Chapter 4
“WHAT THE FUCKING HELL HAPPENED? Who the hell was that woman? Where did shecomefrom?”
Mac was in his cottage. Graybill was still on the courthouse steps.
“Mr. Coltrane, may I ask if you intend for me to attempt to answer these rhetorical questions, or are you venting?”
Oh, for God’s sake.
“Well, obviously the latter, Graybill,” he said through gritted teeth. “But if you can address the former, you’d have my utmost gratitude.” He mimicked Graybill’s clipped English.
“She went off with the auctioneer, Mr. Coltrane. If I’d known you’d wanted me to give pursuit I might have.”
Mac sucked in another breath, as if he hoped oxygen would behave like Ativan. His equilibrium remained thrown. “What did she look like?”
“She was about five feet five. A bit sweaty and disheveled. Frankly, she looked a bit as though she might have slept in her clothes. I at first took her for one of the homeless women who camp out here, or for someone late for a meeting with her parole officer. Then I realized she was wearing what I believe were lululemon yoga pants and Armani sunglasses.”
Mac was momentarily speechless. “What in the... how in the...lululemon? Are you kidding me with this, Graybill?”
“I wouldn’t presume to kid about this, Mr. Coltrane, given how important the matter is to you. You may thank my wife for my knowledge of lululemon.”
Mac rubbed his forehead with his hand. “Is that all you’ve got on her?”
“She had a very determined air. Hysteria channeled in a very goal-oriented way. Knew exactly what she came to do and wasn’t going to leave without accomplishing it.”
Mac was momentarily distracted by wondering about Graybill’s marriage, given the things he noticed about women.
“And she wasn’tunattractive, Mr. Coltrane. Her hair was a sort of dark red. Her form was pleasing. Her face was covered mostly with the aforementioned sunglasses. Though I thought I saw freckles. It of course might have been, er... dirt.”
The word “freckles” pinged somewhere in the vicinity of Mac’s heart, which he used these days strictly as an organ for pumping blood. Certainly no woman had seen the inside of it, to be euphemistic, in eons.
But the word was like a little pinprick puncture. Oddly, he felt the anger seep out of him.
And for a vertiginous millisecond, a slippage in time, he was that uncertain kid again. Hurt. Inwardly flailing, outwardly frozen.
For just a second, however. He might as well be made of rock these days.
“I do wish I could be of more assistance, Mr. Coltrane,” Graybill said into the silence. Graybill was starchy, but Mac believed him, because he was a decent guy.
“What a pity I’m not a police sketch artist, Graybill. Or a psychic. Or both.”
“All viable career alternatives, Mr. Coltrane, should you wish to abandon the agrarian life. A psychic works downtown in Hellcat Canyon, I’m given to understand.”
“Thank you, Graybill. I, too, have seen the giant palm over the New Age bookstore on Main Street. That was more humor on my part; please don’t bill me for it.”
They remained connected in a sort of commiserating silence.
“Mr. Coltrane, I would be happy to act as your agent should you wish to contact Tiberius in New York.”
That was about as delicately put as any human could put anything. Graybill knew exactly how Mac felt about the house. And about his brother, Ty. It was a testament to how well he knew how much this meant to Mac.
“No,” Mac said shortly. “Thank you,” he added a moment later, after a pointed delay, to punish Graybill a very little for even asking.
“Very well,” Graybill said evenly.
Mac cleared his throat. “That woman was attractive, huh? At least that gives me something to work with.”
“I’ve every confidence in your eventual success, Mr. Coltrane.” Admirable dryness, that.
