heard the steps on the stairs, not fast, not slow, he sat down in the boss chair. Then he stood up again. Ran a hand through his getting-long hair.
Miss Wade came through the door of Phelan Investigations and stopped mid-stride. Her head swiveled as she surveyed the Apollo White walls.
His neck warming up, Phelan surveyed her.
The crease at the left side of her lips seemed etched a cut deeper. Her weight had fallen off some. Less than the 120 lbs. on her discharge paper from Gatesville Prison. Still five foot six. Still the gray-blue eyes, but something farther in their gaze. Not tough to figure. Jailhouse tan, long gone: there was sun on her cheekbones and in strands of her ash-brown hair. Miss Wade had been taking in the parade of downtown life from the New Rosemont Retirement Hotel’s outside chairs. He’d studied her from his window, being as the Rosemont was just across the street, wondered what was healing or not in her mind and in her body. Wondered did Phelan Investigations or its proprietor figure in anywhere.
There was more than sun on her cheekbones now—there was deep pink embarrassment. She closed the door behind her, saying, “I shoulda called, but I decided to speak up face to face, so whatever way this went, I could tell you in person that I am grateful that you hired me and sorry you and your new business got pulled into such a dirty mess.”
Phelan felt like he’d swallowed a bowl of concrete chili. The heat from his neck was lapping at his ears.
She wasn’t coming back.
“I got you into the mess, or Phelan Investigations did, and that’s the same thing. You know that’s the truth.”
“Neither one of us to blame for that man, Mr. Phelan.” This judgment sounded settled.
Phelan cleared his throat and went for it. “You well enough to come back to work?”
They looked past each other, him to her mid-section, where a pale blue blouse tucked into a swirly skirt he’d seen on many days. She was glancing sideward toward the new furnishings. The pink on her cheeks spread down to her jaw.
“Is there any work, Mr. Phelan?”
“Matter of fact. We got a ten o’clock today.” He’d said that with a shitload of relief. Shoulda just sounded businesslike. And…we, he’d said we. “The gentleman who called you up before…well, before.”
“The one wanted to be invisible? Yeah. I ’member.” She turned directly to the two-piece sectional and broke out a finer smile than people usually give to used furniture. “Where’d the plaid couch go? What’d you do to the urp-green walls with the scratched and chipped-off patches?”
Phelan shrugged self-consciously. “Spiffing up our business image.”
“I see that.”
“Tax deductible, right?”
“Right.” Her chin lowered. She scrutinized the fat-pillow couch. “That blue’s a nice color. But, you know, it could be two chairs, you pushed it apart. People might not want to sit right smack next to each other. And if we put a coffee table—”
We. He exhaled.
She looked down, shifted one black flat to the other.
Hooked her hair behind an ear. “Guess we could start using first names now, Mr. Phelan, if you want. Being as there’s water under the bridge. Being as you’re keeping me on after what happened. Lotta people wouldn’t—”
“If I’d a been down here like I should’ve been…” Phelan shoved his hands in his pockets, addressed his gaze to the floor. “…that good deed you did wouldn’t have fallen to you.”
“That’s not how those people work, Mr. Phelan. Tom. You were here, he wouldna tried nothing. Still be out there.” A shudder crawled through her shoulders. Delpha turned and placed her umbrella in the coat closet. She went over and sat down at her desk. There she repositioned the Selectric an inch, pulled out the tray drawer and stirred the pencils. She opened her middle side-drawer and set a new manila file folder onto her desk, hovered a pen over its tab.
“What’s the ten o’clock appointment’s name?”
IV
DELPHA RELIEVED XAVIER Bell of a dripping umbrella, set it in a corner of her office to dry. She showed him into one of the mismatched client chairs. As she turned, she had a strange sense of wind changing against her face. Unlikely, because the air in the office came from a flaky AC unit. She squinted at it.
“Wait a minute.” Phelan stopped her before she got out his door. “Why don’t you bring in a pad and take down the details of this meeting shorthand? Like we do on all cases this important.”
Her gaze examined his. Phelan’s eyes roamed downward. To date, zero case-notes had been recorded in shorthand, a language Miss Wade had learned in Mr. Wally’s business class at Gatesville Women’s Prison. She went into her office, opened and closed desk drawers, and returned with a new steno pad and a ballpoint. Peeking out beneath, Phelan could see a folder that she used to hold their standard contract form. A sheet of carbon paper would be clipped to it. Discreetly, she pushed the second client’s chair away from Mr. Bell, all the way to the side of the room, where she sat and poised the pen.
“This is my secretary, Delpha Wade. She’ll make sure we record every detail of your case accurately.”
“Yes, I spoke to Miss Wade on the phone.” Mr. Bell’s spine stretched a mite before he dipped his head in her direction. “Well, look at you. Miss Wade, would you do me the favor of turning your head to the side?”
Delpha lifted her gaze from the steno pad. She looked directly at the client, and again, for a second, her eyes narrowed. Then she turned her head in the direction of the wall that had most needed repainting.
“I am right. You’ve got the profile of Madeleine Carroll. Not the hair of course, hers was wavy. And blond. But, really, the nose, the chin, a dead ringer for—”
“’Fraid I don’t know who that is.” Delpha returned her attention to the pad.
“You’re too young. She was the star of, no, Robert Donat was the star, of course, but she was the lead actress in ‘The Thirty-Nine Steps.’ Alfred Hitchcock, 1935. You’ve seen it?”
No, at Gatesville, movie-time was Doris Day and Elvis Presley. Delpha placed her chin a fraction higher in the air and a slight smile on her lips, to act out interest.
“I’m a film buff. I realize it’s not everyone’s passion, but for me, well…” The client’s gaze turned to rope in Phelan. “Let me remind you that I’d like my identity to remain confidential.”
The sunglasses had told Phelan that.
The man’s nose—straight-bridged in profile but redveined and lumpy from the front—suggested that he liked the bottle. The gray tinge of its tip, that he was an ardent smoker, and the vertical folds in his cheeks, that he had some decades on him. But he didn’t have an elderly hump or a spindly frame. He was built thick like a wrestler or boxer who gravity had weighed down. And he was turned out—wore a navy blazer over a blue plaid shirt, the snap-brim fedora with neat brown hair around its edges. The hair and the mustache, sort of a
