Max gave her a wink that made her toes curl. She grinned back at him, did an illegal U-turn in front of him, and returned to the Traynors'. She felt so pleased with herself that before she began to clean she wheeled the vacuum into Traynor's study, to have an excuse for being there while she copped a peek at the latest chapter. Maybe this would be better, maybe these pages would be as fine as his old work.
She couldn't leave it alone; the flawed novel drew her, habituating and insistent.
But, starting to read, she was more dismayed than before. Even considering that Elliott was ill, the work left her perplexed. She didn't understand this writer who had for years charmed her with his prose. She was convinced his mind was deteriorating, and that was incredibly sad. She wondered if he might be in the first stages of Alzheimer's and wondered if Vivi understood how much Traynor's work had changed, if Vivi really knew or cared. Laying the pages back on the desk, she had a terrible, juvenile urge to grab a pencil and start editing, the way she would have done one of her own amateurish school papers.
The history was all there, but reading this was so dull. Elliott Traynor's words should flow, be alive, propel the reader along. She wanted to see these chapters as he should have written them. She felt strangely hurt that Traynor was ruining his own work.
Aligning the pages, she had no notion that she was not alone. A thump on the desk brought her swinging around-to face Joe Grey. He stood boldly on the blotter, a smug smile on his gray-and-white face.
"At it again, Charlie."
"How did you get in? I fixed the vent."
"What did you take to Harper?"
She simply looked at him.
"What did you take to Harper? Something from the dishwasher, but you had your back to me. I couldn't see much through the window."
"How did you get inside?"
"Slipped in behind you when you got back from meeting Harper."
"That makes me feel pretty lame that I didn't even see you."
"I was on the roof next door when you came to work. Watched you through the window, digging around in the dishwasher. Bagging plates, Charlie? Followed you over the roofs. What's Harper after, fingerprints? All that fuss with evidence bags."
Charlie sighed. "Dirty glasses. I don't know what it's for, okay?"
He glanced at the pages in her hand. "When did Harper ask you for the prints?"
"He called me early this morning, if it's any of your business."
"What time this morning?"
"Why? What difference does it make? I don't know. He woke me up. Around five, I guess." She looked at him, frowning. "He said he was working on a hunch. That he didn't want to make waves yet-that an early morning tip got him thinking."
Joe Grey smiled.
She reached to touch his shoulder. "What? What did you say to him?"
Joe glanced at the manuscript. "What do you think of the latest chapter?"
Charlie sighed. You couldn't force information from anyone, certainly not from a hardheaded cat. She looked down at Traynor's offending pages. "This should be a wonderful book; so much was going on in the early eighteen hundreds. He's done a huge amount of research, but he's going nowhere with it. This makes me want to write it the way it should be. How can he-"
They heard the back door close softly, though no car had pulled up the drive and they had seen no one approaching the house. At the sound, Charlie flipped on the vacuum. "Get lost, Joe. Hide somewhere." Maybe Vivi or Elliott had cut through the backyards from the side street.
"Open the window," Joe hissed.
Flipping the latch and sliding the glass back, she watched Joe leap through and vanish in the bushes below. She was vacuuming when Vivi appeared, pausing in the doorway to watch her. She was dressed in blue tights, a short denim skirt, a black halter top, and a black cap, her dark hair pulled through the back in a ponytail. Charlie turned off the vacuum.
"Why did you leave this morning, Charlie? You left just after you got here. What did you take away with you in the tote bag?"
"I went to get my purse, I left it in the grocery. I had trash in the bag," Charlie said, laughing. "Thought I had my purse. The house I cleaned last night-I dropped the trash in my bag and forgot about it. What's wrong?"
"You could have thrown it in our trash."
"I dropped it in the grocery dumpster." Unplugging the vacuum, she looped the cord up, to wheel it to another room.
"And why is Elliott's manuscript all mussed?" Vivi's eyes were wide and knowing; slowly they narrowed, never leaving Charlie. "Have you been reading this?" Her face drained of color. "Elliott doesn't like people reading his work-in-progress. What were you doing, Ms. Getz? And why is the window open?" She was suddenly so heated that Charlie backed away. "Speak up, Ms. Getz. What were you doing in here?"
Charlie looked Vivi in the eye. "I guess I brushed against the pages. I had no idea he was so-that he, or you, would be upset." Her look at Vivi was as puzzled as she could manage. "As to the window, I was warm. If you don't like me opening a window, I won't do that anymore." Closing the glass, she moved away down the hall to clean the bedroom.
Vivi didn't follow her; she remained in the study a long time. As Charlie made the bed and hung up their clothes, she heard Vivi unlock the desk, heard her open and close the drawers and shuffle papers, perhaps trying to see what else Charlie might have been into. So what was she going to do? Charlie thought, amused. Report her to Max Harper?
Vivi was gone when she finished vacuuming and dusting, had apparently left the house. Charlie supposed, if Vivi had followed her earlier this morning and had seen her meet Max, she would have been far angrier, would have confronted her with that information in a real rage.
Or would Vivi actually have confronted her? Maybe Vivi had seen them, maybe she was desperate to know what Charlie had taken from the cottage.
She went about her work absently, leaving at noon to take care of a number of small household repairs for other customers while Mavity and her crew did their cleaning. She couldn't wait to see if Max had been able to lift two good sets of prints. She finished up at five and hurried home to her apartment to shower and start dinner, stopping first by Wilma's to pick a little bouquet from the garden, daisies and some orange poppies, simple flowers that should please Max.
Frying hamburger to add to the bottled spaghetti sauce, she made a salad and pulled a cheesecake from the freezer. Max got there early, coming directly from the station. He sat on her daybed drinking an O'Doul's, making no comment as she recounted the events of her morning. She left out only her conversation with Joe Grey. Moving from stove to table, and to the daybed, she sat down at the end tucking her feet under her, sipping her beer while the spaghetti boiled. She liked living in a small space, everything near at hand. This apartment was so compact she could almost cook her breakfast before she got out of bed.
She looked at Max comfortably, quietly relishing his presence here in her private space. "I've never felt quite the degree of anger and confusion that I do with Vivi Traynor. You're right, she's not a likable person. And she was so suspicious of me," she said, grinning. "I don't think she saw me meet you, but I can't be sure. She was so prodding and pushy."
"Don't you feel sorry for her husband?" Max said, amused.
Charlie shrugged. "He married her. Poor man. Maybe he got more than he bargained for. Did you get their prints all right?"
"Two perfect sets. Unless they've had company in the last couple of days, we have prints for both Vivi and Elliott."
"And you're not going to tell me why."
"Not yet."
She rose to test the boiling spaghetti and to dress the salad of baby greens and homegrown tomatoes that their local market had been featuring. As she shook the dressing, Harper's cell phone rang. She drained the pasta quickly and dished it up as he talked, afraid he would be called away. She liked watching him, liked his thin, brown hands, his angled, leathery face. She liked the contrast between how he looked in his uniform, a very capable, no-nonsense cop, daunting in his authority, and how he looked in faded jeans and western shirt and hat, with a pitchfork in his hand, or on horseback. That same sense of ultimate control was there, only more accessible.