Bad Girl and Loverboy

by Michele Jaffe

  Everyone knew things always went the way they were supposed to. At least when Benton planned them.

  “Damn it,” Benton said, pounding a fist into the beryl-wood dashboard. “Damn, damn, damn. I should have thought of this. I should have been here. I should not have let her come by herself.”

  J.D. said, “Are you done?”

  “What? Showing emotion? Does it bother you?”

  The dark glasses flashed in his direction. “Actually, I meant trying to find some way to make this your fault.”

  “It is.”

  J.D. gripped the steering wheel harder, and to Benton it was a toss-up: was the man trying to keep from laughing at him or ripping into him. Except that J. D. Eastly didn’t laugh. When he finally opened his mouth it was to say, “If someone wanted to take Rosalind, they would find a way to do it even if you were lying in bed next to her.”

  “You know what?” Benton said, barely waiting for him to finish. “I don’t want to talk about it right now.” Letting “with you” hang. “I want to think some things through.”

  J.D. shrugged and kept his eyes on the traffic in front of them.

  Benton stared down at his clenched hands, opened them, and smoothed his palms over nonexistent wrinkles in his faded jeans. Despite the sun pouring through the sunroof of the sports car, it was cold inside his sweater. The rust-colored cashmere one, the one Ros had given him for Christmas that year. He’d worn it and his jeans because that was how she liked him best, and he loved to make her happy. “You almost look relaxed when you’re dressed like that,” she teased him, running her hand through his hair. “Of course, I know better.”

  She did. She knew him better than almost anyone, and what he felt for her went deeper than for anyone else. She depended on him, had been depending on him for more than twenty years. They argued constantly about everything from quantum mechanics to the merits of silk umbrellas, but only once in the nearly two decades of their friendship had they ever really fought.

  “Jason,” Benton said aloud without realizing it.

  J.D. nodded. “I wanted to wait for you to get here before we called. I thought you should be the one to tell him.”

  Jason Carnow, Rosalind’s sixteen-year-old son, was the product of her brief and tempestuous affair with Walter North, her adviser during her first year of college. In love with Rosalind himself, Benton had been furious when he learned of the affair, and the two of them had not spoken for a year. Not until the winter night Rosalind showed up at his dorm room without a coat but with a baby in her arms. Benton had paid off the waiting taxi, taken them in, and from that day on been the closest thing to a father Jason had ever really known.

  At sixteen, it was clear to everyone that Jason Carnow had inherited not only his mother’s classic good looks, but also her genius. He had finished high school two years early, and instead of going on to college, he’d taken a job helping catalog lizard species in Costa Rica. The only thing he cared about more than lizards was his mother, and he was every bit as protective of her as Benton.

  “There’s no reliable way to reach him,” Benton said finally. “He’s camped somewhere deep inside the rain forest. I haven’t even gotten an e-mail from him in three weeks. And it’s probably better. At least until we know more facts. He would not take it well. He’d go out of his mind worrying about her.”

  J.D. said, “Yeah, better for you to be the only one doing that.” And then, “If you’re done thinking, let me tell you about our progress.”

  The way he drove it took them less than five minutes to get the rest of the way from the airport to the hotel, but that was plenty of time for his report.

  “So you—the police—have nothing,” Benton summed up as they pulled into the hotel driveway.

  J.D. heard the correction as they got out of the car, Benton blaming him but pretending not to be, typical, not saying what he really meant. Diplomatic was how he was sure Benton would describe it. He decided to ignore it. “Nothing yet. But the CIA has already got agents on the ground, and it’s getting Metro’s—and my—full attention.”

  J.D. broke off as a swarm of reporters descended on them. The clicks of a dozen shutters going off were drowned out by the shouted questions of the press.

  “Do you know who has her?”

  “What have they asked for?”

  “Is it true you were going to leave her for the Countess of Lille?”

  “Is there any evidence that terrorists are behind the disappearance?”

  Channel Four, all the networks, even Newsweek, J.D. noticed, scanning the crowd and ignoring their questions. Pretty good turnout. He watched Benton handle it all smoothly, answer the questions, smile for the cameras, and wondered how he could do it without hating himself. Did he not care? Or was he just so used to being the center of the show?

  The crowd surged like a tide and ebbed to one side at the insistence of the Bellagio security guards, and a woman in a well-tailored taupe suite with a clipboard appeared in front of them. She said to Benton, “I’m so sorry about that, Mr. Arbor. We tried to get rid of them before you got here but . . .” Her voice dropped and she looked warily at the reporters. “You are in your regular suite on the third floor, villa three-oh-three. The police finished half an hour ago and we sent housekeeping up, so everything should be in order. We are all very concerned about Dr. Carnow.”

  Benton took the key and gave her in exchange one of his famous smiles, but J.D. saw it vanish as soon as they were past the press. Don’t waste that good stuff on peons, he was thinking as Benton said, “You sent over a forensics team. That means you think she was taken from the room.”

  “It was the last place anyone saw her.” They walked by the elevators and toward the door of the service stairs that led up the two flights to the VIP villas. Stepping inside, they nearly collided with a bellboy who was struggling to keep hold of a hairless rat terrier wearing a Burberry sweater.

  The bellboy stopped and stared at them, surprised to see guests in the stairwell, but his attention was immediately diverted when the dog turned around and bared its teeth at his neck. “Calm down, Lancelot,” he said, quickly taking the last flight of stairs down to the kitchens and the dog dining room. “Please, Lancelot, it’s just me, your friend, Cyril.”

  Benton nodded in the direction of the disappearing dog and said, “I see my cousin Julia is here.”

  “She and Cal arrived a few days ago. Second honeymoon. Or third. I lose count.”

  J.D. kept his tone neutral, and he knew Benton wouldn’t press him. Julia was one of the reasons for the tense silences between the two of them. At least, that was what Benton thought.

  “You said the suite was the last place anyone saw Rosalind,” Benton reminded him as they stepped from the flecked linoleum of the service corridor onto the plush carpet of the third-floor hallway. “Who was the last person to see her?”

  “Chambermaid. Her name is Selina Cortez. She came to make up the room Friday around ten-thirty in the morning and Rosalind asked her to stop back in later. Selina got the impression that there was someone with her.”

  Benton frowned. “Someone with her? The kidnapper?”

  “If it was, then the kidnapper is someone Rosalind knew. Selina thought there was someone in the bedroom. A man.”

  “The chambermaid saw a man with Rosalind?”

  “She didn’t see him. She just had the impression that there was someone else there.” The shadow of relief in Benton’s expression gave J.D. an unwanted flash of sympathy for him. He knew for a fact that there had been a man sharing the bedroom with Rosalind. He’d keep that to himself, he decided, as well as whatever his forensics team turned up from the sheets and towels he had sent over, although he was positive it wouldn’t be much. At least not much conclusive. J.D. knew what the tabloids did not, that Benton and Rosalind’s relationship had for years been more of a friendship than a love affair, but he also knew how Benton reacted whenever he thought Rosalind was seeing someone else.

  “I’
ll want to see that forensics report,” Benton said. “I am sure you weren’t thinking about withholding it from me.”

  “Of course not, Mr. Arbor.”

  Benton picked up his pace and J.D. let him go, sauntering behind and only catching up with him as he reached suite 303. Before either of them could ring the bell, the door was opened by a distinguished-looking man in a tuxedo and white tie who bowed to them both.

  “Good afternoon, gentlemen,” he pronounced with a deep British accent. “I am the butler.”

  J.D. looked at the man’s hotel-issued plastic name tag. Pete Greer. San Antonio, TX. He wondered in which part of Texas he had picked up his accent.

  Benton said, “Good afternoon, Pete. Could you—”

  Whatever else Benton might have said was cut off by a voice from beyond the foyer, exclaiming, “Oh, Benton, thank God you are here.”

  Seven words that J.D. knew Benton had heard a thousand times and never tired of. He saw Benton turn the smile on again and followed him into the living room beyond the entry hall. Benton’s grandmother was there, flanked by his cousin Julia and her husband, Cal, on one side, and Eros on the other. Behind them, on the terrace, two uniformed police officers were conversing with a guard from Bellagio security. Next to them was the taupe velvet chaise longue that Rosalind always claimed, her favorite scarf still draped over the side.

  A romance novel in Spanish was lying open on it, part of her attempt to teach herself the language before she went to visit Jason in Costa Rica. An orchid plant and a glass with a smudge of purplish-black fingerprint powder stood on the round table alongside it. To J.D. it looked like a memorial to a life interrupted.

  It must have looked that way to Benton too, because he seemed to snap into action. He jammed the piece of Juicy Fruit gum into his mouth, leaned toward J.D., and said, “I want the security tapes, all of them, from the hotel starting from the two days before Rosalind disappeared and going until right now. I want her phone records, both here at the hotel and her cell phone. And I want to be deputized by you so I can partake in the investigation.”

  J.D., speaking slowly on purpose to piss Benton off, said, “Partake? Don’t you mean take over?”

  “Very funny.” Benton now faced the butler. “I would like a large pot of coffee, very strong, and a gallon of orange juice, no pulp.”

  “That has already been taken care of, sir,” the butler said. “Detective Eastly sent over orders this morning.”

  Benton turned to J.D., looking, for the first time, genuine. And surprised. “You didn’t—”

  J.D. put up a hand. “Look, whatever there is between you and me, it has no place here. Only Rosalind matters.” He thought it came out sounding like he meant it.

  Apparently Benton did too. He held out a hand to shake and said, “Thanks.” Then he crossed into the living room, bent to kiss his grandmother on both cheeks, and said, “Don’t worry, Sadie. I’ll take care of Rosalind. I’ve got the situation under control.”

  Under control—under control—under control, Benton repeated over and over again, bending forward and standing up mechanically like a marionette, as the man sitting in front of the television set rewound and replayed the end of that scene on the security tape later that night. The screen flickered spasmodically in the dark room, carving frightening shadows in his features. He was sitting much too close to it, he knew, but no one was going to yell at him about it. No one ever did.

  Stop. Start. Stop. Start. Under control. Under control.

  “Liar, liar, pants on fire,” he taunted the television as Benton endlessly repeated his jerky bow. “I’m the one with the control. Remote control,” he added, waving the black box in his hand. “Get it, Ros? Remote control?” He turned toward the woman in the La-Z-Boy recliner next to his. She was sitting straight up, and the way he’d spread the blanket, you couldn’t even tell she was bound into the chair. Even where the clear fishing line was visible, it was hard to see in the dark room. All in all it was such a cozy scene, the two of them at home watching TV. He smiled at her. “Pretty funny, huh?”

  Rosalind did not say anything, just kept staring at the screen with eyes still blank from shock and the sedative he’d given her. They were always like this at the beginning, he knew, but he was still disappointed. He liked it when his friends laughed at his jokes. And Rosalind had such a nice laugh.

  Oh well, there was always tomorrow. And the day after that. And the day after that. He’d take care of Rosalind. He had everything under control.

  CHAPTER 4

  Minneapolis, Minnesota

  Imogen watched a red-parkaed child skate Spirograph figures over the surface of the frozen lake as Irwin Bright slowed to take the corner of Sam’s street.

  “Kathleen and I would be delighted to have you stay with us,” he repeated for the fourth time, and for the fourth time Imogen shook her head.

  “No. I want to stay at Sam’s. Plus, I have to take care of Rex.”

  “Rex?”

  “His goldfish. I promised.”

  Irwin nodded. Drove. Finally broke the silence, saying, “It was a lovely service. Sam would have liked it.”

  Irwin Bright was famous among his colleagues in the department of cognitive science at the University of Chicago for being honest to the point of brutality, which made his delivery, when he did try to lie, abominable.

  Imogen could not keep herself from smiling at his effort, though. “Sam would have hated it, you mean. The church, the flowers. Aunt Caroline insisted.”

  “That part, yes. But the number of people who came. And those who spoke. That would have made Sam happy. And the gospel choir.”

  She had to agree with him there. The gospel choir that had arrived at the end, all in purple robes, and broken into song would have earned an ear-to-ear grin from Sam, and not only because of how much it upset Aunt Caroline.

  “What are those people doing here?” she had leaned over to Imogen to hiss, but for once Imogen was not concerned with her disapproval. Marcy Tate, the leader of the choir and the assistant principal of Anwating Junior High, winked at Imogen as she led her group on in song after song until the entire church was singing.

  Everyone but Aunt Caroline, who had seized her son Nathaniel’s arm and dragged him from the nave.

  “That was horrible, devil’s work,” she told Imogen in clipped syllables on the icy front steps of the church afterward. “I can’t believe you allowed that.”

  “Those were Sam’s friends,” Imogen explained. “He sang with that choir.”

  Caroline slashed a hand through Imogen’s words. “It was a disgrace. You’ve disgraced our family. Again. Nathaniel and I are leaving. We have a long drive ahead of us back to Madison. I lost an entire day of work for this, and now I don’t even know why we came.”

  I do, Imogen thought as she watched her tall, silent cousin hold the door of this year’s Camry open for her aunt. You came so you could have an excuse to see Father Donald tomorrow and get whatever weird thrill you get from saying, “I have sinned, I was angry at my niece because she was not devout enough,” and let him praise you. She tasted burned leaves and lime, the way she always did when she was with her aunt, regrets, remorse, and disgust warring together. Most of the disgust was directed at herself for not being over this by now. The lime was the real taste, the burned leaves the remembered one of the air in the attic of the perfect house, like all the other perfect houses on the street, that she was locked in whenever her sinning mouth got her in trouble. It took a lot of time alone in the dark to get the sin out of a girl as wicked as Imogen was. Especially once Sam had smuggled all those How Things Work books and a flashlight and some of those icing-covered animal cookies up there for her.

  Thinking about Sam brought the heart-clutching sense of loneliness back, and Imogen forced herself to look at Irwin Bright. She owed it to Irwin not to burst into tears right there in his car. In fact, she owed him everything.

  Only in college, while taking a seminar with him, did she learn that w
hat she did was called synesthesia, that it was a rare condition that made her senses overlap. While most people smelled scents, saw sights, and heard sounds, sights, smells, and sounds were translated by Imogen’s brain into flavors. The school she and Sam had gone to in Oregon embraced the idea that any expression was a valid expression, so she’d never realized she was different. But after their parents’ death, when they were moved to a suburb of Madison, Wisconsin, with perfectly groomed lawns and perfectly normal children, Imogen quickly learned that it was not acceptable to make statements like, “The Battle of Gettysburg was slightly minty at the beginning, then became very sugary.” At least not if you didn’t want people taunting you at lunch, asking, “What does this taste like, Page?” and giving you a kick. Or, in junior high school, pulling down their pants and demanding you to tell them what flavor they were.

  She heard Sam’s voice in her head now, saying, “Put that little Popsicle away, Albert, before you lose it.”

  Sam who taught her how to stand up for herself, Sam coming to her rescue, always there, Sam making her laugh and keeping her safe. Sam gone. Oh God, Sam, how can you be gone?

  Imogen dug her nails into her palms to keep from crying.

  It was Irwin who had explained how the mingling of her senses made her acutely aware of patterns, and also unusually—perhaps uncomfortably—empathic. Who explained that some people considered what she did a gift.

  She wondered if she could give it back to them.

  When she had finished her graduate work, it was Irwin who submitted her name to his friend at the FBI as a candidate for their new Cognitive Science Unit, and encouraged her to take the position they offered her. They were doing great things, he said, combining psychology, neurology, biology, philosophy, to try to understand the patterns that motivated people—from the politicians who governed America’s enemies to serial killers. It was a perfect match, a perfect opportunity for his best student to shine as she deserved to rather than having her talents smothered in the petty day-to-day wrangling of academia. Imogen shrugged off his praise and figured that he could tell she wouldn’t last three years trying to make it in the academy. But when she had resigned from the FBI a week before, she felt like she was betraying him more than anyone else, and it still made her sorry.