Wolf in the Shadows - Marcia Muller [50]
Time to call Rae. I looked up the number of the Remedy Lounge in my address book, dialed, and identified myself to owner and bartender Brian O’Flanagan.
“No,” he said formally, “you need to call the office number for that. Do you have it?”
If Brian had installed Rae in his office, which was also his home at the back of the bar, it would mean she’d been followed there. An RKI operative might be within earshot of this conversation. “Is it listed with Information?”
“That’s right.” I detected a note of relief in Brian’s voice as he said good-bye.
This didn’t sound good, not good at all. Neither Rae nor Brian was the sort to imagine things. I called Information, got the number, and dialed. Rae answered in the middle of the first ring.
“Shar?” Her voice shook slightly.
“It’s me. What’s going on?”
“Plenty—all of it bad. Gage Renshaw was at All Souls this morning asking if we’d heard from you. God, he’s got mean, cold eyes.”
“You talked with him?”
“Yeah, Ted had me come up front and deal with him. I went into the song and dance about you being sick, but he didn’t buy it. And at noon when I went over to your house to feed the cats, somebody followed me. I shook him, but when I got to your place, they had somebody on it, too.”
I felt a touch of panic—a flashback to when my house had been vandalized two weeks before. “Is everything all right there?”
“Except for Ralph puking on the couch, I think so. But, Shar, now somebody else has followed me here.”
“I thought as much. Is he outside in the bar?”
“A couple of minutes ago when Brian came back here, he was. I spotted him coming down Precita and speeded up, so Brian managed to get me into the office without him seeing, but he knows I came in here. I’ll sneak out the back way when we’re done.” She hesitated. “Shar, what the hell’s going on?”
“I gave them the slip last night and they’re trying to find me, that’s all. I’m perfectly safe now, but I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to know where. Listen, I don’t like to keep asking favors, but I need another.”
“Sure.”
“Tell Hank that I’m too sick to make a decision on the promotion yet.”
“Oh, Shar!” Her wail made me hold the receiver away from my ear. “That’s the other awful thing. He knows. They all know.”
“Know what? That I’m not sick?”
“Worse, even. When I told Renshaw you were sick he said, ‘Don’t give me that. She went to San Diego on a job for us last night.’ And of course Hank and Mike Tobias chose that moment to walk through the foyer.”
Well, that did it, I thought glumly. “They say anything to you?”
“Not Mike, and Hank didn’t say anything at the time. But later on, he called me into his office. You know how he never reads you the riot act but you always feel like he has, anyway? Well, he said he was very disappointed in both of us—me for lying, and you for asking me to lie. And he was, Shar. You should have seen him.”
How well I knew Hank’s disappointed looks. “Go on.”
“He asked me what was happening, and I said I couldn’t talk about it. He said he’d respect that, but when I was ready to tell him, he’d be there.”
“Then you’d better tell him.”
“But—”
“No, go ahead and tell him. I don’t want you taking the blame for me. Besides, I’ve screwed myself where All Souls is concerned, so it doesn’t matter.”
“What about the promotion?”
“I assume it’s no longer an issue. But you might tell him …”
“What?”
My anger had begun to rise: At the unfairness of the partners, who were trying to force me into a job they knew I didn’t want. At the new order they’d created at the co-op, which had made me feel I couldn’t go to Hank and ask him to allow me the time to deal with this crisis. At their petty new regulation against employees accepting outside jobs, which had made me ask Rae to lie. I wanted to give Rae