FALSE PRETENSES

by Catherine Coulter

  “I would agree,” he said as he seated himself.

  “When I first saw you in the courtroom, I thought you were English.”

  “An affectation,” he said, smiling at her, “that I didn’t outgrow. My mother was the youngest daughter of an English baron, a country gentleman. I was raised to believe that English tweed announced a man of refined and expensive taste and that a properly trimmed mustache announced an intellect of great depth. Smoking my pipe, of course, announces that I, like many Americans, am hooked on tobacco. You don’t mind, do you?”

  “Not at all. My father smoked a pipe. I love the smell.”

  She watched him go through the pipe ritual. He did it gracefully, easily, from long habit. The sweet smell floated through the air.

  “Ah, our wine. Thank you, Kogi.”

  “To your new life, Elizabeth.”

  “Yes, thanks to you.”

  She sipped her wine, wondering what to say to him. What to do? What to expect?

  “It’s been a very long time,” she said at last.

  “Yes, quite a long time,” he agreed. “I see the press has at last forgotten about you.”

  “For the most part. A relief, I assure you.”

  “I did see you once, a couple of months ago, at Lincoln Center, with Rowen Chalmers. An impressive man.” He watched her closely. Her face paled, then grew cold and set.

  “Perhaps,” she said, “one could say that about him.”

  “I know his family, of course. His father is something of a fool, I believe, but his mother excels in good works and the like.”

  She said nothing.

  Kogi announced dinner and she had the oddest sense of déja` vu, when he seated her at the table, of that evening with Rowe. Tonight Kogi had made his shrimp Provençale, so delicate and light it melted in your mouth.

  “You’re a psychologist.”

  “Yes. It is something of a hobby with me. The district attorney was correct in that.”

  “Have you many patients?”

  “Perhaps a dozen, that’s all. Since I have no need to worry about the more mundane aspects of survival, I can select the patients who interest me most.”

  “I see.”

  “For example, I have a middle-aged businessman, quite a successful businessman actually, who one day, for no apparent reason, took off all his clothes and marched into a meeting with his boss, who happened to be a woman. He tried to rape her.”

  The bite of wild rice remained suspended on her fork. “Wh-what happened?”

  He grinned, showing a deep dimple in his left cheek. “Actually, the woman was bigger than he was. She cuffed him, kicked him to the floor, and he had a heart attack. He’s been in therapy with me for about three months now. He has no memory of the incident.”

  The rice fell off her fork. “You made that up!”

  He laughed and shook his head. “No, I swear it’s true. I did, however, have a special set of suspenders made for him. They clip together in the back and cannot be unclipped in the front. Thus if he ever feels the urge again to disrobe, by the time he succeeds in getting his pants freed of the suspenders, the urge should be long gone.”

  “And his lady boss?”

  “She’s also in therapy, I understand, for guilt. She did nearly kill the poor man. She’s not my patient, however. I thought that would be something like a conflict of interest.”

  “Would you like some more of Kogi’s bread?”

  “Why not?”

  He had beautiful, graceful hands, she thought, watching him spread butter on the slice of warm bread. If he weren’t so graceful, his movements would seem studied. He had an artist’s hands, long, narrow fingers.

  “Do you play an instrument?” she asked.

  “I did try when I was younger. The violin and the piano. Unfortunately, I have about as much talent as that salt shaker there. I’m one of your great unwashed admirers, actually.”

  “So you said in court.”

  “That much, at least, was true.”

  He sounded like he was agreeing that the weather was awful, nothing more, nothing less.

  “Tell me about more of your patients.”

  He did. Even as she listened wide-eyed, she suspected that he was embroidering quite freely on the truth.

  “. . . you see, the daughter continued to claim, quite loudly in fact, that she’d been sexually abused by her stepfather. Very interesting, for the stepfather was impotent and had been for a number of years. It turned out that the daughter was trying to protect her mother from spiteful gossip. It was being said at their country club that the husband/stepfather couldn’t get it up, and the mother/wife was very embarrassed by the gossip. By accusing the stepfather of sexual abuse, the daughter was trying to prove that the stepfather/husband could indeed perform in bed.”

  “Whatever did you do this time?”

  “We managed to work it all out eventually. I found a surgeon who could correct the impotence problem, and now that little girl is likely being chased about in truth by her stepfather.”

  Christian listened to her laughter, felt the sweetness of it flow through him, warming him. Slowly he set down his coffee cup. “I suppose, Elizabeth, that you have heard enough of my professional tales.”

  “I don’t know,” she said, looking at him straightly. “Avoidance is sometimes a necessity for one’s soul, and sanity, I suppose.”

  “True, but you do wish to know, don’t you?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “It’s very simple, really. I know you didn’t kill your husband.”

  It was said with such candor, such simplicity, that for a moment she could only stare at him.

  “How could you be so certain?”

  He lit his pipe, taking his time. “I have heard every concert you’ve ever given. You create, you interpret, you birth beauty and emotion. You have lived your life from within, if you will. I don’t believe that individual people ever touched you, touched that deep inside part of you enough to engender anything like a hatred that could lead to murder. You couldn’t kill anything, it would be meaningless to you, something that couldn’t even exist in your worst nightmares. In fact, I’ll bet you can’t bring yourself to kill a spider.”

  He paused a moment, sucked in on his pipe, but she remained silent.

  “You see,” he continued gently, “you don’t even understand the concept of taking another life. It is as alien to you as it would be to me to strip off my clothes and try to rape a woman associate.”

  Elizabeth studied her coffee cup. “You make me sound like some sort of unfeeling being who has sacrificed humanity for art, that it’s something in my genes that has made me odd, different.”

  “Different, certainly. The attainment of perfection in any endeavor requires immense inner focus and drive. Some aspects of a normal person’s development couldn’t appear in you. There was no room for them. I’d even be willing to wager that as a teenager you went through none of the awful throes young girls experience with the opposite sex.”

  She smiled at that. “Actually, the tendency was there. However, my father was much stronger than hormones. I suppose that he convinced me that a healthy dose of contempt was the only appropriate response to boys.”

  “Is that why you married Timothy Carleton? To replace a strong father?” He watched her withdraw, and said quickly, “Forgive me. I don’t mean to pry. I suppose it’s those shrink genes in me that demand to know things about people, to understand things. Nosy genes, I guess you’d call them if you were being kind. Occasionally obnoxious genes.”

  “That’s all right. Perhaps you have a point. I really have never dissected my motives about Timothy. If I had, perhaps I would never have married him in the first place. I wasn’t all that young when I married him, so I can’t use the excuse that I was too immature, too young to realize what I was doing.” Lying, Elizabeth, and to a shrink. She lowered her eyes, hoping he couldn’t see the lie in them. Never would she tell anyone why she had married Timothy.
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br />   “Ah, but you were. Years don’t mean a thing, you know.”

  “Dr. Hun . . . Christian, am I going to have to pay you a fee for this analysis?”

  “Forgive me again, Elizabeth.” He was quiet, refilling his pipe, going through what her father had always called the calming ritual.

  “Do you use that as a way to gather your thoughts?”

  “What? Oh, the pipe. Probably, yes, quite probably.”

  “You still don’t know that I didn’t kill my husband. You spoke words only, marvelously logical words, but still only words. No one can guess what drives another person to do things, even violent things. If you will remember from the trial, I did have the opportunity, my fingerprints were on the weapon, and I supposedly had an excellent motive.”

  “The motive being money?”

  “That and of course freedom from a distasteful marriage to an old man.”

  “You could never be so stupid.”

  “Stupid? As in leaving my fingerprints on that ridiculous silver ice pick? For not having something of an alibi during the time he was being killed?”

  “What were you doing that evening? Where were you?”

  “Actually, I was in Central Park, inviting the muggers to have a go at me, which none of them did, fortunately or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it.”

  “I had understood that you were to be at a special fund-raiser that evening.”

  Elizabeth cocked her head at that. “Yes, how did you know?”

  “It all came out, as I recall.”

  “There was so much—I suppose I’ve forgotten just how much. Well, I didn’t go, as it turned out. It was a pity. Think of how many people could have given me an alibi. Of course, then the D.A. would have claimed that I’d hired someone to kill Timothy.”

  “You’re still very bitter.”

  “Wouldn’t you be?”

  “Yes, but unlike you, my first priority would be to get even. For instance, I’d back a troll if he were running against Moretti. I think I’d also try to stuff a sock in Catherine Carleton’s big mouth. That young woman is a menace, though more to herself than to anyone else.” He paused a moment. “I read about your confrontation with her at that restaurant.”

  “It wasn’t particularly pleasant. Catherine is a sad case.”

  “She doesn’t seem to pick her men carefully, I hear.”

  “How in heaven’s name do you know so much, Christian?”

  He said slowly, “You didn’t read about Chad Walters?”

  “Who’s that?”

  “A real stud to the ladies, in vulgar terms, especially rich ladies, and a dealer. He’s dead, supposedly killed by one of his connections. A thoroughly nasty business.”

  “Was he the man with Catherine that evening at the restaurant?”

  “Yes, he was.”

  “And he’s dead.”

  “Yes. No great loss to society.”

  Elizabeth felt a chill run from her neck to her toes. “It seems very propitious—his death, I mean.”

  “His line of work was particularly risky.”

  “And Catherine had an alibi?”

  “Certainly. She was, as I heard, vacationing briefly in Nassau when it happened.”

  Both of them were silent a moment, each with very different thoughts. Christian said finally, “Would you play for me, Elizabeth?”

  “I will, certainly, if you tell me why you did it.”

  “I did tell you.”

  “No, you gave me a string of very unlikely character tags. Why, Christian? I’m entitled to know.”

  “I’ve lost all my money and intend to blackmail you for the next fifty years.”

  She tried to smile, but couldn’t quite manage it. “Well, that at least I could understand.” She waited, but he said no more.

  She rose and walked to her piano, but didn’t sit down on the bench. She ran her fingers over the shiny ebony very slowly, with great concentration.

  “Elizabeth,” he said from behind her. “Haven’t you ever trusted someone—completely, irrevocably? Believed in someone, despite everything to the contrary?”

  “Yes, I did, but the contrary part was rather overwhelming. I was a fool, a mushbrain—well, you certainly aren’t interested in that.” Oh, yes, she’d believed in Rowe, trusted him implicitly. She shuddered, pain rippling through her, making her stomach knot. I’d get even.

  Well, that’s what she was doing. She forced her shoulders back and sat down. She played the Pathétique sonata, filling the room with Beethoven’s fury and pain and grandeur.

  She was midway through the second movement when her fingers would no longer obey her. It wasn’t that the pages were sad or depressing or hit her between the eyes, it was just . . . She replayed the same measure, then very softly lowered her head and began to sob.

  Christian stayed where he was. The second movement always touched him, but he didn’t believe that the heavy, tragic sounds that melt a stone had moved her to tears. He said nothing, merely waited.

  “Would you like a Kleenex?”

  She gave a small laugh. “No, thank you. I don’t wear mascara so I don’t have to worry about black streaks on my cheeks.”

  “Go to the third movement.”

  “Yes, I will. Had I done that in front of an audience, they would have thrown tomatoes, then carted me off.”

  He watched her exert control over herself, and admired her immensely in that moment. She played the third movement with verve and panache. But without emotion. When she finished, she was breathing hard. She said, smiling toward him, “When I was ten years old, and would practice that sonata, my father would yell at me, telling me that he would rename it the Pathetic sonata. He’d spent the past six months trying to make me understand the concept of pathos. I never really got it, but ‘pathetic’ I understood very well. It took me years to play the sonata through without blundering.”

  “Now, I think no one would question your understanding. Thank you, Elizabeth. That was magnificent. You’ve given me great pleasure. Now, it’s late. May I see you Monday evening? Andre Galreau is playing Mozart at Lincoln Center. I should very much like to share it with you.”

  “Yes,” she said slowly, rising. “I should like that. Galreau is a fine artist.”

  Adrian switched on the tape player, and Elizabeth and Rod listened to Brad speaking to his uncle, Michael Carleton.

  “It makes no sense!” Brad said.

  “I know. It appears that James Houston is a loss. A mistake. It’s a pity that we simply didn’t allow dear Elizabeth to hire him.”

  “Well, I shouldn’t be using the office phone, it’s not smart. I just wanted to fill you in.”

  “We’ll speak more fully on Thursday night. Your grandmother’s house. Same time, Brad.”

  “All right.”

  “One other thing, Brad. This girl you’re supposed to marry.”

  Brad’s voice, mocking, a bit bitter: “She’s a senator’s daughter and, according to Grandmother, has quite the appearance of a good breeder. Unfortunately I met her at a political dinner in Washington and began squiring her about.”

  “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

  “Oh, I know, Uncle, I know.”

  Silence. The sound of the line being disconnected.

  There was a long silence. Rod said, a small, very cruel smile playing about his mouth, “I wonder what that’s all about. Uncle Michael worried about Bradley marrying a senator’s daughter? Seems like what Laurette would want.”

  “I’ll find out,” Elizabeth said.

  “How?” asked Adrian, sitting forward, folding his beefy hands.

  “Trust me,” she said. “I have ways.”

  “There’s still a leak, obviously, but it has to be lower down.”

  “Yes,” said Adrian. “That business about James Houston. In this instance, the leak backfired.”

  “I trust Brad isn’t taping our conversations?”

  “No, not anymore, Elizabeth. Talk about dog ea
t dog, or in this case, bug eat bug.”

  She hated it, the acting, the lying, the sheer misery of pretending. Faking an orgasm was perhaps the most difficult. She did, then waited for Rowe to climax. She forced herself to hold him close, forced herself to kiss his shoulder.

  Christian was wrong, she thought. I could kill another human being. I could, but then I’d have to do myself in.

  “Elizabeth, what’s wrong?”

  Smile, pretend. “Nothing, Rowe. I just have a lot on my mind, that’s all.” She felt him pull away from her, and her entire body relaxed, finally freed of its betrayer.

  He said nothing.

  “What do you think about Brad Carleton and his romance with this senator’s daughter?” she finally asked.

  “I could care less.”

  “No, seriously, Rowe, I heard this rumor that Brad really didn’t want to get together with the lady, indeed that Michael Carleton is quite concerned about it.”

  “I wouldn’t know,” Rowe said. He lay on his back, lightly scratching his belly.

  “Come now, you were telling me how old money sticks together, how one’s dirty laundry is always washed in private.”

  “You want a rumor? Another one that isn’t very nice? Well, old Brad is reputed to be queer. I haven’t the faintest idea if that’s true or not, but there it is.”

  It fit, Elizabeth thought. Oh, yes, it fit. But what to do with a tidbit like that?

  “How’s the banking business, Rowe?”

  He turned on his side to face her. “There, alive, well, and all that. I’m thinking of hanging a lot of it up, as a matter of fact.”

  You mean you’d take the Carleton millions you’ve earned and skip the country?

  “Then again, I’m just spouting off.” He sighed. “Forgive me. I’m just tired, that’s all. How’s your business coming along?”

  “Funny you should ask. Actually, there’s a pretty important bit of news that came to my ears just today. I need to give Adrian my decision on it very soon. It’s about an Army defense contract on a new jet fighter, the G108. I think it’s a good idea to go for it, and most of my associates agree. And it seems that we’ve got the inside track, what with important contacts and all that. Without the new contract, I’m afraid we’d have to make some pretty substantial cutbacks in the military division of Cragon-Matthews. What do you think?”