“And then the others.”

16

Cold case files, suddenly hot.

Beam and his detectives studied the Rachel Cohen and Iris Selig murder files, then Beam sent Nell and Looper to snoop around the Selig crime scene. He took the Rachel Cohen murder, in the Village, himself.

Cohen had been single and a freelance journalist who hadn’t sold much. She’d been supported by her lifetime partner, a woman named Angela Drake, who’d discovered Rachel’s corpse in their apartment on MacDougal Street. Drake had long ago moved from the city. The people who lived in the apartment now, a young artist and his wife, consented to let Beam look around; but as Beam suspected, nothing much resembled the four-year-old police photographs of the murder scene. The furniture was different, and the papered walls with their fleur-de-lis pattern had been stripped and painted.

Beam was driving back uptown and turned onto Fourteenth Street when he noticed a small antique shop, Things Past, where he’d expected to see a jewelry store. His reaction was out of proportion to his surprise. A block away, he pulled to the curb and switched off the ignition.

Five years ago Things Past had been Precious Gems Limited, and was owned and managed by a fence, Harry Lima, who was one of Beam’s most valuable and reliable snitches. More than one burglary ring had been broken up after using Lima’s services to handle stolen goods, without the arrested parties suspecting the reason for their downfall was their fence.

But Beam had pushed when he shouldn’t have, and pressured Lima into informing on a jewel theft ring that was connected to organized crime and particularly dangerous. Despite Beam’s promises of protection, Lima was killed. Most of his body was found in a dumpster; his severed right hand, wearing his gaudy trademark diamond ring and clutching a dollar bill, was discovered six blocks away and served as a ghoulish and striking message as to why he was murdered. Tabloid news photos of the hand and ring were viewed by others in Harry Lima’s business who might be considering informing. It was more than a year before sources of information about jewel thefts in Manhattan began to open up again.

Beam was still haunted by the ghost of Harry Lima. Harry was one of the few major mistakes in his career, but more than that, he’d given his personal guarantee and let Lima down. Beam had been—and this is what Beam still came face to face with in his dreams—responsible for Harry Lima’s death.

It wasn’t only Harry Lima who haunted Beam. It was Harry’s wife, Nola, who’d been skeptical from the beginning about her husband’s safety, and who’d never completely believed Beam about anything. Nola had been a stunningly beautiful woman whose dark eyes and wide cheekbones suggested Native American ancestry. Harry had once caught Beam looking at his wife with more than professional interest, and it seemed to amuse him. He’d begun bragging about Nola’s beauty and passion, more than Beam wanted to hear, and told Beam she was half Cherokee. Both men knew Nola was off limits to Beam, not only because of Harry, but because of Nola herself. This wasn’t a woman to be used; she was the brains behind the legitimate retail jewelry business, and for all Beam knew, the brains behind the fencing operation.

Beam had found himself thinking more and more about Nola’s calm beauty, her slender waist, ample breasts, and what he saw as her noble bearing. He was attracted to her and couldn’t deny it. For a while, it even threatened his marriage to Lani. Not that Nola showed the slightest attraction to Beam. He knew that to her he was simply a danger to her husband, a cop, somebody on the other side, a liar. Nola had been right.

Beam’s problem was that he’d genuinely liked Harry Lima, and he’d more than liked his wife. Nola hadn’t known she’d been a threat to Beam’s career and marriage. She was the one woman who might have derailed him, if she’d taken the time to notice him as anything other than rain in her life.

Without really thinking about what he was doing, Beam climbed out of the car, fed the parking meter all the change in his pocket, then began walking along the sidewalk toward Things Past.

The antique shop appeared smaller than when it was a jewelry store, because of the clutter of merchandise. Antique clocks were mounted on one wall. The other walls were lined with display cases. In the central part of the shop were shelves of glassware and pottery, along with various antiques or collectibles ranging from ancient oil lamps to postcards. And to furniture, on which some of the merchandise was displayed.

Beam stepped around an antique oak bureau on which sat a brush-and-comb set, an old wash bowl, and a two-tiered painted globed lamp of the sort he’d heard called “Gone with the Wind” lamps. When he moved to his left and looked beyond a brass coat rack on which were draped various period garments, he could see a woman seated behind a glass display case on which sat a cash register and charge card scanner. She momentarily took his breath away.

Except for the gray shot through her dark hair, Nola Lima didn’t look any older than the last time Beam had seen her. She was sitting down and had been reading something, and when she glanced up to greet the customer she’d just heard enter her shop, her amiable smile faded and her dark eyes bore into him.

In a fog, Beam moved toward her. “I’m—”

“I know who you are.” Her distinctive, surprisingly throaty voice took him back years. “Detective Beam.”

“Not exactly.”

“Exactly enough,” she said. “I follow the news.”

He said nothing. Could think of nothing to say.

“Are you here because you’re interested in antiques?” she asked, her tone businesslike.

“I’m not here for the reason you might think.”

She smiled. “I might think somebody’s stolen some antiques and you’re here to see if any of my stock matches their description.”

“It isn’t that at all.”

She stood up slowly, letting whatever she was reading slip to the floor. Beam couldn’t help but notice she still had her figure. There was still something about her that made you think of royalty—the kind that had nothing to do with titles. Harry Lima had never known how lucky he was before his luck ran out.

“Then what?” she asked.

“I heard you’d stayed with the shop,” Beam said, “turned to antiques instead of jewelry. I was in the Village and noticed your sign and wanted to look in on you.”

“And now you have.”

“Why didn’t you continue with jewelry, with what you knew?”

“After Harry died, I chose to surround myself with the past. It’s already happened, so it provides the ultimate in predictability.”

Beam smiled. “Does that make sense?”

No return smile. “To me it does.”

He shifted his weight from one leg to the other, as if it might help him find some kind of equilibrium with this woman. It wasn’t to be found. Not today in this musty, smothering little shop that smelled of the past. “I’m not welcome here,” he said, stating the obvious.

“Why shouldn’t you be welcome? You extorted cooperation from my husband, tricked him into informing on dangerous people, and are responsible for them killing him.” There was nothing in her impassive, beautiful face he could read. “Do you intend to try the same thing with me?” she asked.

“For God’s sake no!”

“You’re here looking for a discount, then? A policeman’s discount? Or something bad might happen to my shop?” She was coming out from behind the display case, approaching him unafraid, her broad, handsome features still oddly placid. It was as if they’d played this scene before, and she recalled it but Beam didn’t. “Is that what you want, Detective Beam?”