Stunner

by Niki Danforth

  Nice topic for what I want to discuss with her. “Your staff must play a huge part in why the club is thriving,” I say, working my way to the subject of Terry.

  “Our team is our number one asset.” Adriana sips her coffee. “We offer many services to our members. Lectures, live music, a well-stocked library and wine cellar, personal training, and so on. Our people are key to the superb quality of service we offer the members. Now, Ronnie, how about a tour?”

  Adriana walks me through the fitness area on the third floor and introduces me to the trainers, massage therapists, and a facialist. As we continue upstairs to see the rooms where members can stay overnight, I decide the time is right to dive in with my questions.

  “Adriana, do you remember someone named Terry Jones or maybe Gonzalez? She may have worked for you years ago, when you first opened.” I follow my hostess down a bright hall. “I heard she was terrific.”

  Adriana stops suddenly, and I almost crash into her. Her face lights up for a moment, and then she quickly shifts into neutral as we enter a bedroom. “You’re right—it must be almost fifteen years ago that she worked here. How do you know Terry?”

  I’m on tricky territory yet again. “Well, it’s not that I know Terry directly. She’s connected to a family member, so I’ve heard a lot about her,” I fib and look around. “Are all the rooms quite this fabulous?”

  “Yes, and they’re all different.” Adriana sits in a deep, cushy chair and signals me to do the same. “Terry Jones, now that’s a name out of the past. You know, I first spotted her when she was working at Disney World. I was there with my children, and I knew right away that she had what it takes.”

  “You already had children fifteen years ago? You look way too young, Adriana,” I remark. “How old are your kids?” I don’t want her to think I’m just here nosing around for info about Terry.

  “Sam is twenty and his big sister, Marissa, is twenty-two,” she says with pride. “They’re both in college and doing great.” She gets up to straighten a picture hanging on the wall. “I remember watching Terry successfully handle a nightmare guest at the Disney Resort, and I knew she was special. I offered her a job on the spot if she ever came to New York. And guess what? She did! With just the money in her pockets, which wasn’t much.”

  “How’d it work out?” I smile.

  “Great! Terry was always one of my favorites. She started out a little rough around the edges, but that was OK. Many of our new members weren’t much older than she was when we opened the club. You know, those geeky dot-com kids who had a lot of stock in all those companies, many of which eventually went bust.”

  “Did she start at the bottom, in housekeeping and work her way up?” I ask.

  “Oh no. I wasn’t going to waste her behind the scenes, when her real strength was people skills. But first she needed a Big Apple polish.” Adriana smiles at the thought and then sees my surprise. “I know, I know. She was already so beautiful.”

  “Exactly.”

  “But her clothes were shabby, and not shabby-chic. Her hair wasn’t at its best. She wore a little too much make-up.” Adriana smiles. “So I put her in the hands of our pros here at the club—a good haircut for that beautiful long dark hair, facial, makeup, manicure, pedicure.”

  “That must have been great fun for Terry.” I try to imagine my tomboy daughter, Jess, sitting still long enough for all of that. Older daughter, Brooke, would love it, of course, but definitely not Jess.

  “I think the makeover was fun for Terry, because, as I would soon come to know, she was always trying to grow, learn, improve, evolve,” Adriana says. “She wanted to be the best she could be. Then I gave my personal shopper a budget and sent her out with Terry to create an affordable wardrobe that was appropriate for working here. Of course, the finished results were fantastic.”

  I imagine Terry must have been in heaven. “So how did you use this charming vision of beauty at Club Nucleus, Adriana? What was her first job?”

  “Come with me, Ronnie, and I’ll show you.”

  Adriana’s Louboutins once more click down the staircase to the ground floor entry. While my feet are comfy in my pretty ballet flats, I can’t help yearning to wear a four-inch-high sexy shoe like hers.

  “Adriana, how do you walk in those all day? They’re beautiful, but my feet would be broken after five minutes.”

  She laughs. “I only wear them inside, which doesn’t require a lot of walking. And mostly I use the elevators. Outside the club, I switch to flats.”

  Adriana ushers me into a spacious office furnished in the same minimalist style I’ve seen throughout the club. This is no cramped, cluttered work space. Three attractive people sit at computers—two women in their twenties working the phones and a man in his late thirties poring over a calendar.

  “This is member services,” Adriana says. “Besides meals, work-outs, haircuts, massages, and so on, we organize lectures on all sorts of topics, offer advance screenings of movies, present small concerts. You name it, we do it. We follow up most of those events with a lunch or dinner with the special guest and a small group of members.”

  Adriana motions to the two women on the phones and the man with the calendar. “This is Marie Dupois, Anna Brown, and David Spencer. David runs this office, plus he’s the club’s assistant manager. Club Nucleus wouldn’t function so smoothly without David, who’s been with me since the beginning.” David, Anna, and Marie give us slight, friendly nods as they continue their work. “Not only do they handle the overall club schedule, but they book private events for members.”

  Adriana glances down at Marie’s desk as she passes by on her way to a console, where she opens a cabinet and takes out a folder. “For example, Marie is booking a Bentley for tomorrow. An out-of-town member wants to take his girlfriend to a private dinner at the Blue Hill at Stone Barns in Pocantico Hills. I think he plans to propose, so Marie is organizing all aspects of the evening, also working directly with the restaurant to make sure everything is picture perfect.”

  I don’t doubt that the services cost an arm and a leg. “And this is the job Terry had when she worked for you?” I ask. “How’d she do?”

  “She was a quick study. Fabulous! All the members liked her.” Adriana motions to David. “As a matter of fact, she and David started at the same time, and they became good friends.”

  David looks at us as he listens on the phone and types into his computer.

  “So whatever happened to Terry? You said she was a name out of the past. Did she get a better offer?” I notice a shadow pass over David’s face when he hears my question. He catches me noticing and quickly shifts back to his crisp professional demeanor.

  “A better offer? Yes, well, you might say that.” Adriana hands me the folder, and we leave member services. “Ronnie, this is a membership packet, if you’re interested. It’ll give you all the details. Please call me if you have any questions whatsoever. We’d love to add you to our membership.”

  I’m surprised by the easy invite. “Don’t you have a membership committee that has to approve, once they meet me?” I quickly flip through the pages in the folder. “How many letters of recommendation?”

  Adriana smiles. “I’m the membership committee and Win recommended you. So, you’re in, should you decide to join. We’d love to have you.”

  “That’s wonderful, Adriana. I really enjoyed meeting you today. I’ll take a look at this and get back to you.”

  I leave through the enormous frosted glass doors, thinking I need another club like a hole in the head, even though this one seems like a lot of fun.

  As I walk down Hudson Street in the meat packing district, I stop in front of a coffee shop. There, I pull out my cell, dial Club Nucleus and ask to speak with David Spencer. He picks up.

  “Hello, Mr. Spencer. This is Ronnie Lake. Adriana just gave me the tour of the club, and she introduced us. May I invite you for a cup of coffee at your convenience? We could talk about Terry Jones—”

  “Ah, y
es,” he cuts in. “It was nice to meet you, Ms. Lake. Oh, one moment, I have another call—” The line goes dead. Did he just hang up on me?

  Hmmm. Guess my phone technique requires some work. Need to ask private eye Will at my next Aikido class for some tips on investigative cold calling…

  Chapter Twenty

  The shadows from the trees are long as I drive up the dirt road at Meadow Farm. Having beaten the rush hour traffic, I made pretty good time coming from the city, and I soon pull up to the front of the house. I see Frank and Juliana on the side terrace talking, laughing, focused on something on the table. Are they playing chess? I think about the chess book on Juliana’s nightstand upstairs.

  They hear my car door slam, stop talking, and look up. When they see me, they don’t say a word, but go back to looking at what I can now clearly see is a chess board. Why do I feel I’ve walked into the school cafeteria only to find the popular girl has just stolen my best friend?

  I take a deep breath, walk over, and smile. “Hi, you two!”

  “Hi.” Frank doesn’t look up from the board, and his greeting has a touch of coolness in it. Guess I’m still in the dog house with him.

  Juliana looks up with a smile, but her eyes are neutral. “Hi, Ronnie. Don’t mind Frank. He’s figuring out his next move.”

  “Frank, I hope you’re being nice to Juliana…saving some of those killer moves for another—”

  “Ronnie, Juliana doesn’t need any coddling when it comes to chess.” Frank finally looks at me. “Jules is a superb player.”

  End of conversation.

  “That’s wonderful…” I drift into the house through the dining room terrace door.

  Once inside, I think I hear Juliana ask, “Frank, does your sister just come and go at your house whenever she likes…” Her voice fades out while I walk across the dining room. Then I stand frozen in the doorway to the foyer, my heart pounding. For the first time I wonder if she could turn my brother against me.

  The sound of footsteps behind me causes me to turn to see Juliana holding two glasses as she enters through the French doors. Her long, beautiful hair moves slightly in the breeze. She is something to behold, and I understand why Frank is smitten.

  She shows a momentary surprise, perhaps wondering if I overheard what she just said to Frank. Then she makes a quick recovery. “I need to refill our iced tea—” Juliana stumbles as the heel on one of her shoes breaks off, and she loses her balance, falling to the floor. The two glasses fly out of her hands onto the carpet. I dash over to help her up.

  “Thank you, Ronnie.” She quickly disengages from me and hops over to a dining room chair where she sits and examines the black shoe. It’s not the Louboutins—I see no red sole—and these are lower. “I can’t believe this heel broke. Again…” she says of the shoe. “I had it fixed in California. Three times. I guess I’ll have to retire them, even though they’re my favorites.”

  “Are you OK?” I ask, concerned.

  “I’m fine.” Still, she rubs her ankle.

  “Juliana, what are you doing wearing these shoes around the house? You’re so dressed up.”

  “Frank and I just got back from a lecture at Princeton. Part of an alum gathering,” she says.

  I pick up the two glasses that happen to have fallen near the spot on the carpet that I saw Juliana examining a few days before. I glance at her rubbing her foot and holding the broken shoe. Once more some long-forgotten thought flickers at the edge of my memory. I’m frustrated that I can’t put my finger on what precisely that is.

  Juliana takes off the other shoe and gets up to leave the room. “I think I’ll trade these for something more comfortable.”

  When she leaves with the shoes dangling from her hand, the flicker at the edge of my mind grows stronger. The feeling is like déjà vu, but I still can’t quite get to the exact memory, and it’s driving me crazy. I sit on a chair and mentally reach way back. But before I know it, Juliana returns, this time with the green suede Tod’s—god, do I absolutely love those shoes.

  “You OK?” she asks. I nod, and she goes to the terrace.

  She’s forgotten their iced tea. So I get the refills for them and bring out the drinks.

  Juliana looks up. “Oh, the iced tea. My broken shoe distracted me. Thank you, Ronnie.”

  Frank glances up and then back to the game. “Thanks, Sis.”

  At the French doors, I look back once more to see them lost in the chessboard and take a moment to watch. It’s actually very intimate, this game between them.

  I never got into chess, even though Frank tried to teach me when we were teenagers. I did have a fantasy for a long time, imagining myself as sexy Faye Dunaway playing chess with Steve McQueen in the 1968 version of The Thomas Crown Affair. For me, that scene is one of the all-time great movie seductions.

  I’ll have to see if I can stream the movie or order the DVD. That’d be fun to watch, curled up with Warrior and a bowl of cookie-dough ice cream—since I have no Steve McQueen stand-in in my life.

  ~~~~~

  Rather than pig out on ice cream, I catch an evening Aikido class. Isabella Sensei has dedicated the entire hour to working on basics, something we never stop practicing in Aikido. After all, as Isabella always says, advanced Aikido is basics done really well.

  We’ve been doing shomenuchi ikkyo, and my turn comes to practice this pinning technique. I walk away from my attacker, a young kid named Ben, who’s getting ready to take his first test.

  The sound of approaching footsteps causes me to turn just in time to see Ben rushing at me with the overhead strike that’s like a sword coming down on my head. I try to get out of the way by entering into his space and extending my arms to blend with the attack, but I’m late and fall back, off balance. Not surprisingly, he reverses me, easily controlling my arm and pushing me forward and down.

  Before I can respond, I’m flat on the floor, face down, with my arm out to the side in a pin that doesn’t allow me to budge. I surrender. My free arm slaps the mat.

  Ben releases me, beaming, and I congratulate him with a, “Good job, kid,” even though, at his beginner level, his technique is rough and out of control. I’ll remember next time not to turn my back on him (or anyone for that matter). His grin is huge, and I smile back. I catch a glimpse of Will, who it seems watched me being reversed, because I see a flicker of a smile at the corners of his mouth.

  After class, Will and I meet around the corner at the coffee shop. Private eyes seem to drink a lot of coffee.

  He hands me a folder. “Here’s what I’ve been able to learn about Juliana Wentworth in California without actually going there. Her husband, Carleton Todd Wentworth, a successful tech investor, appears to have left her very well off. You can look over the report at your leisure. After reading this, I really don’t get the feeling that she’s a gold digger.”

  “Well, I’m glad to hear it, for my brother’s sake.” I quickly scan through the report. “I don’t know…there’s something familiar about her. I can’t quite put my finger on it.”

  “Let me know if you want me to check into anything else regarding Juliana,” Will says. “Now switching to her early years on the Terry-or-Teresa-Gonzalez front—since she was a minor, I’m having a tougher time finding out about her before her Scranton Gang days.”

  He sees my disappointment. “Why do you really have me checking into this?” he asks. “Your bogus family-reunion story is taking you much further in conducting your investigation than I ever expected, but what is it you really want to find out?”

  “Part of me is just plain fascinated by her story. How did someone like Teresa start so far on the wrong side of the tracks and make her way over to the right side—so that she ended up as Juliana?” I ask. “That’s the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question. More importantly I want to learn as much as I can, since she may end up marrying my brother. Plus there’s the discovery of this new teenaged Frankie, or Francesca, and how she fits in.”

  I must look distress
ed at the thought because Will speaks up quickly. “Ronnie, can’t your brother take care of himself?”

  “Will, you don’t get it,” I say. “I have another brother, the oldest of the three of us. Years ago, he married a woman we all thought was nice enough. She turned out to be emotionally troubled and insecure, and she cut him off from the entire family. Our parents spent the last ten years of their lives without seeing my brother or those four grandchildren. It broke their hearts.”

  Will stares at me with a kind expression on his face. “How sad. Why did your brother allow it, though?”

  I still wish I understood. “Who knows… sometimes it’s easier to just go along rather than fight a difficult situation in a marriage. Still, to this day, it upsets me to think of it.” My eyes blink back the tears quickly as I finish my coffee. “Anyway, my niece, Laura, is terrified of history repeating itself when it comes to her father. I am, too.”

  I change the subject and bring Will up to speed on what I’ve learned at Club Nucleus and my failed attempt to get David Spencer to tell me about Terry Gonzalez. “He hung up on me. Plain and simple.”

  “Sounds like you need to practice your phone technique.” He laughs.

  “Not funny, Will.” I do notice that he has a great smile.

  “Ronnie, do you plan to join that Nucleus club? If you do, you could walk the application into the club personally, stop by David’s office and try again,” he advises.

  “I already belong to a nice club in the city, so I don’t plan to go back to the Nucleus offices any time soon.”

  “Then you have to phone David again. This time, right after you identify yourself, ask him to please not hang up and to hear you out. And write the script for what follows ahead of time,” he says. “Keep it short and sweet, and use some charm. Got it?”