Bea had cocked her head to the side. “I’m sorry,” she said warily. “I don’t….”
The woman balled the wine-stainednapkins up in her hands and laughed nervously. “Oh, I was blonde then,” she said as she tugged at a strand of hair. “Remember me now?”
There was a brief flicker of embarrassed panic in Bea’s eyes as she drew a blank. She grimaced apologetically and slowly shook her head. “Sorry, I….”
“Kelly,” the woman prodded with a nervous laugh. “I’m sorry. There’s no reason for you to remember me. It wasages ago. Oh God, this is not a good day for me.”
To Bea’s credit she didn’t pretend the “Kelly” was enough of a prompt to jog her memory. Instead she gave a slow, red smile and waved her hand at Joe’s abandoned chair.
“Sorry,” she said warmly. “I have a terrible memory for anything that’s not work-related—the plight of a solicitor. But join me. I can get to know you again.”
Startled colorpinched Kelly’s cheeks, and she bit her lip on a return smile. “I should… I shouldn’t interrupt anymore,” she said. “You have business.”
Bea angled her wrist to check the time on her watch. “I think I can go off the clock now,” she said. “And Mr. Bailey is on his way out.”
Kelly glanced down uncertainly at her tablet and then relaxed slightly. “Okay,” she said as she tucked the pad into herbag. “I guess.”
Joe nodded to both and took his leave. He stepped outside and moved down the pavement, away from the smoky no-go zone that spread out from the door. It was still warm, but there was enough of a chill in the air to make his soaked shirt unpleasant. He fastidiously plucked the damp red fabric away from his stomach as he texted Cal to come and pick him up.
The pulsing dots of ananswer in the works popped up immediately. Joe watched it idly until a bike squealed to a stop in front of him, its skinny tires close enough to his toes that he jumped back on instinct. He looked up from his phone and saw a skinny bike messenger, all wood-hard legs and sweaty T-shirt, peer at him from under a perforated helmet and then check his phone.
“Joseph Bailey?” he asked as he lookedback up.
“Yeah,” Joe said, the acknowledgment out before he thought better of it. The image of Cal’s arm flashed into his head, the curved slash of red that laid his forearm open, and he took another step back. “Who’s asking?”
The messenger shrugged his pack off and efficiently unzipped it. “Don’t know. I just got a message for you, mate,” he said. “Sign here.”
He stuck out the phone, signatureblock maximized on the finger-greased screen, and waited. Joe glanced around at the crowd in front of the bar. A tall woman in a summer dress drew a wave of laughter as she punctuated a story with a wild gesture and knocked the cap off another drinker’s head. On down the pavement, two hikers sat outside, hips perched on the narrow shelf of a window, and ate something with their fingers whiletheir dog snoozed on the ground.
Plenty of witnesses if the messenger did anything. Joe took the phone and signed it quickly, and the smooth, digital line skipped where the grubby screen misread the swipe of his finger. He handed it back, and the messenger traded it for a fat envelope he pulled out of the bag.
“Have a good day, Mr. Bailey,” the messenger said as he swung his bag back over hisshoulder. He hitched himself back up onto the bike and took off. His bell jangled a warning as he cut through the edge of the crowd and then bumped down the curb and onto the road.
Joe turned the envelope over in his hands. It was soft—whatever was inside gave and shifted under his fingers—and securely taped up. His name was printed on the front in neat, anonymous block letters. He pinched thebridge of his nose between his fingers and tried to decide what was worse—that this was the stalker or that he’d been served again.
Either way, he thought with bitter humor, he knew better than to sign something after two glasses of wine. Last time he’d ended up in court for a month over a copyright issue.
“Mr. Bailey?” Cal’s voice interrupted Joe’s thoughts. “Joe?”
He looked up. The Bentleywas parked at the side of the road, the engine running. Cal leaned out the window, his expression curious with an edge of worry.
“I’ll sit in the front,” Joe said as he tucked the envelope out of sight in his jacket and cut around the front of the car. The last dregs of his earlier good humor, sweaty-sweet afterglow, had hung on this far. He wanted to keep them until he got back to the hoteland had to deal with this, even if it meant he let himself pretend it meant more to Cal than a paycheck and sex to pass the time. He climbed into the soft leather front seat and slammed the door. “Do you ever listen to music?”
There was a pause, and then Cal shrugged. He poked the phone he’d hooked into the stereo system, and a low, practiced voice cut in midsentence.
“Podcasts,” he said. “ButI can turn the radio on if you want.”
It was about travel. The voice thrilled with the delights of Saville. Joe shook his head. “No, I like it,” he said. He could pretend he was somewhere hot with a half-naked—or fully naked—Cal. There were worse ways to prolong a good mood.
THE BEARsat lopsided on the clean, white counter in the small kitchen and stared at the world through melted plasticeyes. It had started life as a small cream bear with black eyes and paws that had shaped leather pads stitched to them. That was before someone had taken a blowtorch and left the thick fur matted into scabs and the stuffing melted in hard, charred lumps. It had been dunked in water after, and the smell of wet fabric and stale smoke oozed from it like body odor.
It was a nasty little present froma nasty little mind. Joe didn’t know why it made his throat close up and his heart race.
“Look, you have to tell Edward about this,” Cal said as he poked the dead bear with a spoon. “He can probably track it back through the delivery company or something, find out who sent it. Sick weirdo.”
The bear toppled listlessly onto its side, unbalanced by an arm charred all the way up to the shoulder.Joe flinched inside as though it were a dog or a child, with that wash of empathy. As it toppled over, he saw the folded wad of paper stapled to its underside.
“I thought we had an understanding,” Joe said. He sounded cold again, his voice filtered through a layer of tamped-down emotional noise. He reached for the bear. “You drive. I decide what Edward needs to know.”
