John Lutz - Darker Than Night

Jesus! Claire!

“Hi, Claire.” Sideways glance at Dalia. “I was just thinking about you while I was getting dressed to go out for breakfast.”

“I called about the necklace.”

Necklace? No, no! He couldn’t think clearly. Had to answer her. And without a meaningful pause. “Necklace?”

She laughed. “Don’t sound so guilty. I think you know the one I mean. It’s a ruby on a silver chain. Elegant. Perfect.”

“You, uh, found a necklace?”

“In my dresser drawer, hidden among my lingerie.”

“Hidden?”

“Well, it was way in the back of the drawer.”

“I don’t know anything about-”

Jubal understood then what must have happened. The necklace had come loose from where he’d taped it to the outside back of the drawer above her lingerie drawer. Dalia’s necklace. And as luck would have it, it hadn’t dropped to the floor or bottom of the dresser but had snagged on something and fallen into the drawer below. Or maybe she hadn’t pushed the drawer the necklace was taped to all the way closed.

Either way, she had the necklace.

He thought about lying, but he was committed now to an earlier lie.

Jubal knew when not to push. If he reversed his field here and took credit for the necklace as a gift to Claire, she might sense something was wrong. He decided his best course was to continue playing dumb.

“I’m tempted to pretend I meant this necklace as a gift,” he said, “but I have to be honest with you. The sad truth is I know nothing about it.”

Dalia knew he was talking to Claire and was staring at him from her side of the bed. She puckered her lips and sent an air kiss his way.

Damm it, Dalia!

“Jubal?”

“Honestly, Claire. We bought the dresser secondhand. The necklace must have belonged to a previous owner. Or still belongs. It’s probably just paste, maybe a kid’s necklace, or it wouldn’t have been left there.”

“I don’t think it’s paste. It looks pretty good. And I think there’s a tiny silver stamp on the clasp.”

“Real or not, Claire, it isn’t from me. I wish it were.”

She was silent.

“You do believe me, Claire?”

“Of course I do.”

“Show it to me when I get back. If it’s high quality, we’ll see if we can find out who it belongs to. And if we can’t…finders keepers.”

“Okay, Jubal.” A beat. “Any problems with the play?”

“No, I slipped right back into it. Born for the part. Any part.”

“No news yet on the sitcom?”

“Nothing yet. I told you, they had two more auditions to consider.”

“That’s right, you did. Love me?”

“Love you.”

“I’ll let you get to breakfast.”

“What? Oh, yeah. How are you? How’s the baby?”

“We’re both fine. Both hungry. Like you must be.”

Jubal glanced at Dalia and felt a stab of guilt. But only momentarily.

“Love you,” he said again to Claire.

She told him she loved him, too, then hung up.

“That was pretty damned convincing,” Dalia said. “Maybe too convincing.”

Jubal set the cell phone on the chair and lay on his back next to her. “Damm it! Claire found the necklace.”

Dalia raised her head and propped her chin on her elbow. “What necklace?”

“One I was going to give you. Since I left on such short notice for my flight out of New York, I couldn’t get to where I’d hidden it in the apartment. I was sure it’d be safe where it was for a while, though; then I could remove it and give it to you. But obviously I was wrong.”

“Claire suspects you bought this necklace for someone else?”

“No, I played dumb, as if I knew nothing about it, and I think she believed me.”

“My guess is she did. I only heard your end of the conversation, but like I told you, you’re good.” She smiled. “At everything.”

“If I wasn’t good enough just now, we’ve got a problem.”

Still sprawled on his back, Jubal stared at the smoke alarm above the bed. He was pretty sure Claire had believed him, yet there was something about her voice. And she’d been acting strange lately in ways he ascribed to her pregnancy, pretending to find other, smaller gifts and not knowing where they’d come from. It was damned weird. Something seemed to be going on, and he couldn’t quite figure out what it was.

He felt the mattress shift as Dalia slid over to be near him, her body hot against his. She kissed him wetly on the neck. “I know how to solve the problem,” she whispered in his ear.

“Oh? How?”

“Buy another necklace.”

Claire sat by the phone, holding her coffee cup but not raising it to her lips.

Something was wrong. She could sense it. Maybe being pregnant gave you ESP.

She got up, poured a full cup of coffee, and carried it into the living room so she could sip it while sitting on the sofa and watching local news.

When she used the remote, it was already set for Channel One. A slick anchorwoman and a guy in a suit were talking about that serial killer, the Night Prowler. The suit was a cop, and he was assuring her that the police had leads they were following and would soon bring a resolution to the case. By that, Claire assumed he meant solve it.

Then the woman began asking about gifts the Night Prowler had apparently left in his victims’ apartments, often in the kitchen. The candy, gourmet foods, yellow roses, jewelry.

Jewelry!

Claire stiffened, spilling coffee onto the rug.

Oh, Christ! She hadn’t thought of this. She should pay more attention to the news.

She found she was standing but didn’t recall getting up.

Wait a minute! Calm down, for God’s sake. Think about the odds on this. You’re being stupid. You’re being…pregnant!

She went into the kitchen and ran water on a paper towel, then carried it, along with a dry towel, back into the living room. She rubbed the coffee spots on the rug with the wet towel, then patted them with the dry one, standing and using the sole of her slipper to press moisture from the stains.

It was an effort bending over to pick up the towels. Claire carried them into the kitchen, depressed the foot pedal on the plastic wastebasket so the lid would lift, and dropped them in with the trash.

And noticed something green in the wastebasket-an empty chocolate mints box half concealed by crumpled junk mail.

The mints she’d assumed were a gift from Jubal, and that were uneaten when Jubal left town.

The mints whose box she hadn’t thrown away.

Claire felt her throat tighten. If not Jubal, who had eaten the mints and put the box in the wastebasket?

Jubal might really not have known about the mints. Or about any of the other gifts.

Or the necklace.

He wouldn’t have lied to her about something like the necklace. Not Jubal.

The sense of dread she felt was for good reason.

I’m not being an alarmist. I’m not! Pregnant isn’t stupid.

She went to the phone and called the police.

“We’ve gotta go with it,” Pearl said. “It’s the pathetic sum total of what we’ve got. And maybe Claire Briggs really is in danger.”

“We all listened to her story,” Fedderman said. He was on the outside in their booth in the Lotus Diner because of his arm, which was still in a plastic cast and a sling. The breakfast crowd had thinned in the diner, leaving behind unbused tables and the strong scent of burned sausage and toast, ignored coffee residue cooking in a pot. “I don’t know about you two, but my guess is she’s got a problem with her husband. He probably bought the necklace for somebody else and she found it.”

“Hidden in her drawer?”

“Like the purloined letter.”

Pearl and Quinn stared at Fedderman. Pearl said, “The purloined letter wasn’t hidden under a bra.”