“If we don’t get the old Winslow property, there won’t be an overhaul,” Brian pointed out, annoyed at the man’s presumption. He didn’t need some blue-blooded asshole telling him how to do business. “Remember that old lady who blocked Macy’s from building its Queens store in the sixties? They offered her millions, and she wouldn’t budge, so they ended up building the store around her. That’s not going to happen to us. You make the deal, I’ll keep it legal.”
Cantwell slid his glasses back into place. “I’m going to hold you to that.” He gathered up his papers, then rose from the chair. “I’ll call you this afternoon after we draw up a current map.”
“Fax it to me,” Brian said, standing up. “I want to see how it looks.”
“Will do.” The two men shook hands across Brian’s desk. “Give my best to Margo.”
Brian smiled broadly. “Absolutely.”
The smile faded the moment his office door closed behind Clay Cantwell. He couldn’t give his best or anything else to Margo—or to the girls, for that matter. Margo was still in Aspen with her parents, and had been since Thanksgiving. He supposed he should have seen it coming, but he honestly hadn’t. He’d assumed their brittle, by-the-book marriage suited her down to the ground. When she called the Sunday after Thanksgiving to tell him she wasn’t coming home, he’d felt as if he’d been hit with a two-by-four.
“What the hell do you mean, you’re not coming home?” he’d roared into the telephone, fueled by Scotch and solitude. “The car’s picking you up at JFK in two hours.”
“Then perhaps you should cancel the car,” she’d said in a calm voice he’d never heard before. “I need time to think, Brian, and I’d recommend that you take some time to think as well while I’m gone.”
“Fuck you,” he’d bellowed. Then he’d thrown the cordless across the room, where it crashed against a Chinese screen that had belonged to Margo’s grandmother. When she came home, she’d see how little her absence had really meant.
The days went by. And then the weeks. She’d come home for Christmas, he told himself. She wouldn’t keep the kids away from home at Christmastime.
“You’re welcome to join us here,” Margo had said when he asked her about her plans. “Daddy’s going to take us all out caroling in a horse-drawn sleigh on Christmas Eve. The girls are beside themselves.”
He’d locked himself up in their New York apartment and got blind stinking drunk, and the next day he had gone out and picked up a Ford model in a downtown club and fucked her brains out. It hadn’t felt like much of an accomplishment.
To his surprise, he found he missed his daughters. He didn’t consider himself to be a bad father, but Caitlyn and Allison had never seemed quite real to him. Maybe it was the fact that they were girls and he’d never pretended to understand anything about the opposite sex. Still, he found himself missing them more than he had expected.
He glanced at his watch. He had a four o’clock appointment with a client, but there was still plenty of time to walk over to FAO Schwarz and pick up a few things for the girls and have the toys FedExed out to Aspen. And if he was still feeling expansive, maybe he’d even pop into Tiffany and find something for Margo.
* * *
“The market is in flux,” one of Tiffany’s expert jewelers explained kindly to Alex. “If you had come to see us three weeks ago, we could have settled on a higher number, but today I’m afraid this is the best we can do.” He slid a folded piece of paper across the desk toward her.
Didn’t anybody mention the word “money” these days? she wondered as she reached for the slip of paper. All of this coy posturing seemed ridiculous to her. She read the figure, looked away, then read it again. “That’s all?” she asked, praying she needed glasses.
The jeweler nodded. “I’m afraid that’s all.”
“I’ll take it.”
“Are you sure?” the jeweler asked, obviously surprised by her decision. “If you wait another few weeks, the market may very well swing upward. It could make a substantial difference in our offer.”
She shook her head. “I can’t afford to wait,” she said bluntly.
“As you wish, Mrs. Whittaker.”
“It’s Ms. Curry now.” Unfortunately Whittaker was the name on all the paperwork for the items.
“I’m sorry. I won’t make that mistake again.” He stood up. “Please help yourself to some tea while we draw up a cashier’s check for you.”
“I’d appreciate it if we could finish quickly,” she said, glancing out the window. “The snow has started, and I have a long drive home.” A little over two hours, and that was with no traffic.
“Of course,” he said, then left the room.
She poured herself a cup of tea, took a sip, then put the cup back down on the table. The tea had a funny hint of jasmine to it that made her stomach close in on itself in a peculiar way. She couldn’t take her eyes from the big flakes of snow swirling past the window. She’d never driven in snow, and the thought filled her with unease. Did the VW have snow tires or was that an outdated notion? She hadn’t the faintest idea.
Ten minutes later the jeweler returned. “Just a few papers for you to sign and you’re off,” he said. He handed her a gold-tipped fountain pen. “If you would...”
She quickly signed her name three times, then handed him back the pen in exchange for the check.
“I can cash this tomorrow, right?” she asked, slipping it into her purse.
“You can cash it now.”
“Tomorrow’s fine,” she said as he helped her into her raincoat. “Thank you.”
He escorted her down to the main level, where they shook hands near a display of Paloma Picasso’s latest designs.
“Thank you again,” Alex said. “I appreciate your help.”
“Our pleasure, Mrs. Whittaker,” the jeweler said. “Safe trip.”
She didn’t bother to correct him. All she wanted to do was get home.
* * *
Whittaker.
Brian watched as the woman in the black Burberry raincoat exited the store. The same dark blond hair. The same loose-limbed way of walking. It had to be the woman he’d met at Dee’s house. The woman his brother was sleeping with.
“Sir?” The salesclerk’s voice drew him back. “These earrings are particularly lovely.”
He glanced at the two chunks of gold in the palm of her hand. “Yes,” he said absently. “I’ll take them.”
“Your wife will be quite pleased,” she said, beaming up at him. “Shall I have them sent, or will you be taking them with you?”
He scribbled the Aspen address on the back of his business card. “Send them,” he said, handing her the card.
“I’ll be right back with your receipt.”
“Just a minute,” he said. “That man who just walked a customer to the door. What department does he work in?”
“Oh, that’s Mr. DiCarlo. He handles estate jewelry and resales for us.”
Bingo, he thought as the salesclerk hurried away. He remembered the diamond earrings Alex had been wearing at Thanksgiving. He’d pegged them for the real thing, and apparently he’d been right.
Alexandra Curry Whittaker.’
He made it back to his office by three-thirty. He powered up his computer, then logged onto the Web. There was a private and very powerful search engine that had been set up by the executive of a Fortune 500 company. Its sole raison d’être was to help other executives find each other through the labyrinthine permutations of corporate musical chairs. You could search by name, company, or social security number, and five seconds later some poor bastard’s CV from cradle to middle age was flickering across your screen.
Scary shit, he thought as he typed in the name Whittaker. But damn useful.
There were 163 Whittakers in positions of power worldwide, any one of whom could be the Whittaker he was looking for. He decided to narrow the search.
SPOUSE’S NAME: ALEXANDRA
The hard drive clanked a few times,
then a new screenful of information appeared.
GRIFFIN WHITTAKER
PRESIDENT, EUROLINK VENTURES INCORPORATED
1040 FIFTH AVENUE, NY, NY
M. ALEXANDRA CURRY
NO CHILDREN
CURRENTLY BASED IN LONDON
“Yes,” he said, hitting the print button. Now he was getting somewhere.
Fourteen
The day passed, and there was no sign of Alex. John waited for her to show up at the marina, but by five o’clock she still hadn’t made an appearance. He supposed that shouldn’t surprise him. She was every bit as stubborn as he was and had probably signed a contract with Sea Gate Roofing just to spite him.
He was about to lock the office and storm over to the house to confront her when the roofer appeared in the doorway. He was covered with snow.
“She stiffed me,” Bill said without preamble. “She gets me to do a temp job on the roof and disappears. What the hell kind of crap is that?”
“Disappeared?” Everything else faded away. “She disappeared?”
“What else should I call it?” Bill shot back. He shook the snow from his graying hair. “This morning she tells me she’ll be back by four to pay me, and I haven’t seen hide or hair of her since. What does she think—I have nothing better to do than hang around waiting for my money? I’m gonna charge her for the wait time, that’s what I’m gonna do.”
“What’s the damage?”
Bill told him, down to the penny.
“You take a check?”
“I’ll take pennies if I have to.”
John wrote out a check and handed it to him. “When did you say she left?”
“Ten, ten-thirty,” Bill said. Funny how money could soothe the most savage beast. “She got all dressed up. Looked pretty good too.”
John barely resisted the urge to deck the son of a bitch. “Did she say where she was going?”
“Didn’t ask.”
Seven hours, John thought as he locked the marina office. Where the hell could she be?
A good three inches of snow had fallen in the last few hours, making the roads slick and dangerous. There was no sign of Alex or her beat-up VW anywhere. He checked parking lots, the local hospital, auto-repair shops. He even stopped at the police station and asked if there’d been any accidents reported. The thought of Libby and the boys was never far from his mind.
Eddie was eating supper in front of the TV when John got home. A big hero sandwich and a bottle of Bud. Bailey was lying on the floor next to him, waiting for donations.
“I thought you’d be over at Alex’s,” Eddie said, lowering the volume on Vanna.
“So did I.” John hung his jacket on the hook by the door. “Any calls?”
“Brian called.”
“What the hell did he want?”
“Beats me.” Eddie raised the volume.
“Pop.” John stepped in front of the screen. “He must’ve wanted something.”
“Will you get the hell out of the way?” Eddie grumbled. “You’re blocking the puzzle.”
John headed for the kitchen. It was pretty clear he wasn’t going to get anything more out of his father. Bailey trailed behind him, her tail wagging like a metronome. At least someone was glad to see him. He took some bread and ham from the fridge. Bailey looked up at him, her brown eyes wide and expectant.
“I think you want this more than I do, girl.” He gave her a slice of ham and shoved the rest back in the refrigerator. His stomach was too tied up in knots to eat.
He glanced at the answering machine. The message light was blinking. Probably the call from Brian, he thought. His father had the habit of leaving messages on the machine for days at a time. He pressed the play button and raised the sound.
“This is Patricia Taylor from Princeton Medical Center. I’m calling for Mr. John Gallagher. Please call me at area code 609-497—” He grabbed a pencil and wrote down the number on the back of a Chinese food menu. His hand shook so hard he could barely read back the digits scribbled in the margin.
Bile rose into his throat, and he forced it back down. Not again, he thought as he dialed the number. Not again.
“This is John Gallagher,” he said when Patricia Taylor answered her line. “Is it about Alex Curry?”
“Thank you for calling, Mr. Gallagher.” Her voice had the high gloss of the true medical professional. Sweat broke out on the back of his neck. “Ms. Curry has been in an accident. She—”
He grunted as if someone had landed a punch to his gut, then doubled over from the waist. A cold buzz of terror filled his head.
“Mr. Gallagher.” The woman’s voice penetrated his fear. “Listen to me, Mr. Gallagher.”
“Y-yes.” His voice barely sounded human.
“Ms. Curry is not seriously injured. Her car spun off the road, and she hit her head on the steering wheel. She’s bruised, a little headachy, but that’s it. We’re keeping her overnight as a precautionary measure.”
“I’m on my way.”
He threw the information in Eddie’s general direction, then grabbed his coat and left. The roads were worse than before. He traveled the entire seventy miles between Sea Gate and Princeton in four-wheel drive and, despite that, nearly spun out twice himself.
The cold buzz inside his head grew to fill his chest as well. What the hell had she been doing in Princeton on a snowy night like this? The world was a dangerous place. In a fraction of a second, a person’s life could change forever.
It was ten o’clock when he reached Princeton Medical Center. He took a parking ticket from the machine at the entrance to the covered lot, then found a spot on the second level. Two minutes later he was at the information desk in the lobby, demanding to know where Alex was.
“Room 607,” a volunteer told him. She pointed to her left. “The elevator bank is right over there.”
Heart pounding, he rode up to the sixth floor. The place didn’t seem like a hospital. The corridor was carpeted in a soothing blue tweed, and he couldn’t detect the stink of fear he associated with hospitals. A nurse sat in front of a computer, her skillful fingers skimming the keyboard as he walked by. A small kitchen had been installed between the nurses’ station and another corridor. A man and woman, both dressed in street clothes, talked quietly while they sipped something from plastic foam cups. Normal everyday actions meant to keep the demons at bay.
She’s fine, he told himself over and over, a mantra against the fates. She’s fine she’s fine she’s fine—
The door to Room 607 was slightly ajar. The room itself was dark, except for the dim glow of a nightlight plugged into the near wall. There hadn’t been a room for Libby and the boys. Only the sterile coldness of the morgue—
“John!” She was sitting up in bed, a large bandage taped to her right temple. She wore a standard-issue hospital gown, and her skin was as pale as the white pillowcase. “The snow—you shouldn’t have—”
He was at her side, kissing her face, her hands, trying to convince himself she was there and alive and not gone from him. Not gone at all.
“John.” Her laugh was shaky and soft. “It looks worse than if is.... Poor VW took the brunt of it.”
“What the hell were you doing up here in a snowstorm?” He knew he sounded angry and harsh, but he couldn’t help himself. He could have lost her. “Are you nuts?”
She cupped his face with her hands. He noticed thin scratches all the way up her bare forearms. Glass, he thought, shuddering. Jesus. “I thought I could beat the snow, but I was wrong.” She was looking at him as if she’d never seen him before, as if she were learning his face for the first time. He wondered if a painkiller was finally kicking in. “I want to... go home,” she said. Her words grew slower, more halting. “They put my... clothes in the closet... by the door.”
“You can’t go home tonight,” he said, stroking her hair back from her forehead. “They want to keep you for observation.”
“You’ll observe me,” she said, again with that soft and lo
opy laugh.
He leaned back and looked at her. “How many drugs have they given you?”
“One,” she said, holding up two fingers. “But it... was a good one.”
He grinned as relief began to flood through him. “There’s no point asking you any questions tonight—you’re out of it. Get some sleep, Alex.” He kissed her gently on the mouth. “I’ll take you home in the morning.”
“No!” She struggled to climb from the bed, but he pushed her back against the pillow. “Don’t leave!”
“I’m not going to,” he said, pulling the blanket back up around her shivering form. She looked so slender, so fragile, in the hospital nightgown that his heart ached. “I’ll sleep in the chair.”
She patted the bed. “No,” she said again. “Sleep here.”
“Alex—”
“Sleep with me, John.... It’s... one thing we haven’t done.”
He told himself he was doing it for her sake, that she shouldn’t use up her waning energy arguing with him about the sleeping arrangements, but when he positioned himself next to her in the hospital bed he saw his lie for what it was, the last-gasp attempt of a man desperate to keep from doing the one thing he feared most, the one thing that still had the power to hurt him.
Too late, he thought as he cradled her in his arms. Too damn late.
He loved her.
* * *
Alex floated in and out of sleep that night. Dreams drifted into reality, reality drifted back into dreams, and after a while she could no longer tell the difference between them.
Maybe there is no difference, she thought as her bruised body fitted itself against John’s strength. Maybe this was how it felt to be happy. He held her as if holding her were an end in itself, as if he wanted nothin more than to feel her close to him. As if who she was deep down, in that secret place inside her heart, pleased him more than words could say.
* * *
“Ouch!” Alex winced as John helped her into her clothes the next morning. “Even my wrists hurt.”
“You probably gripped the wheel tight when you went into the skid, and the impact exacerbated things,” he said, buttoning the front of her blouse for her. He whistled low. “Not exactly work clothes.”
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