The First Wife

by Diana Diamond

  He smiled with great relief. “Wonderful. I was terrified that you’d think I was looking to lure you back to my apartment. That all this was just another line.”

  Exactly what I had been thinking, Jane thought. “Oh God, no! Why would I ever think that?” she answered.

  He reached across the table, took her hand, and held it tenderly. Then he launched into the second step of his courtship.

  “How about next weekend at my country house? I’ll get the kids home from school so that you can meet them. Actually, so that we both can meet them. I haven’t seen them in quite a while.”

  Jane hesitated. She wasn’t good around teenagers. Given a choice, she’d rather be shot from a cannon than spend a weekend with his children.

  “I’d like you to see me in a family setting instead of a corporate office. We’ll have a relaxing day in the country. What do you say?”

  She knew she wasn’t ready to meet his kids—or anyone in his family, for that matter. But it seemed important to him. The hole in his life had damaged everyone, and he needed to see that she could fill it for everyone. “Okay,” she agreed. “Just call me with the arrangements.”

  William Andrews practically exploded with joy.

  He held her hand on the drive back to her house and then got out to open her door. In the process, he and the Indian chauffeur collided, which broke any tension of their parting. He walked her to her door, said good night, and pecked her on the cheek. “I’ll call you,” he promised.

  She was in a swooning mood when she opened her door, floating a bit as if swept off her feet. She turned on the light and pulled up short. Someone had been in her apartment, undoubtedly Art looking for his damn disk.

  He hadn’t disturbed the furniture or dumped his laundry on the floor. He probably didn’t want her to know that he had been there. But the door that slid over her computer alcove was open, and she had carefully closed it on the chance that William Andrews might step in. The papers to the left of the monitor were in a neat stack instead of their usual disarray. Most telling, some of the disks that she kept in her file drawer were stacked to the right of the monitor.

  “Damn!” She went into her bedroom, kicked off her heels, and picked up the telephone. It was after ten, but Art was usually up half the night. And if she did happen to wake him, tough. He had no right letting himself in, particularly when she had told him that they would solve his problem tomorrow.

  She started to dial but was stopped by a sound out in the living room. There was an instant of panic. Someone had broken in. But her courage returned when she realized that it had to be her former husband. Probably he was just finishing his search when she had walked in and interrupted him. She put down the phone and started out of the bedroom, still in her stocking feet. She hadn’t yet reached the living room when she heard the front door click.

  Again she stopped short and listened. Had someone just come in? No, Jane decided, it was Art letting himself out. The bastard was skulking away so that he could pretend he had never been there.

  “Art!” she shouted, and ran to the door. She pulled it open and stuck her head out into the corridor. No one was there. She ran to the elevator and pounded on the button, hoping to catch it before its descent. The door opened immediately on the empty car that was waiting on her floor, exactly where she had left it. Then she heard footsteps on the stairs. Jane raced to the stairwell, but she was too late. By the time she got there, she could hear the front door banging down in the lobby.

  She took the first step, knowing that she could still get down to the street before he pulled out in his car, but as soon as she stepped off the carpet, she realized she had left her shoes behind. She went back to the apartment, gathered her heels, and jammed them on. But before she could get to her feet, she heard a car accelerating out of the parking area. She kicked the shoes off and lifted the telephone. But, of course, he had just pulled out of her driveway and wouldn’t be home yet. “Art, you bastard!” she yelled at what was once his side of the bed.

  She phoned him the instant she woke up and was delighted when he sounded as if she had awakened him. “Good morning, Arthur. I was calling to see if you had a productive evening.” Her sarcasm was searing.

  After a pause, his scratchy voice asked, “Jane?”

  “Yes, your onetime nursemaid. I’m just checking in to make sure you weren’t injured during your getaway.”

  Another pause. “What time is it?” he asked.

  “Very early, but I wish it were even earlier. I’d like to know that I was causing you real pain.”

  He cleared his throat and seemed to sip some water, probably from the bottle he always left at his bedside. “Jane, did you just get home?”

  “You know damn well when I got home. You were here!”

  “Where?”

  “In my apartment, hiding behind a chair. I heard you close the door behind you when you left.”

  “Last night? I wasn’t in your apartment.”

  “Don’t lie, Art. You were at my computer, searching for your damn missing disk. You know, the one where the president’s daughter gets kidnapped.”

  He yawned. “Aren’t we going to do that tonight?”

  “Not anymore,” Jane snapped. “We were, but since you took the liberty to let yourself in and search through my files, we’ll just have to let the president’s daughter die.”

  Another pause. “Jane, have you had your coffee yet? Because you’re not making any sense at all. I was here all night.”

  “Art, I saw you!”

  “You saw me? In your apartment?”

  “I saw that you had been through my files. And I heard you leave.”

  “Jane, I don’t know how to make you believe this, but I wasn’t in your apartment and I didn’t go through your files.” Then he asked, “You’re not doing another one of your exposés, are you? Maybe one of our selectmen wants to see what you’re going to say about him.”

  He sounded genuinely confused. Art was a terrible liar, usually contradicting himself in the process. He sounded as if he were telling the truth.

  “You weren’t here?”

  “No. I was never even in your neighborhood.”

  “Well, who then?” Now Jane was the one genuinely puzzled.

  “Maybe your new boyfriend has his own secret service,” Art suggested. “Maybe they’re checking you out to make sure you’re not a spy for some socialist cell. Big-time capitalists are deathly afraid of socialists.”

  “Don’t be an idiot,” Jane fired back, and slammed down the phone. She was positive that wasn’t what William Andrews had meant when he said he wanted to know her better.

  10

  Jane had no trouble gathering information on Bill Andrews’s first wife. Kay Parker was all over the society pages for the years between her coming-out and her tragic death. As Queen of the Cotillion, she was photographed with an honor guard of West Point cadets, their swords drawn to protect her virtue. At Vassar, she chaired committees that fed the hungry and bought cows for African villages. Next came her working career as a junior editor for a women’s fashion magazine and then as a features reporter for NBC in New York. She had taken a six-month leave of absence to ride with the U.S. equestrian team and scored a few points in international competitions. All that was before her twenty-fourth birthday.

  When she moved actively into society, there was immediate speculation of marriage to any number of eligible bachelors. The candidates included the leading man in a Broadway musical who escorted her to the Tony Awards, the great-grandson of a man who had owned railroads and stashed away the profits, a land baron who was developing a thirty-mile stretch of the New Jersey coast, and the backup quarterback of the New York Giants. A corporate executive, no matter how successful, wouldn’t stand a chance. Kay Parker was far beyond anyone who earned his money in trade.

  Society was stunned when she turned up in Saint-Tropez on the arm of William Andrews. At the time, he was considered “impolite,” a general term that explain
ed his casual attire, frequently unkempt appearance, passion for loud motorcycles and speedboats, and business aggressiveness. He was also a regular on the financial pages, making amounts of money that were blatantly obscene to those who thought no one should have as much money as they did. His betters smirked when he used the wrong fork and shook their heads when he dozed at the opera. The thought of their princess being manhandled by someone who bought his clothes off a plain pipe rack sent shivers through the ladies and raised harrumphs among the men.

  The supermarket tabloids claimed, in sequence, that they were already married, that he was impotent, and that she was pregnant and abandoned. When they were guests of an aging French film actress, a grainy photo of the three of them ran under the headline MéNAGE à TROIS. One day William and Kay were suffering a heartbreaking separation, the next they were into kinky sex, and a day later they were both prisoners of a drug habit. New York social doyens held their noses as if the young couple had been wallowing in a barrel of fish.

  But then they married in a small church on Sardinia and honeymooned across the Continent. They were houseguests of the reigning Rothschild, lunched with the queen of Denmark, and had an audience with the pope. They returned to an apartment that took up the top two floors of a building with a view of Central Park, and bought a weekend place in western New Jersey with thirty rooms and paddocks for twenty horses. The tabloids lost interest, but the society pages began to see the young couple in a more favorable light. When the Prince of Wales borrowed their house for his attendants and his polo ponies, they rocketed back to status.

  Kay proved to be thoroughly domesticated. She took her position in the proper charities and lavished money on the arts. When her children came, she expanded her interests into children’ hospitals and headed committees to send doctors and medical supplies abroad. She immersed herself in youth activities, bringing 4-H to midtown Manhattan and sponsoring Scout troops that regularly hiked in the park.

  Jane found her picture everywhere. She was in jodhpurs next to a champion jumper, in a full-length gown of pearls for the Philharmonic, on skis with her children at Aspen, in a stylish suit on the podium at a political convention, in camping attire at a Girl Scout jamboree. Then there was her involvement in the Andrews business affairs. She was by her husband’s side at a satellite launching in French Guiana, dedicating an up-link at the palace in Bahrain, hosting a panel of journalists in Jerusalem, and frolicking with the casts of television sitcoms. She was even photographed in a Red Sox uniform when Andrews Global Network won the rights to broadcast the team’s games in Latin America. It seemed that in a typical week Kay Parker had spent more time in front of a camera than Jane generally spent at her desk.

  Despite their variety, all the photos were flattering. Kay had high, well-defined cheekbones that made her eyes seem sultry and her smile mysterious. Either she was an expert in cosmetics or she had a makeup artist living with her, because her complexion was flawless. Her hair seemed shimmering ebony that simply grew into a stylist’s creation. Her clothes, even those she wore for camping, were on the cutting edge—the latest fashions before they became commonplace. Her figure was perfectly shaped—a model but with a real butt and high breasts. She had somehow remained thin even during her pregnancies.

  As she plowed through her research and read the countless articles, Jane began to feel clammy. It was a symptom of the fear that was growing within her, changing her suspicions of inadequacy to stark terror. William Andrews had suggested that there was a hole in his life, but it was actually more like a canyon. Parker had painted his life’s canvas with a wide brush. When she had fallen, she had gone right through the painting, tearing away everything but the flimsy frame.

  Was that what Bill meant when he said he wanted to know her better? Was he measuring her for a new painting? Good God, it would take a fair-size harem to fill Kay Parker’s shoes. An ordinary woman would be doomed to failure.

  As she scanned back through the electronic clippings, Jane couldn’t find one role that she could fill. The skills of a makeup artist? In the mornings she looked as if she had just gotten out of bed, and in the evenings as if she was ready to go back. Her fashion flair? Her closet was full of quality clothes that would be out of style long before they wore out. Dinner with the Prince of Wales? She probably wouldn’t know how to attack the place setting. Polo ponies? She got sick on the merry-go-round. And skiing in Aspen? They could save time by setting her leg before she got on the lift.

  Jane was particularly shaken by the shots of Kay smiling out through the flap of a tent with half a dozen Girl Scouts behind her. Even when she was a teenager Jane had thought that young women were vain and spiteful, and the thought of spending a week in a tent full of blossoming adolescents was absolutely terrifying. How had Kay managed to make it look like one of life’s joys?

  She still had her printouts scattered around her and the photo of the happy campers up on the screen when William Andrews’s phone call came through. “It’s all set,” he announced with genuine enthusiasm. “The house out in White Marsh is open, and the kids are coming for the weekend. You can make it, can’t you?” She hesitated a bit too long. “Jane! Is something wrong?”

  “No, no. Everything is perfect. I’ve been looking forward to it.”

  “Great! Can you cut out early on Friday? I can pick you up in a helicopter at Westchester or Sikorsky. The trip is only an hour.”

  “I’ll have to ask my boss. He doesn’t like his people starting the weekend early.”

  “Jane, I am the boss!”

  “No,” she answered. “Unless you want me to act like one of your staff.”

  “Oh God, no. I don’t want you to act like anything.”

  Not even like Kay Parker, she thought. “I’ll talk to Roscoe. But I won’t use your name. It wouldn’t be fair.”

  “Right,” he agreed. “It looks like I’d better start sucking up to Roscoe.”

  11

  The helicopter lifted from the Sikorsky field in Bridgeport as the sun was setting in the west. She and Andrews sat side by side in the narrow cabin, each looking through a different window. He had made sure that she had the southern view looking down toward the Manhattan skyline, now a contrast of crimson sunlight and deepening shadows. Lights were coming on in the windows, giving the gritty streets an aura of fantasy that left her speechless.

  “Incredible,” Bill said. Her only answer was a nod and a smile.

  They passed the eastern end of the George Washington Bridge and broke out over the Hudson River, putting all of Manhattan into a panorama. She could see the shadow of her helicopter against the buildings until it was well out over the water, and then the Statue of Liberty came into view. The New Jersey waterfront passed beneath them, then an industrial band of smokestacks and refinery towers. Seconds later the harbor was behind them and they were passing over clusters of suburbs in the process of turning on their lights. Ahead, the sun was touching the tops of mountains in Pennsylvania.

  They flew over open country, a picturesque landscape of forests, fields, and pastures beginning to show their fall colors, and then over horse country with tidy paddocks marked out by white fences. Gradually the rotor noise changed and they began a turning descent.

  “We’re home,” Andrews said, and pointed across to a hilltop mansion surrounded by neatly defined fields.

  “It’s beautiful,” Jane said, although she really wanted to shout, “Wow!” The estate got bigger and bigger as the chopper lowered.

  They landed softly on a paved square. She noticed the wind sock hanging limp in the stillness and saw the house a few hundred yards away. Even at that distance it looked huge, a white-sided two-story structure that sprawled in several directions under a variety of roof shapes and angles. It seemed the perfect setting for a country squire, a role that seemed completely at odds with the hard-charging executive running away from his past.

  Andrews introduced the estate manager, who climbed down from a Land Rover that would have looked m
ore at home on the Serengeti. He was a hands-on type, middle-aged, and well suited to the jeans and sweater he wore. He referred to them as “Mr. Andrews” and “Ms. Warren.” William Andrews called him Burt.

  The house had a country-farm look that suited its location perfectly. Many of the surrounding estates, built with instant Wall Street fortunes, fancied themselves English manors or Rhine castles and looked ridiculously out of place. Andrews had built with white clapboard, open porches, and trellises to support colorful flowers. The chimneys—there were four of them—were whitewashed stone. The pathways were gravel. Instead of dressing up for maximum attention, the house dressed down so as not to distract from the land. It promised comfort rather than luxury.

  The interior, Jane saw as soon as she stepped through the foyer, delivered on the promise. Soft chairs clustered around woven rugs encouraged conversation and intimacy. The living-room fireplace was huge, suggesting a great outpouring of warmth. Kitchen counters were broad, hung with copper pots and pans to support genuine cooking and baking. She fell in love with it instantly.

  “It’s beautiful,” she said. “So comfortable and friendly.”

  “Kay did most of this with a couple of architects and God knows how many decorators,” Andrews commented idly.

  “But you do like it?”

  “Yeah, sure,” he said, but in a tone that made his answer inconsequential. He apparently didn’t waste much effort on the decor of his surroundings.

  Andrews introduced the housekeeper, Agnes, a businesslike woman with a tall, straight physique. “She’s Burt’s better half, and she keeps both Burt and the house running.” She was solicitous of Jane and promised to have dinner on the table in just a few minutes. “I hope you like duck,” she said, turning back to her stove.

  “Where are the kids?” he asked.

  Agnes hesitated. “In their rooms. I think they’re planning on eating upstairs.”