Still Lives(69)

“Someone stole my phone,” I say.

Greg’s flood resumes, as if he didn’t hear. “I can’t come to the Rocque because there are probably reporters there, too—”

I should wait here for Hendricks to call.

“I’ll meet you,” I say.

By the old, closed funicular railroad, Angels Flight, there’s a small stretch of park above a row of bougainvillea bushes. It’s usually littered with trash and bodies in various states of hunger and drunkenness and brain rot. I’ve never wanted to sit on that grass, though it looks warm and thick and the city must water it, but no one notices anyone in that park. I tell Greg to find me there in forty minutes.


I’m awake now, and I can hear the muffled voices of other employees coming in, and I wonder if I should just emerge instead of hiding. Instead, I hug my knees and tuck my chin, closing my eyes. I don’t want to talk to anyone at the Rocque except Yegina, and she must be on the drive to work now. She never answers the phone when she drives.

Meanwhile Hendricks must be entering my empty house. Why hasn’t he called yet?

Minutes pass. I call my cell phone several times, awkwardly pressing redial from my crouch beneath the desk. No answer.

I slide the receiver into its cradle and feel in my purse for the flash drive. I can’t help wondering what the police will do with it. The woman in the photos, she could still be someone important—maybe I should look one last time. I slip out from my hiding place.

Too late. Jayme and Juanita are rounding the corner, Juanita pointing toward my office. They see me. Their looks of disbelief and displeasure throw me into a blind panic. I grab my papers, sling my purse over my shoulder, and bolt from my office, saying, “Just getting some work! To take home with me! I’ll see you Monday!” and make a dash for the stairway without waiting to hear their response.

I take the stairs, two at a time, all the way down to the first floor and then the elevator to the loading dock. If Jayme is following me, I’ve got a good lead on her, long enough to sprint to the carpentry room, where I see Dee petting a large black dog with a wide head. Hold on a minute. It exactly resembles the dog on the flash drive. I slip through the doorway. Jayme won’t think to find me here.

“Hey up, Maggie.” Dee’s face splits into a grin when she sees me. “I’m glad you came in. The Janis Rocque tour got changed to today, and I wasn’t sure you could make it. Can you meet here at eleven?”

Black dog. Brent’s puppy. Dee’s sick days. Brent’s sudden departure.

“Is that Brent’s dog?”

“Dickson. Yup,” Dee says. The dog noses her face. “He’s a good boy. He’s such a good boy,” she croons. She sits with her legs splayed, elbows on her knees, loose and unconcerned.

“Where did Brent go?”

Now she tenses. She looks back at his office, then shrugs.

“Fritz said something—” I begin.

“He went on vacation.” Her London accent sounds especially clipped.

“Brent Patrick goes on vacation?” I drift to his door and peer in at his photographs of New York, the striated underside of a bridge looming over a brick building with arched windows, sprays of graffiti. Then my eyes fall on another picture—small, angled away on his desk—and I step around to look at it.

There she is: younger, prettier, with blond 1980s hair poufed away from her face, her eyes dark with liner. Mouth painted pink. Brent Patrick’s wife. The woman in the flash-drive photograph.

“What are you doing?” says Dee.

“I just love Brent’s photography,” I say, emerging, trying to sound cheery and calm. “I never get a chance to study it when he’s in there. He’s too intimidating.”

“Truer words,” says Dee. “He does go on vacation, though. And he doesn’t want people to know where, and I think that’s perfectly fine,” she adds. “Not everyone has to be in everyone’s business.”

No, but not everyone seems like they’re fleeing a murder case, either. Wherever my eyes fall now, the room looks sharpened, the saw and hammers, the nails, the pointy corners of the art crates. Only the eyes of the black dog are soft as he gazes at me and yawns.

“Good boy,” Dee says again, and runs her hand slowly over his head. “So, eleven?” She turns to me, and there’s sorrow and determination in her narrow face.

“I’ll try,” I say, distracted by her expression. “Are you … okay? You seem a bit off.”

Dee stops petting the dog and holds him around the neck.

“Dee?”

To my surprise, she gives a forlorn sigh. “I’m sure I will be fine,” she mutters. “Now that my new girlfriend is no longer publicly ignoring me.”

“Oh,” I say. “I didn’t know you were seeing someone.”

“It’s a new thing. Not quite common knowledge.” Dee pulls Dickson closer and he sniffs her ear. “Especially not here.”

An actress? An artist? A board member?

“Oh,” I say. “I had no idea.”

“That’s the way she wants it.” Dee’s voice is grim. “And she always gets what she wants.”

I pat her bony shoulder, my thoughts derailing like trains. Dee is sad. She is also protecting Brent, and Brent is running away. Strong, burly Brent. He would have enough strength to bash a woman’s head in. But what would be Brent’s motive? To end an affair with Kim Lord? Was she pregnant with his child? He has been so off-kilter lately. What if he did kill her, and was protecting himself by framing Greg? Or what if someone else was protecting him?