The Hidden Man (15 page)

If the tomboy had to be eliminated, that was that.

THE FOLLOWING NIGHT

LAUREL COURT RESTAURANT—THE FAIRMONT HOTEL

B
LACKBURN FELT COMPLETELY ADRIFT
in the fabulous hotel restaurant. He knew that the unfamiliar environment was filled with observers, carefully eyeing one another. He was as comfortable as a man in a tub of spiders.

His state of tension at the unfamiliar environment was minimal compared to his dread of the task facing him. He was left vulnerable by his lack of skill at coping with a situation like this. His shoulders were already so tense that the muscles had tightened all the way up his neck and under his scalp.

Still, he had to laugh when he imagined the reaction down at the station, if they ever found out that he had finally used the new telephone at home for the first time—to call the Fairmont Hotel and have a messenger take a note up to her room. In that single moment, he grasped the appeal of having one of the telephone devices at home, and why Duncan had wanted him to have it. The showman could reach Blackburn as easily as Blackburn contacted the hotel. He made a mental note to check and see if this new telephone company was publicly traded.

His message to Miss Freshell was that he had to see her right away, and to please meet him in the hotel’s Laurel Court restaurant. All she had to do was dress and come down from her suite. He knew that the place was reputed to be a top-tier establishment, but he had never actually been there. When he arrived, it was a shock to discover how gilded and ornate the place was—and how obscenely expensive.

Still, it felt morally right to do it there, or as close to morally right as he knew how to make it. All he wanted to do was talk to her, but in his gut he felt as if he planned to beat her up, and was simply showing her the courtesy of doing it near home so that she wouldn’t have to travel far afterward.

He was certain of nothing else. Even if she could magically produce some reason for why her wishes had anything to do with his current working assignment, there would still be the bigger issue, the thing about turning in Vignette to Blackburn’s commanding officer. The dread in his stomach had blossomed into the realization that the police must have learned about Vignette from her. He had been wrestling in the back of his mind with this, but no matter how much he tried to rationalize it, it was simply not something that he could swallow.

And for reasons that he had not even taken the time to think through yet, the issue turned out to be the capstone of a whole stack of things that were bothering him about his whirlwind relationship with Miss Freshell. It felt so fine, for a while, to be pursued by a woman—a woman who was not unattractive, an author of romance books.

She originally sought him out to interview him for her new book, but he quickly realized that her company was an addictive pleasure, and asked to see her again. His personal stiffness relaxed and dissolved in the presence of her laughter and her animated conversation. She compensated for his social awkwardness so well that they could even have a social life. Nearly every part of it was new to him.

Tonight, while he sat at the table and waited for her to come down, his skin felt overly warm under his itchy wool suit, as if his garments were woven from strands of pure heat and nervous tension. He checked his old pocket watch and saw that she was not late yet, but he craned his neck around, just to make sure that she was not just out of sight behind one of the gilded marble columns that supported the triple-domed ceiling.

“Randall?”

Caught him from behind.

He stood up, smiling while he turned around to face her. He kissed her cheek and seated her, watching for any hints about her mood. Throughout the greeting, however, her face remained a pleasant mask. She said nothing more.

He sat down, placed his napkin over his lap, smiled at her, and scooted his chair in. He arranged the napkin again and took a sip of water. He had expected her to jump into the pause, the way she always did.

She did not.

That one tripped him up, right off. She always had before, every time he had seen her since the first day they met. Now she merely gazed at him through a glassy façade. Her half smile did not invite comment.

In the past, he had only seen her use quietude as a tool when she was angry. She certainly had nothing to be angry about at the moment. She always preferred a nice restaurant to eating at his house with Shane and Vignette. This place was one of the most posh that the city had to offer. Ordinarily that would be enough to delight her. Moreover, Blackburn’s unique means of arranging the date with her via telephone should have been more than enough to put her in the mood to launch into a conversation right away.

He took another sip, stalling while the waiter filled a glass for her. After the man moved away, Blackburn looked at her again. Her face remained a pleasant blank.

And still she said nothing.

Outside the hotel, Vignette was dressed up and girlish enough to sashay right past the two gallantly costumed doormen and into the hotel. She knew that her conscience would bother her if she got caught, so she arrived full of determination to do no such thing.

Eavesdropping on Randall’s telephone conversation was hardly a proper way to find out when Miss Freshell would be leaving her room. If Vignette got caught there and was also proved wrong, she would look like an utter fool and everyone would hate her.

She could not believe that she was wrong. Not about this. So she faded back into the shadows of the hallways on Miss Freshell’s floor, waiting for her to leave her room. It never occurred to her to wonder what she would do if the room were clean of evidence. That could not happen. If it did, then the sugar-cookie version of life that Miss Freshell claimed to represent was real, and Vignette would have no way to stop her from actually dragging Randall away to New York City.

Two couples passed Vignette on their way out for a late night. She covered by rummaging around in the complimentary ice box as if she were stocking up for a party. The guests ignored her, chattering away.

Moments later, Miss Freshell’s door opened. She came out smoothing her hair with one hand while she pulled the door shut with the other. She never even glanced at Vignette, whose head and shoulders were in the ice box while she made scraping noises. When Vignette raised her head, she was just in time to see Miss Freshell walk away with the air of a salesman on the way to close a deal.

She stood up, brushed the ice chips from her hands and closed the ice box lid, then walked directly to the door of Miss Freshell’s empty room. Using a nail file pulled from her pocket, she jimmied the door latch almost as quickly as it would have opened with a key. Vignette had not done the lock on a hotel room door in a long time and was surprised that such simple mechanisms were still being used. But she filed that fact away, just in case.

Inside the room, with electric lamps still burning, she made a quick visual scan and identified her target: a large traveler’s trunk that had been converted into a filing cabinet.

Thirty seconds at the filing cabinet was enough time to locate the correspondence. There, the fancy stationery of Miss Freshell’s publishing house stood out among all the other typing paper and carbon copies.

The most recent letter to Miss Freshell explained it all. Vignette’s hands trembled like those of an archaeologist who has just made a vital discovery.

Randall sat in the conspicuously opulent dining room and felt solid, visceral fear despite the surroundings. It was the kind of thing that he only expected in dark alleys with armed criminals. He knew that his relationship with Miss Freshell was at a crossroads and he was prepared to confront the crisis. But to do that required verbal skills and negotiating abilities he had never possessed. Years of self-imposed solitude had left him dangerously low on skills for dealing with any woman in a nonprofessional capacity, whether she was verbally skilled or not.

A sunken feeling came over him. He realized more with each passing moment that she was far superior to him in this arena. Janine Freshell was not going to be forced into confronting anything. Even her way of holding a silence without being mean about it—women could do too many of those things, he thought.

Most of the time, Miss Freshell made it easy to be with her. More than easy, it was effortless. Still he remained aware, deep down, that he was not the one who made each encounter so seamlessly smooth, even though she did so much to convince him that it was his humor, his character, and his strength that was making it delightful for her to be in his company.

The wave that carried them was primarily generated by her. For a while, he had been glad to be borne along by it, since in the rest of his life and career he was always the strength and the enforcer. The sheer novelty of having a female be attentive to him, concerned for him, interested in everything about him—he found it overwhelming. And he went for every bit of it.

Randall believed that a gentleman must formalize such an intimate state with an engagement ring. He did. She accepted with delight. With their engagement official, the sexual romps that she discreetly provided made it wonderful to be owned by her.

However, whenever he veered too far from whatever path she may have chosen for the moment, he felt that luscious wave flatten out and die. Motion resumed only when the course was corrected to her liking. Then the wave picked right up, her personality sparkled, and she danced through any social occasion with equal measures of charm and ease.

At the moment, the wave was flat, the air perfectly still. Her smile remained, though, while she silently demanded he tell her what it was that he wanted to see her about, and demanded it by simply refusing to speak first.

In the eye of a hurricane now, Blackburn could actually feel his hands shaking under the table. He started to pick up his water glass again, nearly knocked it over, and decided to refold his napkin instead. He felt driven to handle this delicate thing just right, and at the same time he thought of kicking down a door, doing it with words.

“Did you send the note telling the captain about Vignette?”

“…I beg your pardon?”

A self-conscious flush went through him over his clumsiness. He realized, in that sinking moment, that he had forgotten to say anything at all to greet her after she arrived. It felt as if he had already spoken to her, greeted her. He would have guessed that he had done so. But the busy feeling in his skull came only from the furious pace of his thoughts. He had not actually said a word—until he opened things up with an accusation and essentially began the conversation by pulling out his revolver and blowing his toes off.

He cleared his throat. “That was not well spoken. I’m sorry. I have to admit, I’m feeling a little nervous.”

“You ought to become accustomed to dining in places like this. You deserve it.”

“No, not because of—I meant—”

“You only feel uncomfortable here because you aren’t used to it, Randall. If you realized how you dominate a room like this with your presence—”

“Janine…please. I know that the question is awkward. I apologize again. It’s awkward for both of us. But out of respect for you, I am coming straight out with this…”

She waited, doll-like, telling him nothing.

“Janine, I can’t figure out the time line for when you found out about Vignette from the cops who came in to install the phone, as opposed to when the captain—”

“Of course the men didn’t tell me, Randall.”

“…They didn’t tell you anything?”

“They told me how to use the telephone.”

“I mean—”

“You mean, did I find out from them? No, Randall. I did not. The captain found out from me. I wrote a confidential note to him and had the officers carry it back to the station when they left.”

“And you were there at the house when they arrived, because—”

“Because I knew they were coming to install the telephone and that nobody would be there but Vignette, meaning that she might or might not get out of bed to let them in. I knew you needed help with making sure that the telephone got installed while you were away.”

“Janine,” Blackburn quietly began, “I have to tell you that Vignette thinks you only came over so that you could give the officers the note. I’m sorry, but she’s really got it in her head.”

“Well. I’m sorry, too, Randall. Why would I need to use the officers as messengers? Why would I not simply post a letter? I could do that, anonymously, and still sleep late.”

She smiled that smile again. It was gracious, even though she was clearly annoyed. Just gracious enough to remind him that she had the potential to get the wave moving again, if things went right.

“All right, but the problem I am having is, how did you know? If everybody else was fooled, who told you about it?”

“Vignette did,” Miss Freshell smiled, cool as a watercress sandwich.

“I think not.”

“She did. Not with words, and not deliberately, of course. She thought that her wig fooled me, just because I didn’t mention it to her.”