Gotcha!

by Fern Michaels

  Her thoughts everywhere but on the brainless task of emptying the dishwasher, Julie finished, then ladled out the dog ice cream, which even smelled terrible. The dogs sniffed it, circled around it, then gulped at it. Both retrievers looked up at her as if to say, Okay, we ate it. Now can we have a chew bone? Julie obliged.

  Julie looked at the clock on the stove. Too early to go to bed. She’d caught up on her notes and recipes. She didn’t have a good book to read—not that she would have been able to concentrate—so that left television and reruns of something she’d probably seen at least a dozen times already.

  Settled on the sofa, Cooper on one side, Gracie on the other side, Julie settled down to watch a rerun of The Closer. She loved the feisty chief of police. Within seconds, she was sound asleep.

  Not so the two retrievers. They lay with their heads on their paws, their eyes and ears alert to any strange sounds that might wake their mistress. They knew the doors hadn’t been locked or the alarm turned on.

  Cooper looked at Gracie and tilted his head. Gracie hopped off the couch and went from door to door, turning the dead bolts just the way Julie had taught her, back in the days when Julie hadn’t been able to function and barely knew what her name was. Satisfied with her task, she moved on to the alarm. All she had to do was press the blue button, and the house would be locked up tighter than a drum. She waited, her ear tuned to the three pings that told her she could go back to the sofa. Her tail swished with excitement as she stood in front of Cooper to see if he approved. He did, and showed it by tapping her lightly on the snout with one of his big paws.

  Precisely at ten fifty-five, Cooper’s internal clock kicked in. He leaned over and started licking Julie’s face. Gracie let loose with an earsplitting bark, which meant, get up, it’s time to go to bed. Julie obliged. She turned off the TV and looked over at Gracie. “Did you lock up, Gracie?” Gracie barked twice. “Good girl! Okay, quick in and out, then it’s sack time. No visiting with our new tenants, just go pee and get right back in here.” Both dogs ran to the sunroom and the oversize doggie door. They were in and out in five minutes.

  In her bedroom, Julie’s small television was on. More often than not, she left it on all night because she was a poor sleeper. She’d sleep an hour or so, wake up, watch television for a while, then doze off but never into a sound sleep. Once, she’d slept through the night and always woke refreshed. Those days were gone, never to return. As she brushed her teeth, she could hear the news anchor babbling over the sound of running water. Bank executives were still blaming everyone but themselves for the massive losses they had suffered when the housing market turned against them. Some sports giant not worth the money he was being paid was threatening to leave his current team. Last month’s big lottery winner still hadn’t claimed the prize. Two more movie stars were going into rehab. Again.

  The euro kept falling, and the talking heads were wondering if the European Union was going to survive and what effect that might have on the barely recovering American economy. “Like the world really needs this before they go to bed,” Julie mumbled as she emptied out her pockets and stripped down.

  She swallowed hard when she stared down at the piece of paper she’d been carrying around in her pocket for so long. She shook her head to clear her thoughts as she pulled on a sleep shirt with a picture of Mustang Sally on the front. The picture was of herself and had been a long-ago gift from one of her sons, because “Mustang Sally” was her favorite song. She slept in the shirt every night and washed it every morning. It was threadbare. She wondered again, as she often did, if changing her sleep attire would allow her to sleep better. She never came up with an answer.

  Julie was about to click off the TV with the remote and climb into bed when she did a double take at what she was seeing—and hearing—right in front of her eyes. In the time it took her heart to beat twice and to gasp in surprise, Cooper and Gracie were on her bed as they tried to snuggle into her lap, something they never did unless there was a thunderstorm. Her mouth wide open in shock, she stared at the picture on television of her new tenant. Only his name wasn’t Oliver Goldfeld; it was Mace Carlisle. Lawyer Oliver Goldfeld was fielding questions from a persistent reporter right in front of a building in lower Manhattan that said CARLISLE PHARMACEUTICALS in huge brass letters next to the plate-glass doors.

  When the anchor moved on to the weather, Julie finally closed her mouth and thought about what she’d just heard. Her brand-new tenant had lied to her. Her brand-new tenant and his drug company were being accused—by his soon-to-be-ex-wife, Eileen, and her son, Eli—of paying off the FDA for approval on a new drug for high cholesterol in children. Wall Street was in a tizzy, and shareholders were up in arms that the stock shares they owned were going to plummet. And if that wasn’t bad enough, Mace Carlisle had hightailed it out of town, leaving his lawyer, Oliver Goldfeld, to clean up the mess—including serving divorce papers and evicting the wife, Eileen, from their pricey apartment in the Dakota and firing the son, Eli, from the company and tossing him out of his digs in the Trump Towers.

  That was the end of Julie Wyatt’s sleep for the night. She recalled words her deceased husband used to say: Nothing is as it seems, and there are two sides to everything. Do not judge, do not assume, and do not presume. Words to take to heart.

  Chapter 4

  Knowing that sleep was now out of the question, Julie made a pot of tea and booted up her computer. She didn’t even bother to turn on the lights. The laptop and the night-light on the stove gave her all the light she needed. No sense alerting her new tenant—in case he wasn’t sleeping—that she was a night owl, which she wasn’t. What she was, was someone who hated to be lied to, someone who valued truth. And she damned well hated being made a fool of. Her husband’s words kept ricocheting around and around in her head. She cautioned herself not to be hasty.

  Julie plopped several tea bags into a red-and-white polka-dotted teapot, then poured the boiling water over it. While it steeped, she tapped into Google and typed the name Mace Carlisle. Nice name, she liked it. She blinked at the mile-long list of sites she could click on to get the skinny on her new tenant. She clicked and clicked and printed everything she thought would tell her all that she needed to know. Make that . . . wanted to know. When she had used up half a ream of printer paper, Julie switched up. She typed in the name of Oliver Goldfeld and did the same thing, using up the other half of the ream of paper.

  Then she poured her tea, a blend of wild currant and blackberry. Carrying her mug of tea, which was as big as a soup bowl, and the stack of printouts, Julie trotted back to her bedroom, settled down in a deep, comfortable rocking chair, and proceeded to read about the lives of Mace Carlisle and Oliver Goldfeld.

  Julie finished the last of her cold tea at three forty-five in the morning. She rubbed at her eyes, then stacked the papers neatly into a pile. She leaned back and closed her eyes. She sighed. From everything she’d read, Mace Carlisle was Mother Teresa’s male counterpart. There was no hint, no breath of scandal attached to the man in all his sixty years. Until yesterday.

  Mace Carlisle was born and raised in Hoboken, New Jersey. His father had been a pharmacist and owned the Carlisle Pharmacy in Hoboken; his mother was a schoolteacher. As a youngster, Mace had worked in the pharmacy after school, holidays, and summers. He graduated magna cum laude from Rutgers University and went on to pharmacy school and again graduated with honors. He joined his father at the drugstore, whose name was then changed to Carlisle & Carlisle Pharmacy. To this day, Mace still owned the pharmacy. But other people ran it for him because, as he said in more than one interview, he just couldn’t part with it, even though it operated in the red. His policy was that if a family couldn’t afford the medicine it needed, he gave it to them for free. He didn’t keep records of who owed what, either.

  Mace’s philanthropy was well known. He donated millions of dollars to every cause in the book. He was a well-known animal-rights activist even though he didn’t own an animal himself beca
use, as he said, he was never home, and it wouldn’t be fair to the animal. He donated handsomely to charities he thought his mother would approve of, had she still been alive: women’s shelters, women’s rights causes, free clinics, and so many children’s causes the reporters couldn’t keep track of them all. He had awards, plaques, citations, man-of-the-year awards out the yin yang. The ones he was most proud of were the awards from Little League coaches, whose teams he funded far and wide because, as a child, he’d never had a chance to get out and play like the other kids. He funded thousands and thousands of full-ride scholarships, and the only thing he asked of the students was for them to do their best. And they did. He and Oprah Winfrey had set up a foundation to support aspiring young actors and actresses in their early years, which everyone knew were especially tough ones.

  He was modest, didn’t like to give interviews, and was considered shy. To his employees, he was generous to a fault. While he ran a tight ship, he was always fair, and his people respected him and were loyal. It was said the only way to get a job at Carlisle Pharmaceuticals was to be on a waiting list in case someone went to that big drug company in the sky and, even then, more often than not, one of the deceased’s relatives took over his or her job. One enamored reporter went so far as to say the company should be called Carlisle & Family Pharmaceuticals.

  Mace Carlisle, with the help of his childhood friend Oliver Goldfeld, who had been fresh out of law school, started up Carlisle Pharmaceuticals. To this day, the two men were considered best buds. Obviously, Julie thought, since Mace had assumed his best friend’s identity. Julie knew in her gut that Goldfeld had okayed the switch in identity. She heaved a huge sigh of relief that Mace Carlisle, aka Oliver Goldfeld, was an okay tenant, but one with personal problems.

  Julie’s thoughts rambled on. Both men had been bachelors up until three years ago, when Mace Carlisle took the plunge and married. Wall Street reacted, and CP stock took a tumble. The stock took a second tumble when Mace’s stepson, Eli, was brought in to head the legal department and decided to revamp things. The stockholders pitched hissy fits. Dissension in the ranks was rampant, with Mace giving pep talks to his people almost on a daily basis.

  Early in the marriage, reporters noticed that Mace was starting to look drawn and haggard and was taking time off, blocks of time. His new wife was looking better than she’d ever looked. She’d made some dentist extremely happy, not to mention assorted plastic surgeons. She was into daily spa treatments, and expensive three-hour lunches with her son. She single-handedly kept Saks and Bergdorf Goodman in the black. She decorated a five-room apartment in the Trump Towers for Eli and didn’t once look at the price tag of anything she bought to furnish and decorate the place. Or so it was rumored. She demanded and got a chauffeur, then demanded a place in the Catskills. The reporter went on to say that while he couldn’t prove it, he thought Mrs. Eileen Carlisle had carte blanche at Tiffany’s.

  Oliver Goldfeld was yet another pillar of the community; no taint of scandal anywhere near him. Excellent reputation in the legal field. Several years ago, he’d taken a case all the way to the Supreme Court and won. He was Mace’s best friend, something both men shouted to the heavens. Oliver had never married but had been keeping company with federal judge Marion Odell for many years. Julie liked the old-fashioned term, keeping company. It was rumored that Mrs. Carlisle did not like Oliver Goldfeld and was jealous of the friendship the two men had. It was also said that her son worked long and hard behind the scenes to sabotage the legal and personal relationship between the two men, causing strife in the new marriage.

  And then the latest report, dated just two weeks ago. CP stock tumbled again, and there were rumors of a hostile takeover just as the company was waiting for FDA approval of their new children’s cholesterol drug.

  The cherry on top of what she’d just finished reading was what she’d heard on the news this evening. Even an idiot could figure out why Mace Carlisle had cut and run. To get his head on straight. She would have done the same thing if she were walking in his shoes. Sometimes, as she’d found out the hard way, you had to distance yourself from a situation to get your bearings. God, had she learned that lesson. The hard way.

  The big question for her at the moment was whether to let Mace know she knew his secret or to just go along with his charade. Always the first to champion the underdog, Julie finally decided to keep his secret and pretend she knew nothing. As long as the man paid his rent, she had no right to interfere in his private life. She felt sad that she couldn’t help him in some way.

  Julie Wyatt felt sorry for Mace Carlisle, so sorry she wanted to run across the yard, wake the man, and hug and comfort him the way mothers had done since the beginning of time. Of course, she wouldn’t do any such thing.

  Julie squinted without her reading glasses and tried to see the red numerals on her digital clock. Five o’clock! She looked at her bed and almost laughed out loud. Cooper was stretched out on her side of the bed, Gracie on the other, with no room for her because Cooper wouldn’t move until he was ready to move, and he was out for the count. Oh, well, she might as well shower and think about making breakfast for her new tenant, since there was no food in the cottage. When the dogs finally stirred themselves, she’d send them over to the cottage with a note.

  At five forty-five, Julie was in the kitchen, trying to decide what to make for breakfast. In the summertime, she usually just had fruit, usually a mango, some yogurt, or toast. In the winter, she liked warm cereal. She wasn’t sure, but she thought Mace Carlisle might be a breakfast eater like her sons, who early in the morning would eat anything that wasn’t nailed down.

  Such a dilemma.

  While Julie pondered her breakfast menu, she turned on the small television sitting on the counter. Maybe there would be fresh news, but what that could possibly be, she had no idea. She made coffee while she waited for the six o’clock news to come on.

  Her elbow propped up on the counter, her chin in the palm of her hand, Julie stared at the television. The face of the latest politician to be caught with his hand in the till appeared, smug and self-assured. She muttered a few choice words and was glad there was no one within earshot to hear them. The other news was just as stupid as what she’d just heard. Nothing seemed to be forthcoming about Mace Carlisle and his problems. One would think tampering with the FDA and a new kids’ drug would be the top news. Maybe the seven o’clock news would have something. She rarely was up this early to watch the news. So she didn’t know what the order of news stories was this early in the day. She switched to the Weather Channel—and wished she hadn’t. Rain for the day starting midmorning. Well, sometimes the weatherman was wrong; she could hope.

  The forecast meant that Cooper was going to be rolling in puddles, as water was his best friend. Not so Gracie, who liked to keep her nails dry. Gracie particularly liked the scarlet hibiscus polish the groomer had put on her nails last week. Gracie also liked the red bow the groomer tied around her neck with each visit. Cooper hated his blue bow, and Gracie always tugged it off him. And then they would tussle with it for hours on end until it was nothing but strings.

  Julie continued to sit at the counter, woolgathering, as her mother used to say when she was deep in thought. She looked down when she felt Cooper nudge her leg. She got up, ruffled the place between his ears, turned off the alarm, and opened the door. The dogs were out and back within minutes, at which point she scribbled off a note and handed it to Gracie. She opened the door again, and both dogs sprinted off to the cottage.

  Julie made a second pot of coffee, mixed batter for pancakes, and nuked some bacon. She fired up the electric griddle, and while it was heating up, she beat some eggs into a frothy foam. Breakfast would be served on hard plastic plates. Paper napkins were the order of the day. Fresh cantaloupe would finish off the meal.

  She had a full day, and she had yet to decide what would be on her dinner menu. But she had plenty of time to come up with something that would be worthy of space in her d
ream cookbook. And if not, oh, well.

  Thirty minutes later, everything was good to go for the minute her tenant showed up with the dogs. She was back on her perch at the counter, but now the television was tuned to the Shopping Channel. No sense alerting her tenant that she was an inveterate news watcher.

  Hands jammed into her pockets, Julie felt the piece of paper she’d transferred so many times she’d lost count. She really had to make a decision. Maybe she should round up her kids and take them to lunch and talk it to death. Maybe she needed to call the New York lawyer who handled her business affairs first. Arnie Rosen had been her lawyer as well as a good and loyal friend for twenty-five years. She knew in her gut he was going to pitch a fit, but at least he would know what to do and offer up some sound advice, which she would either follow or not. Hopefully, he would understand what she was going through. Hopefully.

  She heard the joyful barks of the dogs as they barreled up the steps that led to the kitchen door. She’d installed little platforms between the steps years ago when her old dog, Cyrus, an Australian herder, couldn’t do steps anymore. She heard the light knock on the door. She smiled at her tenant, who looked freshly showered and shaved. “Good morning, Oliver. How did you sleep in your new digs?” she asked cheerfully.

  “Like a baby. I opened all the windows, and crickets put me to sleep. This morning, the birds and the sun woke me. It was wonderful. It reminded me in many ways of where I used to live as a child. It smells good in here.”

  “Don’t get too excited about the sun. The weatherman is predicting rain, but I think he’s wrong this time.” Julie laughed as she poured Mace coffee and cut him a huge wedge of melon. “Go ahead and eat while I make the pancakes. I suppose I should have asked, are you a breakfast eater?”