Killer Move

“Yes. Though . . .” She had a thought, and turned back to me, frowning. “What did you actually say in your post? Did you say you were looking for the wine as a gift?”

“Said I wanted to do someone a favor, which is why I was keen to track it down and willing to pay well.”

She took a long drag off her cigarette, looking at me through the smoke. Her eyes were the same color. “That’s . . . less good. Come on, Tony—who else could Bill have wanted to suck up to?”

“What’s going on?” I asked. “Can you just tell me?”

Neither seemed to hear. Both appeared deep in thought, gazing out of different windows. After a moment, a question of apparently trivial importance struck Marie.

“Who drank the wine?”

“Stephanie,” I said. “My—”

“Wife,” Marie said. “I know. Pretty girl.”

Something inexplicable happened to her face, and she pursed her lips together.

“What the hell was that?” I asked.

“Excuse me?”

“Seriously,” I said. “I tell you my wife is in the hospital, and you have to bite down on a smile?”

“Rather her than me, don’t you think?”

I stared at her, and I remembered something Hazel Wilkins had said when we’d met for coffee a hundred years ago: Self-centered. Dangerously so.

Tony picked up on how angry I actually was. “Bill—I’m sorry to hear about your wife. Do they have any idea what was in it?”

“Not for sure,” I said. “But they were talking about E. coli. The bottle’s at the lab now.”

“How on earth would he get hold of E. coli?” Tony asked, but he wasn’t talking to me.

Marie shook her head. She wasn’t looking so pleased with herself anymore. I was brutally glad. “Probably wasn’t him,” she said. “He will have tasked one of his little helpers.”

“Wouldn’t one of them have said?”

“No. They’re his helpers, not ours. Always have been. Which is why I said—”

“Who?” I said, infuriated at being treated as though I wasn’t there. “Who the hell are you talking about?”

The phone on the coffee table rang—the sound sudden and jangling and harsh. The Thompsons looked at it. It kept on ringing. Finally, after about six rings, Marie leaned forward and picked it up. Listened.

“Okay,” she said. “Thank you.”

The change in her face was remarkable. She stared up at her husband, suddenly looking about eighty years old.

“Get rid of him.”

Tony took my arm and led me to the door. His grip was hard and strong. “Look,” I said, but by then I was outside in the corridor. The door closed behind me.

I didn’t walk away. A beat later I heard Marie’s muffled voice.

“Hazel’s disappeared.”

As I stepped out into the sun I saw Big Walter the maintenance guy standing in the middle of the lot. He had his cap in his hand. He didn’t look right.

“You okay?”

He looked at me. “Don’t know,” he said. “You know Mrs. Wilkins is missing?”

“I just heard. But she could just be out somewhere, right?”

He shook his head. “I was just up there. Melda took me. I been in that apartment many times, fixing things. Tidiest damned condo I ever saw. Now it looks like someone was looking for something, got mad when they didn’t find it. Clothes ripped, furniture on its side, everything broken all over.”

“Well,” I said, backing away. “I hope it turns out all right.”

It was weak. I didn’t care. I headed over to my car. I was done here. I was going. I wasn’t sure where. Probably back to the hospital.

As I was unlocking the car I heard footsteps and glanced up and saw someone heading quickly in my direction. He looked familiar, and I realized he was the guy I’d seen the day before, the maybe prospect who’d been wandering around looking up at condos.

“Hey,” he said.

Something happened that was fast and hurt, and then everything was red black.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

My eyes were open. I found myself in a field of gray white space, every particle in slow, rotating movement, like a flock of pale birds in flight. This kept trying to resolve into something in particular but evidently didn’t know what that might be. I blinked, and fell into myself with vertiginous nausea.

I could smell dust. Concrete.

I rolled onto my side. I was lying on something hard. And gritty. And gray. Some of the grayness was closer to my face, a flat plane stretching out from my cheek. Other parts were farther away, like blocks. The far side of these was a patch of different colors. A vivid, blurry orange, and a kind of pale beige. This gave me something to focus on. I blinked again, more deliberately this time, and concentrated on the patchwork. The colors wavered, and then abruptly snapped into something I could recognize.

Hazel Wilkins.

I sat up fast, and my head swirled away from me again, making my gorge rise.

“Easy,” a voice said. “Take it slow.”

Hazel was sitting against a cinder block wall about ten feet away. She was wrapped in an orange blanket. She wasn’t really sitting, though. She’d been propped. Her head tilted away from her neck. She looked gray, too. She looked small. She looked dead. I’d never seen a dead person before, but Hazel looked really dead.