Heartstopper

by Joy Fielding

  The blue-eyed woman entered the stall behind them as the brown-eyed girls—was this really what Van Morrison had in mind?—began playing with their hair. “What do you think?” one asked the other. “Up or down?”

  “I like it down. That’s a neat shade of lipstick.”

  It took Sandy a second to realize that the young woman was talking to her. “Oh, thank you.”

  “What’s it called?”

  Sandy checked the bottom of the metallic, pink tube. “Passion Peach.”

  “Yeah? I like it. Like your ring too,” she added with a nod toward the diamond eternity band on Sandy’s left hand.

  The ring had been a gift from Ian on their tenth wedding anniversary. It had replaced the thin gold band that was all they’d been able to afford when they got married. “Thank you,” Sandy said again, thinking that eternity didn’t last as long as it used to. I was hoping we could keep our divorce as amicable as possible, she heard Ian say. “Would you like it?” She pulled it from her finger.

  “What?”

  “My ring. Do you want it?”

  The girl laughed. “What do you mean?”

  “My husband wants a divorce, an amicable one apparently, so it looks like I won’t be needing it anymore.” Sandy held out her hand. “Really. You can have it.”

  Now the girl looked nervous. “Oh, no. I couldn’t do that.” She glanced toward her friend. Both girls glanced toward the stall.

  “You’re right,” Sandy said, slipping the ring back on her finger. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to be so weird.”

  “Oh, no. You’re not weird,” the girl lied.

  “It really is a lovely ring,” said the other. “You could probably sell it on eBay.”

  “That’s right. I read that one of those girls from The Bachelor sold her engagement ring on eBay after that bastard dumped her.”

  “Did she?” Sandy had no idea what the girl was talking about, although the words bastard and dumped echoed in her ears as she hurried from the room. She heard the young women giggling even before the powder room door was fully closed.

  “What was that about?” she heard one of the women say.

  “What was that about?” Sandy asked herself out loud, looking around self-consciously in case anyone had overheard. But no one was looking at her, and nobody had noticed she was talking to herself, and if they had, they didn’t care. This whole evening was a disaster, she and Rita had obviously been stood up, and it was time to cut their losses and run. She’d down her green-apple martini and leave, she decided as she made her way through the crowded room, people pushing past her as if she didn’t exist. I might as well be invisible, she was thinking. A figment of my own imagination.

  It was then that she saw them.

  The Princes Charming. Middle-aged and pale-skinned. One balding, the other wearing what was obviously a toupee. Rita’s date was the one with the hairpiece. At least Sandy assumed he was Rita’s date because he looked like an older version of the Internet picture Rita had shown her. Actually he looked old enough to be that guy’s father. He was wearing a dark green golf shirt decoratively sprinkled with floating white tees, and he was sitting with his arm casually draped across the burgundy leather banquette, his fingers stretching toward Rita’s shoulder. He was animatedly talking and Rita was laughing, as if she were actually having a good time. Was she? Oh, God, Sandy thought. I’m not ready for this.

  Rita saw her and waved. “Sandy,” she called, loudly enough that several nearby patrons looked up from their drinks. “I was wondering what happened to you.”

  Sandy approached the booth as both men made halfhearted attempts to stand up.

  “This is Ed,” Rita said, introducing the man next to her. Sandy realized he wasn’t much taller than Rita. “And this is his friend Bob.”

  Bob turned his balding head toward her, and Sandy noted he had a serious, pleasant face. Late forties, maybe fifty. Not handsome exactly, but definitely attractive. “Nice to meet you,” she said, sliding into the booth beside him.

  “This, of course, is my friend Sandy,” Rita said. “Didn’t I tell you she was gorgeous?”

  Bob smiled his agreement. His smile said he was pleasantly surprised.

  “Rita tells us you’re from New York,” Ed said.

  “Well, Rochester, actually.”

  “I’m from New Jersey originally.”

  “Really? How’d you end up in Florida?”

  “Came down with my first wife on a holiday, honeymooned here with my second, met my third in Miami, moved my practice down here—”

  “Ed’s a dentist,” Rita interjected.

  “It’s on my profile,” Ed said.

  “You’ve been married three times?” Sandy asked, sipping on the green-apple martini in front of her. She didn’t recall anything on the profile he’d posted on the dating website that mentioned he’d been married so many times.

  “Four actually, but who’s counting?”

  Sandy swiveled toward Bob. “And you?”

  “One marriage. One divorce.”

  “Same as you,” Rita said, as if pointing out something they had in common.

  “I’m not actually divorced yet,” Sandy reminded her.

  “She still hasn’t seen a lawyer, if you can believe it. Bob, talk some sense into her. Bob’s a lawyer.”

  “A divorce lawyer?” Sandy took another sip of her drink.

  He shook his head. “Corporate and commercial. But I could recommend someone if you’d like.”

  “No, thank you. That’s all right.”

  “I’ve already given her the name of a good divorce lawyer—Marshall Hitchcock in Miami. Do you know him?”

  “’Fraid not.”

  “He’s supposed to be really good.”

  “Can we talk about something else?” Sandy asked, taking a longer sip of her martini, feeling it starting to warm her throat.

  “You sound just like wife number two,” Ed said. “She was always saying that. ‘Can we talk about something else? Can we talk about something else?’” he mimicked. “She talked herself right out of that marriage, I’ll tell you. My God, get a load of the veneers on that girl.” Sandy turned to see the young women she’d been in the powder room with walk by. One of them was laughing, and Sandy couldn’t help but wonder if she was laughing about her. “Whoever did her mouth did a hell of a job.”

  Sandy finished the green-apple martini in one prolonged gulp. Immediately, she felt a lump of panic settle inside her stomach, like a stone in water. She couldn’t do this. She couldn’t sit in a cramped booth in a crowded restaurant, sipping martinis and making small talk with two men she didn’t know and didn’t want to know, although Bob seemed nice enough. Quiet and unassuming, maybe even a little modest. He’d actually blushed when Rita had announced he was a lawyer, although maybe he was just embarrassed. Maybe he didn’t want to be here any more than she did. Which meant that maybe under different circumstances, he might be worth getting to know. But not now. Not when she was still so raw and unsure, when just the thought of dating curdled her stomach, when the idea of actually being intimate with a man, a man who wasn’t Ian—had they ever been really intimate? she wondered now—was as terrifying as anything she could think of, and that included the possibility of a serial killer in their midst. She had to get away from all these people, from Rita with her cute brown bob and overly made-up, overly hopeful eyes; from Ed and his four wives, bad toupee, and talk of veneers; from Bob with his nice, serious face and modest mien; from the triplets; from Miss Molly’s Ocean Bar and Grill; from Fort Lauderdale; from Florida.

  From herself.

  “Sandy?” a male voice asked from somewhere above her head. “Is that really you?”

  Sandy turned around and looked up to see a handsome man with salt-and-pepper hair smiling expectantly down at her. He was tall and slender and casually dressed in dark, pleated pants and a blue silk shirt, and his eyes had the kind of mischievous twinkle she’d always found devastatingly appealing. Normally s
he wouldn’t forget a face that looked as good as this one, Sandy thought, trying to place him. But not only couldn’t she put a name to the face, she couldn’t insert the face into any previous context. Her mind raced quickly through her years at NYU, and when that cursory search failed to locate him, she went thumbing through her high school yearbook, trying to add lines and experience to otherwise blank eyes and bland expressions. Still nothing. Was it possible he was one of Ian’s business associates? Had she met him at one of the dozens of medical conventions she’d attended over the years? Or maybe he was the father of one of her students, either here or in Rochester. Again, impossible. Surely she would have remembered that face.

  “You don’t remember me, do you?” he stated with the kind of bemused detachment that made him even more attractive.

  “Of course I remember you,” Sandy lied, climbing to her feet as the stranger embraced her in a welcoming hug.

  “Will Baker,” he whispered in her ear.

  “Will Baker,” she said out loud, reluctantly extricating herself from his grasp and staring into his gold-flecked, hazel eyes. She still had absolutely no idea who he was. “How are you?”

  “All the better for seeing you again,” he said, turning toward Rita and the two men at the table. “Will Baker,” he said, extending his hand to both Bob and Ed. “A neighbor from Rochester, from way back when. Would you mind if I stole her away for just a few minutes?” Without waiting for an answer, he took Sandy’s hand and pulled her gently toward the exit.

  Sandy allowed herself to be led, the smell of the nearby ocean filling her nostrils as soon as they stepped into the cool, night air. It was a beautiful night, she realized, watching the tall palm trees in the parking lot sway to the sound of the surf. Where were they going? Who was he? “Who are you?” she asked, coming to a sudden stop next to a bright red Porsche.

  “You still don’t remember me?”

  Sandy thought back to Harrison Street where she’d grown up in Rochester. There were the Maitlands to one side, the Dickinsons to the other. The Dickinsons had a son, but he was already a teenager when Sandy was a little girl, and so it couldn’t be him. Nor could he be the Careys’ boy. He’d been short and stocky, and even if he’d grown tall and lost his baby fat, he wouldn’t have morphed into anything that looked like Will Baker. Besides, his name was Baker, not Maitland, not Dickinson. No Bakers that she remembered had lived on Harrison Street. Nor had there been any on Whitmore Avenue, where they’d moved after Harrison. “We’ve never met before, have we?”

  A sly grin stretched across his mouth. “No.”

  “I’m not sure I understand.”

  “You looked like you needed rescuing.”

  “What?”

  “I’m afraid I was eavesdropping, which is how I know your name is Sandy and that you’re from Rochester. But I saw the look on your face when Mr. Ed was talking, and I thought, That’s much too pretty a lady to be stuck listening to that crap, and so …”

  “You came to my rescue.”

  “Forgive me?”

  He thinks I’m pretty, Sandy thought gratefully. This beautiful-looking man, who could have his pick of any of the women in that room, and that includes the nubile triplets, picked me, the Ian reject, to rescue. “What else did you overhear?”

  “That you’re in the market for a good divorce attorney.”

  “Please tell me that’s not you.”

  “It’s not me,” he assured her quickly.

  “What do you do, that is when you’re not rescuing damsels in distress?”

  “Stockbroker. And you’re a teacher.”

  “I didn’t think we discussed that.”

  “I believe it was mentioned before you got back to the table.”

  “Anything else of interest that was mentioned while I was gone?”

  “Trust me. There was nothing of interest going on at that table until you arrived.”

  Sandy smiled. He’d not only rescued her, he was flirting with her. And she was flirting back. She who, mere minutes ago, had found the whole idea of dating to be nausea-inducing. And all it took was one lethal green-apple martini and a handsome face. It seemed she was as easily swayed by a beautiful exterior as her soon-to-be-not-so-amicably-divorced husband.

  Will patted the back of the red Porsche. “Care to go for a ride?”

  If this is a dream, Sandy thought, it’s the best damn dream I’ve had in years. “I can’t leave my friends,” she heard herself say.

  “Sure you can.”

  Could she? Sandy wondered. Could she actually get into a stranger’s car—how many times had her mother warned her against that very thing? How many times had she warned her own children?—even if that car was a shiny, new, tomato-red Porsche? Could she really be considering going for a drive with a man she didn’t know, a man she’d met in a bar, for God’s sake, when there might be a lunatic on the loose? (Had there ever been a serial killer who drove a Porsche? She didn’t think so. Ted Bundy, for example, had driven a Volkswagen Beetle, and hadn’t she once read that vans were the serial killers’ vehicles of choice?) The only things she knew about Will Baker were his name and occupation—if they really were his name and occupation—and that he was the sexiest man she’d ever laid eyes on. (Take that, Dr. Ian Crosbie and your Barbie-doll clone. I can be every bit as shallow as you can.) Could she do it? Could she? Could she? “I’ll have to let my friends know.”

  “Why don’t you call them from the car?”

  He opened the car door. Sandy glanced back at the bar, then climbed inside.

  FOURTEEN

  John Weber was pacing back and forth beside his police cruiser. The car was idling in his driveway, and small clouds of gray fumes puffed from the exhaust like smoke rings from a cigarette, polluting the clear, night air. Where was Amber, for Pete’s sake? Hadn’t she said she’d only be a minute? He checked his watch. It had been more than ten minutes already, and what on earth could she possibly be doing in there? “Give the girl a break,” Pauline had yelled from the front door the first time he’d honked the horn. “She’s almost ready.” But how much did she have to do to get ready? She was going to a vigil, not a party. Or so the story went. Supposedly, a bunch of kids were getting together to mourn Liana in their own way—could it really have been a full week since her body had been found?—with songs and guitars and poems and reminiscences. It was to be less formal and more intimate than the memorial service her parents had held for her on Wednesday.

  John didn’t want Amber to go. He’d argued that she hadn’t been particularly close to Liana, although, yes, they’d acted in Fiddler on the Roof together last year. Still, Liana had been almost two years her senior, and they hadn’t traveled in the same social circles. And it was entirely possible that someone from her circle had killed her, someone who would probably be there tonight. John would much have preferred Amber to skip the damn thing, which he considered both morbid and excessive. But, as usual, he’d been outnumbered, two to one.

  “It’s a way for the kids to deal with their grief,” Pauline had insisted.

  “It just prolongs the misery,” John had argued.

  “You don’t understand” came Pauline’s automatic response. Her answer for almost everything these days. You don’t understand.

  And maybe she was right. Maybe he didn’t understand. His way of dealing with problems had always been to solve them to the best of his abilities and then put them to rest. He didn’t want to spend day after day rehashing what he already knew, asking the same questions that had been asked a hundred times already, or stating the obvious. (Although wasn’t that exactly what he and his deputies had been doing all week?) He preferred to define the problem, arrive at a solution, then get the hell away from it as fast as humanly possible. You ran away from a fire; you didn’t embrace the flames.

  Besides, he suspected that along with the songs and the guitars and the poems and the reminiscences, the vigil for Liana would also involve alcohol and drugs. Christ, he remembered his own
teenage years. All he’d wanted to do was drink beer, smoke weed, and get laid. Especially get laid. And if it meant having to strum a few wayward bars on a beat-up old guitar, or recite a few treacly poems he neither liked nor understood, well, he’d have been more than happy to oblige, if such displays of male “sensitivity” were what it took to talk little Jenna or Sue out of her tight little jeans. The boys today were no different from how he’d been. Hell, they were worse.

  And Amber would be no match for them. With how much she weighed, or didn’t weigh, one drink would be more than enough to tip the scales of common sense toward reckless behavior. Sixteen-year-old girls were easy enough to manipulate, especially when they were so hungry to fit in that they’d starve themselves to do it. John could see his daughter being coaxed into taking a tiny sip of someone’s drink or a toke off somebody’s joint. He didn’t think she’d ever done drugs, but then how many times had he heard parents blindly insist that their children absolutely did not do drugs—Never ever, no way!—and how many times had he caught those same children smoking weed in the park or tripping out on Ecstasy?

  At least she was still a virgin. He was pretty sure of that, he decided as he reached through the car’s open front window and honked the horn a second time. She didn’t have a boyfriend after all, had never had a boyfriend, for which he was grateful, although Pauline didn’t share his gratitude.

  “A girl her age should have boyfriends,” she’d fret.

  “A girl her age should eat,” he’d counter.

  Not for the first time, he considered the possibility that Liana’s killer would be at tonight’s vigil. He knew that murderers often attended their victims’ funerals, that it gave them a sense of power, even a perverse sexual thrill. That was why he’d paid close attention to those who’d come to Liana’s memorial service, but there’d been so many people in attendance that the crowd had spilled out of the church and onto the street, and while there were a number of faces John didn’t recognize, no one had aroused his suspicions. The truth was that, despite his best efforts, he was no closer to finding Liana’s killer than he’d been a week ago.