slender shoulder. Needing the comfort, Julie reached up and pressed her fingers over it. Her wide-set brown eyes avoided his, and her gently rounded lower lip was trembling. He knew she was struggling to rein in her emotions. He would help by giving her a job to focus on.
“Why Dan?” she asked, her voice quavering.
He shook his head. “It could just be a tragic coincidence. But we need to find out exactly what happened, who’s responsible, whether the tavern was a random target, or whether there was some specific motive.” His voice was businesslike now. “I’ve already been in touch with the police. But we’re getting pressure from Washington to have a report ready in the morning.”
“Give me a few minutes,” she told him, reaching for a tissue. “Then I’ll get on the phone to some of my contacts.” She paused and looked up at Fitz, tears still glistening in her eyes. “And I can also go through Dan’s things to see if there were any notes he left about what he was doing this evening.”
He sighed. “That leaves me free to make the identification at the morgue and call his family in New York.”
When Fitzpatrick reached the door, he turned back for a moment. Julie was sitting completely still, her face slightly averted. He was struck by how she looked in this moment of crisis. He’d always thought of her as sensitive and attractive but not beautiful. Tonight the unaccustomed pallor of her skin against the background of the dark curtains made her profile look like an antique cameo. Even now, her carriage and style spoke of wealth and culture, reminding him again of her privileged background. More than once he’d wondered how one of the wealthy Baltimore McLeans had gotten into this kind of business in the first place.
Not that she hadn’t done an excellent job here, he reminded himself. But she wasn’t detached enough. You had to know her well to see the symptoms of stress beneath her controlled exterior. Perhaps denying herself the conventional emotional outlets made things worse. He knew she’d already opted out of the service for a lower-key translator’s job back in D.C. Too bad this mess had to cloud her last couple of months here.
None of the calls Julie placed netted much immediate hard information. Although Madrid was a city that kept late hours, most government offices were already closed. Even her contacts at UPI and Reuters were of little help. A rumor that the ETA, the Basque separatist activists, would claim credit for the bombing was still unconfirmed. Whoever wanted that report in Washington wasn’t going to be happy with the dribble of facts she was able to collect.
Still feeling numb inside, she got up and crossed to the door. She wanted to put off going through Dan’s office, but she knew that it was probably the most constructive thing to do now.
The only way she could cope with the smiling picture of him and his parents on the bookshelf was to lay it facedown before starting to go through desk drawers full of manila folders neatly labeled with project names. She recognized most of them, but the one at the very back, labeled Foolery, piqued her interest. It turned out to be full of risqué cartoons and jokes that had been passed around the office. They must have appealed to Dan’s offbeat sense of humor, she thought, realizing with a painful stab that she was already thinking of him in the past tense.
Pulling out his appointment book, she flipped through the pages. His schedule, like her own, had been full of meetings with Spanish government officials, briefings for visiting U.S. dignitaries, and the long afternoon lunches where the Spanish habitually concluded a surprising number of business negotiations. Most of the entries were complete with names and phone numbers. But on a few scattered dates there was simply a capital R lightly penciled in the lower left-hand corner. Julie thumbed back through the previous six months and found they came in pairs—about twice every
Caroline Anderson / Janice Lynn