Bad Girl and Loverboy

by Michele Jaffe

  Imogen knew she was in trouble when the first thing she was told was that the hotel had no bar.

  “There is no place for people to have cocktails?” she asked, astonished.

  “Oh,” the woman at the dark-wood reception counter said. “Cocktails. Yes. For that, there is the Bristol Lounge.”

  It only got worse from there.

  “I really cannot speak to you,” the hair-sprayed-spit-polished-creased-trousered lounge waiter told Imogen tersely. He refused to even exchange a word with her inside the lounge, and, instead, they were huddled in a corner of the wood-paneled lobby, opposite the concierge’s desk. He did not sit down in one of the green leather sofas, as if to underscore that they would not be speaking long. “People share things with me at the bar when I mix their drinks that they would not share elsewhere. They trust me. What happens in the lounge, as in the rest of the hotel, is protected information.”

  “Protected by whom?” Imogen asked.

  “You have heard of attorney-client privilege? Or the sanctity of the confessional? It is the same for me.”

  “In what sense?” Imogen asked. “Have you been ordained?” She would not have been surprised to have him answer yes.

  But he merely regarded her as if her question were ridiculous. “Our guests’ trust is the most valuable commodity we have. And we preserve it by protecting their privacy.”

  “I think they would trust you to cooperate with law enforcement officials,” Imogen told him. Imogen could have sworn he was about to tell her that he was above the law when a voice behind her made her mouth taste sweet.

  “Ah, Mr. Arbor. So good to see you again,” the concierge said.

  Imogen turned very slowly and saw Benton looking at her. He nodded, hesitated, took a step forward, and said, “Don’t jump to any conclusions. I am here for work. To make everything look just like normal.” Sounding tired now, like he hated it.

  She said, “Why didn’t you tell me you were coming to Boston?”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  There was no rebuke in his tone, but there could have been. She should have told him. He was nominally supervising her investigation. She decided to change the subject. “What work?”

  “Our winter track is just outside of Boston. You can check that if you want to.”

  “I will,” she said.

  “I figured. Now, if you’ll excuse me—” He went back to the concierge’s desk and started conferring intensely.

  The lounge waiter had taken advantage of the interruption to disappear back into his holy of holies, leaving Imogen standing alone in the corner of the fancy hotel lobby. She decided she liked Vegas better, because at least there she could lurk behind the slot machines. Here her aloneness, her out-of-placeness, glared.

  She was walking across the thick Persian carpet to the discreet brass-and-mahogany reception counter to see if she could contrive a meeting with the manager when the man himself emerged from a well-concealed door to greet her.

  “Lars, our head lounge attendant, just told me you had been in. I am terribly sorry he gave you a hard time. He would be happy to answer all your questions. He was just”—the manager sought for a word—“misguided.”

  Imogen could not keep the amusement out of her eyes. She did not dare ask directly if Benton had somehow affected the new “Welcome, FBI” attitude she was sensing, even from the head lounge attendant, because if he had she would have had to feel bad about accepting it. Better to pretend he had nothing to do with it. But she knew how she could test it without really letting herself know for certain.

  “Thank you so much Mr.”—she looked at his name tag—“Richeleau. I was wondering. Your hotel is so beautiful. Is there any chance you have a room available tonight?”

  “As a matter of fact we do. It’s a suite, but of course, for a member of the FBI, we offer a special price.”

  Damn Benton, she thought. Damn him for being helpful and useful in an unobtrusive way even though he was exhausted and under stress. Imogen wondered if he had specified the suite or if that was just an accident. “Thank you,” she said against all her better judgment. “That will be perfect.”

  She went into the Bristol Lounge, took a stool at the long wooden plank that anywhere else would have been called a bar, and gave Lars the third degree. It was the least she could do after all the trouble Benton had gone to. And she did learn something interesting. Three days before she was killed, a woman “possibly” resembling Corrina Orville had been having a drink with a friend at one of the tables that looked out on the Boston Common. It was not busy yet, so Lars had been waiting on the tables as well as taking care of the bar. Her friend left abruptly and Corrina stayed to pay the bill. But a “tall, dark, and handsome” (Lars’s words) stranger had paid instead and they had become engaged in conversation. Lars was not sure, because he did not make a habit of listening in on other people’s conversations, but he thought the man might have mentioned something about being in publishing in New York. He and the woman seemed to be discussing poetry, which Lars noticed only because he himself was a poet. If it were not for that, he certainly never would have eavesdropped, but he did think he heard them say something about going around the corner, to Pignoli, for dinner. No, they did not say anything about going to her place, but Lars would not have been surprised, because the woman seemed eager to show the man her work. Only her work? Well, she did not seem displeased with the man’s company.

  Of course, he would never eavesdrop on the hotel’s guests, so he wasn’t certain.

  CHAPTER 37

  Imogen managed to convince Reggie to change their dinner reservation to Pignoli, but none of the waiters remembered anyone like Corrina Orville or Lars’s tall, dark, and handsome stranger dining together in June.

  Conversation between her and Reggie was somewhat hampered by her distraction and his insistence to inch closer to her every time she inched away. Tall, dark, and handsome could easily have described Reggie. She remembered the crush she’d had on him when she had been in Boston working on Louisa Greenway follow-up. Heavy flirting, a lot of good chemistry. Remembered how excited she had been when she had introduced him to Sam. But as the case petered out she discovered that the attraction had been driven by the intensity of the investigation, not anything real. Her crush disappeared when the last of the paperwork was done, and although Reggie called a few times after that with suggestions of weekend getaways, Imogen always apologetically found she was too busy with work. One day the calls stopped.

  Sam had not been impressed with Reggie. “He’s like one of those Easy-Bake cakes,” Sam had said after meeting him. “Nice package, a cinch to make, but never as good as you want it to be. And smaller. Have you noticed that? Always smaller than you hoped.”

  Imogen laughed to herself at the memory, and Reggie, taking this as a good sign, slid his hand all the way up her thigh and whispered, “Your place or mine?”

  “Are you still living with your ex-wife?”

  “Good point. Yours.”

  She removed his hand. “I’m afraid not.”

  “Look what I brought,” he said, sliding a thin box of condoms onto the table. “That way you can’t go all ice princess and make excuses the way you did last time.”

  Imogen grabbed them and shoved them into her purse. She could feel her cheeks flaming. “No.”

  “Why not, Gigi?”

  “I don’t want to.”

  “Are you seeing anyone?”

  “No.”

  “So what’s to stop us? We’re not talking about a life commitment. We’ll be great together, I know it. You know it. Come on, why not? Just a little fun.”

  Sam’s voice was again in her head. “I wish just once you would date someone hard. Someone who would know the difference between what you are giving him and what you are capable of, and would demand more.”

  “I don’t want to be with someone who demands more. I like the kinds of relationships I have,” she had replied. They were lying on their backs
, head-to-head, on the beach in Hawaii, looking up at the night sky. Lying in more ways than one.

  “Look, Gigi, emotions don’t kill people—”

  “—people with psychoses kill people,” she had finished his sentence. “I don’t want to talk about this right now, Sammie. We can talk about it later.”

  But they hadn’t. Later was too late. Because Sam was gone.

  Reggie’s tongue was in her ear.

  Imogen pulled away. “I said no, Reggie,” she told him.

  He looked at her, still not getting it, she could tell. He gave her a lazy smile, said, “Okay. But you can’t blame me for trying. I mean, you call out of the blue talking about favors, then fly here at the drop of a hat—”

  “That was for an investigation.” She knew she shouldn’t have called him. Knew it.

  “Sure,” Reggie said, nodding smugly. “Right. I get it now. Well, if it’s all business, let’s let the Bureau pick up the check for dinner.”

  Was this how Loverboy had behaved with Corrina Orville? Imogen wondered, and decided it wasn’t. She had the sense that he was suave and a good judge of people’s reactions. He would never have missed the cues she was sending out. He would do everything he could to make himself appealing, carefully constructing a persona that would make his companion like him.

  Like him. Maybe that was why he did not kill them on their first date—because he wanted to be sure they liked him before he did it. To prove to himself that they’d fallen for his act, prove that he was smarter than they were? Or was delaying the killing simply an exercise in self-control? A way to show himself that he did not have to kill them if he did not want to?

  No. It was more complicated than that.

  Distracted, she paid the check, and agreed to let Reggie walk her the three blocks back to the hotel. They were almost there when he turned and pushed her into a recessed doorway.

  His mouth pressed hers and his hands moved over her coat as he whispered, “Come on, baby,” hotly in her ear.

  “Reggie, stop.”

  He shoved his hand up under her jacket until he found the zipper on her pants. He pressed his erection against her thigh and whispered, “Let’s do it right here. I know you were just freaked out with all the people around in the restaurant. You’ve always been a priss.”

  “That’s not—”

  His fingers were on her waistband, touching the silk of her underwear. Touching her skin. Inching down. He panted, “Let yourself go. You know you want to, Gigi.”

  Imogen socked him in the jaw.

  CHAPTER 38

  She was standing there, staring at Reggie’s unconscious body and rubbing her wrist, when Benton came up behind her.

  He said, “Nice shot.”

  “I wish he hadn’t gone down so easily. I would have liked to hit him a few more times.”

  She was making light of it, but he could see she was trembling. What he really wanted to do was pull her to him, wrap her in his arms, hold her tight until she stopped shaking, but he sensed that there was a fifty-fifty chance she’d slug him too. Maybe more like eighty-twenty. Anything to prove she wasn’t weak. So he just stood there.

  He had spent the entire plane ride to Boston reading over her personnel files. He’d memorized parts of them, favorite lines, like almost no one more unsuitable to working with a team and best agent to come through the Bureau in decades. He liked her letter of resignation too, where she told her boss in a P.S. to get a new toupee. He’d bet the man had.

  He had realized, staring out the window at thirty thousand feet and seeing only her face, that was the thing about Imogen Page. You wanted to strangle her. But you wanted to make her happy more.

  He said, “If you want to take another shot at him now, I won’t tell.”

  “No. That wouldn’t be fair.” She looked at him now. “Can we go somewhere and get a drink? Not at the hotel. Someplace seedier.”

  And there was that damn thought again, the one that had drawn him to read her files, the one he’d been determined to talk himself out of. The one he’d had when she pulled a gun on him and when she’d insisted on driving and when she’d told him his jokes stank but laughed anyway. The thought that Imogen Page was someone who could make him want to compromise. Everything.

  He said, “Sure. I know just the place.”

  The decor of the Iguana Café was early Tijuana. It had dusty crepe-paper flags hanging from the ceiling, patches of sawdust ground into the floor, and smelled like old beer.

  “Is this seedy enough for you?” he asked her as they walked in.

  She looked around and nodded happily. “Perfect.”

  In a few hours, Benton knew, the place would be filled with college students, but right now there were only two other customers in there, sitting at opposite ends of the bar staring as a woman on television demonstrated a fantastic new concept in mopping. The waitress was watching too, leaning back, elbows on the bar, her hand rubbing a nicotine patch on her upper arm. She looked over her shoulder at Imogen and Benton as they came in, said, “Whatdyouwant,” one word, then gestured them toward one of the scarred wooden booths that lined the wall.

  As they waited for their order—two bourbon-and-waters and a bowl of ice—Imogen flexed and unflexed her hand. She said, “I wonder if I should send someone to look at Reggie.”

  “Who? The cops?”

  She started to laugh, and through it Benton could see the effort she was making to hold herself together. He said, “He’ll be fine. Plus, he deserved it.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I watched him with you at dinner. No, I was not following you. I was seated at the table behind you having a meeting. You can check if you want. It was with two boat designers.”

  “Is Arbor Motors branching out into boats?”

  “No. Julia says we need more of a luxury presence. More than just my ‘lovely face on the cover of another tabloid.’ ” He saw her wince slightly, thought, Good, then went on, saying, “We’re thinking of commissioning a boat for the Americas Cup race. The Courtesan.”

  “That’s a nice name.”

  Their drinks came. Benton nodded at her hand as she put it into the ice and said, “What did you do to him, anyway?”

  “Left jab.”

  “Nice. Unexpected from a righty.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Where did you learn that?”

  “Recess. With a little help from a boxing coach in D.C. named Big Fat Joe. Where did you learn that ankle twist you pulled on me the morning we met?”

  “You mean when you arrested me?”

  “Tried to. Yes.”

  “Army Rangers. It rarely comes in so handy. I’m out of practice.”

  “You did a nice job,” she told him like she meant it. And gave him a smile.

  Do not say anything you are going to regret, he warned himself. He looked away from her and said, “Apart from getting some quality time with your friend out there, was your trip productive?”

  She nodded and he listened as she told him about the other dead woman, her theory about Loverboy meeting them more than once, about amusement parks and family fun and how she was going to see Louisa Greenway’s parents the next day to see if she could back the idea up.

  He leaned forward. “Wait, what if that’s it?”

  “What?”

  “I keep thinking about Martina looking at the photo of Rosalind and Jason, tilting her head. She said, “She has a son. Of course.” What if Loverboy is making a family? I don’t know if it works with the others he’s taken, but Louisa had brothers, right? Her obituary said something like ‘survived by her parents and two brothers,’ I think. So what if she were the sister in this family?”

  Her eyes moved past him and she said, “Steve Simon had two children. He could be the father. Benny Woolworth took his nephews out every Wednesday night, including the Wednesday before he disappeared.”

  “Uncle,” Benton supplied.

  “And Pauline Dodd had been out with her sister and
her sister’s children Christmas shopping.”

  “Aunt.”

  “Father, sister, aunt, uncle.”

  “What about the brother?”

  “No.” Imogen shook her head. “The other victim was a girl. Kaylee. She lived with her aunt and uncle and their two children— Oh. She was a cousin.”

  “Which makes Rosalind the mother.”

  She nodded slowly and used her index finger to put her hair behind her ear. “Yes. Maybe why he saved her for last. That is really good. It tastes right. And it goes with an idea I was working on the other day, about how the victims themselves trigger him. I had assumed all the family connections were just to ensure that the victims would be missed, but your explanation is much more solid. Thank you.”

  She smiled at him again.

  He said, “Where do the Greenways live?”

  “Somerville. Do you want to come with me to see them?”

  “I’ve got an appointment in Cambridge tomorrow morning. Somerville is on the way. I’ll drive you over—if you’ll let me. Want to meet for breakfast at seven-thirty?”

  “Breakfast at seven-thirty will be perfect.”

  They got the check and, despite his insistence on paying, split it. The walk back to the hotel was quiet. At the elevator bank Benton said good night to her, kept himself from saying half a dozen other things he would be sorry about in the morning, and was heading for the stairs, willing himself not to turn around, when he felt her hand on his arm.

  She said, “Wait, Mr. Arbor. Before you go, I owe you an apology from the other day.”

  Now he had to turn around. He said, “I don’t think I heard that quite right. Can you repeat it?”