The Mirror and the Mask (7 page)

“Hell, no. But if you find him, let me know. I'd like to have a little chat with him myself. He swindled me out of a couple hundred thousand dollars back in ninety-six. We were business partners back then in a house rehab company.”

“How'd he steal the money?”

“We set it up so we could both sign for our business account. One day he up and splits. But before he does, he cleans it out. I was left holding the bag on three properties without a dime to do the work. I looked for that asshole for years. Never found him.”

“You know anything about his family?”

“First tell me who you are. Don't lie this time.”

“I'm private. Working for his daughter.”

“Like I said, lady, don't lie. He don't have a daughter.”

For a moment, Jane was thrown. “Her name is Annie Archer.”

“Oh, you mean the stepdaughter. The cute one. But she's not his.”

“You're sure of that?”

“Hell, yes. Johnny couldn't have kids. Bad plumbing.”

“He told you that?”

“He loved it. Said he could sleep around and nobody could ever nail him with a paternity suit. If your client thinks he's her father, she's not giving you the real story. She knows better.”

Jane remembered something Nolan once told her. Basic rule of investigating: Everyone lies. Nolan warned her to keep that in mind. If she did, she'd never be blindsided.

“Tell me,” said Jane, pulling her writing pad closer, “did you ever meet Archer's wife?”

“Mandy? Yeah, she was another looker. Nice, too. Too good for Johnny.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Hell, first off, he was an ex-con.”

“He'd been in prison?”

“Don't ask me for what, but yeah. You saying his stepdaughter didn't tell you?”

“She never mentioned it.”

“Well, shit, lady, you better sit her down and get the real story. She's playing with you. Actually, I'm kinda surprised they aren't still in touch. The two of them were pretty tight. But then, after the mom died, he took off. I think the girl had already moved away by then. I was told, secondhand a'course, that he got this big insurance settlement when his wife kicked.”

“Are you saying—”

“That he had something to do with it? No idea. Johnny was a thief, but he didn't strike me as the wife-murdering type. Then again, who the hell knows? He was money hungry, that's for sure. But he also had this weird, generous streak. He'd steal from you and never give it a second thought, but if he thought you were having a hard time, he'd empty his wallet, give you all the cash he had. I'd like to have a quarter for every woman who bent his ear with a sob story. I mean, the guy got a reputation for being a soft touch. My opinion, that's the kiss of financial death.”

Jane wrote quickly. “Is there anyone you can think of who might still be in touch with him?”

“He might be an easy mark, but he didn't make friends.”

“Do you remember any of his wife's friends?”

“Nah. She worked at one of those resorts around here. If you can figure out which one, maybe you'll find someone who knew her.” He coughed, then added, “Anything else?”

“You've been a big help.”

“Yeah, right. Hey, tell me something. Your last name really Lawless?”

“It is.”

He made a sound that was half laugh, half wheez. “Kind of strange, wouldn't you say? A PI with the name Lawless. You must get razzed about it all the time.”

Not as much as her dad, the criminal defense attorney, did. “Thanks, Steve. If you think of anything else, let me give you my number.” She waited while he found something to write on. He took down the number, then kidded her one more time about her name and finally hung up.

 

After leaving the motel in Hastings, Susan drove home. Frosted ice crystals clung to the trees along the side of the road, weighing down the branches, even snapping a few, but the effect was nothing short of breathtaking. By the time she reached Stillwater, the rising temperature had melted away the winter wonderland.

Feeling dispirited, she found Jack finishing his breakfast in the kitchen while reading the local paper. She set her overnight bag next to the island. The pitiful pantomime she'd once thought of as a marriage was about to begin again.

Jack asked her how the roads were. He didn't really care. She told him they were fine. They hadn't been. He rumpled the newspaper, turned a page, nodded to the coffee, said it was fresh. She poured herself a cup. Sat down across from him. The mail was on the counter. She sipped her coffee. He sipped his. Neither looked at the other.

It was surreal, acting as if nothing had changed when in a matter
of days he would no longer . . . be. The whole idea seemed so utterly impossible that she wondered if she'd dreamed it. But looking at him, at his garish Hawaiian shirt, at a face she'd once found so handsome but now caused nothing but revulsion, she saw more clearly than ever before that she had no other way out.

Susan had never understood killing, not even in war. Taking a life seemed incomprehensible. When she heard about murders on the nightly news, it was always at a distance. She might think for a moment about the strange mind that wielded the knife or pulled the trigger, but it had nothing to do with her. She lived a normal, orderly existence. As soon as the subject on the TV changed, the violence was all but forgotten. And yet here she was, about to become the person those anchorpeople talked about in disgusted, semidetached tones. Sitting across from Jack, watching him shovel breakfast cereal into that yawning void of a mouth, the mystery revealed itself.

Murder was an act of profound ego. It was the voice inside the soul screaming,
I want
.
I deserve
.
I take because I can
.

While finishing his breakfast, Jack asked where she'd stayed the night. She answered easily. Conversation proceeded in the usual way. He had a noon meeting. Sunny had already left for school. Susan's sister had called last night from Fort Worth, said she'd try to reach Susan after church on Sunday. Nothing urgent, she just wanted to check in. But in all the normality, Susan could feel something slip from her grasp. One minute everything was fine and the next the room had turned airless and blurry. A powerful tension heated up inside her. Was it then that Jack began looking at her in that critical way of his? She'd always thought of it as X-ray vision, afraid that he could see inside her. Her words grew stilted. The gaps between comments seemed to grow longer.

Susan couldn't stand it another second. “Is something wrong?” she asked.

“Wrong? With me? No.”

“It's probably me. I thought we'd seen the bottom of the housing market, but it's still dropping. I guess I'm a little preoccupied.”

“Join the club.” He got up, set his dishes in the sink. “We need to relax, chill out. Why don't you join me in the hot tub?”

She hesitated. It was the last thing she wanted. “Sure. Good idea.”

He turned back to her before he left the room, stared at her for a couple of extra seconds, then said he had to run back up to his study and make a quick call. She smiled at him, told him to take his time, that she planned to work from home for the rest of the day. There was no hurry.

And so it went, Susan scrutinizing each new shift in topic, taking Jack's emotional temperature every few minutes, weighing each word on the slippery scale of normality. She learned one important truth over the course of the morning. Spending time with a man you're about to kill was agonizing.

 

Ever on the tip of readiness, Cordelia had formulated a plan. No noodling around on the Internet for her. She believed in direct assault.

Cordelia Thorn was a supersized woman, six feet tall and well—
well
—over two hundred pounds. She was also drop-dead gorgeous in a curvaceous, Queen Latifah sort of way. More to the point, she knew how to use her zaftig, larger-than-life persona to get what she wanted.

Every morning—as late in the morning as possible—she crafted and costumed herself for maximum effect, depending on what she had planned for the day. There was one rule, and only one: No fading wallflower clothes were allowed, unless dictated by a necessary role. Not that Cordelia ever performed on the legitimate stage. She was a director, not a performer. She understood the difference between real life and acting, although in her opinion, the line was often a tad fuzzy. The world was Cordelia's stage, and she commanded it like a diva.

Today, for a little round of sleuthing, she'd chosen the Wagnerian cone-breasted look, the one seen on nurses in the fifties and in modern
bondage flicks. She wanted to project sexual power and menace. Toss a low-cut red blazer over a tight skirt and sell it with black fishnet stockings and stripper spikes, and it was an image made in heaven for a jaded bartender sick to death of the long parade of excess derma and nightly ass grabbing.

Cordelia was smokin' and loaded for bear when she left her loft. Nobody knew the bars along West Seventh better than she did. Theater people were creatures of the night, and the night, after a show, was made for bars. A few of the best bars in that neighborhood were just off Seventh, and some were attached to restaurants. This Annie Archer person might have missed one of them. Cordelia intended to be thorough. She intended to find the father dude.

By one thirty, the huge head of steam she'd worked up had dwindled to a puny puff. She was fed up with all the twelve-year-old, second-string bartenders, their eyes falling out of their sockets as they gaped at her alpine cleavage. Sure, her breasts might be exclamation points honed for maximum effect, but
pullease
.

The Promised Land, half a block off Seventh, was the last place she intended to visit. She had a meeting at the theater at two—with a pastrami sandwich, extra mustard, no pickle.

Sauntering into the glitzy, neon-lit interior, Cordelia caught the bartender's eye. Or, rather, her breasts did.

“What can I get you?” he asked, wiping the counter with a soft cloth.

She pulled out the photo, handed it to him. “You know that guy?”

He took a quick look. “Nope.” His eyes snapped back to attention.

“Look at it again,” said Cordelia. She'd said the same thing in at least ten other places. “Picture the man a dozen years older. Maybe he has a mustache or a beard. His hair might be longer or shorter, or gray, or whatever. Maybe he wears glasses.”

Grudgingly, the bartender took another look. “Now that you mention it, I do recognize him. He doesn't have a beard, but his hair
is graying. What's his name. Oh, jeez, it's right on the tip of my tongue.” He snapped his fingers. “Bowman. Jack Bowman.”

Cordelia did a double take. “Bowman? As in Jack Bowman of DreamScape Builders?”

“Yeah, I think that's right. The guy's in construction.”

“He a regular here?”

“He comes in fairly often. Sometimes early, for one of our bar burgers, sometimes late at night, usually with a woman.”

“The same woman?”

“Nah, seems like it's a different one every time.”

Cordelia didn't need to ask anything else. She already knew. “You're my man,” she said, smiling triumphantly.

“I am?” he said, his Adam's apple bobbing.

“It's just a figure of speech. Later.”

 

 

 

J
ane had just come back to her office with a fresh mug of tea when Cordelia phoned.

“Are you sitting down?” came Cordelia's excited voice.

“Why?”

“You need me, Janey. I . . . am . . . freakin' . . .
indispensable
. After this, neither you nor Nolan will
ever
want to sleuth on your own again.”

Jane picked up a pencil and drummed it against her mug. “Setting aside the fact that Nolan would never call what he does ‘sleuthing,' what did you find out?”

“I solved your case.”

“Meaning?”

“I found John Archer.”

“You're kidding.”

“Think about it, Janey. If you had a playful bent of mind and your name was John Archer and you wanted to keep it essentially the same but change the specifics, what would you call yourself?”

“Don't make me play games.”

“What's another name for John?”

“Ian? Sean? Johann? Juan?”

“Stick with English. We have John Kennedy, but lots of people also called him . . . what?”

“Jack?”

“Bingo. And then Archer. What's another name for an archer?” Jane was losing patience. “Just tell me.”

“Bowman. Jack Bowman.”

“Cordelia, just because you worked out this little word puzzle doesn't mean you found the guy.”

“Of course it does. I took that picture you gave me and did some footwork. I found the bar—just
off
Seventh—that he frequents. And the bartender confirmed it. The guy's name is Jack Bowman. And what's even more important, I know him. That's why he looked so familiar. He's not a good friend or anything, but I did him a favor once.”