A String of Beads (Jane Whitefield, #8)(45)

A part of what was bothering her now was that she could have told Jimmy about all this, but she’d had a year and still hadn’t told her husband, Carey. She had been afraid he would never understand, and might say something that would stay between them forever. What she feared was a rejection of the part of her that was Seneca. She was a modern, educated woman, and sometimes it seemed to her that it was easiest for Carey to assume that was all she was—that she was just like everybody else they had known at Cornell, or even the women they met at cocktail parties and hospital benefits. Right now she resented him for that, even while she admitted to herself that the real reason he didn’t know things was that she hadn’t been able to tell him.

She turned around after a few miles and walked back toward the hotel. She considered calling Carey, but first she analyzed why she wanted to call. She was feeling guilty for having thoughts about him that weren’t fair. She was afraid that she was being drawn too much into the Seneca world and a culture that he could never share. She was afraid the balance that sustained her was being disrupted. Even that thought was a problem—the Haudenosaunee peoples’ belief that all things needed to be kept in balance. And she was lonely for Carey, but also irritated at him for not seeing that she loved him too much to leave him unless she had to.

As she walked on, she decided that none of the reasons for calling Carey was the right one. She had told him last time not to expect a call. And she had told Jimmy that getting in touch with people at home was dangerous. It went for her too. A small risk was still a risk. There was no reason for Carey to listen to her saying over and over that she loved him and would come home when she could. If she said those words enough times on long-distance calls, they began to feel like lies.

She stopped in a diner and had a cup of coffee, and then let the waitress refill it while she sat thinking about her life and her marriage until she realized that she had been there too long. She got up and continued the walk to the hotel.

When Jane reached the parking lot of the hotel she stayed outside it until she had walked the perimeter, keeping her path out of the overhead lights that shone down to protect the parked cars. She studied the Chevy Malibu again to be sure nobody was watching it, either from another parked car or from the sort of van that the police used for surveillance. By then she was near the dark side of the building, so she walked along the brick wall. She looked at her watch. She had been gone more than three hours. It was late enough now to be sure the hotel’s side entrance was locked, so she went on to the main entrance.

Through the double glass doors she could see the night desk clerk. He was occupied, talking with two men who looked like business travelers who had just driven from the airport and not brought their luggage from the car yet. They were leaning on the long counter, the three of them all close and preoccupied. As Jane walked by, something unusual happened. One of the two men came around and joined the desk clerk behind the counter. He turned the screen of the computer so his companion could see it too, and they began to scroll down a page that was a series of divided sections.

Jane stood at the elevator and pretended to hit the button, but kept watching the men without seeming to. As she watched, the man behind the counter raised his right hand and pointed a finger at one of the lines of text. As he did, his sport jacket rode up and she could see the gun under it. Jane pressed the button and the elevator door opened, she stepped inside, and the door slid shut.





11



In the elevator Jane pressed the key on her phone. “We’ve got to get out. Pack whatever you can in the next three minutes and then start wiping fingerprints off every surface we touched. I’ll be there in a minute.”

As soon as the elevator door opened she was out and running along the fourth floor hallway. Before she reached the door of their suite she had her key card out, and when she reached the door she stuck the card in the reader and opened the door just far enough to slip inside, then set the deadbolt.

Jimmy was stuffing his new clothes into his backpack. Jane stepped past him into her room, rolled her clothes and placed them in her backpack, then went into the bathroom and swept the cosmetics and soaps into a plastic bag. After she put the bag into her backpack she took a hand towel and began wiping every surface. She stepped to the door, saw Jimmy wiping doorknobs and counters with a napkin from the coffee service, and tossed him a hand towel. “Use this. While you’re at it, check the window for watchers or suspicious cars, but don’t get spotted.”

Jimmy stepped to the window and looked out the lower right corner for a few seconds. “I don’t see anybody out there. There’s nobody near our car.”

“Good. Keep wiping. Anything either of us may have touched.” She put all of the dishes from the cupboards into the dishwasher, added soap, and started it. She picked up the magazines from the coffee table and put them in a trash bag, then swept everything from the refrigerator into the bag after them.

Jimmy had completed his circuit of the suite, so Jane said, “All right. Go down the stairs.”

Jimmy went while Jane stayed a few seconds to wipe off the door and its inner and outer handles, and let it swing shut. She slipped into the stairwell just as she heard the ele-vator bell ring.

At the bottom of the stairwell, Jane edged past Jimmy, slipped out the door, and moved to the small enclosure where the garbage dumpsters were hidden from view. She emptied the bag of trash into a dumpster, then crumpled the bag, tossed it in too, and walked with Jimmy to the Chevrolet Malibu. She set her backpack on the backseat, and got into the driver’s seat. Jimmy sat beside her.