Read Book 07 - Deadly Quicksilver Lies for Free Online Page B

else it took to shape
reality to her own vision? They all do, even when there’s no
hope they won’t get found out. People. They do make you
wonder.
    “Justina was after my grandmother.”
    I understood from her tone. Never was a kid who did not resent
hearing how he or she was named after some old fart they never met
and couldn’t care less about. My mom played that game with me
and my brother. I never figured out why it meant anything to her.
“Any special reason?”
    “The name’s been in the family forever. And Granny
would have been hurt if . . . ”
    The usual. Never made sense to me. You sentence a kid to a
lifetime of misery on account of somebody might get his feelings
hurt if you don’t. Three rousing oriental cheers, say I:
foo-ee, foo-ee, foo-ee. Who is going to be upset the longest?
    You entered Emerald’s suite through a small sitting room.
There you found a small writing desk with its chair, in blond wood.
There was an oil lamp on the desk. There was one more chair, a
storage chest with a cushion on top, and a small set of shelves.
The room was squeaky clean and more spartan than it sounds. It did
not look promising.
    I hate it when they clean for company. “Your daughter ever
take a powder before?”
    Maggie hesitated. “No.”
    “Why did you hesitate?”
    “Trying to decide. Her father kidnapped her when she was
four. Some friends convinced him that a child is better off with
her mother.”
    “Would he try something like that today?”
    “Probably not. He’s been dead eight
years.”
    “Chances are he wouldn’t.” As a rule, the dead
don’t get involved in custody disputes.
    “She got a boyfriend?”
    “A girl from the Hill?”
    “Especially a girl from the Hill. How many does she
have?”
    “What?”
    “Look, believe it or not, it’s easier for Hill girls
to slip around than it is for downtown girls.” I offered
examples from my own cases, one of which had featured a bevy of
Hill girls working the Tenderloin just for the thrills.
    That stunned my Maggie Jenn. She had a blind area, an inability
to believe her baby could be anything less than the absolute image
of what she desired. It hadn’t occurred to her that Emerald
was going to break her heart. Plainly, she didn’t understand
that people sometimes did the wicked stuff for other than survival
reasons. Whoring as an amusement was a concept too alien to
encompass.
    Only the classes in between don’t believe in whoring.
    “You didn’t grow up on the Hill.”
    “I admit that, Garrett.”
    I had the suspicion that my pretty Maggie had maybe had to make
ends meet to make ends meet during the hiatus between husband and
crown prince. I didn’t need to know about that, though. Not
yet, anyway. Maybe later, if it began to look like the past had
some bearing. “Plant yourself on a chair. Talk to me about
Emerald while I work.”
    I prowled.
     
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11
    Maggie said, “To my knowledge she has no boyfriends. Our
circumstances don’t let us meet many people. We aren’t
socially acceptable. We form a class unto ourselves.”
    A very classy class it was, though Maggie Jenn and her kid
weren’t its only members. The sisterhood of mistresses is
quite large. At these rarified heights, a man is expected to have a
mistress. It demonstrates his manhood. Two is better than one.
    “Any friends at all?”
    “Not many. Girls she grew up with, maybe. Maybe somebody
she studied with. At her time of life, kids are real status
conscious. I doubt anybody would let her make any strong
connections.”
    “What’s she look like?”
    “Me, twenty years less shopworn. And wipe that silly grin
off your mug.”
    “I was thinking how looking for you twenty years younger
would have me hunting somebody barely out of diapers.”
    “And don’t forget that. I want my baby found,
not—”
    “Right. Right. Right. Any special stress between you
before she disappeared?”
    “What?”
    “Did you have a fight? Did she stomp out yelling about