“I guess. For a long time I was pretty committed to using their divorce as an excuse to do whatever I damn pleased. Or do nothing at all.”
Cal props his chin on his hand and gazes at me for a long moment. “I admire you, Audrey, I really do. It takes guts to start your own business without any family support. I graduated from college with an English degree and no earthly idea what I wanted to do. My mother was nagging me, my friends all seemed to have a plan. So I took the coward’s way out and went to law school.” He rolls his eyes. “Just what the world needs—another paper-pushing, nit-picking asshole billing five hundred bucks an hour to add layers of complexity to every business transaction.”
I smile as some of my tension dissolves. I’ve never heard Cal express the slightest self-doubt before. “I thought you loved being a lawyer. You’re certainly successful at it.”
He pushes aside the bread basket, clearing the space between us. “What I love is politics, Audrey. That’s my passion, but I didn’t realize it when I was twenty-two. I should have gone to Capitol Hill and worked as a gofer for some Congressman, shared a ratty house with five other guys doing the same thing. It’s too late for me to live that life now, but I can run Spencer’s campaign in Palmer County. And if he wins the election—when he wins—I’m going to be his chief of staff in Trenton.”
Cal’s eyes reflect the flickering candlelight. The worldly self-confidence he always projects—that thing about him that both attracts me and terrifies me—has slipped away. Suddenly he’s a little boy on Christmas morning, thrilled to have received the race car set of his dreams. “That’s great, Cal. You’re going to quit the law firm?”
“Taking a leave of absence,” he explains. “In the long run, I’m worth more to them in Trenton than Palmyrton. And I can take a break from contract law.” He shivers and leans closer to me. “I hate preparing cases, hate filing briefs. I’m a horse-trader, Audrey. Spencer likes to keep himself above the fray, but I tell you, I love rolling around in the dirt, hashing out the deals.”
The waiter chooses this moment to materialize, demanding our order. Cal selects steak; I foolishly order the entrée that sounds most appealing: grilled sesame tuna. The moment the waiter retreats I’m filled with diner’s remorse. Garlic/soy/ginger marinade—my mouth will reek for days. What was I thinking?
I give up on flagging the waiter down so I can switch to baked filet of sole, and turn my attention back to Cal. “How did you first meet Spencer?”
“It was five years ago. I wanted to score points with this girl who was working at Spencer’s Senate campaign headquarters, so I volunteered to stuff envelopes. Spencer was in the office that day and he started talking about what he hoped to accomplish in Washington. He talked about how the chasm between rich and poor in New Jersey was bad for everyone. He said he wanted to be the first senator who’d represent Paterson and Peapack; Camden and Upper Saddle River; Newark and Princeton. He was ahead of the curve, talking about public-private initiatives, getting corporations to understand it was in their best interest to improve inner city schools.” Cal pauses, breathless. “The next thing you know, I was offering to make phone calls and give speeches. Meeting Spencer—and Anne—changed my life.”
I’ve never been the slightest bit interested in politics, but I find myself experiencing a pang of envy. It must be nice to feel committed to a higher purpose than getting the very best price for a vintage Jetsons lunchbox. Plus, Cal has managed to do what I’ve always longed to: trade in the defective family he was born into for a fully functioning, deluxe model. But I can’t tell him all that. So I say, “Anne seems very fond of you.”
“She is. None of their kids has been bitten by the politics bug. So I’ve become the son who wants to follow dad into the family business.” Cal leans forward and drops his voice. “By the way, Anne really likes you. She was very pleased when I told her I was seeing you tonight. She thinks I have awful taste in women, so she warned me not to mess this up.”
Cal mess up? I’m the one who needs advice on how not to blow this. Luckily, the waiter arrives bearing our appetizers, sparing me the need to come up with a coolly witty response. Before leaving our table, he refills our wineglasses. Mine was far emptier than Cal’s. Nevertheless, I take another big gulp.
Gradually, the conversation comes a little easier. I find myself telling funny stories about Ty and Jill and my regular customers, like Howard the Hoarder. At least, I guess they’re funny because Cal is laughing. He tells me about life on the campaign trail with Spencer—the reporters, the gadflies who come to every event to ask annoying questions, the crooks who try to slip him wads of cash.
“Is he ever tempted?” Of course I know what Cal will say, but it’s kind of sweet to see the intense sincerity in his eyes when he says it.
“Spencer wouldn’t take a stick of gum from a constituent.” Then Cal laughs. “Of course, he always leaves it to me to get rid of these people. Once I had to tell some Mafioso from Atlantic City no thanks for the foot high stack of chips, the suite, and the call girl.”
The waiter shows up on “call girl” and we both giggle like middle-schoolers.
“This cake is delicious,” Cal says. “Try it.” Aiming a loaded fork at my mouth like a mother robin with a worm, he steadies my chin with his other hand, an oddly tender gesture that makes my spine dissolve.
Even after he’s fed me, Cal continues to lean across the table, stroking my right hand with his fingertips. “Pretty ring—unique.”
I feel a hot flush rising. This is it. Tell him now, or never.
“It was my mother’s. My father had it specially made for her.”
“Sweet.”
“I found it in the trunk in your aunt’s attic.”
Cal aspirates the coffee he’s sipping and starts to cough.
Nice one, Audrey—I have all the tact of a chainsaw. “Sorry. Look, Cal, I kinda figured out what the deal was with your aunt and the jewelry. Her neighbor told me that Agnes was a housekeeper and a nanny…the jewelry is all different sizes and styles...”
Cal holds his hand up and glances around the restaurant.
Right. Not the best place to be discussing Agnes’s larcenous habits. I think I’m blowing my beautiful evening out, but my need to know how Agnes got my mother’s ring is greater than my need to charm Cal. “Can we talk about it later?”
Cal nods, but then he can’t let the matter drop. “She worked hard all her life, Audrey. Her husband was sick for years. She never had two cents to call her own. When I saw the stuff, I knew.”
Now I’m the one who reaches for his hand. “I understand. It’s not so terrible—seems like none of it was ever missed.”
Cal touches my ring. “Your mom never wondered what happened to this?”
“My mom disappeared on Christmas Eve when I was three years old.”
Cal signals the waiter. “Let’s get out of here.”
Back at my place, several glasses of cognac later, I’ve told Cal the entire story of my life—my mother’s disappearance, my father’s estrangement, my suspicions that my mother might have been pregnant, my determination to know the entire truth.
“Finding the ring after thirty years, and then nearly dying two days later—what can I say? All that stuff you hear about near-death experiences is true. I feel liberated, like I’m finally free to do exactly what I want to do.” All the booze has loosened my tongue. I’m saying things that I never realized I felt. “All my life I tried to keep my grandparents happy, and my father—he’s impossible to make happy, but I tried not to make him more unhappy. But this I’m doing for me. I deserve to know what happened to my mother.”
“Of course you do.” Cal pulls me close to him on the sofa and studies the ring on my finger. “I don’t know when my Aunt Agnes crossed your mother’s path. She didn’t keep records of the families she worked for, and she was always paid off the books.”
“I’m pretty sure she never worked for us—my father always used an agency. But there has to be so
me link between our families. Do you remember her talking about the people she worked for? Any names at all?”
Cal shakes his head. “I really didn’t spend much time with her, Audrey. She wasn’t our most fun-loving relative.”
“Who would know? Your mom?”
“Maybe. I’ll ask.” Cal massages his temples. “When I ask her what the hell I should do about all that stolen jewelry. That should be a great conversation. My mother’s policy is to ignore all unpleasantness and shoot any messenger who brings it to her door. Thanks for keeping the trunk for me, by the way. I’ll take it off your hands after the election, I promise.”
“If your mom can’t tell you who Agnes worked for, you’re not going to be able to return the stuff to the rightful owners.”
“I know. I’d like to toss it in the Passaic River, but in politics you can always be sure a reporter will pop up at the worst possible time.”
“I have an idea. Whenever we have stuff left over from a sale that’s too good to throw away, we ask the estate if they’d like to donate it to this community group in Newark run by Sister Alice. She always finds a way to sell it or use it.”
Cal raises his eyebrows. “I don’t know—how are you going to explain a trunk full of jewelry to a nun? I don’t want it traced back to me.”
“She won’t ask questions. Sister Alice is a great believer in the hand of God. She’ll see that jewelry as the divine intervention she needs to get her furnace repaired.”
“Okay, I like the Robin Hood angle. Just to be on the safe side, can we wait ‘til after the election to give it to her? ”
“Sure.”
“Thank you.” Cal brushes his lips across my forehead.
Oh, God—here it comes! Can I do this?
“You’re so tense, Audrey. Relax.”
He runs his hands along my back and pulls me close to him. I let out a little moan.
Ethel comes over and tries to insinuate herself between us. I nudge her away with my knee.
I can definitely do this.
Chapter 24
I don’t cross the threshold of the office until nearly eleven, and before I can stagger to my desk someone starts pounding on the door. Each knock is like a jackhammer to my aching head, so I rush back to the door to shut the insistent fool up. I‘m greeted by a delivery man with a monumental bouquet of flowers, which is why Jill is now kvelling.
“Ooo, Audge! Who sent them?”
Of course it has to be Cal, but he left my bed only three hours ago, after which I fell back into a fitful doze. How could he have managed to get these flowers here so quickly, when I’m still too exhausted and hung over to even contemplate a bowl of Cheerios?
I stagger slightly as I read the card tucked among the lilies and iris. Maybe it’s the cognac still circulating in my bloodstream, or maybe it’s the message: “You’re on my mind, Cal.”
“Who sent them?” Jill continues to demand. She’s as puzzled by my stunned response as she is by the lavish arrangement.
“Cal Tremaine.”
Jill cocks her head, bearing an uncanny resemblance to Ethel when she’s trying to discern the source of distant barking. “Wow, Audge—this is the second time he’s sent you flowers. What’s going on?”
“Nothing, nothing. That’s the kind of guy he is.”
A player.
I know that. This thing with Cal is nothing serious, but I can still enjoy it, right? I’m finally doing what my friend Maura is always encouraging me to do: change up my game. Maura accuses me of always dating what she refers to so charmingly as “pencil dicks”—thin, mournful intellectuals. Why not try a fireman, a lacrosse coach, a bond trader? You might be surprised how much you like it, she tells me. Oh, yes, Maura would approve of Cal. The attention, the flowers, the sex: all good, as long as I accept it for what it is.
A hook-up.
Having escaped Jill’s prying eyes by inventing errands to run, I now stand in the lobby of a big boxy office building staring at the board listing the tenants. Burke and Fein, the first PR firm on my Chamber of Commerce list, is on the third floor. Will they know anything about my mother? Will I even be able to talk my way in to find out? My work has made me adept at persuading people to do what they secretly long to do. (I’m sure your grandmother would want you to sell her mink coat if you’ll never wear it. That sterling flatware could pay off your student loans—why not let me find a buyer?) But I’m less confident in my powers of persuasion when it comes to convincing people to do what I want. I take a steadying breath and press the button for the elevator. The doors slide open before I have the chance to cut and run.
The minute I step into the Burke and Fein reception area I’m filled with doubt. The vibe is all wrong here: utilitarian office furniture, factory-produced “art,” a honeycomb of cubicles stretching out from either side of a long hallway. Surely my mother never worked here. Of course, the Burke and Fein of thirty years ago might have been less antiseptic. But still…
“May I help you?” the efficient looking woman at the front desk asks.
I stammer out my request. My fears that my cover story would sound implausible were groundless. This woman wants nothing more than to process me out of her reception area—either back into the maze or out the door, it matters not to her. With a few clicks of her computer and buzzes of her intercom she has my answer. This firm was never located on Reston Ave; Charlotte Perry never worked here.
Out the door I go.
The reaction at the second PR firm on my list is much the same: no Reston Ave, no Charlotte Perry. I get back in the car to drive to the third address. Traffic is stop and go, and as I glance in the rearview mirror before changing lanes, I notice a small gray car with the dinged front bumper. Wasn’t that car parked across the street from Burke and Fein when I left? I watch it behind me for three blocks. Then I turn right and it keeps going straight. I realize I’ve been gripping the steering wheel awfully tightly, and peel my fingers back. Paranoia really isn’t my style—I’ve got to relax.
As soon as I pull up in front of The Van Houten Group, I feel a tingle of anticipation. The red brick building looks as if it started life as a standard issue suburban bank, and somewhere along the way encountered a post-modern architecture fairy. Two wings cantilever out of the building’s sides at improbable angles. The front wall is solid glass. The Van Houten Group is etched on a slab of granite by the curb. This is the kind of firm that could have started out in a Victorian on Reston Ave.; I’m sure of it.
Two steps into the foyer and I’m overcome with wardrobe anxiety. Everything is smoky gray and stainless steel. I should be wearing black, as I’m sure all the employees here are required to do. Certainly the receptionist, with her long raven hair, short black dress and high black boots, blends in chameleon-like with her surroundings. Her black mascaraed eyes scan me from top to bottom. She pauses a beat, then speaks. “And you have an appointment with…?”
All right, obviously I don’t look like one of their regular clients, but does she have to treat me like a Jehovah’s Witness? As I stammer out an explanation, a young man in big rectangular glasses (black, natch) glides up to her desk and adds his curious stare.
“We’ve been in this space for seven years,” he says with authority. “Before that we were somewhere on the west side of Palmyrton, I believe.”
“Reston Avenue,” a deep voice says from behind me.
I see Black Glasses exchange a glance with Black Boots.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Van Houten.” The receptionist strides out from behind her desk, skates around me, and holds her arms out to the old man who’s just entered. “Let me take your coat.”
“Who are you?” he asks me. His voice is imperious but not insulting. Sharp blue eyes stare at me from under a crest of pure white hair. I feel compelled to tell the absolute truth.
“Audrey Nealon, Charlotte Perry’s daughter. Did she used to work here?”
“Charlotte Perry!” His whole face lights up. “You’re her daughter? My G
od, the last time I saw you, you were wearing a pink hat with bunny ears.” His eyes narrow to a squint. “You don’t look much like her.”
“So I’ve been told. Did you know her well?”
“Oh, my yes. I hired her.”
Now I’m the one whose face lights up. “Look, I understand if this is not a good time, but could I talk to you for a few minutes about my mother? I mean, I can make an appointment and come back…”
“Tamberlynn.” Mr. Van Houten’s voice is as sharp as a finger snap. “Bring Miss Nealon and me some coffee in my office. And take her coat.”
As Tamberlynn scrambles to do his bidding, Mr. Van Houten smiles at me and extends his arm. “Right this way my dear.”
Van Houten’s office is a shrine to Mid-century modern. There’s a Milo Baughman chrome sofa and a Morris Lapidus coffee table. Gingerly, I sit in an Eames chair opposite his desk. I’m sure this is the real deal and it takes every ounce of self-control I possess not to flip the chair over and check for the trademark underneath. I should be thinking about what I want to ask the man, but my eyes keep darting around, lighting on the kinds of things I’d kill to find in the homes of aging baby boomers being shipped off to assisted living: Eero Saarinen stools, Heathware pottery, a chrome cigarette lighter, even though no one can smoke in offices. Finally, I bring my attention back to Mr. Van Houten. That’s when I notice the framed painting above his desk. I’m out of my chair in a flash.
“My God! Is that a David Salle?”
He swivels in his chair to watch me studying his artwork. “Yes, one of his early pieces. You know his work?”
I tell him the story of the Lee Krasner I found in the home of an old drunk. Van Houten looks pleased.
“You have a keen eye for quality. So did your mother. She was with me when I acquired that painting at a gallery in Soho.” He chuckles. “That was when Soho was quite disreputable.”
“Really?” I have an intense desire to touch the painting, or even the simple black frame. I clasp my hands behind my back and turn to face him. Van Houten looks to be about ten years older than my father. What was he doing taking my mother to Soho art shows in the seventies?
Another Man's Treasure (a romantic thriller) (Palmyrton Estate Sale Mystery Series Book 1) Page 14