole who'd made a travesty of this high-powered charity event had arrived with me . . .

Not to mention the presence of Declan Serrano. Getting the chance to rag John about his sister's ‟date” in front of half the department would be more than a much, much better person than the cockroach could resist.

A cab skidded to a stop. A photographer jumped out. I leapt in.

‟Where to?”

That issue hadn't entered my mind.

‟You coming from this reception?” the cabbie was suddenly all eyes on the rearview, checking out my party duds.

‟I'm going
to,
” I announced. ‟To the Mark Hopkins.”

If I had come back to the city after college, the venerable Mark Hopkins would probably have been just another venue to me. But after my twenty-year exile, stories from the far past unexpectedly cut into my thoughts. The one now, as the cab coughed up Nob Hill toward the hotel's floodlit entry, was of my grandmother dressing up to have a last drink at the Top of the Mark with her boyfriend, the two of them looking out the window and watching the sun set behind the Golden Gate before he shipped out to be killed somewhere in the Pacific in 1943. She had been much younger than I and yet I felt a—

But that was exactly what I did not intend to feel. I needed to head into the Mark Hopkins like I belonged there, like a woman who'd just come from a high-powered event in City Hall.

The cab jolted to a stop. I paid the driver and strode into the lobby, up to the great wooden reception desk. It was seven o'clock, well after the rush of check-ins.

Behind me, three couples were coming in, followed by a bellman pushing a luggage-laden cart. I strode to the counter, opting not for the newest-looking clerk, but the one more senior to him. The junior clerk was nabbed by a man behind me.‟May I help you?” he said, with the politeness of the professionally courteous.

‟My dear friend, Tessa Jurovik, was a guest the night before last. She thinks she left a notebook, a leather one with a design on the front. Would you see if it's been put aside for her?”

‟I don't believe she's called, but let me check—”

‟She couldn't. And now she's got a plane out of SFO in two hours. I said I'd do this for her.” I looked at my watch.

‟The concierge—”

‟I understand. I'm sorry to rush in like this. But could you just check to see if anything was left in her room.”

‟I don't—”

‟She just needs to know! If you can't give it to me I understand. Just tell me if she left it.” I let my voice rise.

‟I don't—”

Never let a clerk complete a negative sentence.

‟Tessa had intended to stay at the Fairmont, but I told her she'd be much more comfortable here. The service, I said, is the best.” Now I leaned forward and said in a stage whisper. ‟Don't prove me wrong.”

Behind me, conversation stopped. It was a moment before the clerk said, ‟Certainly, madam, let me look into that for you.”

He tapped three keys on his computer. ‟No record,” he announced with clear satisfaction.

‟J-u-r-o-v-i-k.”

‟I'm so sorry, madam, there's no record of anyone by that name.”

‟I dropped her off here Saturday. In this lobby. She telephoned me from her room. You have a record of her. Please find it.” Surely Byron hadn't made this up. If he had, he was the one who should be doing the acting.

The man made a show of rechecking his computer. ‟I'm sorry, madam. I've looked at the entire week.”

‟It's an unusual name. Perhaps you've misspelled it. Try the ‛G's'.” No record of her, what did that mean? Odd enough she'd have come here, but now, to have
not
come? Could she have used another name? But that made even less sense. So . . . ? I was only buying time; the clerk wasn't going to find her under the G's or any other letter. And he was clearly anxious to move on to the increasingly less patient folk in line behind me.

But I couldn't leave here empty. What did I know about her? What would he remember?

‟I'm sorry, madam—”

‟Who was on duty here Sunday night?”

He hesitated. But I'd offered him an easy out here, particularly if the Sunday staff wasn't on duty now.

One of his younger colleagues spoke up. ‟I was on the desk then.”

‟Good,” I said. ‟Then let me see how I can help you remember her. She's about my height, dark hair cut along the chin line, thin, about my age”—
What made her different, other than the bridge?
‟
—
She's a biker—”

‟Oh, the woman with the racing bike!” He gave a laugh indicating something peculiar.

‟What?” I prodded.

‟Well, uh, the thing is, we're at the top of a hill.”

The couple behind me chuckled at this and, relaxing a bit, the second clerk said, ‟She insisted on keeping the bike in her room. Wouldn't even allow the bellman take it for her.”

‟So,” I said, ‟you know she was here. Why don't you have a record of her?”

‟Well, she wasn't using that name. She insisted on a room on our highest floor. That's not unusual, of course. But she wanted southern exposure.”

I must have looked puzzled.

‟See, most guests want views of the bay. But south, it's only the city buildings.”

Not the bridge!
‟She didn't use that name?” I repeated.

‟If you'd given me the correct name—”

‟Which one?” I said, as if Tessa was an eccentric with a pack of aliases as well as a bicycle. ‟Saturday night in a south-facing room on the top floor.” I couldn't give him time to think about what he was doing. ‟Was it . . . no, you go ahead.”

He was staring at the computer but not responding. The man I'd been talking to originally was looking on.

‟There!” The second clerk pointed to the screen. ‟Varine!”

‟Ah,” I said, ‟Varine?”

‟Varine Adamé.”

Varine Adamé? ‟Are you sure?”

‟Certainly, madam, it's right there on her credit card data.”

Varine Adamé? She skips her husband's ceremony and her card buys a night at the Mark. What did that say?

There was something about his expression that made me feel sure the guy had some inkling of memory about her, but I couldn't guess what. And his focus now was in moving me on. Behind me I heard grumbling. ‟Can I help you with some other matter, madam? If not . . . ”

I shook my head. I walked across the lobby, stepped into the elevator, rode up to the nineteenth floor, the Top of the Mark, and ordered one of their hundred variations on the martini.

The tables by the windows were filled. So, I took one in the middle with a view of darkness, which was fine by me. If I'd been facing the wall it would have been even better. It was odd to be all dressed up here in the restaurant that had been such a romantic icon in city history, me, now, not staring into the misty eyes of a doomed lover, but desperate for a place to think.

I needed to think: a lot. I'd do it better with food. I went for clam chowder. Despite the ninety-nine idiosyncratic options, my martini was Grey Goose, vermouth with two olives. (There was a choice of a dozen varieties of olive. I went with green.)

I stared into the glass as Tessa herself might well have done and tried to imagine myself in her skin. But there were too many unanswered questions for me to make that leap. Who the hell was this woman who nearly jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge, who was a responsible employee at a bland job, saved her money, and spent it all on an expensive racing bike
and a little girl she didn't know? And copped a woman's credit card for a night in the Mark Hopkins? The night before she was to jump.

I knew I should sip this martini. Instead, I took a good-sized swallow. I didn't expect it to clear my head but it did.

The one lead I had to Tessa was her hotel room here.

Maybe.

If the maid had missed something . . .

If no one had checked in later . . .

If, if, if. Not much of a lead, but it was all I had.

Or
might
have if I could only figure out how to get into the room.

A shadow moved over my table. I didn't look up, didn't even want to deal with the waiter. Too much time had passed since I'd pulled Tessa back from the edge, too long without her turning up anywhere. Maybe I would never find her, never know, the way it had been for so long with Mike. She could be deciding to go back to the bridge tomorrow.

I could not let that happen.

The shadow shifted. Irritably I glanced up, and gasped. Actually—embarrassingly—gasped. ‟What are you doing here?”

Declan Serrano slid into the chair across from me. In his suit and tie he looked only slightly out of place here—as if he'd mistake his knife for a shiv. But perhaps that was overkill.

The waiter arrived with my soup.

‟That all you're eating? That's no dinner,” he said, exactly as my brother John would have. Unnervingly so, in fact. He gave the menu the swift scan of someone used to being called to a crime scene before he could finish his meal. He made his choice—an exotic-sounding crab dish—without questions or alterations. He ordered it for two. For himself he added a martini with a vodka I'd never heard of. It arrived in under a minute and he took the kind of swallow that said it had been a long day.

The past is illusion, the future a dream: be this moment.
What could I get out of this supposed friendly meal? I glanced at his glass. ‟That was fast. Your reputation must precede you.”

‟I've done some work here.”

‟What kind?”

‟The discreet kind. Crime's bad for business. If it happens management wants it handled double-Q: quick and quiet.”

An
in
with management! ‟Your reputation does precede you then.”

‟Yeah. They're going to add
cucaracha con queso
to the menu.”

‟You'd be served with cheese?”

‟I'm served with whatever I want.”

I held the smile and forced myself to wait for a few beats before taking a warm bite of chowder. ‟So, what brings you here, Roach?”

‟Another meal with you.”

‟Am I buying you dinner, too? No wonder men fear to be in your debt.”

‟Nah. This is on the house. Your debt's a whole lot more.”

‟In your dreams!”

Before he could react, a skyscraper of crabmeat arrived, surrounded by a forest of greens and bright yellow chanterelle mushrooms—faster than I'd ever seen food this side of take-out.

We Lotts take our eating seriously, and mere apprehension doesn't impede appetite. Serrano attacked the meat, but on the edge of the great mound—for presentation, only, I guessed—were legs. I sucked the flesh out of them, one after another.

As Leo'd said, taking the wrong road doesn't get you there faster. Consciously I didn't weigh the open roads, I kept my mind as clear as possible—the empty vessel can be filled etc. I was aware of Serrano shooting his gaze over my breasts as automatically as he passed the bread. He finished his martini and signaled the waiter without turning to see that his move was noted, but his grip was just a bit too tight on his glass. The drink arrived with the impressive speed of its predecessor.

‟Tell me—” We'd both spoken at once.

‟Go ahead, Declan. What esoteric secret have I uncovered that your antennae missed?”

He forked a bite of mushroom. ‟What was with that date of yours?”

‟My date? Are you reporting back to my big brother?”

‟Not likely.” He grinned. ‟Your secrets are safe with me.”

Was he actually flirting? ‟Macomber Dale? Got me.”

‟Why'd he attack Adamé?”

‟You were standing right there with them. What do you think?”

‟I'm
asking.
” He put his fork down and leaned toward me. ‟What was with him and Adamé before that?”

I almost mentioned financing our production, but if the cockroach didn't know about that I sure wasn't going to be the one to tell him. ‟How should I know? Mac seemed to be trolling for backing—”

‟Why would he do that? He's the producer; he's already ponied up, right? He's been run through an insurance check, right?”