Unsympathetic Magic - Laura Resnick [35]
“There you are!” said Jeff with false brightness. I could tell he was annoyed that I had spent so long on the phone. He’d probably been stalling, trying to convince his boss I was reliable while simultaneously wondering why I hadn’t come upstairs yet. “Did you get lost?”
Max said quietly to me, “I’ll wait here.”
I took one more look at Darius Phelps’ photograph, noting that he had been a handsome man in life—something that hadn’t been so readily apparent last night, when he was three weeks dead and physically maimed.
Then I turned and walked through the door that Jeff was holding open for me. Using my ace- in-the-hole immediately, in hopes of compensating for my tardiness, I said in a clear voice as I entered his boss’ office, “I’m sorry that call took so long. I was talking to the production office of The Dirty Thirty. Michael Nolan, the show’s star, has had a heart attack, and they’ve got to reschedule the filming of my scenes.” I handed Jeff his cell phone. “Thanks for letting me borrow this.”
“No problem.” Jeff closed the door and turned to the woman who was rising from her chair behind her desk and extending her hand to greet me. “Catherine, this is Esther Diamond.”
My first surprise was that she was white. I had just sort of assumed that Jeff’s boss at this important African-American institution in Harlem would be black.
She was also younger than I expected, given that her husband would be about sixty- five now, if he had lived. She was a very well-groomed woman, which made her age hard to guess accurately, but I thought she was probably in her early forties.
I reached across the desk to shake her hand and smiled. “Dr. Livingston, I presume?”
“How witty,” she said, stone- faced. “I never hear that.”
I glanced at Jeff. He gave me a pained look.
“Do call me Catherine,” she said in a cool voice as she withdrew her hand. “I insist.” She looked down at her well-manicured fingers with a barely perceptible expression of distaste, then reached for a tissue.
“It’s very hot outside,” I said by way of apology as she wiped my sweat from her hand. “And I’m not dressed for the weather, I’m afraid.”
Jeff said quickly, “I explained to Catherine that you came straight here after an all-night location shoot after I called you earlier today, and you haven’t had time to change out of your costume for the hit television show that you’re working in.”
A few moments ago, I thought that I might have spread it on a little too thick. Now I stopped worrying.
Catherine gestured gracefully to a couple of chairs in front of her desk. “Please have a seat.”
Since I had spent too much time in these high- heeled boots in the past twenty- four hours, I accepted the offer gratefully. Jeff sat down next to me.
Catherine’s spacious office was lined with bookcases that were filled with well-ordered volumes, top to bottom, without a speck of dust in sight. There were wonderful African masks and batiks on the remaining wall space. My sweeping glance around the room briefly revealed all sorts of interesting objects decorating the shelves of the bookcases. Her desk was piled high with books and papers in neat stacks, as was a nearby coffee table that sat in front of a small couch. A long piece of colorful, geometrically patterned cloth was spread across the back of the couch.
“That’s beautiful,” I said, pointing to it.
She smiled, looking friendly for the first time. “It’s kente cloth. Also known as nwentoma. It has been popularized and misappropriated now, of course, but it’s originally native to the Akan people of Ghana and the Ivory Coast.” She nodded toward the cloth that draped the couch and said with pride of ownership, “That piece is genuine and dates from the early twentieth century.”
“Very special,” I said politely.
“The ribbons of green color symbolize growth and spiritual renewal. This derives, of course, from green being the color of planting and harvest, of life renewing itself with each cycle of the agricultural seasons. The yellow symbolizes royalty and wealth, so this cloth may