I patted his arm and addressed the spectators. “If you gave Teddy a horse, he’d not only look it in the mouth, he’d give it a colonoscopy.”
“Charming image.” Teddy was still smiling, but there was a lot going on behind those pale blue eyes. “I could put out a shingle: ‘Proctologist to the stars.’”
Even as we traded barbs, I found myself scanning the crowd for a gleaming bare head, though I knew perfectly well I wouldn’t find it. Max had declined my invitation, and not only because he was in L.A. “It’s too soon,” he’d said last weekend when we talked on Skype.
“It’s been two weeks since the arrest,” I said. “How is that too soon?”
“They haven’t charged him with the murders yet. Last time I spoke to Cullen, all they had on him was stalking.”
“You talked to Tommy?”
Max leaned back and crossed his arms over his chest, so he looked more than ever like Mr. Clean. “That’s what interests you, that I talked to Tommy? What are we, back in high school?”
“No,” I said, hoping the webcam wasn’t good enough to register slight changes in color. “It’s just that I haven’t heard from him lately.”
“And that matters because . . . ?”
“It doesn’t. Why should it? He’s got his perp, case closed and on to the next. I get that.” So what if it left me with one more hole in my Swiss cheese of a life? I suppose all crime victims feel this odd sense of loss when their case is resolved and the investigators move on. Or maybe it was the kiss, which I couldn’t quite get out of my mind. At the time I’d thought it meant something; but sometimes, I guess, a kiss is just a kiss.
“The point is,” Max said, “there are still a lot of unanswered questions. How did this Drucklehoff get to Molly and Rowena? How could he have written those spot-on e-mails and put together the distribution list?”
“He is a printer, you know.”
“He’s a clerk in a retail print shop: hardly a publishing maven!”
“He could have stolen my laptop in Santa Fe, downloaded a bunch of stuff, and put it to use.”
“Maybe. The point is, we don’t know and he’s not talking.”
“He might never talk,” I said. “We may never know.” Though Max’s frustration with this answer was evident, I had made my peace with uncertainty. There is no understanding the mind of a psychopath. Just the other day I’d read a story in the Times about a man charged with murdering a woman simply in the hope that her brother would come out of hiding to attend the funeral. There are people among us, people who look and, for the most part, act like the rest of us, for whom a human life has as much value and weight as a pawn in a game of chess. Cross the path of such a person and your life may be lost or upended for reasons so petty that they defy detection by the normal mind.
I could live with not understanding why. Unlike fiction, real life is full of plots that never get resolved. What bothered me was the how of it. How did Stanley Drucklehoff do all the things he did? How did he get to Molly and Rowena? Unless he confessed, we’d never know.
Eventually, I was certain, the police would assemble their case, and Drucklehoff would be charged with both murders. But I was in no mood to wait for the law to wend its stately way. After several weeks of blissful routine, I’d begun to breathe normally again. Somehow I needed to draw a line between the past hellish months and the future; and the dinner at Maison D’être, I’d decided, would be that line.
The maître d’ announced that the buffet was open. At once the margins of the room thinned out as my guests gathered around the serving table. On the sparse outskirts I noticed Gordon Hayes, standing like a sentinel with Mingus at his side.
I flagged down a passing waiter. “Bring me a sirloin steak, would you, please?”
“Yes, ma’am. How would you like that? Rare, medium—”
“Raw, cut into chunks, and packed in a doggy bag. It’s for my bodyguard there.”
The waiter followed my eyes, nodded, and hurried off to the kitchen.
I joined Gordon, gave him a hug. Then I hunkered down next to Mingus and hugged him, too. He licked my cheek once with his warm tongue, then squirmed until I let him go.
Gordon reached down and hauled me to my feet. “Are you sure about this?”
I ran my hand through the dog’s thick black ruff. Giving him back was harder than I’d ever imagined it would be, but seeing the way he’d greeted and now cleaved to Gordon made it easier. “Got to cut the umbilical cord sometime. He deserves his country retirement.”
“If you ever need him again—”
“I won’t hesitate. Thanks, Gordon.”
His narrow eyes crinkled. “Just looking after my interests.”
Well-trained as Mingus was, there was no point in torturing him at the buffet table, so I went and filled a plate for Gordon. The menu was eclectic but hearty: there were crab cakes and Black Mission fig salad, wild mushroom risotto, chicken pot-au-feu, and tender short ribs. I’d eaten nothing all day, and the smells rising from the buffet reminded me how hungry I was. I gave Gordon his plate—Mingus’s dinner, I noticed, had already been delivered—and went back to get one of my own.
By then everyone was seated at the tables, eating. The noise had died down to a muted thrum of conversation amid the tinkling of cutlery and glass. Silvery light reflected off the tin ceilings. Finding myself alone for a moment, I looked around the glittering room at my guests, New York’s finest publishers, editors, agents, critics, and writers. These are my friends and colleagues, I thought. This is my life. I started as a scrawny, unloved orphan, and look where I am now. And then, with a bow to Molly: If this isn’t great, what is?
Holding my plate, I looked for a congenial table and noticed two people alone at a table for six: Harriet, with Charlie Malvino by her side. I hurried over, unhappy to see them alone. If anyone suspected our parting was less than amicable, my sitting with them should refute it.
“Nice speech,” Charlie said as I joined them. He wore tight jeans and a graphic tee under a blazer. Harriet wore a black wool dress with crisp white cuffs and looked like his maiden aunt.
“Is it official?” I asked. “I didn’t know if I should say anything or not.”
“Signed the papers this morning,” he gloated while Harriet, picking at a crab cake, eked out a sour smile.
“So what is it? The Malvino-Peagoody Literary Agency?”
“Peagoody Malvino Literary Management, actually,” Harriet said stiffly. She’d done something to her hair, tamed it into a kind of pixie cut that perched uneasily atop her long, angular face.
“Sounds fine. I wish you both every success.”
Charlie thanked me, but Harriet pursed her lips and would not meet my eyes. She hadn’t believed I would call her bluff, and in fact I nearly hadn’t. Harriet was an accomplished agent with a serious client list. It should have been, as she’d said, a no-brainer. And yet Molly had never offered Harriet a partnership; she chose me instead. I thought about that, and about Harriet’s habit of lecturing me in staff meetings, and the timing of her ultimatum. I churned it over in my mind until gradually my thoughts clarified into a decision to let her go. Like Tolkien’s Galadriel, I would diminish and yet remain myself.
She was shocked when I told her, disbelieving at first, then furious. A generous settlement had, I hoped, taken the edge off that fury. I’d allowed her to take her clients’ backlist with her, although contractually those books belonged to the agency, not her. This gave her fledgling company a small but vital float and accounted, I presumed, for Charlie’s smugness. In return, though, I’d kept Chloe. Given a choice between accompanying Harriet as her assistant and staying with me as an agent, she hadn’t hesitated.
Now Charlie wore the sly, sated look of a fox who’s raided the chicken coop, while Harriet looked like one of the chickens. “Be careful what you wish for,” Molly always said.
&
nbsp; Chapter 28
I slept in the morning after the party, and when I woke, I was alone. It felt strange and rather sad not having Mingus underfoot, not fixing his breakfast while my coffee brewed. It was nine thirty; I had just stepped out of the shower when the phone rang.
“You’re there,” Lorna said.
“So it seems. I did say I’d be late.”
“I know. Only there’s a problem.” My secretary lowered her voice. “Harriet’s here. She said she just wanted to pick up some personal items, but she’s been in there for like an hour.”
“Doing what?”
“Nothing. Just sitting at her desk; Chloe’s desk, I mean.”
Damn. “I’d better come in.”
“No, wait. There’s something else . . . I didn’t think much of it when it happened, but now I think you need to know.”
I sat down on the edge of my bed, towel wrapped around me. Lorna wasn’t the brightest girl in the world, but she was never fanciful. If she thought something was wrong, it probably was. “What is it?”
Silence for a moment, then she whispered, “I can’t talk about it here.”
“Come over here, then.”
“OK, but it would be better coming from you, not me. Could you call Jean-Paul, tell him to send me over with a manuscript or something?”
This seemed unnecessarily circuitous, but I did as she asked, refusing Jean-Paul’s offer to come himself. Once I’d dressed, there was nothing to do but wait. I carried the manuscript I was reading into the living room, which was full of flowers from last night’s party: spray chrysanthemums, roses, and Asiatic lilies in shades of red, yellow, and orange. Curling up by the unlit fireplace, I tried to read.
• • •
She arrived without any announcement, and I made a note to talk to the doormen. Of course they knew my staff well—Lorna and Jean-Paul in particular were always coming and going—but there was no excuse for laxness. Lorna stood awkwardly on the threshold, dressed in stretch pants, a plaid blouse, and a bulky brown cardigan that put an extra twenty pounds on her extra twenty pounds. She carried a thick manuscript under one arm, her oversized bag on the other. “Come in,” I said, relieving her of the manuscript and jacket.
She glanced around as she followed me into the living room. “You finally got rid of that beast?”
“Never did warm to him, did you? He’s back in retirement.” We sat on facing sofas. Lorna clutched her bag on her knees as if she expected a purse-snatcher to dash by. I offered her some coffee.
She shook her head. “I can’t stay long.” And yet she seemed in no hurry, gazing around at the flowers, studying Leigh’s painting over the mantel, even fingering the wedding photo of Hugo, Molly, and me on the steps of City Hall.
“So what’s up?” I asked, and finally she looked at me, an odd expression in her small brown eyes.
“You are,” she said. “You’re something else.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Nothing gets to you, does it? The agency’s torn apart, your top client and your best friend murdered, and what do you do? You read manuscripts and throw parties.”
If this was a compliment, it was an idiotic one. Though she always meant well, Lorna often annoyed me, and this time she’d surpassed herself. But I bit back my first intemperate response, reminding myself that I wasn’t the only one who’d suffered these past few months. Everyone had been afflicted; and no one had been more loyal than Lorna.
“What choice do I have?” I said. “It’s ridiculous to say nothing gets to me. I got hit so hard I feel like I went ten rounds with Muhammad Ali. I’m just trying to pick myself up off the mat.”
“And doing a fine job of it. Everyone admires you. ‘Jo’s so brave; Jo’s so gutsy; you must be so proud to work for Jo, however menial your position.’”
However menial her position? Was this her clumsy way of asking for a promotion? A reaction to Chloe’s elevation, maybe . . . but that made no sense. Lorna, whose lack of ambition was the very reason I hired her, had never aspired to be anything more than the perfect secretary.
“Lorna,” I said, as patiently as I could, “what was it you had to tell me?”
“More show than tell,” she said, smiling as if there were a joke in there somewhere.
“Are you OK? You don’t sound like yourself.”
“What self is that? Fat, dull Lorna? Unambitious, work-for-peanuts Lorna?”
I stared at her, and she held my gaze with that incongruous little smile. Her usual slump was gone; she sat erect and still, eyes sparkling with restrained exuberance. I looked around for Mingus, wondering what he’d make of this transformation, but of course he wasn’t there. Uneasy, I stood.
“Where the hell are you going?” Lorna said, in a decidedly unsecretarial tone.
“Making coffee.” I tried to sound normal; I thought I succeeded.
She followed me into the kitchen, still clutching her bag, and perched at the counter. I measured out the coffee grounds, carried the carafe to the sink, and filled it. I could feel her eyes on the back of my neck. Was Lorna having some sort of belated breakdown, now that it was all over? My BlackBerry was charging on the counter beside the coffee machine. With one hand I poured water from the carafe into the machine. With the other, I eased the phone from its cradle and dropped it into the front pocket of my jeans, taking care, though without thinking about why, to shield this movement from Lorna.
“You put in a dishwasher,” she said.
“What?” I turned to look at her.
“And you moved the refrigerator. It used to be over there.” She pointed to the corner where the old fridge had indeed stood, before Hugo and I updated the kitchen.
Goose bumps prickled my arms. “How do you know?”
“I used to live here.”
“What, in another life?”
“My room was the second bedroom down the hall. Your guest room now.”
“That’s impossible, Lorna. Hugo bought this apartment ages ago, before you were born.”
“We lived here together.”
“We being . . . ?”
“Mama, Hugo, and me.”
“Really,” I said, crossing my arms. “And this was when?”
“Right up until you got your claws in him.”
I didn’t speak. The silence between us was so dense, it had its own gravitational field, sucking in sound from outside. I heard a doorman whistle for a cab, heard the rise and fall of a siren passing by far below.
“Tell me you don’t believe me,” Lorna said.
An image rose before my eyes: a Raggedy Andy doll, crammed into a box full of women’s clothing and shoved down the chute. But that memory had nothing to do with Lorna; whatever it meant, it was none of her business.
“Of course I don’t believe you.”
“I knew you wouldn’t. You’re the Queen of Denial.” She reached into her bag, and I flinched.
Until that moment I hadn’t admitted that I was afraid. I’d told myself it was pity I felt, pity and concern. Lorna’s sudden movement shattered that illusion. She noticed my reaction and seemed to feed on it, keeping her hand hidden, prolonging the moment. Then she drew it out slowly, and I saw that she held a snapshot, lovingly preserved in a clear plastic case. She looked at it reverently, then handed it to me.
Despite the protective casing, the color photo was faded and creased through much handling. The setting was unmistakably the Central Park Carousel. A plump little girl of five or six sat beaming with pleasure atop a gray charger. Behind her, his hand on her shoulder, stood Hugo. I studied the child and recognized those small brown eyes, that pugnacious chin.
The picture blurred before my eyes. Lorna snatched it away, wiped it on her sweater, and stuck it back in her bag.
I couldn’t look at her. “He wasn’t your father. Hugo had no children
.”
“He had me. I called him Papa.”
The coffee maker beeped. I took two clean mugs from the dishwasher.
“Not for me.” She glanced at her watch, as if she had someplace to be and I was keeping her. “Put that fucking cup away.”
Once, walking through the woods behind my grandmother’s house, I stumbled on a black bear nursing a cub. The mother bear jumped up and roared, flashing her long white teeth. I froze, inside and out. The bear didn’t move, and for that one endless moment full of latent possibilities, it seemed as if there was no one in the world but me and her. Looking at Lorna now with the same funnel vision, I was met with the same predatory stare; and at last I understood that she was not the prissy-mouthed, dull little girl I thought I knew. This was a whole other person.
I put the second mug away and filled mine with steaming brew. My back was to the corner; I felt trapped. I didn’t drink my coffee. There was more comfort in holding it.
“Why are you here?” I asked.
Her eyes widened in a look of dopey innocence. “Because you needed me to bring you a manuscript. Isn’t that what you told Jean-Paul?”
I could throw the scalding coffee in her face and grab her bag. My fist tightened on the mug’s handle . . . but I hesitated. I was scared, but I wasn’t sure. Sam Spade was in jail. So far this was all just crazy talk. Unlike the bear, Lorna hadn’t shown a weapon.
I asked her again: “Why have you come?”
“To tell you a story,” she said. “I know you like fairy tales. I read the ones you told Teddy Pendragon in that magazine article. So sweet they made me puke.”
“And this from someone who takes four sugars in her coffee.”
“You think this is funny?”
“No,” I said carefully. “I don’t understand it, but I don’t think it’s funny. Let’s go back to the living room.”
She made no move to stop me, but stayed between me and the front door. We resumed our former places in the living room, in front of the fireplace, with the coffee table between us. Lorna clutched the bag on her knees like a tourist riding the subway.
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