Ashley Bell (Ashley Bell #1)(68)

There she paused to open St. Croix’s handbag, in which she found, as expected, a smartphone. She used it to call her father’s cell number, which wouldn’t compromise her disposable model if the Wrong People were monitoring Murphy’s phone traffic.

He answered on the second ring. “You got Murph.”

“Hi, Daddy.”

“Bibi! We’ve been trying to reach you all morning.”

“I’ve been dodging calls.”

“Dodging even your own parents? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong. I’m fine.”

“Don’t flow me a load of feel-good.”

“Relax, old man. It’s just that I was dying two days ago, and I need a little me time to get a handle on that.”

“Tell me! All morning, I’m one minute grinning like a dog and the next minute all verklempt.”

Hearing the strong emotion in his voice, Bibi said, “Don’t get verklempt on me, Dad.”

“I just love you so much, honey.”

“I love you, too. But, you know, I want to keep this quick. I’m going down the coast a little, find a cool place to hang out for a couple days.”

“A little time to chill.”

“Exactly. Maybe Carlsbad. Or La Jolla. I’ll let you know when I have a motel. I’m sorry I didn’t bring back Mom’s BMW this morning.”

“That’s when we started to worry. But don’t you worry, kiddo. We’ll hustle over there and fetch it ourselves. Hey, last night, how was Calida?”

“Memorable,” Bibi said. “We’ll talk about it in a couple days, when I see you.”

She almost asked about the silver bowl and lettered tiles in his office, about the packet of needles and the white-cotton rag with the bloodstains. But she didn’t know where that question would lead, and she didn’t want to know. She wouldn’t doubt her parents. Couldn’t. In times as turbulent as these, but also in the seeming humdrum of daily life, which always proved to be more meaningful and consequential in retrospect, each of us needed to rely on people of constant character and truths that were immutable. She knew her parents’ weaknesses, which were minor and easily forgiven, and she believed, based on long experience, that they were as reliable as anything in this world. If she ever discovered that they were not what they seemed, she would be devastated, and the word heartbroken, made trite by overuse, would have fresh and poignant meaning for her.

“Tell Mom I love her.”

“She’ll worry anyway. So will I.”

“I’m walkin’ the board, Dad.”

“If you say so. Nobody walks it better.”

“Okay, then. Just remember that. Bye.”

She hung up and was wiping the phone clean when it rang. She took the call but didn’t say anything.

Terezin evidently now maintained a round-the-clock monitored tap on Murphy’s cell. He said, “Ah, there you are, lovely Bibi.”

Hoping to unsettle the arrogant bastard just a little, she said, “Hello, Bobby.”

“So the girl detective has made some progress. You must have visited my father. Once I’m done with you, perhaps I’ll visit yours.”

Crossing to the door that earlier she had kicked open, she said, “You’re thirty-three, but you’ve never grown up. Your taunting is childish. Tedious.”

“You want tedious, read your novel. I just did. It’s a toss-up which needs burning the most—that book or its author. Anyway, day after tomorrow, I’ll be thirty-four. I promise to be all grown up then. Too bad you can’t come to the party. Ashley will be there. My guest of honor. It’ll be the last chance you’ll have to find her alive. It all begins again. The little Jewess’s role is historic.”

She thought he was trying to keep her talking, to get a GPS fix on the phone, but he terminated the call. Maybe he already knew where to find her.

Bibi wiped the phone clean once more and threw it across the garage.





Although it might be a sunny March day inland, the fog would not relent along the coast. As noon approached and the lowering element failed to lift, there was every reason to expect that it would remain throughout the afternoon.

In the Honda, Bibi tossed the professor’s handbag and decorative pillow cover on the passenger seat. She fished her keys from a pocket of her blazer and started the engine.

The immediacy with which Terezin had traced and called back the professor’s cell number alarmed Bibi. Maybe Homeland Security could do that trick. But how wired into the government security apparatus could this vicious mother-killer be? His quickness seemed more supernatural than techno-savvy.

She didn’t think he could drop a couple of assassins into the neighborhood by drone or circus cannon as fast as he had placed the call. But she remembered what Chubb Coy had said: There are a lot of these cockroaches, and they have resources. She wanted out of there yesterday.

She drove uphill, under a canopy of tree limbs, and on the left-hand sidewalk, near the corner, she spotted a man walking a dog. A tall man in a hoodie. Walking a golden retriever. Bibi almost failed to see them in the fog, a ghostly pair, hardly more substantial than an apparition, and then they turned the corner, out of sight.

With the thick mist and the chill in the air, a hoodie made sense. Dozens of people would be wearing hoodies to walk their dogs in this weather. And a golden retriever wasn’t unusual. This wasn’t the guy from the hospital the night before last. Couldn’t be. Ridiculous.