The Big Run-Off (Holden Burke #1)

Sixteen

I said nothing. It said nothing. I didn't move. It didn't move. The figure and I looked at each other for a few moments, until I noticed that neither of us were dead.

The gun wasn't aiming at me—it was just aiming. It was a small-calibre pocket pistol, held in the steady grip of a tall woman in a dark, wide-brimmed hat, dark coat, dark gloves, and behind dark sunglasses. She took another step into the room. I tried not to move anything but my eyes.

'Are you working for Ramsey?' she asked. Her voice was low and cautious.

'No,' I said. 'Are you?'

'No. I'm not.'

She slowly moved the gun to her side and took another step as if to assess a clearer view of the truthfulness of my face. 'You aren't going to do anything until we understand each other, correct?'

'No,' I said.

She nodded.

'Then the gun can go away now, I think.'

She looked at me with the full darkness of her sunglasses, and took off her hat. 'Not until I'm sure I won't have to use it.'

I put one hand in the air and slowly moved the other in clear view to my pocket. I took out my wallet and extended my investigator license.

She took a quick look at it. 'You're a private enterprise?' she asked.

I nodded. 'If there's a phone book in here you can look me up. And I'm on LinkedIn, too.'

'Whose employ are you on?'

'To be totally truthful, nobody's right now. But if I'm on anyone's dime, it might be Samuel Pearson's.'

She was struck in silence for a moment; behind her costume I couldn't get a sense on what she was thinking beyond a quick shock of surprise and then re-composure. 'You're investigating his death?' she asked.

'You know he's dead?'

She looked away from me and moved across the room. At the other end, across the bare and dusty floorboards, she put the gun in her pocket and replaced it with a cigarette. I went to the mid-way point of the room and watched her light it.

'How did you find this place?' I asked her.

She was looking out the window, the cigarette cradled carefully in her fingertips. 'Same way as you, I suppose.'

'The pseudonym?'

'Howard Marshall. How creative of him. You'd never look at that name twice if you didn't have to. I almost didn't.'

'I think you should tell me your name now, so that we can do our best to understand each other.'

She clenched her teeth. 'Caroline Wendice,' she said.

'Okay, Caroline Wendice.' I stood next to her. She took off her sunglasses looked at me briefly with an arid glance, then back out the window. The cigarette smoke was coiling from her fingers and disappearing above us.

She soured a look on her face and said, with a quiet exhale, 'My name used to be Caroline Pearson.'

'You were his wife?'

'I'm his ex-wife now. That's all I am.'

'Okay. And what about the gun?'

'Samuel's dead. Killed. Wouldn't you be nervous?'

'I am nervous, Mrs Wendice.'

'Miss. We haven't been married for a long time.'

'He divorced you?'