Bleeding Hearts(116)

What he should have had on his mind was Candida dead on the floor, Candida murdered, Candida the person. What he ought to have been doing was having an orgy of emotion. Fred had never been very good at emotions. They had always seemed to him to be such a waste of time. He preferred to think.

Daggers, he thought now. Walls. Town houses. Jealousy. Money. Everybody thought he needed more money. Billionaires thought they needed more money. There was no end to it.

He sat up on the bed. What hair he had was a mess. He could feel it sticking out of his skull in sharp points. He smoothed it down.

Money, he thought again. Money and the dagger. Those were the keys. It was all so clear to him, sharp as a photograph, except that it wasn’t exactly. It was as if he were looking at the picture upside down. Jacqueline lying on the floor of the living room in that town house, lying dead the way he had seen her in the police photographs that had been handed over to him in discovery. Candida De Witt, talking calmly in the car on Friday night about what she knew and what she didn’t know. Candida, lying dead herself on another living room floor. Christ, what was wrong with him? Why couldn’t he make it come out straight?

He got off the bed. His coat was lying over the back of the desk chair on the other side of the room. He had left it there when he had gone down to breakfast to let the maid clean up. The maid had picked it up and shaken it out and folded it neatly and left it there herself. Fred shrugged it on and searched around in the pockets to find his gloves. He never actually wore his gloves, but he liked to know he had them with him. He was the same way about the personal confessions of his clients. He liked to know if they were guilty or innocent. He made a point of insisting that they tell him. He was better than a priest at never telling anyone else. It just made him feel better to know.

Fred let himself into the hall, checked the pocket of his pants for his room key, and headed for the elevators. Going down, he went over it all one more time. There were two other people in the elevator car with him. One was a stout little elderly nun in a white habit that reached just to the middle of her knees, and a black veil. She looked mad as hell. The other was a middle-aged woman in a powder-blue suit with a pleading expression on her face. They seemed to be together.

“They make really wonderful chicken salad in the restaurant downstairs,” the woman in the pastel suit was saying. “It will be perfect for you. I know how you love your chicken salad.”

Fred got out of the elevator as soon as the doors opened on the ground floor. He didn’t care if the elderly nun liked chicken salad or not. He passed the reception desk and saw that it had sprouted decorations it hadn’t had when he’d checked in on Saturday night. There was a bright crimson cardboard heart trimmed in red paper lace next to each of the check-in stations. The young woman stationed at the cashier’s desk was wearing a “Be My Valentine” heart pin on her right shoulder. Fred passed them all and went out onto the street.

Valentine’s Day was—when? Friday? Thursday? Decorations were appearing all around him, in the windows of stores, on the doors of restaurants and delis. This was a busy part of the city. Fred walked up to one of the hotel doormen and gave him the address of the Hazzard town house. The doorman was wearing one of those “Be My Valentine” pins on his tunic. It was so cold out here, Fred’s face felt stiff enough to crack. The doorman was stamping his feet and whacking his gloved hands together every chance he got.

“I wouldn’t bother to pay for a cab to go there,” the doorman said. “It’s only about ten blocks away. That way.” He pointed into the traffic.

“What about the neighborhood?” Fred asked him.

The doorman shrugged. “You shouldn’t have too much trouble, even in that coat. But things are the way things are these days. It’s a new world.”

Actually, Fred thought, it was a very old world. He could have told the doorman things about the crime in ancient Rome that would have curled his hair. He dodged into the traffic and headed out in the direction the doorman had pointed him in. He would have walked a good ways no matter what the doorman had told him. Walking helped him think. Besides, one of the reasons he had picked this hotel was that he’d known it was close to the Hazzard town house.

Daggers. Jacqueline. Living rooms. Stab wounds. Prosecutors. When he’d come to Philadelphia to defend Paul Hazzard against charges of murder, he had thought about the project in purely technical terms. Paul Hazzard was a friend of his. Paul Hazzard was in trouble. Paul Hazzard needed to be gotten out of trouble. Fred had asked Paul the ultimate question—did you do it? and received the ultimate answer—no I didn’t—and taken enough care to ensure he was being told the truth, but he hadn’t gone beyond that. It had been different with Paul, because Paul was somebody he knew. Fred had been reluctant to push the way he might have pushed other people. Fred hadn’t even been sure he wanted to know what had really happened there. And now…