Free While Other People Sleep by Marcia Muller Page A

overhead light. Then, cautiously, I brought the bag inside and opened it.
    A bottle of Deer Hill Chardonnay—the right vintage, no less. Taped to it was a Post-it note bearing one typed word: “Sorry.”
    I let my breath out in a hiss that was a combination of relief and rage.
    Sorry.
She'd broken into my home, drunk my wine, flushed my pills down the toilet, terrorized my cat—and now she was
sorry?
    Yeah, sure she was.
    I left the bottle in the bag, picked it up by its top edges, and took it to the kitchen. Tomorrow it would go to Richman Labs for fingerprint analysis and to see if it was contaminated, but I suspected the fee I'd pay the investigative laboratory would be wasted; she'd been careful last night, and she'd have been more careful with this specious gift.
    Before I reset the alarm, I gave consideration to asking the neighbors if they'd seen who dropped off the bag, but decided against it; I'd already bothered them this morning, and it was too late to go ringing doorbells.
    Both cats were sleeping on the sitting room couch, let in by Michelle from next door. The light on the answering machine was blinking—one message. I hit the play button and heard Hy's voice.
    “Just wanted to let you know I arrived here safely. Buenos Aires is even better than I remembered it; someday you'll have to make the trip with me. Anyway, I miss you. Hope that woman hasn't given you any more trouble, and that you've got the problem with Ted and Neal sorted out. You have my itinerary and numbers, so if I don't get hold of you, call me. Love you.”
    I'd call him tomorrow. I badly needed the comfort of a talk.
    Tonight I'm underwater. Murky water in a dimly lighted aquarium where opaque green plants wave their silky tendrils. The pebbles under my feet glisten and shift with my steps.
    How can I be underwater and still breathe?
    I watch myself move through the plants, clumsy in contrast to their gracefulness.
    Movement at the far side of the tank, whipping the plants to a frenzy. Bubbles rise toward the surface. I draw back into a sandstone cave.
    Strange sea creatures appear. They're brightly colored: red, blue, gold, vermilion. They dart and weave among the green tendrils, uttering unworldly cries that echo off the glass.
    I watch, both fascinated and afraid.
    Now comes a procession that silences the sea creatures. A series of faceless women draped in filmy teal-blue cloth. They drift among the sea creatures but don't touch them.
    Each woman carries a bottle of wine and a glass.
    Sorry, they murmur as they drift close to my hiding place.
    Sorry, sorry, sorry …

Thursday
    K eim's on line one, Shar.”
    “Thanks.” I picked up. “Charlotte, where are you?”
    “Detroit Airport, about to board my flight home.” She'd spent the week shadowing the traveling businesswoman from Chicago to Minneapolis to the Motor City.
    “Still nothing?” I asked.
    “Nothing at all. This woman works too hard to fool around on the road. The client must be paranoid.”
    “You call him yet?” The client, Jeffrey Stoddard, wanted oral reports on a daily basis.
    “I tried, but he wasn't home. I'll try again on the in-flight phone—”
    “No, I'll call him and you can fill him in on the details when you get back.” Keim, like so many fans of high technology, loved to talk on the airliner phones and had previously run up her expense account to an unjustifiably high level.
    “Okay,” she said. “I guess if I get bored, I'll have to call Mick—on my own nickel, of course.”
    “Don't stand up in the aisle while you're talking.” That practice has always struck me as a particularly obnoxious way of calling attention to oneself—“I haven't a minute to waste,even at 33,000 feet. I'm important!”—to say nothing of an annoyance to those who aren't impressed with the airborne dialer's need to stay connected.
    “Exactly like last night?” Neal asked.
    “Yes.”
    On both Tuesday and Wednesday Ted had driven directly from the pier to Neal's