This is Bone. Where are you?
In my car. On my way back from Southdale.
Im coming over, he said. Twenty minutes.
Okay… you cant stay long. George is
Twenty minutes, Bone said, and punched off. He pushed another speed-dial button, and another woman answered, this voice younger and crisper: Kerin.
This is Bone. Where are you?
At home.
Dan Kresges been killed. Shot, probably murdered. Had you heard yet?
No. My God…
Ill be at the office in an hour, or a little more. If you have the time…
Ill be there in ten minutes. Can I get anything started before you get there?
Names and phone numbers of all the board members…
They talked for five minutes; then Bone punched out again.
A THREE-CAR FENDER BENDER SLOWED HIM A BIT, BUT he pulled into the downtown parking garage a little less than a half hour after he made the first call. Hed gotten out of his hunting clothes and was wearing a Patagonia jacket with khakis and a flannel shirt. He pulled the jacket off as he rode up in the elevator.
Marcia Kresge met him at the door in a blue silk kimono. You like it? I bought it an hour ago.
I hope youre not celebrating, he said.
He said it with an intensity that stopped her: What happened?
Your soon-to-be-ex-husband was shot to death up at the cabin this morning. Im undoubtedly one of the suspects.
Kresge looked mildly shocked for a quarter-second, then slipped a tiny smile: So the fuckers dead?
I hope to Christ you didnt have anything to do with it.
Moi? she asked mockingly, one hand going to her breast.
Yeah, Marcia, youre really cute; I hope youre not that cute when the cops show up.
The cops? Finally serious.
Marcia, sit down, Bone said. Kresge dropped onto a couch, showing a lot of leg. Bone looked at it for a moment, then said, Listen, I know you think you fucked over Dan pretty thoroughly. Youre wrong. Last week the board granted him another two hundred and fifty thousand options to buy our stock at forty, as a performance award. If the merger goes through, and its botched, the stockll be worth sixty in a year. If the merger is done exactly right, it could be at eighty in a year. Thats ten million dollars, and if its held for a year, youll take out eight after taxes.
Me? I
Marcia, shut up for a minute. The options have value. They become part of his estate. Youll inherit. Youll also get the rest of his estate, that you didnt get in the divorce. No taxes at all on that. In other words, Dan gets murdered, you get ten million. Im up there with a gun, and guess whos fucking Marcia Kresge?
Jesus, she said.
I seriously doubt that hes involved.
But they cant think I…?
You didnt, did you? You know all those crazy nightclub characters
…
Bone: I had not a goddamned thing to do with it. I reallydidthink Id taken him to the cleaners… and I mean, I didnt like him, but I wouldnt kill him.
He knew her well enough to know she wasnt lying. He exhaled, said, Good.
You honest to God thought…
No. I didnt think you went out and hired some asshole to kill him, Bone said. What I was afraid of is, youd mentioned to one of your little broken-nosed pals that ifDan died, youd get another whole load of cash.
Well, I didnt, she said. Because I didnt know that I would.
Okay… I dont think it would be necessary to mention to the police that weve been involved, he said dryly.
Good thought, she said, matching his tone precisely.
All right. He stood up and started toward the door. Ive got to get down to the bank.
The bank? God, when you called, I thought maybe… Shed gotten up and come around the couch.
What? He knew what.
You know. She slipped the belt of the kimono; she was absolutely bare and pink beneath it. I just got out of the shower.
I thought George was coming over.
Well, not for a couple of hours… and you gotta at least tell me what happened.
Take off the kimono.
She took it off, tossed it on the couch. He was staring at her, like he always did, with an attention that both disturbed and excited her.
What? She unconsciously touched one arm to her breastbone, covering her right breast as she did it. Bone reached out and pushed her arm down.
Put your hands behind you, he said. I want to look at you while I tell you this.
She blushed, the blush reaching almost to her waist. She bit her lower lip, but put her hands behind her back.
We started out like we always do, walking back into the woods. You know how that trail goes back around the lake…
As he told the story, he began to stroke her, his voice never faltering or showing emotion, but his hands always moving slowly. After a moment she slowly backed away, and he stepped after her, still talking. When her bottom touched the edge of a couch table, she braced herself against it, closed her eyes.
Are you listening? he asked; his hands stopped momentarily.
Of course, she said. A few minutes before six and the shooting started.
Thats right, he said. He pushed her back more solidly into the couch table and said, Spread your legs a little.
She spread her legs a little.
A little more.
She spread them a little more.
Anyway, he said, gently parting her with his fingertips. Any one of us could have killed him. It was just a matter of climbing down from the tree, sneaking back up the path…
Did you do it? she asked.
What do you think?
You could have, she said. And then she said, Oh, God.
Feel good?
Feels good.
Look at me…
She opened her eyes, but they were hazy, a dreamers eyes, looking right through him. Dont stop now, she said.
Look at me…
She looked at him, struggled to focus on his dark, cool face. Did you kill him?
Does the thought turn you on?
Oh, God…
SUSAN ODELL'S APARTMENT WAS A STUDY IN BLACK and white, glass and wood, and when she walked in, was utterly silent. She pulled off her jacket, let it fall to the floor, then her shirt and her turtlenecked underwear, and her bra. The striptease continued back through the apartment through her bedroom to the bathroom, where she went straight into the shower. She stood in the hot water for five minutes, letting it pour around her face. When shed cleaned off the day, she stepped out, got a bath towel froma towel rack, dried herself, dropped the towel on the floor, and walked back to the bedroom. Underpants and gray sweatsuit.
Dressed again, warm, she walked back to the study, stood on her tiptoes, and took a deck of cards off the top of the single bookshelf.
Sitting at her desk, she spread the cards, studied them.
Shed once had an affair, brief but intense, with an artist whod taught her what he called Tarot for Scientists. A truly strange tarot method: business management through chaos theory, and he really knew about chaos. An odd thing for an artist to know, shed thought at the time. Shed even become suspicious of him, and had done some checking. But he was a legitimate painter, all right. A gorgeous watercolor nude, which nobody but she knew was ODell herself, hung in her bedroom, a souvenir of their relationship.
After she realized the value of the artists tarot method, hed bought her a computer version so she could install it on her computer at workthe cards themselves were a little too strange, and a little too public, for a big bank. Theyd done the installation on a cold, rainy night, and afterwards had made love on the floor behind her desk. The artist had been comically inept with the computer. Hed nearly brought down the bank network, and would have, if she hadnt been there to save him. But she could now access electronic cards at any time, protected with her own private code word.
Still. When she could, she preferred the cards themselves: the cool, collected flap of pasteboard against walnut. Hippielike, she thought. McDonald referred to her as a hippie, but she was hardly that. She simply had little time for makeup, for indulgent fashion, or for the flattering of men all the things that Wilson McDonald expected from a woman. At the same time, she obviously enjoyed the company of men, and her relationship with the artist and a couple of other men-about-town had become known at the bank. And she was smart.