Wolf in the Shadows - Marcia Muller [6]
I folded the map and stuck it in my bag, then pulled the trunk release and went to look inside. Nothing. I went over the front seat and the backseat once more, then hurried to the office. Fry still stood behind his desk, staring dejectedly at his mounds of paperwork. I gave him my card, asked him to call me if he heard from the renter of the damaged car. As I ran to my MG, I tried to estimate the amount of time it would take to reach Ravenswood Road. It was quarter to three now—
Dammit! I’d forgotten about the partners’ meeting at All Souls. Command appearance, and I was reasonably sure I’d be in big trouble if I failed to show. I’d have to return to the city for it, then double back, and brave San Jose in rush-hour traffic. At least it stayed light until eight or eight-thirty this time of year, so I’d be able to see whatever there was to see down there—if anything.
I pointed the MG toward the entrance to northbound 101.
Two
When I hurried into the foyer of All Souls’s big Victorian in Bernal Heights, I saw that the sliding doors to the parlor, where the partners held their weekly meetings, were closed. Ted Smalley, our office manager, looked up from his computer and said, “Aspice quod felis attraxit.”
I sighed. “And that means …?”
“Look what the cat dragged in.”
During the past weekend Ted had come across a gem of a book by one Henry Beard entitled Latin for Even More Occasions. Ted, who is an odd combination of Renaissance man and efficiency expert, read and memorized the entire volume and was now planning to search the stores for all the other Beard titles, as well as seriously considering signing up for a refresher course in the dead—well, apparently not so dead—language. Recently I’d been worried about him because he’d seemed depressed—not an unusual emotional state for a gay person who had lost at least a dozen friends to AIDS during the past year—and I welcomed this improvement in his spirits. But if he was going to greet me every morning with such expressions as Expergiscere et coffeam olface (Wake up and smell the coffee), I wasn’t altogether certain how long I could endure this bizarre new enthusiasm.
I motioned at the closed doors. “I take it they’re annoyed with me for being late.”
Ted shrugged.
“Should I go in?”
“Hank said they’d send for you. If you ever showed up,” He went back to his computer.
Terrific, I thought. The summons to the meeting had sounded ominous from the first, and now I was out of favor for being late. Bad initial impression, and if I went in there preoccupied with Hy’s situation, I was likely to compound it. What I needed was to put Hy out of my mind for the moment. Perhaps some diverting conversation—and not in Latin— would help.
Instead of going up to my office, I went down the hall to the cubbyhole under the stairs that belonged to my assistant, Rae Kelleher. She sat at her desk, one foot tucked up in the chair, the other scuffing rhythmically against the floor as she spoke on the phone. I squeezed past her and curled in the armchair—my former ratty armchair that she’d slipcovered in blue and white—and waited while she finished a conversation relating to one of the background investigations she was working. The office, a converted closet that the building’s former owner had the gall to call a den, was overly warm and stuffy; I glanced at the ficus plant Rae nurtured under an ultraviolet bulb and saw its leaves were dusty and drooping from lack of water. Rae herself seemed similarly uncared for; her curly auburn hair needed washing, and her jeans and sweater looked as if she