“A Saab. A red convertible Saab with leather everything and the most amazing stereo. You should see how it just scoots right on to the freeway without having to think about it.”
Oh, what the hell. I’d wanted her to have a new car and now she had one. That didn’t mean Harry was trying to woo her, did it? “It sounds like you love it.”
“I love it. Do you know what Harry said when he gave me the keys?”
“Could be almost anything.”
“He said Volkswagen cabriolets want to be Saab convertibles when they grow up. Isn’t that cute?”
Right. I had to get her out of that house.
“Brenda, come have drinks with Eileen and me tonight,” I commanded.
“Yay!” she said. “Where are we going?”
“The Bubble Lounge. We’re meeting Leenie at eight.”
“Yay!” she repeated. “I’ll pick you up at the hotel so you can see the new car, okay?”
“Yay,” I said.
***
Jack didn’t grumble when I told him my plans for the evening. Perversely, I found that disappointing. Intellectually, I know I want to be in the kind of relationship where we have our own lives and are comfortable spending time apart. Sort of like Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy—or at least like the characters they played. But emotionally, I guess I wanted Jack to at least pretend he’d miss me, even if it was only going to be for a couple of hours. There was only one solution. I had to dress to kill.
At 7:40 precisely I emerged from the bedroom wearing a sleeveless black dress by MaxMara with a V-neckline that dipped to the exact optimum cleavage point and a flirty little ruffle that skimmed just above the knee. It showed off the good stuff, camouflaged the bad stuff, and hinted at the stuff in between. Insanely high-heeled strappy sandals completed the look. I had blown my hair dry with my head upside down for volume, then given the ends a hint of a flip, and used every makeup brush in my arsenal to achieve that smoky eye thing the magazines are always going on about.
When Jack saw me he dropped his book. That made all the effort worthwhile.
“You’re wearing that?” His eyes swept from head to hot-pink toe.
I was nonchalance personified. “Don’t you like it?”
“To meet the girls for drinks?” he asked.
I gave him a “didn’t we already discuss this?” look.
“At a bar?” he completed the question.
“The Bubble Lounge. It’s a champagne bar, a little too yuppified for me, but it’s close to Eileen’s office.” I’m so informative.
“Uh huh,” he said. “I have a better idea.”
Success. “Oh?” I said innocently.
“Room service. With me.”
The look he gave me melted all my resolve. My instinct was to say “okey dokey” and stand up my two best friends. Luckily, I had planned the timing perfectly, and Brenda knocked the instant before I caved.
I gave Jack a bright smile. “Too late, that’s Brenda.”
Okay, so it was an old-fashioned, sexist ploy, but I left knowing Jack would miss me after all. So there.
***
The car was beautiful and Brenda was glowing. She gushed about it all the way downtown, pointing out its perfect little accessories and clever little designs. She left it with the valet, and watched longingly until it was out of sight.
She gave a small sigh. “Charley, you know I’ve never really been into material possessions.”
“I know, sweetie.”
“And I’m probably being a traitor to my little VW.” She bit her lip. “But I just love that car.” She looked at me.
“Don’t worry, sweetie. You’re still a good person.” I put my arm around her shoulders and dragged her inside.
The bar was lit with a soft amber glow and decorated with velvet drapes and clusters of comfortable upholstered seating around low cocktail tables. Eileen was waiting for us at a table in the back corner, perched on a crescent-shaped banquette. She waved us over.
“I didn’t feel like champagne, so I’ve got three dirty martinis on the way. If you don’t want yours, I’ll drink it for you,” she announced.
“The hell you will,” I said.
“Oh, Eileen, what’s the matter?” Brenda asked.
Eileen sighed and drummed her fingers on the table. She looked around the room. “Men,” she said heavily.
There were a lot of them in the bar. All clean-cut and aggressive, vying for the attention of equally sharp-looking women. Suit jackets had been flung off, and ties loosened at the collars of Thomas Pink shirts that revealed gym-honed torsos. It’s not that there weren’t any drab, dumpy guys in the financial district, it’s just that they didn’t venture into the same bars as the esthetically elite. Frankly, I thought the joint could have used a few balding heads and beer guts just to break up the monotony.
“We shouldn’t have come here,” Eileen said. “They all look like Ben.”
“Ben?” Brenda asked.
“Drinks!” I saw the waiter heading our way. “Who’s Ben?” The waiter, yet another perfect specimen, set down three martinis, heavy on the olives, and walked away with the attitude of someone used to being watched. Too bad, we were focused on Eileen. “Is Ben the guy?” I asked.
“What guy?” Brenda demanded. “Are you seeing someone? Why didn’t you tell me?”
Eileen delicately removed the olives from her drink, then tossed back half of it in one gulp. “Why,” she asked, “just once, can I not get interested in a normal guy?”
We sipped and considered.
“Maybe you don’t meet any,” Brenda offered.
I was less concerned with Eileen’s love life at that point than I was with figuring out if her Ben was actually Cece’s Tom Nelson—in which case he was certainly in league with Macbeth. “Tell us everything,” I demanded. “Leave nothing out. Start with when you met him and take it from there.”
“Blow by blow,” Brenda said.
Eileen nodded, polished off her drink, and signaled to the waiter for another. I turned around to make sure he’d seen her and caught a flash of something out of the corner of my eye. I wasn’t sure exactly what it was. A sudden motion, someone turning away, maybe, but it bothered me. I scanned the crowd but didn’t see anything beyond the usual activity. I turned back to Eileen with a prickly feeling on the back of my neck.
Brenda pushed her drink, barely touched, toward Eileen. “Here,” she said, “I’m driving.” Eileen took the martini, giving me a highly significant look.
I refused to be diverted from my investigation by a discussion of Brenda’s new car. “When did you meet him?”
She grimaced. “About a month ago.”
Ah ha. That would have been a week before Jack and I had gotten back—which was exactly the timeframe I was worried about. “How did you meet?”
“He came in as a new client. He’s worth over a hundred million, so they sent him to me.” She shrugged. “We had a perfectly normal first consultation. I didn’t really see why he needed to change firms, because his portfolio was doing fine as it was, but I wasn’t going to turn down his business just because of that.”
But if he was Macbeth—or working for Macbeth—he’d have sought Eileen out for reasons other than her skills as a financial manager. And he would have had millions, according to Jack. “How did he behave toward you?” I asked. “Was it obvious he was interested from the beginning?”
“Not really,” she said. “Like I said, it was all perfectly normal, right until the end of the meeting.”
“What happened then?” Brenda asked before I could.
“He asked me out.”
“Just like that?” I asked.
Eileen nodded. “We were standing at the door, and had made an appointment for the following week for me to show him some suggestions I’d come up with, and he said ‘I really don’t want to wait that long to see you again. How about dinner tomorrow?’”
“Smooth,” I accused.
“Nice,”
Brenda said.
“Where’s that waiter?” Eileen finished Brenda’s martini and looked around for replacements. I turned to look towards the bar, and that’s when I saw it. At the far end of the bar, on the floor, was a red motorcycle helmet. It was only visible between the legs around it in intermittent flashes, but it was definitely a helmet. I turned around quickly. Would I sound paranoid if I asked Brenda whether she’d noticed a red motorcycle in her rearview mirror?
Eileen continued relating the story of Ben, but I was only able to give her half my attention. I’d remembered the day I’d gone for a run, the day we’d gotten the call from Cece’s kidnappers, and the red motorcycle that had kept pace with me. That day, too, I’d caught a flash of something out of the corner of my eye and thought it had been the biker, carrying his red helmet, watching me.
“He was nice enough, and very attractive, but I should have known there was something weird about him from that first dinner.” That caught my attention.
“What?” I demanded. “What was weird about him?”
Eileen looked startled at the intensity of my interest. “He was a neat freak,” she said. “He kept straightening things on the table, lining up the silverware perfectly, adjusting the angle of the little lampshade on the candle, repositioning the bread basket every time the waiter or I moved it.”
“Maybe he’s obsessive-compulsive,” Brenda suggested.
I’d have to find out from Cece if it was a characteristic of Tom Nelson.
“You don’t know the half of it,” Eileen said. “His apartment was unbelievable.”
“When did you go to his apartment?” I asked sharply.
“Good. More drinks,” Eileen said. When the waiter came back to the table I took the opportunity to glance over to the end of the bar again. The helmet was gone. Was that a good sign or not? Did he know I’d spotted it? Was he still there? Or was I just freaking out for no reason?
“What about his apartment?” Brenda’s question brought me back to the conversation at hand.
“It was perfect,” Eileen said.
“Wait,” I interrupted. “When did you go there? On the first date?”
“Why, are you worried I’ll get a reputation?” Eileen bit into a fresh olive.
“I just want to be clear on the timeline.” They both looked at me like I was crazy, but Eileen shrugged and answered.
“No, it wasn’t on the first date. We went out a couple times. Dinner, drinks, and that play at the Curran. You’d hate it,” she told me, then came back to her story. “So it was the fourth date by the time he invited me over. He cooked.”
“Nice,” Brenda said again.
“You’d think,” Eileen agreed.
“So what was it about his apartment that was weird?” Men in black ski masks hanging out in the dining room, maybe?
“It was just so perfect,” she said. “Hardwood floors you could see yourself in with white rugs and white furniture. Glass and chrome tables with surfaces like mirrors. And you should have seen the kitchen,” she went on. “It looked like you could perform surgery in there. Not a speck on anything.”
“What did you think?” Brenda asked.
She gave us a guilt-wracked look. “I thought, if it got serious, he’d have a hard time adjusting to Anthony.”
“Ouch.” I adored Eileen’s nine-year-old son, but I had to admit he was a neat-freak’s nightmare.
“Yeah,” Eileen said. “So I just spent the evening trying not to spill anything or let my glass make a mark on his furniture.” She finished her third martini. “I swear to God, when I used the bathroom I flushed four times.” She giggled, then looked surprised.
“So did you spend the night?” I asked.
She shook her head. “He didn’t ask. That was another weird thing. In all this time he’d only given me pecks on the cheek or forehead. Nothing else. No moves whatsoever.” She looked a little mournful. “Even though I got a new haircut and all those new clothes.”
“You look fantastic,” Brenda assured her. “He’s probably gay.”
“Absolutely,” I agreed loyally. “It’s obvious he was either gay or a lunatic. Otherwise he’d have been all over you.” But I wondered. Cece had never explicitly said she’d had sex with Tom Nelson. I’d just assumed that, since they’d moved in together, they’d been intimate. Something else I’d have to check on. I was beginning to regret not bringing a little notebook.
“Thanks, guys.” Eileen straightened up. “You’re right. He was a nut case.”
“What finally convinced you?” Brenda asked. “Did he want to spit-shine your boots or something?”
“No,” Eileen shook her head. “Can I have that?” She pointed at Brenda’s second barely-touched martini.
Brenda slid the drink towards her. “What happened?”
Eileen took an olive and sucked on it. “I made a move.”
“That night?” I asked. “At his place?”
“At his place, but it wasn’t until the next time.” She dunked the olive back in the drink. “Even though Anthony’s with his dad this month, I didn’t want to invite Ben over to my place. I mean, of course I’d told him about Anthony, but it’s one thing to hear ‘I have a son’ in the abstract, and another to see the PlayStation-hooked-to-the-TV, model-airplane-parts-everywhere, train-set-in-the-dining-room reality.” She looked to us for understanding. We understood. A man has to be eased into these situations.
“So you went back to his place…” I prodded.
“Saturday night,” she said. “After dinner.”
“And you made a move?” Brenda probed.
“I did,” she admitted. “We were talking on the couch, and I…pounced.”
“What happened?” Brenda asked.
“Well, we’re kissing, and then we’re taking each other’s clothes off, and I figured he’d move into the bedroom, but no.”
“No?”
“No. Instead he pulls me down onto the floor.”
“That can be nice,” Brenda said, then looked embarrassed.
“Most things can be nice,” I said. “What did he do then?”
“It’s not what he did,” Eileen cringed. “It’s what he said.”
“What?” Brenda asked.
Eileen swigged the last of the martini. “He said ‘Try not to get the rug messy.’”
“Eeeyyuu.” Brenda made a face.
“You’re kidding,” I said.
Eileen raised her right hand. “I swear.”
“What did you do?” I asked.
“What could I do? I gathered up my clothes, and what was left of my dignity, and I left. Are you going to finish that?” She pointed to my martini.
I took the last swallow. “Yep. You’ve had enough anyway. It’s a school night.”
She sighed heavily. “Is it me?”
“No!” we protested. And we took her home and tucked her in, telling her all the while how fabulous she was and how much better off she was without a pathologically clean boyfriend.
Privately, I thought there were worse things than bad boyfriends. There were too-good-to-be-true boyfriends who turned out to be kidnappers. Maybe Eileen had been luckier than she would ever know.
Chapter 15
When I woke up the next day Jack had already left for the gym. He’d promised not to play racquetball until his shoulder was fully healed, but apparently there were other ways he could find to torture himself.
I hadn’t told him about Eileen’s suspicious boyfriend. My going-for-a-drink-with-the-girls outfit had been a little more effective than I’d bargained for, and I hadn’t had a chance to say much of anything at all. Now that I thought about it, I wasn’t sure how to introduce the topic without revealing that I was interrogating my friends. If he knew what I was up to, Jack would probably tell me to let him handle the situation, and that was a conversation I’d rather not have.
I sifted through everything Eileen had told us about Ben. Point one, he was rich. That fit. Point two, although he’d asked her
out, he’d waited for her to make the first move. I had to remember to ask Cece whether that matched her experience with her perfect boyfriend. Although the thought of probing into Cece’s sex life was not an appealing one.
And then there was the obsessive cleanliness thing—unless it had been an act. But why? If Ben was working for Macbeth, and trying to get as close to Eileen as Tom Nelson had to Cece, the behavior had worked against him. Why would Macbeth hire someone with habits that would drive his intended victim away? How could Macbeth hire anyone from solitary confinement anyway?
The whole mental exercise began to seem pointless. After all, both Tom and Ben were out of the picture now. I should be spending my time worrying about those people who were still around. I decided to head for the theater and check out the new director.
***
I came in through the stage door, hoping to slip in unnoticed so I could observe my suspect during the auditions. No such luck. I wasn’t three steps into the building when I heard Simon cry “Darling!” He strode towards me, gracefully flinging a sweater from around his shoulders. “Charley, my angel, my pet, how we’ve all missed you!” There was a reason Simon had chosen the life of the theater.
“Simon,” I greeted him, as he kissed both my cheeks, grabbed me by the hands, and dragged me to the stage, talking all the time.
“Darling, it’s all so thrilling! Don’t you just adore auditions? They spell the dawn of a new day for our little troupe. Will we find genius today? Will we all write about this in our memoirs, as the day we discovered a breathtaking new talent?” As we reached the stage he pulled me close and whispered in my ear. “Sorry for camping it up so, darling, but the money man is here and one has one’s image.”
I smiled, relieved that Simon hadn’t gone completely over the top. Then I took in what he’d said. The money man. The anonymous donor, who apparently wasn’t that anonymous any more. I felt a stab of jealousy that he would be in my theater. Then I realized he was yet another stranger in our lives. “Where is he?” I muttered.
“Fifth row center,” Simon said softly, then, with boisterous energy, “Look, kittens! Look who’s come back to the fold! The prodigal producer has returned!” I saw a lot of familiar faces, but more who looked confused and annoyed at the interruption.
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