by Jane Heller
The Lion King was a spectacular production, but I’m not sure I caught every moment of it. I was distracted, preoccupied, not my customary engaged self. After the show, Bill dropped the boys off at his apartment and told them he’d be back as soon as he took me home. We were standing in my foyer when he reached for me. I was less than responsive.
“Tired?” said Bill.
“No,” I said.
“Didn’t like the show?” he said.
“Loved the show,” I said.
“Don’t like me?” he said.
Under other circumstances, I would have said, “Love you,” but I didn’t.
“Okay,” said Bill. “Let’s have it. Something’s wrong, obviously.”
“Yes.” My arms were folded across my chest and I was tapping my foot on the floor. Nancy Stern, the stern school teacher.
“Are you going to tell me or make me guess?” he asked.
“It has to do with a few remarks that Peter made this afternoon.”
“What remarks?”
“You’re sure you’re ready for this?”
He smiled tolerantly. “Just spit it out, Nancy.”
“Fine. Peter indicated that your ex-wife is angry at you. Because of the ‘kind of life you have.’ Because of ‘what you do.’ That’s exactly how he phrased it.”
Bill looked surprised.
“So what did he mean, Bill?” I said, bracing myself. For the gambling addiction, the S&M stuff, anything.
“Why didn’t you ask Peter what he meant?” said Bill.
“I did. He wouldn’t tell me.”
He smiled again. He didn’t seem especially concerned, I noticed. “Could we sit down? It’s been a long day.” Without waiting for a reply, he sank onto the sofa in the living room. I followed him but remained standing. “Come here, Nancy. I won’t bite.” He pulled me down onto the sofa next to him. “I don’t know why you’re so spooked, but what Peter must have meant was my job with Denham.”
“Really? And why would your ex-wife be angry about your job?” I said skeptically, hopefully.
“Because I left her father’s jewelry stores to go to work for Denham, remember? She has this idea that I turned my back on the family so I could rub up against what she perceives to be the glitz and glamour of an international corporation. I swear to God, she thinks I’m some sort of social climber, which you know I’m not.”
He was awfully convincing and I was awfully relieved, but I wasn’t letting him off the hook quite yet.
“You told me that you and your ex-wife have a good relationship,” I reminded him.
“We do, when there are issues involving the children,” he said. “But I haven’t forgiven her for committing adultery and I guess she hasn’t forgiven me for finding a more challenging career. There’s a lot of residual anger there. Peter probably gets an earful at home, even though she and I vowed to shield him and Michael from our battles.”
He was more than convincing. He was telling the truth. And I was an idiot to have doubted him. I made a decision then and there to stop listening to Janice, who told me over and over that men were, by the very nature of their genetic makeup, liars and cheats.
“That must be difficult for Peter,” I said as I drew myself closer to Bill, cozying up to him.
“It is,” he said, wrapping his arm around me. “But what does any of this have to do with you, Nancy? What did you think Peter meant by his remarks?”
I laughed, as if my remoteness throughout the evening had been a figment of his imagination. “I didn’t think anything,” I said and tried to prove it by involving Bill in a long, wet kiss.
I’ll never mistrust him again, I pledged, wishing he could spend the night instead of going home to his place.
I saw Bill’s kids three more times during their visit. Then it was back to school in Virginia for them and back to school at Small Blessings for me. I was glad to be back, glad to be with my kids again. It was nice to have a break but, despite my flirtation with the other Nancy Stern’s seemingly more exciting profession, I really did love my own.
On a less positive note, Fischer was especially unmanageable on his first day back from vacation. He hit Todd Delafield during lunch, claiming Todd stole a piece of cheese from his Lunchables. And he was alternately clingy with me, demanding to sit next to me at every opportunity, or cross with me, demanding to know why I wasn’t wearing the pin. His behavior provoked me to speak to Olga when she came to pick him up that afternoon.
“I’m worried about Fischer,” I told her. “Did he have problems while he was off from school?”
“Nutting dat unusual,” said Olga.
“Well, he’s out of sorts today,” I said. “He hit another boy and gave me a hard time.”
She shrugged. “I say dis before to you: Da parents dun’t pay attention to him. I do vat I can.”
“Of course you do, Olga.” I patted her arm, which was as solid as a tree trunk and about the same size. “It’s just that I feel bad about that pin he gave me for Christmas. The one you took him to buy at Wal-Mart. He keeps asking me why I don’t wear it to school, and the reason I don’t wear it is because—”
“Excuse, Missus,” Olga interrupted. “Vat pin?”
“The pin. The piece of jewelry you took Fischer to buy for me at Wal-Mart, near the Levins’ house in Connecticut.” It was possible that Olga didn’t know the English word for pin, I realized. After all, I didn’t know the Latvian word for it.
She looked at me blankly. “I dun’t understand.”
I was right, I decided. I grabbed a crayon and a sheet of paper and drew Olga a picture of the pin Fischer had given me. “You remember now?”
She shook her head. “Maybe another boy in da class gave you dat. Not Fischer. I didn’t buy with Fischer.”
“Are you sure?”
“Sure.”
“You didn’t go with him to Wal-Mart before Christmas?”
“Val-Mart?”
“It’s a store, Olga. A big discount store.” God, where were interpreters when you needed them. “Mr. Levin said you took Fischer there to buy me the pin. Fischer showed him the receipt.”
“Receipt?”
What was the use. “Never mind,” I told her. I patted her arm again, then glanced over in the corner of the classroom where Fischer had overturned a glass jar full of plastic magnets. It was time for him to go home.
It was on my way home that afternoon that my purse was snatched right out from under me—or, rather, over me. It was a brown leather shoulder bag that I should have worn strapped across my chest, as many women wear theirs these days, but it was hanging loosely over my shoulder, just sitting there begging to be swiped. Still, begging or not, I was shaken by the mugging, really rattled.
What happened was, I was midway between Small Blessings and my apartment, walking carefully, with my head down, stepping over the occasional river of slush, when a man grabbed the purse, yanking it off me and, in the process, nearly breaking my arm. He was gone before it had registered what he’d done, disappeared into the crowd. I didn’t even get to shout, “Stop thief!” or scream for help or run after him myself. He was such a nimble mugger that there was no way I could give the police a description of him, except that he was a man. Although I wasn’t a hundred-percent sure about that. You can’t be nowadays, according to Janice.
When I got to my apartment, I had to ask the super to let me in, as my keys were in the purse, along with everything else of importance—my money, my credit cards, my driver’s license, my lipstick (it was a shade that had been discontinued and was, therefore, extremely valuable to me).
“This year ain’t going so well for you,” said the super. “First, your apartment’s cleaned out, now this.”
“You’re right,” I said, wondering if I had, indeed, hit a patch of bad luck.
“Could be worse though,” he added. “Look what happened to the one in 24A.”
I nodded. “Could be worse.”
Chapter Twenty-One
The day after the mugging, I received a phone call from a cop at my local precinct, saying that a sanitation worker had come across the handbag in a garbage can, plucked it out, and brought it over to the station.
“How did you know the purse was mine?” I asked, since I hadn’t bothered to report the mugging.
“Your driver’s license,” he said. “It was in your wallet.”
“My wallet?” I was confused. “The crook didn’t take my wallet?”
“Nope. He didn’t take the money out of it either. Or your credit cards.”
“I don’t understand,” I said, genuinely mystified. “Isn’t that why purse snatchers snatch purses? For the money?”
“Usually. But not this one, I guess.”
“Then why in the world would he take the purse?”
“Well, could be he’s one of those cross-dressers,” said the cop, “and he was too embarrassed to walk into a store and buy a purse for himself.”
“Now there’s a theory.” I rolled my eyes.
“Or maybe he’s into black market sales. They steal the designer stuff right off your back and turn around and sell it on the street.”
“But my purse wasn’t designer merchandise,” I said. “It was a Chanel knockoff.”
“That’s why it landed in the garbage,” the cop said. “It was a small fish and the guy threw it back.” He laughed. “Of course, there’s another possibility.”
“And what might that be?” I said dryly. This cop was annoying me.
“He was looking for something in your purse.”
“Looking for something?” I said. “Like what? My lesson plan for my preschool class?”
“Who knows?” he said. “Whatever it was he was looking for, just be grateful he didn’t find it.”
I was grateful. Another small blessing.
An hour later, when I went to the police station to collect my purse, I ran into Det. Burt Reynolds and asked him if there were any breaks in the Nancy Stern case.
“No comment,” he said.
“Oh, come on, Detective. Don’t play hard to get. You can at least tell me if you’ve arrested anybody for the murder.”
“No comment.”
“Brother.” What a waste of our tax dollars. “Okay, how about telling me if you’ve ruled out robbery as the primary motive? Several apartments in my building were hit recently—including mine—and I was wondering if there could be a connection.”
“I’m not gonna comment and that’s that.”
“You know, you were much friendlier when I first met you.”
“That’s exactly what my wife says,” he muttered and went on his way.
Bill was as confounded by the purse episode as I was, and since he wasn’t an expert on crime or criminals, he didn’t have any explanations for it either.
“I feel terrible about it,” he said, with as much remorse as if he were the one who had mugged me.
“It wasn’t your fault,” I assured him. “You can’t stand guard over me twenty-four hours a day.”
“No, but maybe you should take cabs to and from school from now on,” he said.
“That’s ridiculous,” I said. “I’ve lived in the city for years and this was my first mugging. I view it as a rite of passage, sort of like losing my virginity.”
“I’m serious, Nancy. There’s no point in taking unnecessary risks.”
I chuckled at that one. “If I hadn’t taken an unnecessary risk, I would never have met you, baby.”
The subject was dropped and life went on—uneventfully, thank God. Bill and I spent more and more time together, took it for granted that we were a couple, agreed that he would accompany me to Pennsylvania over Easter so he could meet my parents. Still, even during our most intimate conversations, he always stopped short of asking me to move in with him.
“Men.” Janice sniffed when I mentioned his reluctance to formalize our living arrangement. She and I were out for dinner, just the two of us, as it was a Thursday night and Bill was working late at the store. “They’re freaked out by commitment.”
I smiled at my friend and her sweeping generalizations. “Bill isn’t freaked out by commitment, Janice. He’s just deliberate about what he does. He’s not impulsive like you are. I really think that’s all that’s going on.”
“You’re so naive.” She shook her head at me. “Has it ever crossed your mind that as perfect as Bill seems to both of us, he might have problems?”
“Oh, you mean neuroses?” Janice’s favorite word.
“It’s possible. People aren’t always what they appear to be. You found that out with the other Nancy Stern.”
“Please. If Bill had psychological demons, they would have surfaced by now. Am I disappointed that he hasn’t said he wants us to live together yet? Yes. Does the fact that he hasn’t said it suggest that he’s screwed up? No. The truth is, we haven’t known each other that long—six months—and I’ve only just met his kids. He’s got them to consider, don’t forget. Maybe they’re the ones who aren’t ready for us to live together and he doesn’t want to push them.”
“That’s not unreasonable, I suppose.”
“I’m telling you, he isn’t like the men you talk about all the time. When it comes to Bill Harris, what you see is what you get.”
The next night, Bill and I had arranged that I would meet him for dinner at the Chinese restaurant around the corner from Denham and Villier. But I was early, as was my habit and custom, and didn’t feel like getting a table, sitting by myself and playing with the silverware until he showed up. Instead, I decided to buzz by the store and wait for Bill there, so we could walk over to the restaurant together.
Having paid Bill a visit at work before—the time I’d gone to the store to ask him to appraise Fischer’s pin—I knew right where his office was. When I got to it, though, Bill was nowhere to be found. It occurred to me that he might have left for the restaurant and that we had crossed paths.
“Excuse me,” I said, stopping a pretty young redhead in a tweedy brown suit. “Would you happen to know if Bill Harris is still in the building?”
“Mr. Harris?” There was something sweet, almost worshipful, about the way she said Bill’s name.
“Yes. Has he left yet?”
“Gosh. I don’t think so,” she said, trying to be helpful. “I’m Ms. Davis, the assistant to one of the salespeople here, and I’m almost positive he’s in a meeting with my boss.”
“Oh, good.” I was relieved I hadn’t missed him. “Is there someplace where I could wait for him?”
“Sure. I’ll show you,” she offered, then escorted me to a nearby reception area, where there were four empty chairs arranged around a square glass-topped table. “Make yourself comfortable.”
“Thanks. I appreciate it.” I’ll have to speak to Bill about giving this Ms. Davis a promotion, I thought, making a mental note.
She gave me a little wave before leaving me alone. I waved back. And then I took a seat and waited for Bill to come out of his meeting. And waited. And waited.
I should have brought something to read, I thought, after I’d waited for ten minutes or so and gotten restless—as restless as I would have gotten in the restaurant but without any silverware to play with.
And then I noticed the glossy, full-color Denham and Villier catalogs that were fanned out on the table. I picked one up. Its cover announced “For Our Most Discerning Clients” in elegant script just beneath the company’s name and logo. For Our Wealthiest Clients is what they mean, I smirked. Obviously, what I was holding in my hands was a custom catalog intended specifically for Denham’s high-end customers.
Okay. Let’s get a look at these trinkets, I thought, as I began to leaf through the catalog. Maybe I’ll see something that suits me.
Ah, yes, I mused. How about this one?
I was referring to a little number described as an Art Deco bracelet, circa 1925, with 384 calibré-c
ut Burmese rubies (could there possibly be any other kind?) and 280 round and half-moon diamonds. The piece was priced at a mere $185,000—a bargain.
I turned the page. Pictured here, according to the caption, was a 51-carat emerald necklace with 164 round, pear-shaped, and marquise diamonds. Its price: $415,000—another steal.
Hey, this is fun, I thought, as I continued to flip through the catalog, my jaw dropping with each entry. There was exquisite jewelry offered—necklaces and bracelets, rings and earrings, even tiaras and hair ornaments, all sparkling with diamonds and rubies and emeralds and sapphires and stones so unusual I didn’t even know what they were.
I was halfway through the catalog, so fascinated by the photographs that I’d forgotten all about Bill and the Chinese food, when I came upon a piece of jewelry that caused me to do a double take. The piece was a pin, “a platinum-and-diamond floral brooch,” the caption read, “the center of which holds a 25-carat, extremely rare canary yellow diamond.” The cost of this baby was a cool $550,000. Plus tax, of course.
At first, it was the intricate design of the pin that grabbed my attention; there had to have been literally hundreds of tiny, individual diamonds that made up the flower’s shimmering petals. And then it was the size and shade of the center diamond that knocked me out; it was enormous—about a half-inch all around—and a rich, golden yellow, a color I’d never imagined a diamond could be. And then it was the price that boggled my mind. How many people can actually afford to buy this stuff? I wondered. And even if they can afford to buy it, why would they buy it? Why strut around in public wearing a pin costing over a half-million dollars unless you have a death wish? If someone thought my purse was valuable enough to steal, wouldn’t every creep in the world be after a piece like that—and do whatever they had to do to get it?
I was studying the pin and contemplating these matters when it finally dawned on me what I was looking at.