I was to meet Phil Tabor at Novita, a restaurant not far from my apartment on the East Side, a restaurant I’d heard wonderful things about but, thankfully, had never dined at before tonight. I filled the rest of the afternoon pondering alone, and with Harry, how a man like Phil Tabor or a woman like Naomi, Hal Wirth’s date, figured into the rapid financial ruin and ultimate murder of targeted victims. I’d spent my writing career in search of the perfect crime and wondered if I’d finally stumbled upon it.
“How long you think this has been going on?” Harry asked from alongside me on my terrace, which overlooked Park Avenue.
“You must be reading my mind.”
“More interesting than reading your mail.”
“The answer is, I have no idea, any more than I’ve got any idea how many victims have been claimed or how many people there are behind the curtain.”
Harry’s scowl deepened once more. “So they knock off their marks before those marks can figure out how they got taken and report it. Smart.”
“That was my thought.”
“I’m glad you called me, Jessica. Seems like the only fun I have is when I get to work with you.”
“You call this fun?”
He shrugged playfully. “You’re the one going out for the fancy dinner.”
“With you ready to storm the restaurant if things go bad.”
Harry’s expression turned somber. “What do I have to say to get you to call Mort or the FBI?”
“Nothing. I’m determined to see this through myself.”
“It’s not a book, Jessica. You can’t write the ending.”
“Watch me, Harry. Just watch me.”
He looked at me across the terrace, groping for words he couldn’t find, while I fretted about the breeze messing up my freshly styled hair. I moved through the sliding door ahead of him, and noted Chad looking up from behind his laptop.
“Whoa, Jessica, you look . . .”
“The same?”
“I was going to say ‘dressed to kill.’”
“Odd phrase to use, under the circumstances,” I said, managing a chuckle.
“Glad you’re enjoying this, Jessica,” Chad told me. “Because I just confirmed a new date for tomorrow night.”
Chapter Thirty-one
Phil Tabor looked exactly as he did in his profile picture, to the point where I wondered if his registration was only a few days old, just as mine was. Chad had explained that there was no point in bothering to ascertain how long his profile had been up, because if he was a plant, those behind it would’ve taken elaborate steps to make it seem as if he’d been registered for a long time.
He was already seated when I arrived at Novita, where a hostess named Melissa escorted me to the table where he was waiting. Harry McGraw had parked his beat-up old car in a no-parking zone across the street, prepared to listen in on everything that transpired. I’d already switched on the surveillance app he’d asked Chad to install on my phone, available only on sites like the spy store he frequented to buy or borrow his “toys,” as he called them.
Phil Tabor rose when I reached his table, a prime one set before a mirror and against a partition for reasonable privacy.
“You must be Eileen,” he greeted, smiling.
“And you must be Phil,” I said, taking his extended hand. ‘But if you’re not, I think I’ll stay anyway.”
The joke sounded so lame when I uttered it, but the man who may or may not have really been Phil Tabor chuckled anyway. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”
He moved to pull my chair back and eased it in again once I was seated.
“Been a long time since I’ve done this,” he said, retaking his spot alongside me on a bench seat set against the wall beneath the mirror.
“Me, too.”
“Well, we have that much in common.”
“And plenty more,” I offered, “given that we’re a match.”
“I hate that word.”
“Me, too.”
“I’m sorry you lost your husband,” Phil said, sounding as if he genuinely meant it.
“And I’m sorry you lost your wife.”
“Well, truth be told, I didn’t actually lose her.”
“No?”
“We’re divorced. Sorry if my profile may have been a bit misleading. I’ve found the sympathy factor makes me more appealing.”
“Not enough maybe,” I heard myself say, too late to stop the words, “given that you’re still trying.”
“Ouch.”
“Oh, that came out so wrong.”
“No reason to apologize,” Phil Tabor said with a smile that seemed as genuine as his expression of sympathy.
“It’s just that, like I said, I’m new at this.”
“The truth is never anything to apologize for.” I watched him place a cell phone that looked like mine onto the table. “I’m not being rude. This thing controls my hearing aid, believe it or not, and sometimes crowded restaurants require adjustment.”
I slipped on my glasses. “I can’t read the menu without them.”
“So I can’t hear and you can’t see. Guess we make quite the pair.”
“I’ll drink to that,” I said, toasting him with my water glass.
“Why don’t we order something more appropriate? Wine?”
“One glass, unless you want me to fall asleep.”
He looked at me like an old friend instead of a fake match made on a dating site. “Wouldn’t be the first time, Eileen.”
I almost didn’t respond to my name, until I remembered the alias. Our banter and exchange of smiles left me wondering if it had been like this for Hal Wirth the night he’d gone out on a date with the woman he called Nan in his memoir. His words intimated that he’d tired of the whole thing almost from the time the date began. Absent the circumstances, I could have actually enjoyed being out with a man of suitable age who might have been here on pretenses as false as my own.
What might the experience have been like if there were no pretenses, if this weren’t about the murder of a good friend by forces the charming Phil Tabor might well have been working for? That thinking made me ask myself for the first time why I’d never dated again, or sought even the most rudimental male companionship beyond the friendships I maintained with Harry McGraw, Mort Metzger, and Seth Hazlitt since Frank’s death. Was I afraid of feeling guilty? Afraid of building a new life for myself outside the pages of my books? My output had doubled, almost tripled in the wake of Frank’s passing, as if I’d willingly plunged into a world of fantasy because reality was too harsh. I never thought I could enjoy another man’s company, much less one I met on a dating site, until now.
I tried to remind myself the whole thing was a ruse, that I was never going to see Phil Tabor again no matter how well tonight went. Still, even the inkling of enjoyment I was taking from our encounter made me question exactly why I’d rejected male companionship like this ever since Frank had died.
Besides using his cell phone to adjust the volume on his hearing aid a few times, Phil Tabor otherwise did nothing but eat his breaded swordfish while I wolfed down my Chilean sea bass, which I’d learned long before didn’t actually come from Chile. Being nervous inevitably heightens my appetite, and I was a nervous wreck, not just over the fact I was out on a date with a man who might be an accessory to murder, but because I was on a date, period.
“You’re no better at this than I am,” Phil Tabor said over cappuccino.
“Maybe we’re just too old for this kind of thing.”
He nodded, as if weighing my words. “Our demographic is the fastest growing when it comes to dating sites.”
“Demographics are a rationale for anything these days, aren’t they?”
He looked at me, as if unsure what that meant exactly. “Well, there’s nothing wrong with a friendly di
nner, is there?”
“A dinner between friends is different from a friendly dinner,” I said, surprising myself with a remark that sounded biting, my discomfort with this whole “dating” thing starting to show through.
Phil Tabor sipped his cappuccino. “I’ll make you a deal, Eileen. If we decide to do this again, we agree to tell each other our real names.”
“Deal,” I said, extending my hand across the table so we could shake on it.
* * *
• • •
Harry McGraw was still laughing when I climbed into the passenger seat of his car, the door sticking and grinding so much I had trouble closing it.
“You know, instead of yukking it up at my expense, maybe you should get your door fixed.”
“I don’t use that door.”
“Your passengers do.”
“You’re my first passenger in months. And that was your first date in . . . how long exactly?”
“A long time.”
“Since Frank died.”
“What, you think I was dating while we were married, Harry?”
He started laughing again. “That’s the same tone you used on that poor guy in the restaurant.”
“Was I that mean?”
“Let’s say, considerably less amiable than your usually charming self.”
“You hear anything that raised any eyebrows?”
“I was laughing so hard through most of it, it’s hard for me to say. How about when you insisted on splitting the check?”
“When was the last time you dated, Harry?”
“Had dinner with one of my daughters last week.”
“That doesn’t count,” I told him.
“Everything’s relative, Jess.”
Chapter Thirty-two
As of the next morning, Chad had found no attempts of forced entry, so to speak, into any of the fake bank and brokerage accounts he’d opened in my name. The elaborate financial history and holdings he’d built for me would stand up to the closest scrutiny until any attempts to drain the money, or borrow against the assets, revealed the ruse.
This was hardly a comfort, given that Phil Tabor had done nothing to stoke my suspicions. He’d had no opportunity to fish through my handbag in search of pertinent information, nor had he asked me any prohibitive questions that may have led me to reveal anything personal, like my password or something similar. In fact, he had done nothing at all that had even remotely raised my suspicions, including either blackmailing or trying to hypnotize me. And when I recounted the highlights of my evening to Chad, the only thing he seemed to take note of was Phil’s use of his cell phone to control his hearing aid, though he didn’t say why.
I’d fallen behind on my latest book and thought the day leading up to my second “date” might offer opportunity to do some catching up, but I couldn’t keep my focus on fiction when so much was swirling around me in fact. I’d always looked at the process of writing as a refuge to which I could retreat and shut out the demands of the real world. In stark contrast to that world, my writing universe was mine to control. I was the puppet master, as opposed to just another puppet.
The one exception to this proclivity seemed to be when I found myself embroiled in an actual mystery. During those times, I found it difficult to write at all, as if the intrusion of reality on my fictional world made it impossible to linger there or produce anything worthwhile. It wasn’t writer’s block per se, so much as the strange aura a real-life mystery cast over a fictional one. Not only was I not the master; I was barely a puppet. Real life had infringed on my fictional world in a way that rendered the musings of my characters and their actions irrelevant, moot. It had happened before, but never quite like this, because never before had I taken on a real-life mystery with so many personal overtones. While going “undercover” wasn’t totally new to me, I’d never done so in a way that subjected me to such risk, and could only imagine what Mort Metzger would say if word ever got back to him.
I was also taken aback by the degree to which I remained unsettled by last night’s so-called date. The fact that it had been a sham didn’t stop the experience from illuminating the path my life had taken. I wasn’t questioning that direction so much as wondering how things might’ve been different if I’d opted for other choices. Spending so much time around Chad and especially Alyssa left me pondering an alternate existence where Frank and I had managed to have kids of our own, who today would be filling my life with what it otherwise lacked. It’s easy not to miss something you’ve never had, until the slight taste of it fills you with angst over roads not traveled.
Increasingly discomfited by that line of thinking, I turned my attention to my date with one Richard Fass. According to his profile, which could’ve been as fake as mine, he was a corporate attorney and litigator, and listed his hobbies as model shipbuilding, painting, and poetry. He’d been married once, but his profile listed him as single for some seven years. We were to meet for coffee at a trendy East Side coffee shop that catered to the non-Starbucks crowd at five o’clock that afternoon. And, after last night, I was ever so glad to forgo dinner in favor of something less formal and, well, less lengthy.
I tried to nap. Failed.
Tried to read. Failed there, too.
Tried to watch the news. Failed again.
I started to fear I’d never be able to do anything again until all this was resolved, which left me wondering what would happen if it never was. If this whole assemblage of algorithms, profiles, and dating data was the product of folly and nothing more.
I was still pondering that when Harry McGraw drove me to the coffee bar and found another illegal space to park his beat-up wreck in. This time I could barely get the passenger side door open until I put all the heft of my shoulder behind it.
“Thanks for the help, Harry,” I said, from the sidewalk.
“How much are you paying me again?”
* * *
• • •
I recognized Richard Fass immediately from his profile picture. He was seated at a back table facing the door and waved to me as soon as I entered. A stately, handsome gentleman with a shock of dazzling white hair, he bore a slight resemblance to Seth Hazlitt. He waved me over with a smile and I started for the table, wondering why he hadn’t risen, as was the gentlemanly custom. And I didn’t get my answer until my second date in as many days pushed his wheelchair out from beneath the table, stretching a hand up to greet me.
“I know,” he said with an easy smile. “Something I left out of my profile.”
“You think it would’ve mattered?” I asked, taking the seat across from Richard Fass as he pushed his wheelchair back into place.
“Makes me less of a catch, don’t you think?”
I shook my head. “Not really.”
“My ex-wife begs to differ.”
“Car accident?”
“Persian Gulf War. We didn’t suffer a lot of casualties in that one, but I was one of them. I was thirty-five at the time. Thought I had my whole life ahead of me. Know what I learned?”
“What?”
“That it was still ahead of me, just a bit lower.”
“Your wife didn’t agree?”
“I think she would’ve left me even if I could dunk a basketball. We had issues that had nothing to do with the chair.”
I had no idea why, but I immediately felt comfortable in Richard’s company, stoking thoughts in me again about the choices I’d made, or didn’t make.
“You didn’t mention serving in the army in your profile either.”
“It turns some women off,” he told me, “and others on, for all the wrong reasons.”
“Like?”
He leaned forward, his wheelchair rocking with him. “Let’s save that discussion for the next date. Over alcohol.”
“It’s a deal,” I told him. “And to tell yo
u the truth, I prefer coffee.”
* * *
• • •
The shop was self-service and I had every intention of fetching our orders when Richard rolled his chair out from the table before I’d had the chance to offer.
“What can I get you?”
“How about a tea?” I replied, not bothering to argue the point. “Something fancy. Your choice.”
“The fancy ones tend to be weak. I’ll make sure to bring you two bags.”
He rolled on, his thick hair remaining in place the whole way to the counter. The sneakers he was wearing curled over the footrests, affixed with some neon strips runners used to keep them safe at night. They shone brightly under the spill of the coffee bar’s fancy lighting.
Richard rolled back to our table with his coffee and my tea tucked into cup holders built into the arm of his chair. “Hey, if cars can have them, right?”
I smiled and accepted my tea from him—two bags, true to his word, and of my favorite flavors.
“How did you know?” I asked him.
“It’s in your profile.”
I knocked myself in the head. “You’d think I’d remember that.”
“What’s my favorite beverage?”
“Craft beer,” I recalled. “I remember it clearly because it’s called Frank—something. Frank was my late husband’s name.”
“How long ago did he die?”
“Some days, it feels like yesterday; others, a hundred years ago, to the point I wonder if he was even real.”
Murder, She Wrote--A Date with Murder Page 20