She had been approached by two other prospective clients but had turned both over to other designers. She could take on nothing new. She wanted, when she left the San Francisco firm in March, to have all her work completed. She expected she would move back to the village. She had been offered an enticing position as head designer, if she would move to the firm's new Seattle office; but that was so far from her friends.
In Molena Point, she had given Charlie a deposit on the duplex apartment and had made arrangements to start work for Hanni the first of March. That gave her four months to finish with all her clients. She didn't want to hand over any last-minute items to her successor.
During the next busy months she would have little time for personal concerns, little time to follow the confusing leads to her family; and maybe that was just as well. Anyway, the most pressing matter at the moment was to clear her desk and calendar before Lucinda and Pedric arrived-and hope that whoever had followed her was gone, and that Consuela returned to Molena Point, out of her sight. She wondered if Lucinda and Pedric could shed some light on the jewelry, on its age and background. The fact that Lucinda had bought similar pieces in that small shop up the coast invited all manner of speculation.
Russian River was just a tiny vacation village, but it had a colorful past filled with strange stories from the Gold Rush. So many immigrants had ended up there, panning for placer gold or working the mines, people from dozens of countries and divergent cultures. She wanted to go up there later in the year if she had time, dig around and see what she could learn.
She chose her clothes for work the next morning, then straightened the apartment, picking up papers she'd left scattered and doing a little dusting. The cool serenity of the cream and beige rooms welcomed and calmed her, the simple white linen couch and chair and loveseat, her books and framed prints. She had brought nothing with her from the Molena Point house when she left Jimmie, had wanted nothing from that old life that had gone so sour, not a stick of the furniture she had taken such care to select. She'd had an estate dealer sell it all, the Baughman pieces, the handmade rugs, everything that had at one time meant so much to her.
She had wondered if Jimmie would like her to ship the furnishings up to San Quentin, for his new residence. If a convict had free access to large-screen cable TV and the latest computers, if he could make and receive all the phone calls he pleased, and could, in the prison library, study for a law degree with which later to sue the prison authorities, if he could place bets on the horses and professional sports and buy lottery tickets, maybe he'd like to customize his cell, redesign his personal environment in keeping with his new mode of living.
Clyde would say she was bitter.
Clyde would be right.
Filling her briefcase with the needed papers and work schedules for Tuesday, and setting aside a stack of sample books, she moved about the apartment with an increasingly uneasy sense of being watched again, even in her own rooms. Oh, she didn't want that to start, that awful fear that had stopped her from taking the cable car or walking to work, that had made her cling to the comparative safety of her own locked vehicle whenever she left a building.
Finishing her housekeeping chores she fetched a favorite Loren Eiseley, a copy in which she had carefully marked the passages she loved most, and she curled up on the couch under a quilt.
But she couldn't concentrate for long; she kept looking up from the pages toward the kitchen where the north window was open to the breeze.
Of course there could be no one there, she was on the second floor.
Except, the roofs were flat out there and, she supposed, easy enough to access if one knew where the fire escape or maintenance stairs were located.
Rising, she closed and locked the window, then got back under her quilt holding the book unopened, listening.
And later when she checked the window before she went to bed, the lock was not engaged. The closed window slid right open, though she was sure she'd locked it. She locked it now, testing it to make sure-it was not a very substantial device, just one of those little slide clips that sometimes didn't catch, that she would have to press hard with her fingers while she slammed the window, to make it take hold properly.
That night she did not sleep well. And every night for a week, arriving home after dark, she checked the kitchen window first thing. It was always locked. But then on Friday evening, she discovered that her extra set of house and car keys, which she kept in her jewelry box, was missing.
She looked in the locked file drawer in her home office where she sometimes hid the extra keys and extra cash. The cash was there, but not the keys. She looked in the pockets of her suitcase-where that black tomcat had been poking around, hooking out her safe deposit key.
The pockets were all empty.
Well, she'd misplaced her extra keys before, and later they'd turned up. Only this time the loss frightened her. She felt chilled again, and uncertain
But what was Consuela going to do, let herself into the apartment and bludgeon her? How silly. Bone tired from the week's intense work and late hours, but more than satisfied with the Ranscioni house, she gave up the search. The keys were somewhere. No one had been inside the apartment. If they didn't turn up, she'd change the lock. Making herself a drink, she slipped out of her suit and heels and into a robe, thinking about the Ranscioni job.
The buffet installation and fireplace mantel and new interior doors were perfect. She was more than happy with the work the painters were doing. The furniture had been delivered on time, and today the draperies had been hung, right on schedule. Tomorrow, Saturday, she'd place the accessories herself. She did so enjoy doing the last details on a house by herself, wandering the rooms alone for a leisurely look at the finished product, uninterrupted even by her clients; a little moment to herself, to enjoy and assess what she had created.
A young woman, Nancy Westervelt, had come in just this morning wanting her to take an interesting small job. Kate had regretfully turned her down. The woman-handsome, dark-haired, and quiet-had wanted Kate to incorporate her South American furniture and art into a contemporary setting. Nancy was mannerly and soft-spoken and, given that their tastes were so similar, would have been fun to work with.
She had thought a lot that week about the safe deposit box incident. She had paid close attention to her office file drawer, often checking to see that the cardboard box was there in the bottom drawer at the back, and that the tape hadn't been disturbed. She had gone back to her safe deposit box twice to see if Consuela had returned. After that once, just after she'd cleared the box herself, the girl had not been back. But the presence of that frowzy, thieving girl there in the city, presuming she was still there, bothered her more than she wanted to admit.
She had not glimpsed the man who had followed her before she left the city, and that was a plus, although she had not found her spare house and car keys yet. And then on Saturday morning, leaving the Ranscioni house, coming up the stairs with her grocery bags she opened the door-and paused, feeling cold. That prickly sensation as if her hair wanted to stand up. Had she heard a small, scraping sound? Had she felt some unnatural movement of air against her face?
She stood for a long moment trying to identify what was disturbing her, what held her so rigid and still. She sniffed for some strange scent, a hint of cologne perhaps. She listened for the faintest brushing, the tiniest shifting of weight on the wooden floors.
Silence.
But someone was there, she could feel the difference on her crawling skin. The way she had felt in Wilma's house that morning when she had paused in the dining room, certain that someone was present.