Glass Slipper Bride. Arlene James
hot coffee splashing over the rim onto the webbing between his thumb and forefinger. He shook his hand and rubbed it against his thigh, mesmerized, and suddenly he knew what it was about her that bothered him.
Serena.
Jillian Waltham reminded him of Serena.
He immediately squelched the spurt of emotion that thinking of Serena inevitably brought him. It had been almost five years, and the thought of her senseless death still enraged and pained him. Desperately, he pushed the thought away and tried to listen to Jillian Waltham.
“It isn’t my boyfriend,” she was saying, leaning forward. “It’s my sister’s.”
“Sister’s,” he echoed dumbly.
“Maybe you’ve heard of her, Camille Waltham, Channel 3 News.”
Camille Waltham. Channel 3 News. Sister. Something familiar swam around the edges of his mind and then suddenly dove into its center. He saw a trim, effervescent, conventionally pretty blonde with smartly styled hair and perfect makeup. The sound of her voice came to him: “This is Camille Waltham, Channel 3 News, thanking you for watching. Because we’re YOUR news station.” Reality snapped into focus. Not Jillian Waltham. Not someone who reminded him of Serena. And not a charity case, thank God. Camille Waltham, newscaster. He opened a drawer and took out a pad and pen. After flipping open the pad, he began to write.
“Let me get this straight,” he said, “someone is threatening your sister.”
A brief silence alerted him, and he looked up. Jillian Waltham sat with a pensive expression on her face.
“Not threatening, really.”
Zach laid down the pen, feeling seriously exasperated.
“It’s more like he’s stalking her.”
Ice slid through his veins. Zach picked up the pen, all business now. “Any idea when this started?”
“Oh, yes. When she broke up with him. And it’s just like him, too. Janzen never could take no for an answer. It’s like putting up a red flag, issuing a challenge. Even if he doesn’t want it, he’ll go after it just because you told him he couldn’t have it.”
With a sigh, Zach laid down the pen again and reached for patience. “I really need a date.”
“A date?”
The squeak in her voice confused him. “Yes, please.”
“Well, all right,” she said, “but we have to take care of my sister first. She’s all the family I have.”
He stared at her for several long seconds before all became clear, and then he didn’t know whether he was amused or appalled. “Uh, you, um, misunderstand me, I think. What I need is the date your sister broke up with this boyfriend.”
“Oh! That date!” She laughed, but it was nothing like before, and the red flags of color rose in her cheeks. “I thought...but, I should have known better! You sounded a little desperate there, and a man like you wouldn’t...” She laughed again, the sound so strained and false that it made him want to shake her. She must have sensed his mood, for she took a deep breath then and said solemnly, “It was almost two months ago when they broke up. Say, May 8 or 9. Camille would be able to tell you exactly, of course.”
Of course. He cleared his throat, uncomfortable with the knowledge that she considered herself beneath him. But that wasn’t his problem. He tried to concentrate on business. Question number one. “Why, exactly, am I talking to you about this instead of your sister?”
“Oh, Camille’s scheduled for every moment,” Jillian said. “You know how it is, the station’s always sending her out on public relations stuff. It’s that local celebrity thing.”
He knew too well the demands made on and by celebrity types. “Okay, then, let’s take it from the top, Miss Waltham.”
“‘Jillian,”’ she said.
He nodded.
“Or ‘Jilly,’ if you prefer.”
He didn’t prefer, actually. The sobriquet seemed to further trivialize her somehow, but again, it wasn’t any of his business. He made himself nod and smile. “Could you start from the beginning, please, and explain exactly why you’re here?”
She slid to the very edge of her seat and confided, “It was the broken window.”
He opened his mouth to elicit an explanation, then closed it again, hoping that he would do better to let her tell it in her own way. The fallacy of that notion quickly became obvious.
“Camille says it was an accident,” Jillian went on. “and it probably was. He’s not all that coordinated. I mean, you’d think someone who’s involved with music, even if it is just advertising on the radio, could at least dance, you know, but not Janzen—not that he knows it. He doesn’t. He thinks he’s the world’s greatest dancer, just as he thinks he’s God’s gift to women. So maybe he broke it when he was trying to paint it.”
Zach realized he was grinding his teeth and relaxed his jaw to ask, “The window, you mean?”
“Yes.”
“He was painting a window?”
“With words,” she confirmed.
“Words. Ahha. And what words would those be?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. We couldn’t read them after it broke.”
“The window, you mean.”
“Yes, of course.”
Of course. Zach contemplated the container of coffee growing cold on his desk and wondered if it was possible to drown in it. He rejected that particular avenue of escape and sat back again, elbows propped on the arms of his chair, fingers templed. “So your sister broke up with her boyfriend, Janzen, and he tried to write words on her window and probably broke it that way, so no one knows what he was writing.”
“Except you.”
“Me?”
“No, you. The word you. That part was written on the brick next to the window.”
Zach swallowed something hot and acrid that tasted strangely like anger, but he couldn’t have said just with whom he was angry at that moment. He rubbed a hand over his face and said, “So he wrote something that ended in the word you.”
“Exactly.”
Zach waited, but she didn’t say anything else; so he thought perhaps he would offer some suggestions. “What do you think he wrote? I hate you? I want to kill you?”
She shrugged, not quite meeting his eyes.
“But it was a threat of some kind,” he pressed impatiently.
She sighed. “I think so.”
He floundered helplessly. This obviously was getting them nowhere. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to speak with your sister.”
Jillian closed her enormous eyes in obvious relief. “Oh, thank you! I’m so worried about her.”
He nodded, “Right. So, um, shall I call her?”
“Oh, that won’t be necessary,” Jillian said. “Just show up around six o’clock.”
“Show up?”
“At Camille’s.”
“You want me to come by her house at six o’clock this evening?”
Delicate, wispy brows drew together. “Is that a problem?”
It wasn’t, actually. He often made calls to women’s shelters, private offices and police stations, and he could make this one on his way to dinner at his brother’s. Why, then, was he looking for excuses not to go? He shook his head. “Just tell me where,