Taking the Fifth (9780061760891)

by Jance, Judith A.

  Jasmine returned to the table smiling. “It’s always nicer if you can sign it to them personally,” she said.

  The waiter was obviously conscious of Jasmine’s attention as he created our salads. There was an almost electric sensuality about the lady, and the waiter was no more immune to it than I was.

  “So how did Mary Lou Gibbon become Jasmine Day?” I asked, once the waiter had served our individual salads and walked away.

  “On my back.”

  It was a no-nonsense reply, and it left no room for misinterpretation. It caught me off guard, with a mouthful of salad. A large piece of romaine lettuce went down the wrong way and stuck crosswise in my throat. I choked and coughed, trying to jar it loose.

  “I take it that’s not a career path you approve of,” she said mockingly.

  I didn’t say anything in return because I still couldn’t talk.

  “I slept my way to the top once,” she said quietly and added in a determined tone, “This time, I’m doing it right.”

  That statement was open to interpretation, but I didn’t have nerve enough to ask.

  CHAPTER 11

  TIRED AS I WAS, WITH THE LENGTH OF time I’d gone without sleep, drinking even one MacNaughton’s was a big mistake. Drinking two was downright stupid. Halfway through the meal, the drinks hit me. Hard.

  My mind wandered. It was all I could do to hold up my head, to say nothing of my end of the conversation.

  Jasmine didn’t seem to mind. In fact, I don’t think she even noticed. I did my best to listen while she talked.

  It was as though someone had pulled a plug and her life’s story came tumbling out. She told me anecdotes about growing up in the conservative confines of Jasper, Texas. There were tales of some of her wilder exploits from the heavy-metal rock days. She also told me about her six-week stay at Rancho Mirage.

  I was doing my best to listen, concentrating on every word, but eventually my eyes must have glazed over.

  She stopped abruptly. “Am I boring you?” she demanded.

  “No, not at all. I didn’t sleep last night. I just hit the wall.”

  She started to push back her chair. The waiter, hovering solicitiously nearby, hurried to pull it out for her and help her to her feet. “Let’s go then,” she said.

  I guess there’s a certain similarity between being drunk and being uncoordinated. If the truth be known, I was probably a little of both. As we walked toward the door, I misjudged the height of a carpeted step, tripped, and almost fell. Eventually I righted myself and went on with as much dignity as I could muster, but I was aware of the questioning glance Jasmine Day cast over her shoulder in my direction.

  Outside the almost deserted restaurant, my Porsche sat waiting by the door, its powerful engine purring contentedly under the hood. As I handed the attendant my parking ticket and a tip, Jasmine walked to the driver’s door and got in. She was sitting there with both hands resting easily on the steering wheel when I turned to get in.

  “Hey, what’s this?”

  She leaned out the window and smiled up at me. “I make it a point never to ride with someone who’s had too much to drink.”

  The trio of parking attendants were observing this small drama with undisguised amusement. Rather than make it worse, I clamped my mouth shut, walked around to the other side of the car, and got in. If Jasmine Day really did have a brown belt hanging in her closet, there was no sense arguing with her about it. I had no intention of fighting her for the keys.

  I slammed the passenger’s door shut just as she finished readjusting the seat. Considered in retrospect, maybe Jasmine was right and I was drunk, because that capable action on her part plucked me good. It had taken me months to master all eight of those goddamned complex seat controls.

  Instantly I wasn’t the least bit sleepy anymore. Or drunk either, for that matter. I sat there doing a slow burn while blood pounded angrily in my temples. Who the hell did she think she was, assuming that I was drunk! Where did she get off, taking away my car keys! Driving my car!

  “Which way do we go?” she asked.

  Tersely, I directed her out of the parking lot, around the winding underpass that goes under the south end of the Aurora Bridge, and back up the hill to southbound Aurora Avenue.

  “You’re not a very happy drunk,” she commented mildly.

  “I’m not drunk, I’m tired,” I snapped, noticing all the while that she drove my Porsche with disgusting competence.

  “Drunk or tired, either way you shouldn’t be driving. Where are we going?”

  “The ground rules, remember? Back to your hotel.”

  “Rules were made to be broken,” she replied.

  I was still mulling over that enigmatic remark when she asked, “Where do you live?”

  We were just turning right off Aurora onto Wall. I pointed toward Belltown Terrace, its late-night high-rise lights winking above the surrounding smaller buildings. Instead of turning left onto Fifth Avenue, which would have taken us directly back to the Mayflower, Jasmine headed down Wall toward the Belltown.

  Grudgingly, I directed her through the zigzag maze necessitated by downtown Seattle’s one-way traffic grids. She eased the Porsche through the parking-garage doors, down the series of ramps, and into its assigned parking space without missing a beat.

  So Jasmine Day had driven a Porsche before. Big deal!

  With the car safely tucked away, Jasmine switched off the motor and dropped the car keys into my outstretched hand.

  “I had fun tonight,” she said quietly. “Thanks.”

  I grunted in reply and got out of the car.

  “May I walk you to your door?” she asked.

  I’m from the old school. The tables were turning a little too much, and I didn’t like it. “How come?” I answered stiffly. “Do I look as if I need it?”

  “Maybe,” she answered, grinning.

  I shrugged. “Suit yourself,” I said. “We’ll call you a cab from my apartment.” It was hardly an engraved invitation.

  We stopped in front of the locked door that opens into the garage-level elevator lobby, where I proceeded to fumble incompetently with my keys.

  “You know,” she said. “I think I like you. You’re an interesting combination of old-fashioned machismo with just a hint of ego problem.”

  I finally managed to insert my key in the lock and turned to look at her as I pushed the door open. She was grinning up at me. Not smiling—grinning. Impishly. I looked away and punched the Up elevator button.

  The elevator doors slid open and we got in. It’s a hell of a long way from P-4 to the twenty-fourth floor when you’ve got less than nothing to say. I glared at the pattern in the carpet so I wouldn’t have to talk to her or look at her. I was sure she was laughing at me, and I didn’t know what to do about it.

  “Penthouse?” she asked as the elevator door opened on my floor to let us out.

  I nodded.

  “You never mentioned that before,” she said.

  “You didn’t ask.”

  We went inside the apartment. As I reached to turn on the lights, I noticed the red message light on my answering machine was blinking furiously. I was torn between ignoring it and playing back the recorded calls. I chose to ignore it. Jasmine and I didn’t know one another well enough for her to listen in on my messages.

  Jasmine walked through the spacious living room to the wall of windows, where she stopped to look down. One of the windows was open. Twenty-four stories below, at the rear of the building, a few late-night cars were visible both on First Avenue and on Broad. We could hear them too, but only distantly. She turned from the window and examined the room, nodding in transparent approval.

  “This is very nice,” she said. “Quiet too. Not exactly the K-Mart school of interior design.”

  I didn’t know if that was a compliment or if she was making fun of me. “Glad you like it,” I said.

  Moments later Jasmine Day solved my answering-machine dilemma by asking to use the bathr
oom. I directed her down the hall to the first door on the right. As soon as the bathroom door shut behind her, I made a dash for my machine.

  The first few calls were hang-ups. I skipped over those. Then there was a call from Al Lindstrom, saying that although the surgery on his grandson was over, it was still nip and tuck and he would probably be at the hospital most of the night. In other words, I shouldn’t expect to see him at work on Friday.

  Al’s message was followed by several more hang-ups. Then there was a call from Peters. His voice sounded as if he was talking to me from the bottom of a tin can, and he said he’d call back in the morning.

  Finally, at the very end, a woman’s voice came on the machine. Her words were clipped and impatient. “Mr. Beaumont, this is Grace Simms Morris. Since you left a message for me to call, the least you could do is be there to answer your phone. I’ve tried several times. Now I’m going to bed. I had planned to stay with my son, but he must be out of town. I’m at the Executive Inn tonight. Room 338. If I don’t hear from Richard by noon, I’ll be going on home to Bellingham late tomorrow afternoon.”

  I scribbled some notes on a pad I keep near the phone. After stuffing the notes in my jacket pocket, I pushed the erase button, leaned back in my chair, and closed my eyes to listen to the soft whir of the machine.

  Wind blowing in my face woke me up. A forerunner of Big Al’s promised storm, a stiff breeze was blowing in off Puget Sound through the still-open window. The lights in the room were turned off, but as I got up to close the window and go to bed, my way was lit by the hazy glow of moonlight reflected off low-hanging clouds.

  Half asleep, I tried to remember exactly how the evening had ended. Had I ever called for a cab to send Jasmine Day back to the Mayflower Park Hotel? Had I turned out the lights, or had she?

  I shed my tie, jacket, and shoulder holster, leaving them hanging, in that order, on a chair at the dining-room table. I kicked off my shoes and padded down the hall in my stocking feet. After stopping off briefly in the bathroom, I stripped and headed gratefully for bed. The red numbers on my clock radio said 3:45 as I slipped my feet under the covers.

  “So you finally decided to come to bed,” a voice said softly.

  The mattress dipped slightly as someone on the other side of my king-size bed turned toward me.

  If I were ever going to have a heart attack, it would have been then, that very moment. I had thought I was totally alone in my apartment—I wasn’t. Someone was there, not only in my apartment but in my bed.

  Jumping to my feet, I frantically groped behind me, fingers searching blindly for the switch on the beside lamp. At last I found it. With a click, the room was awash in light.

  On the other side of the bed, leaning sleepily on one elbow, was Jasmine Day, or at least someone who looked vaguely like Jasmine Day. Her long, blonde hair was gone. The lady in my bed had hair cut as short as a 1950s crewcut.

  “What happened to your hair?” I croaked.

  Jasmine gestured toward the dresser. I looked. There, indeed, was the familiar mane of blonde hair, perched on what I recognized as the silver cocktail shaker from my bar.

  “What are you doing here?” I demanded.

  “Waiting for you,” she answered. “I figured you’d come to bed eventually. Do you want to get into bed or not?”

  Suddenly self-conscious, I got into bed and pulled the covers up to my chin. I lay there, holding the covers with a death grip, staring up at the ceiling.

  “You asked about my hair. Does it shock you?”

  I glanced over at her without answering. She was lying on her belly, chin resting on her arms, with the golden curve of one naked breast pressed hard against the firm surface of the mattress.

  “When I was in the seventh grade back in Jasper, one of the kids in our class, Bruce Cantwell, got cancer. The treatment made all his hair fall out. I came up with the brainy idea that everybody else in class should shave their heads. I was the only one who actually did it. My mother pitched a fit. She made me wear a wig until it grew out. For a long time, I forgot how good it felt to wear my hair that short.

  “Last year, while I was in treatment, I remembered. So I cut my hair off. It’s like a disguise now. People expect me to look a certain way. When I go out without a wig, no one knows who I am. I get my anonymity back. I can walk down the street and be Mary Lou Gibbons and nobody knows who’s there.”

  She moved toward me on the bed. “Are you mad that I’m here?”

  “Surprised,” I answered.

  “So you don’t mind?”

  I was smart enough to see that any reply I might give to that question would be treacherous, so I kept quiet. Her hand reached out, tentatively touching my shoulder. A solid sheet of gooseflesh spread from her fingertips over the entire length of my body.

  She inched closer to me. Now I could feel the warm, supple softness of her body against mine, hip to hip, breast nudging gently against a rib. I was conscious of the noisy thump-a-thump of my own heartbeat. I turned to look at her. Jasmine Day’s finely molded face was only inches from mine, her blue eyes intense and watchful in the bright light while her fingers traced an absentminded pattern on my upper arm.

  “Maybe I’m nothing but a sexist at heart,” she continued, smiling a little. “I’m used to being pursued. If a man wants me, I don’t want him. It’s as simple as that. I’m not used to being sent packing in a cab.”

  Deftly, she pried the covers loose from my fingers, lay my arm flat on the bed, then nuzzled into the curve of my neck.

  “Besides,” she murmured, her lips grazing the sensitive skin over my collar bone, “I wanted to get to know you better.”

  And so she did. It took a little encouragement on her part, but eventually I rose to the occasion.

  Jasmine Day didn’t seem to have any complaints.

  Neither did I.

  CHAPTER 12

  IT SEEMED ONLY MOMENTS LATER WHEN I opened my eyes, drawn awake by the smell of newly made coffee. Jasmine Day, wearing nothing but one of my oversized shirts, stood beside the bed holding a tray. On it sat a coffee pot and two clean cups.

  “How do you like your coffee?” she asked.

  “Black and strong.”

  “Good,” she said. “Me too.”

  Holding the tray level, she eased her way back into bed and settled against the pillow I held up for her. She filled the two cups and handed one to me.

  “Good morning,” she said.

  For a time we said nothing else. We each sat there with our respective cups in hand, thinking our own private thoughts. It’s tough going to bed with a stranger. There’s nothing much to talk about the next morning when you wake up.

  I stole a furtive glance at her. Without makeup, Jasmine Day’s eyelashes, eyebrows, and short hair were all the same tawny golden color, the texture of the individual hairs fine and delicate. No, I decided, there was nothing masculine about the haircut. It showed off the fine molding of her smooth skull and accented the firm set of her chin and high cheekbones. There was nothing dykish about Jasmine Day’s looks any more than there had been anything dykish about her behavior in bed a few hours earlier.

  “It’s raining,” she said suddenly.

  The sound of her voice startled me. I jumped, slopping some of the hot coffee on my bare chest. I mopped it up with a corner of the sheet. She watched me do it.

  “Am I still making you nervous?”

  “You’d better believe it.”

  She laughed. “Well, I won’t for very much longer. I’m scheduled to do two talk shows today. We tape one this morning and do a live one this afternoon. I’ve got to go back to the hotel to get ready. Would it be too much trouble for you to drop me off, or are you still determined to send me home in a cab?”

  I glanced at her and could see she was laughing at me. “I don’t hold grudges,” I said. “I’ll be happy to give you a ride.”

  “And can I use your shower?”

  “Sure. Help yourself.”

  She refi
lled our cups, put the tray down on the foot of the bed, then got up and walked toward the bathroom. I watched with considerable interest while she gathered up her clothes. My shirt was long on her, but not quite long enough. When she bent over to pick up her purse, the view was tantalizing.

  My response was classic and predictable. I lay on the bed, drinking my coffee and arguing with myself about it while I heard her turning on the water in the shower and adjusting the temperature. Finally, I made up my mind. After all, she had started it. So what if it was a case of mistaken identity? She was the one who had put the idea in my head, who had said ground rules were made to be broken.

  I got up and tapped gently on the bathroom door. She opened it a crack and peered out at me through a cloud of steam.

  “May I come in?”

  She smiled. “That’s up to you.” She reached out a bare arm and clasped it around my neck, pulling me into the room with her.

  One of the things I had marveled about when I bought the penthouse at Belltown Terrace was the massive sunken tile bathtub and shower in the master bathroom. I had wondered about it, but in the few weeks I had lived there, I’d had no chance to field test it the way Jasmine Day and I did that morning, with the needle points of hot water stinging our naked bodies and thick steam boiling up around us.

  Later, as we dried off, I gave her an appreciative flick on her water-dotted rump with my damp towel. “That is undoubtedly the best shower I’ve ever taken,” I said.

  “Not bad,” she replied.

  As she began to rummage through her purse for makeup, I heard the phone ring. When I answered it Peters was there. He still sounded as if he was talking from the bottom of a large tin can, but he seemed cheerful, more like his old self, more like the man who had been my partner until his neck got broken.

  “Look, Beau. No hands.”

  “What do you mean, no hands?”

  “The phone. It’s a speaker-phone with an automatic redialer. All I have to do is press one button, and it dials you up. We’ve programmed in twelve different numbers, and nobody has to hold it for me. It’s a present from Ralph Ames.”