“April, I didn’t come to browbeat you about Phil. You didn’t do anything to me. You weren’t the first. If there was a home wrecker, it was somebody twenty years ago. What I want isn’t to-“
“I know.”
“What?”
April shook her head. Her face began to crumple again. “I thought I was the only one ever, and that we had fallen in love. That was what he said.”
“Oh. I’ll bet. What made you change your mind?”
“Ray Hall.”
Emily was shocked for a second, then realized she shouldn’t be. “Ray talked to you about Phil? When?”
“After you and I talked. He made me see that it wasn’t the way I thought it was. He told me there had been other women, that Phil had told them that same kind of story.”
“I guess we all believed him. Look, April. I think you’re right to want to put this in the past as soon as possible. I’m not happy about what happened between you and Phil. But now Phil is dead. He emptied our bank accounts, which means he was planning to drop me, and he didn’t leave any money to pay the people who worked at the agency. I think that means he planned to leave town. I need to know some things, and I have to ask you.”
“Oka Y”
“Was he planning to run off with you?”
April looked uncertain. “I’ve thought of that, but I don’t know. I don’t think so. He didn’t ask me if I wanted to go away with him.” She stared at the coffee table in front of her knees, as though she were trying to make out the small print in one of the magazines on it. “As I looked back on it since he died, I realized something. I don’t think I would have gone. I thought I was in love with him, but I must have been wrong.”
“I understand.”
“Lately I’ve been growing my hair out and saving money for a great stylist-Adrian Nolfi. I made the appointment months ago for him to do me at the Beverly Hills shop, not the one in West L.A., where you get his assistants. Phil knew that. He didn’t say, `Don’t make the appointment,’ or anything.” She paused and looked up at Emily. “I guess he was leaving me, too.”
“I don’t feel angry at you or blame you for what happened anymore,” Emily said. “Phil had figured out all the ways of getting women to do what he wanted before you were born. I don’t think he cared very much about whether he told us the truth.”
“That’s for sure,” April agreed. “I just feel really bad about it.”
“Right now I’ve got a terrible problem, and you might be able to help me.”
“What can I do?”
“The man who broke into my house still thinks that Phil left me some information about a powerful man, and he wants it. There’s no question in my mind that he’ll kill me for it. I think the fires last night were either a first attempt to kill me, or a way of getting me outside into the open. I’m more terrified than before.”
“I thought the information was burned up.”
Emily’s heart began to beat faster. She could sense April was lying. Did it mean she had the evidence? “I wish I could be sure one way or the other. Before the fires, I had already searched just about everywhere in both the house and the office. Ray, Billy, Dewey, and the police all searched. I keep thinking it has to be somewhere else, someplace Phil could have driven to that nobody knew about.”
“It’s not here.”
Emily studied April’s face. She seemed to be aware enough and guilty enough to want to help. Emily said, “Did he ever talk about having a special project in the works, or say he was about to come into money, or anything like that?”
“I don’t think so. He was always the same. He never said much about what he was doing, even when we were in the office and it was the normal thing to do.”
“Did he ever give you anything-a box or container of any kind-and ask you to keep it safe for him?”
“No,” she said quickly, then looked uncomfortable. “Oh, wait. He did, I guess. It was a long time ago, though. Maybe six months. It was a box.”
“What was in it?”
“I don’t know, really. He told me not to look inside. It was one of those boxes like fancy stationery comes in. He put it … um … under my bed, and told me to just forget it was there.”
“You looked, though, didn’t you?”
“At first there was just a case file, and he had it hidden under the stationery. He added things once in a while. There was a manila envelope, a couple of cassette tapes. Then he would slide the box back under the bed, and we’d forget about it.”
“Where is the box now?”
“I don’t know. One time when he came over, he just picked it up and took it with him.”
While April had been talking, Emily at first pictured him stopping here for a minute to take her out to a restaurant or something, but when she said “came over,” the image changed. He was in the bedroom with her. It had to be early afternoon, when they could pretend to be out to lunch, so they had the blinds closed to keep the sun light out. They were both naked because they had been here in the afternoon having sex. Phil must have looked at his watch, got up and put on his pants and then knelt down to pick up the socks he had tossed there, and pulled the box out from under the bed. When he drove back to work with April, he said nothing about the box, just took it with him. Emily wanted to cry, but she fought it. “Can you tell me what it looked like, exactly?”
“The box?”
“Yes.”
“It was the size of regular paper. A ream. The bottom part was just plain white, but the top had a kind of maroon color, with gold letters that said something, some brand name of a stationery company.”
“Do you remember the company?”
“I’m sorry. It was just words, no picture or anything. That much I remember. It just didn’t seem to matter at the time.”
“Was there still stationery in it?”
“There was some. Whenever he added stuff, he took out enough stationery so the box would still close. By then maybe it was only onethird stationery.”
Emily recognized Phil’s way of thinking. He had brought his papers to the apartment of his current mistress. And then he hid the papers in a box of papers. That was Phil. “He hid it here so it would be safe. Did he say from whom?”
“No.”
“Did he say why he was taking it away?”
“I don’t know.”
Suddenly Emily knew. Just to be sure, she said, “April, did other people in the office know about you and Phil?”
“Ray Hall. I was sure he knew at the time, but he says now that he only suspected, but didn’t know.”
“Anybody else?”
“No. And Ray says nobody else knew. I would never tell anybody, and we weren’t that obvious about it. Phil wasn’t that trusting. He didn’t like people to know things like that about him. If he could have had an affair with me without my knowing, he would have. I mean, he was married, and…” She paused, not sure how to end the sentence.
“I know. Tell me something else. Did you ever hear of anyone else he’d had an affair with?”
“No. Phil told me there had never been any others. Ray told me there had been, but he didn’t say who. Nobody had ever said anything about it in front of me before.”
“Not even Ray?”
“Not until after Phil was dead. I don’t think anybody but Ray ever knew anything personal about Phil, and Ray was his friend. He would never gossip about him.”
Emily stood up abruptly. “I’ve got to go now.”
“What? Is something wrong?”
“I’ve just got to go,” she said. “Thanks for telling me the truth. It may be the thing that keeps me alive.”
28
Hobart watched Emily Kramer leave the apartment building. She looked as though she was in a hurry. He kept wondering why she would be out like this on the morning after the fires, going to see another woman. When she had left the house where she had spent the night in Van Nuys, he had expected her to be wearing the same pair of jeans and the same sweatshirt she had been wearing at the fire, but she had been dressed in black pants and a black jacket, with flat shoes. When he had seen her clothes, he had begun to scan the surrounding blocks for signs that an arson investigator had her under surveillance. If the cops had been watching, then the clothes would have been the clincher. A person who knows enough to pack up her best clothes the day before her house burns down is an arsonist.