Fidelity Read Free Page B

chemical sweeteners, a little box with an emery board and six bottles of nail polish, and a couple of hairbrushes. The final item was a cheap makeup case.
    “The cops aren’t going to impound your hairbrush,” Ray said. “If it embarrasses you to leave tampons lying around, then take them. But you don’t want your desk so empty that the cops think you’re hiding something.”
    “I’m not!” she snapped.
    “Then act like it. Put your stuff back in your desk, sit in your chair, and see what you can bring yourself to do to help us find Phil.”
    April gaped at him, then sat down and pulled a file out of the deep lower right-hand drawer of her desk. “This is the log sheet. It’s what everyone has been doing this week.”
    Emily’s eyes widened. She spun it around on the desk to read it.
    “Christ, you didn’t include him.”
    “Of course not. He’s the boss,” April said.
    Emily knew that a part of her was grateful to April for not referring to Phil in the past tense. “Have you kept logs of incoming phone calls and appointments?”
    “Sure.” April showed Emily a notebook full of lined paper with two columns of names and numbers. Then she produced a bound calendar with a page for each day.
    Emily could see that there were lots of calls, lots of people coming into the office. There were also whole days when Phil had been out of the office, and April had put a diagonal line through his square and written No Appointments on it in her neat, unhurried handwriting. Emily pointed to the most recent one. “What’s this? Did he say in advance that he didn’t want you to make any appointments, or just call from somewhere and say `I’m not coming in today’?”
    “Both,” April said. “A lot of the time somebody will be here and then leave, so I have to cancel whatever else is up. Sometimes one of the men calls to say he’s in Pomona or Irvine or someplace, and can’t get back.”
    Emily held the three men in the corner of her eye while April spoke. She noted that none of them showed surprise at anything April said. Emily said, “You all know what I’m looking for. We need to know what Phil’s working on, and where. He could be stuck somewhere and in trouble.”
    The recorded voice on the telephone said again, “Please hold. All our representatives are busy now, but your call is important to us.” Emily hung up, then reached into her purse, found the slip of paper where she had written the number the police officer had given her when she had called before, and dialed it again.
    She heard a voice say, “Officer Morris.”
    “Officer Morris, this is Emily Kramer. I spoke with you a little while ago about my husband. Well, now I’ve just learned that money has disappeared from his business accounts and our personal bank accounts. I’m afraid someone may have his identification or be holding him or-“
    “Mrs. Kramer, wait. I’ve been trying to reach you. I just called your house, and I was about to try the office. I’m afraid we’ve found Mr. Kramer. I’m very sorry to say he’s dead.”
    Emily felt thankful that he had not prolonged the revelation and made her listen for a long time, praying that he wasn’t going to say what she had known he would say. “Thank you,” she said.
    Then she began to cry.

3
    Jerry Hobart and Tim Whitley were stuck on the road to Las Vegas. Interstate 15 was always just the first part of the pleasure, the incredibly clear sky and the bright yellow morning sun striking the pavement ahead of the car and making the tiny diamond particles pressed into the asphalt glitter. It didn’t matter that the diamonds were really bits of broken glass pressed into the hot asphalt by the weight of the cars passing at eighty or ninety. They were like the sequins on the little outfits of the waitresses and the girls in the shows. They weren’t diamonds either, and the glitter in their makeup wasn’t gold dust, and Tim Whitley didn’t care. All that would have done was add to the