The manager arrived with their coffees. As he set them down on the table, he gave Teddy a strange look and cocked his head.
“Is something wrong?” Teddy asked.
Carmichael paused. He wasn’t much older than Teddy and about the same size, though he had a paunch growing beneath his apron. He scratched his curly black hair.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Seeing you sitting here like this. I was making your drinks and watching you. I remember a guy sitting in the same seat. He’s been in here before. He orders a caffe latte and sits in this seat nursing it for as long as he can. Most people sit where she is when they’re alone so they can people watch. But not this guy. He always sits with his back to the room and stares out the window.”
Teddy glanced outside, watching the girl ride her bicycle to nowhere. The chill hadn’t come from the cold air.
“What about the night Rosemary came in?” Powell asked.
“The trouble is she came in lots of nights,” Carmichael said. “That’s what I told the detective this afternoon. It’s hard to remember which night you’re talking about. They’re all pretty much the same around here.”
“It would be the last one,” Teddy said. “The last night you saw her.”
Carmichael sat down, his eyes flicking back and forth as he tried to remember. After a moment, something happened and his eyes shot straight ahead.
“He was here that night,” he blurted out. “The last night I saw her, he was here. I remember now because he switched seats. I looked over and saw him staring out the window. When I looked back, he was facing the other way.”
“What does he look like?” Powell asked.
“About thirty,” Carmichael said. “Light brown hair, almost shoulder length. The kind that goes blond in the summer. I remember his hands. There was paint on them.”
“House paint or bright colors?” Teddy asked.
“Bright colors.”
He’s a painter, Teddy thought to himself. They were on the right track.
“What about his face?” Carolyn said. “Who’s he look like?”
Carmichael thought it over and shook his head.
“Tall or short?” she said.
“Normal,” Carmichael said. “Thin, maybe even wiry like he’s in good shape. He’s got blue eyes, sort of piercing. He’s the nervous type. Kind of out of it and a little strange. But what I remember most about him are his teeth.”
“What about them?” Teddy asked.
“He’s got bad teeth. He doesn’t need braces. That’s not the problem. His teeth look like they’re rotting.”
It clicked in Teddy’s head. The man was an artist and a drug user.
“One more thing,” Carmichael said after a moment. “The last night I saw Rosemary. I think he followed her out the door.”
It hung there. When someone walked out of the cafe, they turned to the entrance like they could see it. The man with bad teeth following Rosemary out the door.
FORTY-FIVE
They were sitting at his table. They were looking through the window at the gym, putting it together and talking about him.
Two plus two equals four. Eddie’s the one who followed Rosemary out the door.
He felt the chill of a cold hand grabbing him by the back of the neck. It was the proverbial cold hand. The one he felt when he knew he was in deep trouble.
He started shivering. He looked up the street at the gym, then turned to the storefront directly before him and pretended to window-shop. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a Milky Way bar and tore open the wrapper. As he popped the candy into his mouth, he read the words Fun Size printed on the front and back of the wrapper. This usually triggered a smile, but not tonight.
Eddie pulled the scarf over his mouth and stepped closer to the window, peering at them in the cafe from the corner of his eye. He could see them drinking coffee and going over it again with the manager-the guy who always gave him funny looks when he ordered his usual caffe latte, the guy who liked to flirt with Rosemary. Eddie had seen the woman with blond hair in the newspapers. She was a prosecutor working the Darlene Lewis murder case. He didn’t recognize the man seated across from her, but he seemed young and eager and too intense. Eddie had never liked people who were eager. Mrs. Yap had been eager, and look where it got her.
Two young women and a man passed him on the sidewalk. They were wearing expensive clothing, walking arm in arm and giggling at him. Obviously, they had stopped off for drinks after work and were popped. Snarling at them as they vanished around the corner, Eddie turned back to the cafe.
The manager was saying something, and the other guy was writing it down. They were getting up, moving to the door, the manager waving at them. As the door opened, Eddie heard the manager say, “If I remember anything else, I’ll let you know. If he comes in again, I’ll call the cops.”
The man started up the street with the blonde. They were getting away and they had something.
His eyes moved back to the cafe. The manager was behind the counter, flirting with a female employee as he wiped the counter with a towel.
Eddie turned away and started up the sidewalk, deciding he’d follow the two of them until he could figure out what he was supposed to do. He dug his heels into the pavement, hurrying his step until he was right behind them. He liked the woman’s hair and face. As he eyed her figure beneath her coat, he realized that he liked that, too. But the man was another story. He had a cell phone to his ear, ignoring the woman and jabbering into his phone on a public street.
They stopped at the corner, waiting for the traffic to pass. Eddie was with them, part of the crowd and playing it casual. Close enough to smell the rich scent of her skin. The man closed his phone and slipped it into his pocket, glancing back at the cafe and then right at Eddie. Their eyes met. Eddie looked away, adjusting the scarf over his mouth. When the traffic cleared, the man turned back to the blonde and they crossed the street.
Strike three, Eddie thought, keeping close like a shadow and imagining himself a ghost.
“It was Jill,” he overheard the man saying to the woman. “Andrews called and says he wants a meeting first thing in the morning. It sounds like something’s up.”
The woman shrugged as if she didn’t know anything about it. But Eddie knew who Andrews was. The district attorney had gotten more coverage in the papers than she had.
He kept his eyes on them as he followed three feet back. There was something about the guy he didn’t trust. Something about him he didn’t like. A certain darkness in his eyes. A strong chin and prominent cheekbones. It was the look of someone who had taken a hit in life and was ready for the next one. The look of someone who might turn on him, reprimand him, tell him that he was no good.
Eddie couldn’t keep his eyes off him. The more he looked at the man, the more frightened he became. The more he hated him.
They were walking down Seventeenth Street. Then without warning, the man swung a door open and followed the blonde into the ground floor at One Liberty Place. The first two floors of the building were something like a high-end mall. Eddie followed them in, slowing down his pace and thinking they might be getting something to eat. When he saw them pass through the doors into the building lobby and walk toward the elevators, he realized he was wrong. The man didn’t work for the district attorney. He wasn’t a cop or even an art critic with an eye in the center of his forehead.
Eddie watched them through the glass, turning away as they stepped into the elevator. He heard the doors close and entered the lobby. The elevator was rising up into the towers above. He could see the numbers over the doors clicking by one after the next. When the elevator stopped on the seventeenth floor, he crossed the lobby and checked the building directory. The sixteenth and seventeenth floors were occupied by Barnett amp; Stokes. He knew the law firm. He’d read about them in the papers, too. The man he’d just seen was a defense attorney representing that stupid mailman, Oscar Holmes. So why was he on such good terms with one of the prosecutors?