Free Clean Slate (Kit Tolliver #4) (The Kit Tolliver Stories) by Lawrence Block

 

     
    T oledo. What did she know about Toledo?
    Like, Holy Toledo. The original city, in Spain, was famous for fine swords, and the newspaper here in Ohio called itself The Toledo Blade. That was a better name than the Mud Hens, which was what they called the baseball team.
    And here she was in Toledo.
    There was a Starbucks just across the street from the building where he had his office, and she settled in at a window table a little before five. She thought she might be in for a long wait. In New York, young associates at law firms typically worked until midnight and took lunch and dinner at their desks. Was it the same in Toledo?
    Well, the cappuccino was the same. She sipped hers, making it last, and was about to go to the counter for another when she saw him.
    But was it him? He was tall and slender, wearing a dark suit and a tie, clutching a briefcase, walking with purpose. His hair when she’d known him was long and shaggy, a match for the jeans and T-shirt that was his usual costume, and now it was cut to match the suit and the briefcase. And he wore glasses now, and they gave him a serious, studious look. He hadn’t worn them then, and he’d certainly never looked studious.
    But it was Douglas. No question, it was him.
    She rose from her chair, hit the door, quickened her pace to catch up with him at the corner. She said, “Doug? Douglas Pratter?”
    He turned, and she caught the puzzlement in his eyes. She helped him out. “It’s Kit,” she said. “Katherine Tolliver.” She smiled softly. “A voice from the past. Well, a whole person from the past, actually.”
    “My God,” he said. “It’s really you.”
    “I was having a cup of coffee,” she said, “and looking out the window and wishing I knew somebody in this town, and when I saw you I thought you were a mirage. Or that you were just somebody who looked the way Doug Pratter might look eight years later.”
    “Is that how long it’s been?”
    “Just about. I was fifteen and I’m twenty-three now. You were two years older.”
    “Still am. That much hasn’t changed.”
    “And your family picked up and moved right in the middle of your junior year of high school.”
    “My dad got a job he couldn’t say no to. He was going to send for us at the end of the term, but my mother wouldn’t hear of it. We’d all be too lonely is what she said. It took me years before I realized she just didn’t trust him on his own.”
    “Was he not to be trusted?”
    “I don’t know about that, but the marriage failed two years later anyway. He went a little nuts and wound up in California. He got it in his head that he wanted to be a surfer.”
    “Seriously? Well, good for him, I guess.”
    “Not all that good for him. He drowned.”
    “I’m sorry.”
    “Who knows? Maybe that’s what he wanted, whether he knew it or not. Mom’s still alive and well.”
    “In Toledo?”
    “Bowling Green.”
    “ That’s it. I knew you’d moved to Ohio, and I couldn’t remember the city, and I didn’t think it was Toledo. Bowling Green.”
    “I’ve always thought of it as a color. Lime green, forest green, and bowling green.”
    “Same old Doug.”
    “You think? I wear a suit and go to an office. Christ, I wear glasses.”
    “And a wedding ring.” And, before he could tell her about his wife and kiddies and adorable suburban house, she said, “But you’ve got to get home, and I’ve got plans of my own. I want to catch up, though. Have you got any time tomorrow?”

    It’s Kit. Katherine Tolliver.
    Just saying her name had taken her back in time. She hadn’t been Kit or Katherine or Tolliver in years. Names were like clothes, she’d put them on and wear them for a while and then let them go. The analogy only went so far, because you could wash clothes when you’d soiled them, but there was no dry cleaner for a name that had outlived its usefulness.
    Katherine “Kit” Tolliver. That wasn’t the name on the ID she was carrying, or the one she’d