Deadline by Campbell Armstrong

Author:Campbell Armstrong
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
ISBN: 9781504003902
Publisher: Open Road Media Mystery & Thriller

6.55 p.m.

The sheet of paper seemed to wilt in my hand. I shivered because I felt suddenly cold, raw. I saw through the sliding-glass doors the figure of a man move among shrubbery. He was present only a moment, then he was gone.

I looked at Emily and said, ‘A trespasser or a protector?’

She walked to the glass doors, and stood in front of them, as if to obscure my view. ‘That’s just Danny. One of my police shields.’

‘Like bodyguards.’

‘On the taxpayer’s nickel.’ She came back to where I was sitting and flicked the paper in my hand with a fingernail. ‘Sondra didn’t tell you about this, did she?’

‘No …’

‘Why not?’

‘I guess maybe she was ashamed. She’d also be worried about bad publicity and how it might affect my practice.’

Emily Ford said, ‘Are there secrets in good marriages?’

‘We’ve never had any secrets until now,’ I said.

‘I guess some stuff gets hidden in every relationship,’ she said. ‘Partners keep one another in the dark.’

In the dark, I thought. Like the submerged bulk of an iceberg.

Like Emily Ford’s own life.

‘Why the hell did you run my wife’s name through your computer, anyway?’

‘I ran everyone who has had access to your office, Jerry. I did the same with Jane Steel who, incidentally, has sixteen unpaid parking-tickets. And her gun license is out of date, and her work-permit expired last year –’

‘This is ridiculous, it’s petty,’ I said.

‘The efficient secretary who overlooks something as important as a work-permit, Jerry? Really?’

‘So Jane has forgotten to fill in a couple of goddam forms, what’s the big deal?’

‘This is where we differ, buddy. I believe the big picture’s hidden in the tiny details. But you think the details are just too tiresome, don’t you? You’re a guy that jumps right into the lake without testing the waters.’

Emily Ford’s need for order and thoroughness, her desire for exactitude, annoyed me. I glanced through the glass doors. A sparrow rose off the diving-board. I wished Sondra would just materialize in front of me with a surprised smile: Oh, Jerry, I was thinking about you! What a surprise! Let’s have a drink and dinner. We’d embrace. I’d kiss her. And life, as we’d once known it, would go on. The baby would grow inside her and we’d move to another town. Our new home would have a stained-glass window and a porch and a terrific attic and a couple of acres where we’d grow tomatoes and green beans and oranges and whatever else people cultivated in one Stop-sign towns. The rooms would smell of fresh paint and baking cookies, and on Thanksgiving turkey juices would scent the air.

Emily Ford was watching me carefully, as if she expected me to explode like a firework and shower incandescent bits and pieces of myself all across the room.

Cocaine. Goddam coke.

I’d never tried the stuff. I’d been in the presence of it, of course, I’d seen it razor-chopped and carefully laid out on mirrors, and I’d watched people bend over powdery lines with a straw pressed to a nostril.

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