Camouflage(14)

“Hello,” the woman said, making the word seem like a chirp. The bright blue eyes moved over my face in a way that made me think of a supermarket shopper feeling up a piece of fruit to determine its ripeness. “Are you here about the room?”

“No, ma’am. I’m looking for R. L. McManus.”

“I’m Jane Carson. If you have an animal you’d like boarded, perhaps I—”

“I’m not a canine customer, either. Is Ms. McManus home?”

The smile lost about half of its candlepower. “What did you want to see her about?”

“Personal business.”

“What sort of personal business?”

“I have something for her.” I waggled Virden’s envelope. “To be delivered personally. It won’t take long.”

“Your name, please.”

I handed her one of my business cards. The woman looked at it, blinked, blinked again, and the smile flattened out into a straight line. She said, “Come in,” in a reluctant voice that no longer chirped, and stood aside.

I hesitated, eyeing the Rottweiler.

“Don’t worry about Thor,” she said. “He’s gentle as a lamb.”

Sure he was. A were-lamb, maybe. Thor. Some name for a dog. Some dog. But I went in anyway, sidling past him. He didn’t move, but his hot yellow gaze tracked me as I trailed Jane Carson across a hallway and into a room that had probably once been a parlor and was now a combination Canine Customers reception office and waiting room. Behind me I heard nails clicking on the hardwood floor as Thor came in after us.

“Wait here, please.”

She went away through a door behind a short counter. The Rottweiler sat in a watchful pose, about twelve inches of tongue lolling out of one side of his mouth. I quit looking at him and pretended interest in some of the batch of dog paintings and photographs that covered the walls. I was eyeing a bad watercolor rendering of a mastiff about the size of a small pony when the same door opened and a different woman came in, alone.

R. L. McManus, this time. Not as slender or attractive as she’d been nine years ago, the brunette hair styled differently, cut shorter and waved, her cheeks less rounded and tinted with the kind of waxy shine that comes from more than one facelift done by a plastic surgeon not half as good as the one Kerry had gone to; but the generous mouth and luminous brown eyes hadn’t changed much. She was carrying my business card between a blunt thumb and forefinger as if it was something not quite clean. The brown eyes were wary, the cords in her too-smooth neck drawn tight.

“I am Ms. McManus,” she said in crisp tones.

“Roxanne Lorraine McManus?”

“I prefer to use my initials. What could a private investigator possibly want with me?”

“It’s nothing for you to be alarmed about,” I said. “Your ex-husband hired my agency to locate you.”

“My ex-husband?”

“David Virden.”

There were about five seconds of dead air before she said, “I don’t understand. What does he want after all these years?”

“A favor.” I extended the envelope. “It’s all in here, Ms. McManus. Easier for you to look over the contents than for me to try to explain.”

Frowning, she opened the envelope. The frown deepened as she scanned through the Church material; her mouth got tight, loosened and bent a little, then tightened again. “Is this some kind of joke?”

“No, ma’am.”

“The Catholic Church can really do this kind of thing?”

“If all the paperwork is in order and the Marriage Tribunal votes in favor.”

“And enough money changes hands, I suppose.”

I had nothing to say to that.

“Why does he want an annulment now?”

I told her why.

“Well, I think it’s ridiculous,” she said. “I’d never be a party to anything like this. I want nothing to do with him or the Catholic Church.”

“That’s your prerogative.”

“And don’t try to talk me into it.”

“Not my job.”

“All right, then. Take this back to him and tell him to leave me alone. Don’t you bother me again, either.”

Her voice had risen slightly, no more than a couple of octaves, but it put the Rottweiler on alert. His ears pricked up and he popped up onto all fours and made a low rumbling sound in his throat, his hot-eyed gaze still fixed on me. The muscles in my shoulders and back bunched. I’ve had run-ins with dogs before; I don’t care how well-trained they are, they can still be unpredictable.

But nothing happened. The woman said, “Quiet, Thor,” not as loudly or as sharply as Jane Carson had but with the same effect. The dog subsided immediately, squatting again with that long tongue hanging out.