“‘Bout three years. Did I say I lived in an apartment?”
“I dunno.” He smiled. “Doesn’t everyone in New York live in an apartment?”
“No, sometimes a condo or co-op.”
“Same thing. You go in a door and down a hall before you get to your door.”
“Yeah, I suppose so.”
“Bet you have a nice place. Maybe I could see it sometime.”
A quick hint of a smile. “Definitely. Sometime.”
“Where’d you live before Manhattan?”
She moved closer and rested her head on his shoulder. A tingle of alarm played up the nape of her neck, like the very tip of a soft feather drawn over flesh. What was going on here? “How ‘bout you? Where’d you live before New Jersey?”
He told her, but she barely listened. Someplace in Connecticut. Not that it mattered. No way to know if it was the truth. A thousand voices in Hedra were screaming for her to be careful. She’d heard those warnings before and ignored them, and regretted it later. Alcoholics and gamblers must hear those same unheeded voices.
She and Andy danced until closing time and agreed to meet there the next evening. He kissed her lightly on the forehead as they parted. Nothing pushy, but a promise. Subtle foreplay.
And the next evening she went. She couldn’t stay away.
She waited until almost midnight and he didn’t show up.
After turning down her tenth offer of a drink or a dance, she decided to leave. She threaded her way across the crowded dance floor and past a line of people waiting to get into the main room. A short man with a gray beard and a gold-flecked silk jacket turned away from the woman on his arm and winked at Hedra. She said, “Nice coat, but that’s about it, asshole,” and walked past him and out the door.
Zinging the bearded man had given her a great deal of pleasure, but she wasn’t sure why. Maybe she’d made him a substitute for Andy. He was the same sex; that was close enough.
Midnight was too late for a woman alone to ride safely on the subway.
Alone. Not what she’d planned.
It wasn’t unusual to be stood up, she assured herself, as she hailed a cab to take her back to the Cody Arms. That was how it went in the singles scene in Manhattan, a cruel and devious game, each partner playing with the softest part of the other. Hadn’t she always known it?
Still, she’d liked Andy a lot. She’d wanted desperately for the voices to be wrong, for him to be who he said he was.
But was anybody who they said they were? Really?
During the cab ride through the dark and rain-slick streets, snow began to fall.
At the Cody Arms, she paid the driver and climbed out of the taxi, feeling a few cold flakes on the back of her neck as she bent down and slammed the rear door. The cab pulled away and left a swirling turmoil of blue-gray exhaust that held the glow from the street light, then drifted low and disappeared in darkness.
She turned up the collar of her new blue raincoat and hurried across West 74th Street, listening to the clack! clack! clack! of her high heels spiking the pavement. She wanted to be warm. Safe. Home. Soon as possible.
There was no one in the lobby or the elevator. She rode up to the third floor, waited patiently for the elevator to go through its yo-yo act to minimize the step up. As the sliding doors hissed open, she strode out into the hall, already fishing in her purse for her key.
As soon as she closed the apartment door behind her, she felt much better. Calmer. And she realized she was very tired. Being stood up was a strain. The hell with you, Andy, you inconsiderate bastard. She’d have a cup of hot chocolate and then read herself to sleep.
She didn’t notice them at first. Not until she’d hung her coat in the closet by the door and taken three steps into the living room.
Then her breath became a cold vacuum and she stopped and stood still. Mother of God!
What was going on here? Were they real, sitting so calmly and unmoving on her sofa? Staring at her?
Not real, she decided.
Not possibly real.
An illusion.
She dug her fingers into her palms and laughed nervously, startling herself with the high-pitched rasp that exploded from her constricted throat. When she inhaled she found the air thin and dizzying and felt as if she might suffocate.
The large, tweedy man holding the brown package and the dead cigar said, “Nasty out there, isn’t it, dear?” And she knew he was real.
Real, too, was the figure next to him on the sofa.
Sitting in Hedra’s place.
Allie Jones.
Chapter 36
HEDRA knew she was in a trap but had little idea of its tightness or dimensions. She had to feel this one out. Move carefully.
What could they know about her?
Actually know?
That she’d moved into the apartment under false pretenses. That she wasn’t using her real name.
That was all, really; they couldn’t possibly prove she’d lived here before. They knew nothing about her actions during that time.
They can’t prove anything, she told herself. She’d obscured every track and neatly snipped every loose end. Just like in the mystery novels she read so avidly. They can know but they can’t prove. Don’t let them bluff you.
With an immense effort of will, she calmed herself. The fluttering in her stomach slowed and almost ceased. She managed to stare at Allie questioningly. Who are you? She said, “Whoever you people are, I think you have the wrong apartment. You damn well better have a believable explanation.”
Allie parted her lips to say something, then she decided against it and remained silent. There she sat in the streaming lamplight, staring at Hedra accusingly and as if she couldn’t quite understand her. But it was Hedra who didn’t understand. What was Allie doing here? Why wasn’t she behind bars awaiting trial?
The big man absently holding the snubbed-out cigar uncrossed his weighty legs, then extended them and crossed them again at the ankles. I’m not going anywhere, his actions told her. He was wearing huge wing-tip shoes, scuffed as if he’d been kicking rocks. Sighing like an asthmatic, he reached into a suitcoat pocket and dragged out a small leather case and flipped it open. He made a show of extending it toward her. “I’m Detective Sergeant Will Kennedy,” he said, “N.Y.P.D. This is Miss Allison Jones. She used to live here, in this apartment.”
Hedra didn’t bother examining the identification, as if she were uninterested. She wished Allie would stop staring at her and say something. Wished the bitch would stop regarding her with that mixture of cold anger and puzzlement. And something else: pity. Hedra said, “I read in the papers Allison Jones was in jail.”
Sergeant Kennedy smiled with a strange sadness. “And so she was. Miss Jones here persisted in telling us an interesting story. One nobody believed.”
“Was it one she could prove?” Hedra asked.
Kennedy ignored the question. He sighed again. “She said a woman named Hedra Carlson had been her secret roommate and had … well, gradually taken over her life in a very real sense.”
“Taken over her life? What’s that mean?”
“Become her, you might say.”
The acrid smell of his dead cigar drifted to Hedra and nauseated her. “Well, I’m Hedra Carlson, but I just moved into this apartment a few weeks ago. I never saw it till the rental agent opened the door.”
“But you’re using the name Eilla Jones. We wouldn’t have noticed that on the computer printouts, except for the address. That made it kinda jump off the page at us. It was Miss Jones here who convinced us to get computer printouts on all rental units in Manhattan occupied since the date of her friend’s murder.” Kennedy shook his head in wonder. “All that kinda information’s available these days almost at the press of a button. Amazing, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know anything about her friend’s murder, but I admit I used guile to get this apartment. Of that I plead guilty, Sergeant, but I’m not sorry. You have any idea how difficult it is to get an apartment in New York?”