Cold Case Read Free Page A

pride.
    Hair silvering nicely, hairline receding. Height: five-nine, which made it easy for me, from my six-one vantage, to note that his crown was not yet thinning.
    Fingernails buffed and filed. Hands well cared for. Prosperous. My kind of client. A lawyer? A professor? A respected businessman? The speed from phone call to initial appointment had curtailed my research.
    â€œMr. Mayhew?”
    â€œYes,” he agreed cheerfully. “And you’re Miss Carlyle.”
    He’d been eyeing me as carefully as I’d been observing him. I wondered what conclusions he’d drawn from my disheveled appearance.
    If Paolina’s unexpected package of cash hadn’t arrived, if I’d skipped the Miami phone call, if said phone call hadn’t taken such a daunting chunk of time, I might have attempted to dress for success. Worn a little makeup to accent my green—well, hazel, really, almost green—eyes, and belittle my thrice-broken nose. I’d have done battle with my tangled red curls.
    I opened my mouth to utter polite excuses, realized that Mr. Mayhew didn’t seem to expect them. I liked the way his level glance concentrated on my eyes, as though the measure of a woman were not in her clothes or her curves, but hidden in a secret compartment beyond all external gifts and curses.
    I nodded him down the single step to my living room-cum-office.
    â€œYou may call me Adam,” he said.
    â€œCarlotta,” I replied. I liked his lived-in, good-humored face—lines, pouches, bags, and all. His eyes were blue behind bifocal lenses, and seemed shy and oddly defenseless, as though the glass barrier were necessary for protection as well as visual acuity.
    He toted a battered monogrammed briefcase of caramel-colored leather. Forty years ago, it might have been a college graduation gift.
    â€œI’ve wanted to do this for so long,” he said as he settled into the upright chair next to my desk.
    â€œExcuse me,” I said. “You’ve wanted to do what for so long? Visit a PI’s office?”
    If the guy was a flake I wanted him out. He didn’t seem like a thrill-seeker. He seemed genuine. Sympathetic. So sympathetic I was tempted to tell him my troubles with Paolina and the drug money. I shook myself out of it.
    â€œOn the phone—” I began.
    â€œDo you remember Thea Janis?” he said at the same time, glancing at me expectantly. “The writer.”
    â€œWriter” jogged my memory.
    â€œIt was a long time ago,” I said, struggling to recall a faint whisper of ancient scandal relegated to some distant storage locker in my mind like so much cast-off furniture. “I remember reading her book.”
    â€œNot when it was published,” he said. “You’re too young.”
    â€œWhen I was fifteen, maybe sixteen.” Over half a lifetime ago. My mother had bought it for me three months before she died. Did I still have it? The title hovered tantalizingly out of reach, a ripe fruit on a high branch.
    â€œThea was younger than that when she wrote it,” he said. He could have uttered the words dismissively. Or flippantly. But he spoke with longing, with fervency and desire. Triumph, as he added, “She was fourteen. Imagine. Fourteen. The critics didn’t know that, at first. Unqualified praise. When they learned the book had been penned by a child, a teenager, the bouquets turned a bit thorny, almost as if some critics felt they’d been duped, not given the real goods somehow. Jealousy. Nothing more than jealousy.”
    â€œWhy do you say that?”
    â€œShe was the goods,” he answered simply. “A prodigy. Nietzsche wrote like an adult at twelve. We find it more acceptable in music. Mozart.”
    â€œThea Janis was a literary Mozart?”
    â€œSee? You can’t keep the skepticism out of your voice. It’s automatic. Cinematic prodigies, okay. Visual arts, okay, with reservations. We prefer