Something about it was odd, and even way after midnight he hadn’t felt comfortable letting Milicia Honiger-Stanton drive him all the way to his building. He had no reason to ask her to let him off at Columbus Avenue, several long blocks from his apartment on Riverside Drive, but he did. He figured it was some kind of symbolic thing that had to do with Emma. He lived alone now, wanted to walk home alone. Crawl home like an injured animal was more like it.
He had gotten out of the car and was surprised to hear Milicia say, “I’d like to see you again.”
He didn’t reply immediately, and she hesitated, as if she weren’t used to having to say those words to a man herself, much less follow them up.
A faint breeze stirred the air. Somewhere a siren howled.
“Hey, man, got a quarter? I got to get me sumpin’ to eat.”
The plaintive voice of a large black man with long, matted hair rose to a wail as he menaced a young couple halfway down the block. Jason stiffened, ready to move in their direction. Sometimes he had Mace in his pocket, but not today. Not having the Mace didn’t bother him. Even from where he stood Jason could tell the man was unsettling but not dangerous. He didn’t have to rescue the couple though. On the hot summer night there were still a lot of people on the street. A cop emerged from the dark and moved the man along.
Jason returned his attention to Milicia. He was startled by how beautiful she looked in the dark. The glow from the streetlights backlit her red hair, giving it the appearance of a fiery halo. Her face was as pale as the moon, which at the moment hung low in the sky over Central Park and seemed to hover over her head, very ripe, and just a day or so short of being full.
Her wide-eyed look of sudden shyness and innocence was belied by the display of deeply tanned thighs, visible almost to the crotch, and parted with the business of dealing with a gearshift. Jason noted that her old Mercedes needed a tune-up. It idled high in neutral. The woman’s whole being exuded a powerful sexuality. No thanks, he wasn’t buying.
“Thanks for the ride,” he said coolly.
She caught her bottom lip with her teeth and struggled a little with her breathing. “I need someone to talk to,” she said faintly.
“Oh?” Jason hesitated although he was already long gone, preoccupied by a thousand important matters to avoid thinking about what weighed most heavily on his mind.
Right then he was thinking about his schedule for the next day, the precious hours he had wasted going to Southampton to see Charles and Brenda when he should have been working on the paper he had to present at a conference in Baltimore at the end of the week. He was aware that the black man was now lurching in their direction.
He smiled a bit grimly to himself at one of those gender differences between men and women that kept turning up to complicate the simplest things. Women took a lot longer to say good-bye, often had trouble letting go of the moment. Men liked to walk away without looking back. He wanted to walk away.
He and Milicia had had an uneventful drive back. They talked about the house she designed for Charles and Brenda, architecture, New York City rent-controlled apartments, the firm she worked for. It was pleasant, but by no means one of those luminous, unforgettable events like the first time he met Emma.
Jason had interviewed Emma Chapman for a paper he was writing on adults who had been moved from place to place when they were children. Emma’s father had been an officer in the navy before he retired. Jason and Emma were instantly drawn together, as if some kind of bond between them had always existed.
Jason started to sweat. Jesus, how could that be over? He was distracted for a second, thinking of Emma. He had no intention of seeing this woman again. Why did she suddenly need someone to talk to after he was already out of the car? She was very beautiful. Maybe she was just used to more gratification. He couldn’t tell by the way she said she wanted to see him again if she meant professionally or socially. How annoying.
“You mean you want to see someone professionally?” he asked.
He was awkward now, standing on the street. Why had she waited until he was out of the car?
“Not exactly, but I do need some advice.”
“What about Charles? He’s very good at advice. Have you asked him?”
Milicia hesitated some more, then shook her head.
Ah. So there was a bit of conflict there. Maybe Charles had hit on her. Jason felt a second of sympathy for her.
“You’re a shrink, right?” she asked.
Jason nodded. She knew he was.
“Well, I have a very sick sister.”
Oh. Jason relaxed. It was professional. He pulled a pen from his pocket and scribbled his number on a scrap of paper. “Sure I’ll talk to you. Here’s my number. Call if you want.” He handed her the paper and headed home as if he had averted a potentially difficult situation.
The pendulum on the new clock stopped again at ten forty-eight. The phone rang. Shit.
Jason had two minutes to Dennis. He decided to answer the phone and reached for the receiver. “Dr. Frank,” he said.
“Hi. It’s Milicia.”
“Who?”
“Milicia Honiger-Stanton. I drove you home from the Hamptons last night. Have you forgotten already?”
“No, no. Of course not.”
“Remember I said I’d like to talk to you? Can I buy you lunch?”
“No, thanks. I thought you wanted a consultation.”
“Can we consult over lunch?”
Jason frowned, his eyes on the motionless pendulum. “No,” he replied. “Not really.”
“How about dinner?”
“I don’t consult over dinner either. Would you like to make an appointment?”
“Oh, all right,” she said. “But you’re making me think I have bad breath or something.”
“If you need advice,” Jason said gently, “that’s a professional matter. Professional matters have to be dealt with in a professional way.”
“All right,” Milicia repeated. There was now a slight edge to her voice. “We’ll consult. But don’t think of me as a patient.”
“Fine,” Jason said and took out his appointment book. “When would you like to meet?”
“Today?”
He flipped the pages in his appointment book. A Monday patient was on vacation in Paris. He sighed. “Five-fifteen. Is that all right?”
“Where are you?”
He gave her the address. Then he hung up and stuck another piece of paper under the clock leg.
6
Igor Stanislovski of Crime Scene shook his head at April’s barrage of questions that couldn’t wait for the lab reports and couldn’t be answered without them. What about this sand? She had asked about the sand in the window display. Would it be worthwhile to go through it grain by grain?
“Don’t touch,” Igor said irritably.
“I didn’t touch,” April said.
“Well, you’re hanging around, bothering me. Don’t you know you’re supposed to get lost?”
“I don’t get lost,” April said. “Maybe you won’t think of the questions I want to ask. What about the sand?”
“It’s my job to think of every question. I’ve already thought about the sand. I’m doing it last with a different bag.” Igor crawled into a corner and vacuumed the same stretch of woodwork for the second time, which meant he was desperate. It was almost unheard of to get anything of great value from vacuuming.
“Not much here,” he muttered. “Not even a stray spiderweb.”
“That’s what’s wrong with this picture. It’s all too clean,” April said.