Lady Vanishes Read Free

didn’t keep a regular schedule. She said it didn’t matter there, no one knew the time of day anyway. She asked if it mattered to us, if we needed someone who could commit to the same time every day. She said you and Dashiell were especially gifted with her residents, but that you kept weird hours, that sometimes you’d visit after breakfast, sometimes at bedtime, sometimes not for weeks at a time, that you did what you could, and would that work for us? Then she told me why, that you were a private investigator.”
    Venus turned to face me now, her eyebrows raised, as if she wasn’t sure it were true and I was supposed to tell her it was or it wasn’t.
    “And that’s what you need, a private investigator? To find out who mowed down—”
    “Harry Dietrich,” she said. “Yes, that’s what I need.”
    I waited for more.
    “I’m not buying that it was a random accident, Rachel. I just don’t believe it. Maybe I don’t want to believe it, I don’t know.”
    “Terrible things happen for no discernible reason. Look at the population you take care of at Harbor View.”
    “I know,” she said. “Still.”
    “And are you hiring me on behalf of Harbor View?” I asked.
    “No,” she said. “That’s why we’re talking here, not there. I’m hiring you on behalf of myself.”
    Once again, I waited for more. It seemed to me that there was no end of more I hadn’t been told. I didn’t need a tarot deck or a crystal ball. It’s just how human beings are, always keeping the most difficult stuff for last. Or not telling it at all.
    “What I want you to do is this. I want you to come in with Dashiell and work with the kids, but you’ll be working undercover. I want you to find out who killed Harry. And I need you to do it as fast as possible.”
    What had the cops found out? I wondered. But I figured I’d get that answer straight from the horse’s mouth.
    “Do you know what kind of bike rider hit him, Venus?”
    She shook her head.
    “I know I’m not giving you much right now. But something’s wrong. I just feel it, and I’m scared.”
    “Of what?” I asked, thinking I should have said, Of whom? But it wouldn’t have made any difference. She wasn’t going to answer me either way. I could see it in her eyes. The conversation was over.
    “I have to get back now,” she said. “I’m already late. Come later this afternoon, two-thirty, can you do that? I go to the gym every day after work, Serge’s on Bank and West, just a couple of blocks from Harbor View. I’ll arrange a pass for you. It’s a good place for us to talk. We can meet there every day and fill each other in. Five-thirty. On the treadmills.”
    “Then there’s more you want to tell me?”
    “Lots more,” she said. “But it’ll have to wait. I’m never late, and I don’t want to draw attention to myself right now.”
    “Venus, if I’m looking for a bicycle messenger or a delivery man, then why—”
    “I don’t know what you’re looking for,” she whispered. “But whatever it is, we only have until Friday for you to find it.”
    “Why?” I asked. “What happens on Friday?”
    “I’m late,” she said, turning to leave, but not before I saw the fear creep into her dark eyes.
    Then she was gone, and I was standing there alone, holding the price list, wondering what was going to happen on Friday. Would her coach turn back into a pumpkin, her fine white horses into mice?

CHAPTER 3
Some People Have All the Nerve
    As I approached Harbor View, I was assaulted by the deafening sound of jackhammers. They had already come so close to the building line, chopping away half the sidewalk out in front, the institution looked as if it might fall over forward onto the half-constructed roadway.
    Harbor View was neither grand in scale like some of the commercial buildings facing the river at the northwestern edge of the Village, meatpacking plants that had been converted into high-priced housing, nor small and funky like the bar that had