by Laura Leone
“House special,” Nick told the waitress. “And a draft beer.”
As soon as they were alone, Diana leaned forward and said, “Now what are you going to do about my father?”
“First of all, I want you to tell me everything you can think of about Felix and Mrs. Bouvier.”
Diana blinked. “What?”
“I questioned her once, and nothing she said can account for Claude’s conviction that Felix’s advice is damaging. Claude has made some ridiculous charges, but I figure his primary concern is that he thinks Felix is influencing Mrs. Bouvier financially.”
“Felix would never do that,” Diana said hotly.
“I realize that now. That’s what Mrs. Bouvier says, too.” Nick paused to take a sip from the beer the waitress had brought, ignoring Diana’s blatant disapproval. “The question is, what do Mrs. Bouvier and Felix talk about? What does Felix tell her that Claude perceives as threatening to himself? Or at least, threatening his access to the family fortune?”
Diana shook her head. “You know Felix never talks about what goes on in a consultation.”
“But he told you that a relative of Mrs. Bouvier would bring chaos and turmoil into your lives,” Nick reminded her.
“Yes.” Diana frowned, trying to remember something significant. Nothing came. “That’s the only specific comment he ever made about the Bouviers. He mostly says cryptic things like, ‘There are disturbing indications in the cards,’ or ‘Mrs. Bouvier faces some difficult choices.’ Nothing else, really.”
“Does she ever talk to you? Tell you her worries or troubles? Tell you what Felix has said?”
Diana shook her head. “No. Especially not lately. These days, all she ever talks about are the arrangements for her daughter’s twenty-first birthday party.”
Nick looked at her sharply. “That’s soon, isn’t it?”
“Tomorrow, thank God. I’ve had to come up with more excuses for not going than you could ever—”
“Didn’t she say they’re having it out of town? Some family estate in the country?” he prodded.
“Yes, that’s right. You’ve got a good memory,” she added grudgingly.
“I’ll bet you that’s where they all are tonight,” Nick said. “Getting ready for their big, weekend blowout.”
“Are you going to confront them?” Diana asked hopefully.
“Maybe.” Their food arrived, and Nick turned his attention to dinner. After a few bites he felt vaguely uneasy. He looked up to find Diana watching him with fascinated horror. “What’s wrong?”
“What is that?” She stared at the food on his plate as if it might jump up and bite her.
“Country-fried steak with bacon gravy.”
Diana grabbed his arm when he moved to cut another piece. “How can you pollute your body this way?” she demanded.
“Funny. That’s what I wanted to say when you were serving me eggplant casserole and red bean pudding, night after night.”
Diana looked hurt. “I thought you liked my cooking.”
“A starving scavenger wouldn’t like half the stuff you made me eat,” he said with feeling.
“And red meat!” she added in a shocked voice. “I thought I explained to you—”
“Look,” he interrupted irritably. “Do I try to tell you what to eat?”
“At least I exercise a little common sense and social responsibility when I sit down to dinner.”
“Very noble, Diana. If you ever exercise yourself on some palatable food, be sure to let me know.”
She made a noise that reminded him of Ishtar and dug into her salad with a notable lack of enthusiasm. “I’m sure this isn’t organically grown,” she grumbled.
Diana was determined to maintain a dignified silence during the rest of the meal, but when Nick ordered pecan pie and coffee for dessert, her sense of duty forced her to speak up. “I can’t believe the way you’ve abused your system in just one meal. Animal fat, sugar, alcohol, caffeine—”
“Sure. All the major food groups.”
“Oh, Nick.” She shook her head in dismay. “I didn’t know you at all.”
“Yes, you did,” he said quietly.
Their eyes met. He looked very serious and a little sad. Diana remembered the kisses and smiles. She remembered the suspicion and confusion that had blossomed into trust and affection. She remembered the moment she had realized he wanted to make love to her.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” she whispered, hurting all over again.
“I guess not.” He didn’t need to ask what she meant. “But I couldn’t think of anything else at the time.”
She looked down at her hands, folding and unfolding her fingers. “Did you really think we were thieves and swindlers?”
“I didn’t want you to be.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“Once I got to know you both, I thought you were innocent.”
Her expression grew bleak. “And when was that? Before or after we—”
“Don’t.” He reached across the table and covered her hand with his, finding himself squeezing a little harder than he’d meant to. “Don’t, Diana. Do you honestly think I would have made love to you before I was sure about you?”
She saw his earnest expression through a mist of tears that came so suddenly they surprised her. “But you did it before I knew about you,” she said in a rough voice. “How do you think I felt the next day, when I found out you had lied all along to me? That you were investigating us?”
“How do you think I felt, when you attacked me on the basis of a tarot card?” he countered gently, wanting to be reasonable.
“Since you were pretending to study under my father, I had no way of knowing that you were so contemptuous of the mysteries.” She pulled her hand out of his grasp and raised her chin in silent challenge.
“And since you were pretending to be rational, I had no way of knowing that you took it so seriously!” he snapped. Realizing from her expression that she was prepared for a real fight, Nick said, “Never mind. This is getting us nowhere. Felix should be our main concern right now.”
“Yes, of course.” Diana was ashamed that she had forgotten her father’s plight for a moment there. This man had a bad effect on her, under any circumstances. “What now?”
“I’ll have to check in with Peter, then we’ll see if we can find out if the Bouviers really are at their country estate.”
“And if they are?”
“That’s our next stop. I don’t suppose you have a car?”
“It just so happens we do.”
Since she had eaten under protest, she made him pay the bill.
“You call this a car?” Nick said incredulously when Diana pulled up in front of the House of Ishtar twenty minutes later.
She frowned at him and leaned her arm against the open window. “What’s wrong with it?”
Nick eyed the beat up, old, pale lavender jalopy with considerable misgivings. “How bad can business be?”
“Business is fine. You know that. We like this car.”
“Don’t tell me,” he said in resignation. “It has a good aura, right?”
Diana scowled. “Just get in.”
Nick met her icy gaze and decided to let the subject drop. He walked around the car, spent most of his strength prying the door open, and slid onto the colorful cushion covering the passenger seat. “Let’s go,” he said, sternly repressing his sense of doom.
Diana put the car into first gear. It hiccupped and died. She tried to restart it. It belched a few times, then finally puttered down the street with jerky motions. “We don’t use this car much,” she admitted. “No sense in contributing to air pollution, global warming, and unnecessary consumption of natural resources.”
She had to use considerable leverage to shift gears. After his initial alarm, Nick found he didn’t mind so much, since the energetic motion of working the floor pedals made her skirt ride up to show off her shapely legs.
“You found out
where the Bouviers are?” she prodded. He had been using the phone in the House of Ishtar while she got the car.
“Yes. They’re all out at Beaux Champs, their place in the country. It’s an old river plantation, about an hour from town.”
“I know. It’s on the engraved invitation Mrs. Bouvier pressed on me last week.” They agreed on the best way to get to the estate, then Diana asked, “What are you going to do when we get there?”
“I’ll play it by ear, maybe try to shake Claude up a bit, see if his mother has any idea what’s going on. Whatever I do,” he added emphatically, “you are to stay in the car and out of sight. Is that clear?”
“Um,” she said absently.
“Diana.”
“He’s my father, and if that upper-class bastard has—”
“Look, do I try to interfere in your yoga classes? This is my job, and we’ll all be better off if you’ll just let me handle it.”
She grunted and looked doubtful. They spent the rest of the moonlit journey in tense silence. Diana felt as though someone had hit her heart with a two-by-four. Being near Nick today was worse than being separated from him for the past two weeks. Everything he said and did made her wonder how she could have been so blind before, how she could have thought she trusted a man whom she had obviously not even known.
He was exactly the sort of Mickey Spillane character that Felix had predicted with such confusion the night he’d read Nick’s birth chart. He carried a weapon, he poisoned his body, and he ridiculed the stars. He probably even slept with bimbos. Diana winced at that—he had slept with her, after all.
It was confusing, shocking, and demoralizing to realize that she still wanted him around. She wanted to stop the car, crawl into his arms, and ask him to take away her fear. She wanted to believe that he hadn’t been so skilled at pretending, and that some of the good she had seen in him was really there. She wanted him to help her father and prove that maybe, just maybe, he had one or two redeeming qualities, after all—that maybe she wasn’t falling to pieces over a purely physical fascination.
By the time they arrived at Beaux Champs, the Bouvier estate, Diana was a nervous wreck and in need of some serious meditation. Between her terror for her father and her confusion over Nick, she was amazed she was still functioning.
The estate was guarded by locked gates and an electronic security system. Diana waited in the car while Nick prowled around the area for ten minutes. When he came back, he told her he was ready to try to talk to the Bouviers.
“What are you going to say?”
“I’m going to see if I can bluff Claude out of here. We’re not going to learn anything while he’s hiding behind these walls and gates.”
At Nick’s request, Diana drove right up to the gate. A voice on the security intercom demanded to know who they were and what they wanted. Nick leaned out of the car, smiled guilelessly at the video camera, and said, “This is Nick Tremain from the House of Ishtar. I’m here to see Mrs. Bouvier with a message from Felix Stewart. Would you tell her, please?”
Diana waited tensely, wondering what would happen. But the message had the desired effect; a few moments later the gate opened for them.
“Would you get a load of how the other half lives?” Nick murmured as they drove down the long driveway, passing the gatehouse and several small outbuildings on their way to the manor house.
“It looks like this party will be as big as Mardi Gras,” Diana said, glancing around the vast acreage.
Two enormous marquees were already set up on the lawn, and despite the late hour, there were more than a dozen workmen busily preparing for tomorrow’s bash.
Diana’s jaw sagged when they pulled up to the Bouvier mansion. “Can you imagine what their electric bills must be like?” Some fifty windows and an imposing front porch all blazed with light.
Nick covered Diana’s hand with his own when she reached to turn off the ignition. “Keep the motor running.”
“No. I want to go in with you.”
He slid his hand over her wrist and up her arm, warm and caressing. He squeezed her shoulder gently. “I know you’re worried about Felix, but we’ll have a better chance of finding him if you let me handle this.”
“Nick,” she protested pleadingly, leaning toward him.
“Stay here, with the engine running and the doors locked. Don’t roll down the window or open the door for anyone but me. Got that?”
“But I—”
He pulled her to him and kissed her without warning, a warm, moist, insistent kiss. “I’ll be back in five minutes,” he whispered.
He was out the door and halfway up the steps before she had caught her breath. Diana pressed her lips together, still feeling him there, still tasting him. A familiar ache started inside her, the same craving she had known every night since meeting him. She wrapped her arms around herself and wished she understood her destiny better.
True to his word, he was back within five minutes, grinning and looking pleased with himself. “Let’s get out of here,” he said, buckling his seat belt and slamming the car door.
Diana put the car into gear and lurched away from the house, heading down the long driveway toward the road. “What happened? What did you find out?”
“Claude saw me first and tried to stop me from seeing his mother. When she found him trying to shove me back out the front door, she came about as close to cursing as a woman like her can come.”
“Did he let you speak to her alone?”
“No, but that was the idea. I told her that Felix has been missing since lunchtime, and that just before he disappeared, he told us that a member of her family would bring him harm and suffering.”
“Nick!”
“Mrs. Bouvier went white as a sheet. Claude turned so purple, I thought he might have a heart attack on the spot. Then she turned on him and started screaming, ‘What have you done to Felix?’”
Diana braked the car before the front gate, waiting for it to open. “What did he say?”
“He denied it, of course, but he was lying.”
“How can you tell?”
“It’s my job.”
“Did Mrs. Bouvier believe him?” Diana asked.
“I doubt it. She collapsed in a heap of tears and started sobbing something about his poor, departed father, and how glad she was he hadn’t lived to see this. Things got kind of confusing after that.”
“Poor Mrs. Bouvier.” Diana drove through the gates and onto the road.
“Then Claude threw me out of the house. He’s really shaken up, Diana. If he knows where Felix is—and I’m sure, he does—I think he’ll act on panic.” He added, “Well, once his mother’s through with him, that is. She was still shrieking at him when I left.”
“So what now?”
“Stop the car.”
Diana pulled off the road and put on the parking brake. “Why?”
“I’m hoping he’ll leave the house tonight to check on Felix, wherever he’s keeping him. When he does that, we’ll follow him. I’ll drive,” he added sternly. “In the meantime, we’ve got another problem.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s a three-ring circus in there. They’ve got workmen, sound and light engineers, barmen and caterers going in and out of this place tonight. If Claude’s smarter than I give him credit for, he could slip right by us.”
“What can we do?”
Nick showed her. The road outside Beaux Champs dead-ended a quarter of a mile west of the Bouvier estate, so presumably everyone leaving the grounds would drive east. Nick and Diana drove the car a few hundred yards east of the estate, parked it in the middle of the road, opened the hood and trunk, and spread a number of tools across the pavement.
When the first vehicle leaving Beaux Champs approached them, they enacted their plan. Diana nagged, complained, waved her arms, and took her sweet time about moving the car out of the way, while Nick chatted with the various passengers and workmen, assuring them he had the situation under cont
rol, and ensuring that Claude Bouvier wasn’t among them.
They repeated their act numerous times during the next few hours, until the last load of employees had finally left the estate. Nick checked the house around midnight and told Diana that most of the lights had been extinguished.
“Since Claude hasn’t made his move yet,” Nick said, “he’s probably waiting until he’s sure everyone’s asleep. Then he’ll sneak out.”
“Why wouldn’t he just use the phone?” Diana asked while they were moving the car to a sheltered spot just outside the security gate.
“Kidnapping’s a pretty serious business to discuss by phone, particularly if he’s afraid of being overhead by his mother. And Hollywood has everybody believing that their phones are bugged,” said Nick. “Besides, since Claude obviously hasn’t snatched Felix for ransom money, he must want something from your father. I have a feeling he’ll try to get it tonight.”
“What could he want from Felix, if he’s not a believer?”
“If we knew what Claude was afraid of, we’d know that, too.”
Once he was satisfied that the car was well-hidden, Nick settled into the driver’s seat and waited with the patience that was foreign to his nature but necessary to his profession. He hadn’t been out to the countryside for several months, and he thought it a shame that the circumstances weren’t different.
A beautiful moonlit night, a sultry scented breeze, a warm and generous woman in the dark, inches from his arms... He had almost everything a man could find in paradise. Except peace of mind.
The night was haunted by the specter of a friend in trouble, for Nick had come to think of Felix with the fondness of friendship, despite everything. The breeze carried the scent of failure, too. He had accepted cases from the wrong clients twice now, first from Maurice LeCoz, who would probably ruin him, and now from Claude Bouvier, who wanted to hurt two of the warmest—if most peculiar—people Nick had ever known.
And despite his own grievances, the woman at his side had every reason to feel betrayed. She wouldn’t come to him again, not the way she had that one spectacular night. He had lied and pretended everywhere except in her arms. He had hoped that his honesty on a deeper, more intimate level would make up for everything else, but she had made it clear that it wouldn’t.