As Michelle passed the end of the table, she let her coat slip off her arm, seemingly accidentally, to fall across the briefcase. As she stooped to pick it up, she scooped the mec with it, at the same time pushing the sides of the tear together so that it wouldn’t be instantly obvious. She straightened up, collected her purse from the seat where she had been sitting, went down into the bathroom, and locked the door.
It seemed to Corfe that he couldn’t move without walking straight into some kind of trouble. Listening for a while through the acoustically equipped mec that he had included in the complement at Garsten’s had revealed nothing. Then, when he activated one of the larger telebots and tried looking outside whatever it was he had found himself shut up in, he’d had quick impressions of being on the floor in some kind of room, Michelle looking worried and flashing a warning signal at him, and then himself being bundled up inside something constricting and being moved. Since any further action on the telebot’s part seemed not to be in order for the moment, he transferred to one of the smaller mecs still inside whatever the telebot had emerged from, and used that to gain another peek through the gap that he had made.
There was carpeted floor, the under parts of a table, and a pair of legs terminating in men’s shoes. He crawled out and looked back to see that the mec had been in a large leather briefcase. There was something familiar about the place he was in, he realized. After a few seconds he recognized it, from this unfamiliar angle, as the main salon of the Princess Dolores. The Dolores was normally kept at the private dock behind Payne’s house in Bellevue, yet when Corfe had stopped less than a mile from there before crossing back over the lake, he hadn’t made contact. He could only conclude that the Dolores had been moved to some location nearer Seattle center.
Michelle had gone, and the surroundings looked clear. Deciding it would be prudent to spread his options around, he walked the mec farther back under the table, into the space between the edge of the carpet and the wall. Then he switched back to the telebot and remained inert, awaiting developments.
He felt the circus tent in which he was wrapped being set down on something solid. Then part of it was lifted aside, and a hand brought him out onto a shiny orange terrace by an empty swimming pool. Above the pool was an enormous mirror wall edged by lights. There were two Michelles, one reflected in the mirror, the other looking at him directly. He was in a bathroom, standing on the side of a marble washbasin.
Michelle’s lips were moving. He made a side-to-side horizontal movement with an arm, indicating that he couldn’t hear her. She seemed to understand. Corfe could see her biting her lip, thinking frantically. He walked across the surface and pointed at a chrome dispenser holding facial tissues. Michelle nodded, rummaged in her purse, and produced a felt-tipped pen.
She pulled out the top tissue, wrote on it, Doug? Kevin? and held it in front of him like a poster. Corfe indicated who he was, then pointed at the pen and made writing motions. Michelle gave it to him and held the tissue flat while he used both arms to write, moving the pen like a broom.
YACHT WHERE?
Michelle took the pen again and wrote: Shoals club, Lake Union. Believe sailing soon. Fetch help. Corfe signaled that he understood and would do his best. Michelle asked: You have the van? He nodded. In similar fashion he answered that he had contacted Eric and that he didn’t know what the situation with Kevin was.
Michelle looked at the door suddenly as if someone was knocking or calling, then back at the mec, indicating by showing a palm and pointing that she was out of time. Corfe got the pen back and wrote hastily: LEAVE MEC HERE and pointed at the floor. Michelle stared for a second, then nodded. She took the pen, gathered her purse and coat, and set him down beneath the washbasin. Then she turned the light off and left, leaving the door cracked open.