Mrs. John Doe

Chapter 27

She woke in another strange environment, just like the previous morning in France, and once again she had to think a moment before she remembered where she was. London-she was back in Gower Street, at the Byron Hotel.

But not in her usual room. The second floor-or, in British terms, the first floor-of the Byron had a long corridor with five doors on each side. Her usual room, number 3, was in the center at the front of the building, facing Gower Street. Now, thanks to a call from Craig’s cellphone on the road last night, Mme. Blanche (as in DuBois) Williams (as in Tennessee) was ensconced in room 8, directly across the hall from room 3. Her favorite stage role in A Streetcar Named Desire had been on her mind ever since her impromptu dialogue in the French guesthouse yesterday. “Mme. Blanche Williams” was a seventy-four-year-old widow from Paris, in London to consult a specialist about her arthritis if anyone should ask. Always keep your lies simple: another bit of advice from her husband.

Craig hadn’t liked the idea of her returning to the Byron last night, but he’d really had no choice. Nora had pointed out that any other hotel or guesthouse in London would require authentic identification and payment, and that could set off an alarm bell somewhere. The Tindall family had allowed her to put the new room on account, to be paid for later, when it was safe to use her credit cards.

She’d briefly considered her husband’s apartment in Soho, but he’d always refused to let her so much as set eyes on it; he insisted on staying here with her when she was in London. Besides, how would she get in there without help from his colleagues? It was a grim fact that Nora was now dodging the good guys as well as the bad guys. Anyone outside Bill Howard’s little team was a potential threat to her remaining in England, and she had no intention of leaving.

So, the Byron it was. When she’d called the hotel last night from the car, the dependable Lonny Tindall had answered. He’d run upstairs to prepare the new room for Mme. Williams, and he’d sneaked Nora’s clothes over from room 3. The bundle of jewelry and the iPhone from the hotel safe were waiting at the front desk when she arrived at midnight. Lonny stared at her strange disguise, but then he grinned; he clearly found it-and her new, assumed name-more amusing than curious. Good.

She went to the new room and checked for messages on her iPhone. But first, she put on her wedding ring, and her spirits rose the moment she felt the familiar band of metal around her finger once more. It was a connection, a physical one. The man who wore its mate was out there somewhere, as worried about her as she was about him. And she would find him, if she had to march into hell itself to do it.

There were four messages: three texts from Dana (Hi, Mom, call me. Mom, r u there? Mom, whr r u???) and one voicemail from Vivian Howard (Hi, darling, it’s Viv. Bill says you’re still in London for a couple more days, so give me a buzz when you get this and we’ll do lunch or whatever. Ciao!). It was too late to call Viv, but it was seven o’clock in the evening in Great Neck, Long Island. She was careful not to call from the iPhone, remembering Jeff’s last written message, the one they’d found clutched in the hand of the dead Solange. Trust no one else, and don’t use your phone. She placed the long distance call from the hotel’s landline beside the bed. Aunt Mary answered; she and Dana were just sitting down to dinner.

“Noreen, dear, how lovely to hear from you! Your daughter has been frantic for the last two days, but I told her you were busy over there. She’s grabbing at the phone, so here she is. I’ll talk to you lat-”

“Mom! Oh, thank God! Where have you been? I was ready to call Scotland Yard! First Dad, now you-nobody over there is taking my calls! Have you two, like, disowned me or something? What gives?”

It took Nora several minutes to calm Dana down, lying about where Dad was (“Oh, you know, work, work, work!”), but she promised they’d be home soon, hoping she’d be able to honor that promise. She repeated her order that Dana must not use her devices-no calls, texts, tweets, or Facebook-or tell anyone where she was. Dana didn’t understand; for a twenty-year-old, one week without electronics was the equivalent of ten years in Sing Sing. But she agreed, with many pointed questions and martyred sighs, to do as instructed. When Nora had finally extricated herself from her daughter’s melodramatics, she’d fallen across the bed, exhausted. She’d slept for nine hours.

Now, in the bright morning sunlight streaming in through the windows, Nora felt a new surge of energy. She took a long hot shower and put on her black brushed-denim suit and her beloved boots, pinning up her hair before donning the gray wig. The elderly makeup was quickly done-the lines, the crow’s feet, the pale cheeks and lips. The wire-rimmed granny glasses and the crocheted gray shawl over the cloth coat completed the old-lady effect. She was reaching for her bag to go down to breakfast when the hotel phone by the bed rang.

Craig, she thought. He’d left her here last night and gone off to Bayswater for a good night’s sleep in his own bed. They were to meet up later today, after he’d reported in at Bill’s office. She reached for the phone. “Hello, Cr-”

“Mrs. B.? It’s me, Lonny Tindall.”

“Oh. Good morning, Lonny. Why are you whispering?”

“I’m at the front desk, and I don’t want the bloke to hear me. There’s a delivery for you from some florist. I told him you were away, just like you said to, and I offered to keep ’em here at the desk for you, but he wants to take ’em up to your room. I thought I should check with you. We don’t usually allow tradesmen above stairs-”

“Wait a sec, Lonny.” She lowered the phone, thinking. She hadn’t told Lonny Tindall anything about her dilemma, and she wasn’t going to tell him now, but she needed to see whom this was. She didn’t believe for one moment that anyone in England had actually sent her flowers-not Jeff, certainly. She thought a moment and then raised the receiver again. “Okay, here’s what I want you to do…”

Ten minutes later, she was standing at the door of room 8, peering out through the peephole at the door to the room directly across the hall. Lonny and the man with the flowers arrived there, and Lonny opened the door to room 3 with a key card. She couldn’t really see the florist, only the back of his head and the vase of pretty flowers he carried in front of his face. Lonny waited in the doorway while the man-tall, black haired, dark skinned, dark suit-disappeared inside room 3 for a few minutes. Then he came back out, facing the peephole, and Nora finally saw the face she was fully expecting to see.

Her nemesis, the purse snatcher.

Lonny Tindall would indeed make a good spy. He never even glanced over at the door of room 8-where she stood, holding her breath-as he escorted the “florist” back downstairs. She gave him five minutes and then ran to the phone.

“Is he gone?”

“Yes, ma’am. I stalled him as long as I could, and it was long enough.”

“Good. What did he do in the room?”

“Oh, he was slick, I’ll say that for him! He wiggled over to the table and made a big show of placing the bowl down and fussing with the blooms, but he did a total scope of the place. Eyes darting everywhere-the closet, the loo, even under the bed. I told him you’d be back in London tomorrow or the next day, and he handed me a card from Sunshine Flowers in Oxford Street and told me to contact him as soon as you were back. ‘I don’t want my mums to droop!’ he says. ‘I might have to bring fresh ones if she’s away too long!’ I said I’d call him the minute I clapped eyes on you, and he took off. It’s none of my business, Mrs. B., but I’m here to tell you that bloke isn’t any florist. Those blooms aren’t mums, they’re carnations, and there’s no Sunshine Flowers in Oxford Street that I ever heard of. I’ll throw away the flowers in the dustbin behind the hotel, just like you said. And you were right-there wasn’t an enclosure card. I don’t know what this is all about, but it’s fun. So, how did I do?”

“You were great, Lonny; you should open a detective agency. I’ll be down in a few minutes. Could I have eggs and sausage-what do you call it, a fry-up?”

“You got it, Mrs. B.”

She was getting used to her bizarre new appetite. It seemed the more nervous she was, the hungrier she became. She’d just seen the man who’d knocked her down in the park and tried to rob her, who’d probably followed her to Paris and back, whose employers or co-conspirators were even now holding her husband captive-and she was starving. Well, go with it, she decided. Eat when you can; you never know what’s coming next. Besides, Craig Elder the younger was now on the job, and he’d let her know where the man went.

She’d called him right after telling Lonny to bring the “florist” up to the room and to take his sweet time about it. Craig must have broken several traffic laws getting there from Bayswater, but he’d been outside the hotel in the Ford Focus by the time Lonny finally let the man leave. A bellboy-another Tindall grandson-had taken the car from Craig, who was now tailing the man on foot.

She bundled up her jewelry and the iPhone to put them back into the hotel safe, where she should have left them in the first place. Her husband had warned her not to use the phone, and she hadn’t, not exactly. But her shadow and his friends knew she was back at the Byron, and she had a fair guess how they’d learned that. Last night she’d switched on the iPhone just long enough to get her messages, which was apparently long enough for these people. She’d have to be more careful. At least she hadn’t waltzed back to the hotel as Nora Baron and gone into room 3. If she had…

The hotel phone rang. It was Craig with bad news.

“He vanished. Got me all the way down past the museum, and then he must have ducked into a shop doorway, or he slipped round a corner before I could see him do it. Damn it!”

Nora suppressed a sigh; that was the last thing he’d want to hear. “It’s all right, Craig. You’ll find him again.”

“That’s for sure, and when I do, I swear to God I’ll-”

“Yes, of course,” she said, amazed at how steady her voice was. She was staring at Mme. Blanche Williams in the mirror, the elderly lady clutching the phone receiver. “You just come back for the car and go on to your office, Craig. I’ll call Bill there soon, and we’ll decide what to do next.”

It was a lie, but the actress easily made it sound like the truth. She’d already decided what to do next. The “florist” had apparently been aware of Craig Elder following him, which meant that Craig was no longer viable as a tail.

But somebody else was.

She stared at her image in the mirror some more as she hung up the phone. Then Mme. Blanche Williams hobbled downstairs for breakfast.