“Cookies?”
“Sure.”
“You can bake, Mommy?”
“Yes, I can.” She could have told her daughter that, once upon a time, before Lincoln, she had done many things for herself. She refrained.
“Cookies! We’re going to bake cookies!”
Toni smiled as Miranda bounced away from her, twirling around the room with delight. Miranda stopped suddenly though, before the window, staring down.
“What is it, dear?” Toni asked.
“Oh, the nice security man is downstairs again.”
Panic seized Toni. Irrational, she thought. With everything going on, thank God security men were around.
Except, where the hell were they when her jewels were being stolen?
Unless …
One of the security men had stolen her jewels?
Toni forced herself to be calm as she rose and walked to the window. It was Leland, the young good-looking one. He wasn’t on her property, though. He had parked on the road and was just standing in front of her house.
“I wonder if he wants to give me back my toy,” Miranda said.
Toni frowned instantly.
“What toy?”
“Oh, just a little black toy I found in the bushes,” Miranda said briefly.
Still desperately trying for calm, she walked to her daughter and took her by the shoulders, crouching down beside her. “Miranda, could you describe this little black toy for me?”
Miranda nodded enthusiastically. “It was kind of like a Game Boy, but it was just black, and it didn’t do anything fun.”
Little, black, like a Game Boy. A Palm Pilot? Hadn’t Sigmond had a Palm Pilot?
Toni reeled, wondering what information Sigmond might have collected. She closed her eyes, fighting another wave of panic. No. Sigmond had known nothing about her.
But somebody did.
She stood quickly. “I’ll just get your toy back,” she told Miranda. Toni raced out of the house, moving faster than she had in years.
But it was no good. Leland had gone by the time she reached the front yard.
Toni stood shivering on the lawn, wondering if she could get a lawyer good enough to convince a jury that killing Lincoln had been an act of both personal and national defense.
At last she stopped herself from shaking. She wasn’t going to lose Miranda. She turned resolutely, calling to Bertha that she was going out.
Lydia had sounded as if a secret tête-à-tête between them was the most important thing in the universe at the moment.
The Palm Pilot was a maybe.
Lydia was a definite. And it wouldn’t do to keep her waiting.
* * *
Lydia noticed Renée’s agitation the minute she walked into the club room. Sleek, together, beautiful as Renée always was, today she was wound up tight as a violin string about to break.
Lydia wondered how such an incredible woman put up with her husband’s philandering. There were many secrets at Gryphon Gate, as she was discovering. But it was no secret that Jerry Lynch always employed voluptuous maids.
Renée got right to the point. “Lydia, what is it? I have a situation at home with which I must deal, so I haven’t much time. Whatever is going on, you must tell me instantly.” She paused, lifting a hand to Tiffany. “God, I need a drink! And you—how is it that you’re all so calm and pulled together now?” Being Renée, apparently, she couldn’t quite help smiling. Or smirking. “Did the police find your attacker?”
Lydia realized that she was calm. Dead calm. She had reacted like an idiot in the basement; being alone and in the dark had fed her general state of paranoia.
“It’s all part of the reason I called you,” she said quietly. She was embarrassed that she had appeared in church practically in the altogether, but by now she had pulled herself together nicely. She, at least, had thought herself under attack, for heaven’s sake; while they’d been acting like maniacs, prancing around the church without any such provocation!
“Okay, go on. Why did you call me?” Renée grew serious and whispered, “Does this have anything to do with the terrible things going on here—the murders, I mean?”
“No—well, I don’t think so. Lord, who knows? It’s all insane, isn’t it?”
“You mean it could have something to do with the murders?” Renée squeaked.
“I mean I don’t know. Probably not, but then again, who knows? What I have to say is quite personal.”
“To the victim, murder is always personal,” mused Renée.
“You’re right, of course. Tiffany,” Lydia called, “please get Mrs. Lynch a very big drink!”
“Lydia, talk.”
“I will—just a minute. Ah, here comes Toni.” She raised her voice again. “And a drink for Mrs. Sinclair, too, please.”
Toni sidled through the tables to join them. “Thanks, I needed that!” she murmured, slipping into one of the chairs.
Renée squirmed in her chair. “All right, I don’t begin to understand what’s going on here, but I haven’t much time,” she warned.
“We’ve one more coming.” Lydia said, sensing her friend’s growing agitation.
Tiffany arrived with the drinks. Both Toni and Renée instantly picked up their glasses and downed them in a swallow. Lydia felt a strange and supreme sense of power.
“I believe the ladies need another,” she said pleasantly to Tiffany.
“Certainly, it’s been that kind of day!” Tiffany said cheerfully.
“Think you might have had something to do with that, dear?” Renée inquired of the bartender politely, the slightest edge to her voice.
Tiffany took no offense, merely laughing delightedly as she walked away to procure another round of drinks.
“Lydia!” Renée warned again.
“Wait. We’ve one more coming.”
“Who now?” Toni demanded.
“Rachel.”
“Rachel?” Renée protested. “The poor dear is still in mourning. She hasn’t even buried her husband yet.”
“Being out and about has been good for her, I think,” Lydia said. “I understand that she was here earlier and seemed quite able to discuss everything that went on in church. Ah, and there we are. She’s just walked in.”
The three women watched as Rachel Vormeister made her way to them. As Lydia had predicted, she seemed amazingly calm, completely pulled together.
“How are you doing, dear?” Toni asked, showing her concern. Lydia had noticed that Toni hadn’t stayed for coffee hour after church. But she’d had her daughter to deal with, of course.
“I think I’m still in denial, actually,” Rachel said, sitting. She smiled. “My brother is here, and my mother is visiting, of course, and that helps. Although, God knows, it seems to me that Aaron is acting as strangely as everyone else! The young are usually so resilient, but a murder in the family…” She swallowed hard.
“Rachel, I’m so sorry.” Renée patted her hand. “As I told you earlier, you know that my sympathies are with you.” Renée turned to Lydia. “But now I’ve got a situation, and I can’t deal with it until I find out what has Lydia all knotted up!”
“What situation?” Toni asked sharply.
Renée waved a hand in the air. “Nothing I can talk about right now.”
“Difficulties with Jerry?” Toni suggested, watching Renée intently.
“Good heavens, no!” Renée protested, blushing profusely.
Thou dost protest too much! Lydia thought.
But Toni seemed intent on getting to the reason. “Is there something wrong at your house?” she demanded.
“Wrong? Like what?”
“I don’t know. Poor Lydia was attacked. Maybe somebody broke in? To steal something?”
Renée lowered her head, setting her empty glass clumsily on the table. Suddenly the ever-efficient Tiffany appeared with the next round.
Reaching for a fresh drink, Renée nearly toppled Tiffany’s tray.
“Oh, my God! You we
re robbed!” Toni declared.
“No!” Renée protested. She stared at Toni. “Why? Were you robbed?”
Toni took her drink, staring suspiciously at Lydia. “I—I don’t know. Perhaps I’ll have to go home and find out.”
“Robbed! Here—at Gryphon Gate!” Tiffany cried with horror. Then, staring at Rachel, she seemed chagrined. “Of course, murder is far, far worse. So, I suppose, if there can be murder, there can be robbery,” she finished lamely.
Rachel Vormeister stared blankly at the girl for a few seconds, shook her head, then smiled at Tiffany. “Thank you so much, dear. I think that will be all for the moment.” She pointedly sipped her drink. Tiffany, abashed, awkwardly departed.
“Okay,” Renée said. “Jerry and I are as happy as clams, and no one was robbed.”
“So what is the problem?” Toni persisted.
“If you must know, girls, I’m firing the maid!” Renée said impatiently. “I need to get back to the house and make sure she’s cleared out. So, Lydia, please, out with it!”
Lydia leaned over the table. “I know who attacked me.”
“You do?” Rachel said.
“Have him arrested!” Toni interrupted. Then she hesitated. “Maybe he’s the murderer, too.” She glanced unhappily at Rachel.
“I don’t think he came to attack me,” Lydia said. “I think I overreacted,” she admitted.
Renée leaned back, shaking her head. “Lydia, for the love of God, will you get to the point?”
“There was something, you see, that I remembered afterwards. Eyes. Eyes staring at me—from what I thought was a ski mask. It’s May, of course. Nobody’d be wearing a ski mask in May. Silly of me to think so.”
“Lydia, is your runaway imagination part of this?” Renée demanded.
“In a way, yes.”
“Eyes,” Toni murmured.
“Good lord!” Renée exclaimed. “What do eyes have to do with anything? Will someone please make sense of this!”
“Well,” Lydia continued, “when I thought about the eyes I had seen, after I calmed down, had a few drinks.…”
“Great!” Renée groaned. “You’ve called us here because you had too many drinks.”
“She’s getting to the point,” Toni said. “Listen to her.”
“It was the doctor. Dr. Charles Jefferson.”
“What?” Renée said incredulously. “Lydia, why on earth would your gynecologist break into your house to attack you?”
“Besides, nobody’s supposed to be allowed in the gates,” Rachel added.
“Right. Well, he got in somehow.”
“Great security,” Renée muttered.
“The best,” Toni said, her tone hollow.
“I’m totally lost,” Rachel said.
Renée stared at Rachel then. “He’s your doctor, too, isn’t he? And…”
“And I’m pregnant, yes. I was so delighted, but now…” Her voice broke. “Sigmond will never see his baby.”
“He wouldn’t have seen his baby in any case,” Lydia said in a whisper.
“What?” Rachel looked up, confused.
Toni was staring at Lydia. “That’s why she’s called us all here?” She gaped at the other two women. “Once, I mentioned the extraordinary and beautiful eyes of some of our children,” she said, looking to Lydia once again. “Green eyes.”
“Green eyes. Like those of the man I had assumed to be my attacker,” Lydia said.
Renée suddenly turned pale. “What are you getting at?”
“I’m getting at the fact that too many children in Gryphon Gate have extraordinarily beautiful green eyes,” Lydia said.
Renée gasped. “You mean—are you trying to say—no, that’s not possible.”
“I’m trying to say that all our children apparently are related to our ’miraculous’ doctor, the good Charles Jefferson. And I’m willing to bet that when Rachel’s baby is born, it will have the same green eyes.”
Rachel gasped, a horrible sound.
“What—what—do you think he did?” Renée asked, her voice trembling. She seemed to have forgotten her urgent situation at home for the moment. “You mean that, in the artificial insemination thing he—he substituted his own…? How could this have happened?”
Toni let out a sound. Dry, deep, and incredibly scornful. They all stared at her.
She lifted her glass. “Well, ladies, I’m not sure how it worked with you. But when I was desperate for a child and went to his office, well, I just decided to solve it the simple way the doctor suggested.”
“Charles Jefferson was your OB-GYN when you had Miranda?” Rachel said slowly.
Toni nodded. “He was younger then—not such a hotshot as he is now.”
“And what, pray tell, was your simple way? The way the doctor suggested?” Renée demanded.
Toni smiled then, honestly amused. “Ladies, I simply screwed the man.” She leaned forward again. “Why don’t we be honest here? Share and share alike, that’s what I always say.”
Rachel fell back in her chair as if she’d been slapped. “Oh, how could you even suggest such a thing?” she wailed.
Lydia shot to her feet and wrapped her arms around her sobbing friend. She glared at Toni. “That was cruel.”
Toni lowered her eyes. “I know. I’m sorry. I don’t know what came over me. It’s just that you’re all so serious about this foolishness. Surely you can’t believe that a prominent doctor like…”
But the three women would never learn what Toni thought of the prominent Doctor Jefferson because suddenly, from the area of the bar, came a bloodcurdling scream.
10
TIFFANY SAT ON THE CHEST freezer in the storeroom behind the clubhouse bar and watched Danny lean closer to her, his red hair bright in the dim light. “Damn, that was funny,” he said, and put his hand on her thigh.
Clearly, the light wasn’t the only dim thing in the storeroom. Tiffany smacked him hard on the back of the head.
“Hey!” he said, ducking away.
“You know, Danny,” Tiffany said, “I don’t ask for much. Just that you do what I tell you to when I tell you to do it. And, yet, here we are with this mess.”
“I did too do what you told me.” Danny rubbed his head. “Hell, we all did.”
“At what point did I tell you to dope the congregation?”
“Oh, come on.” Danny grinned at her. “That Laura woman acted like she had God on speed dial, and then she kept a flask in the choir stall. Did you see her go for the rum on the altar? It was a no-brainer.”
“Which explains your participation. Give it.” Tiffany held out her hand and Danny passed over a small brown bottle. “This,” she said, holding it up, “is a controlled substance. It is illegal. You could get busted for this, Danny. That would be bad.”
“You don’t need to act like I’m dumb,” Danny said. “Tell you what, I’ve got a joint, let’s…”
“Yeah, that’s exactly what I need,” Tiffany said. “Because the loons that populate this place aren’t weird enough already, I should get stoned to improve the experience. No.” She took a deep breath to get the irritation out of her voice. “Now explain to me why Tyrone went mental on Toni Sinclair and Parker Upshaw yelled at Jerry Lynch.”
Danny frowned. “Toni who? The hottie with the kid?” He shrugged. “Tyrone said somebody paid him to spook her. I don’t know about the other guy.”
Tiffany grew still. “Somebody paid him? Who did he tell about the service?”
Danny shrugged. “Nobody. The guy must have known we were coming, because Tyrone found a fifty dollar bill in his costume pocket and a note telling him what she looked like and to say something about people being out to get her.”
Which meant, Tiffany knew, that “the guy” had to be one of two people: the Reverend Peter Armbruster, who’d called her at the crack of dawn and asked her to provide emergency religion for his congregation, or the man she’d been in bed with when Armbruster called. Jason, you opportunistic rat, she th
ought, not without admiration. “And do we still have this note, Danny?”
“No,” Danny said. “At least I don’t.”
“Okay.” Tiffany took a deep breath. “Okay.” She slid off the freezer, trying to look bright and cheerful. “I appreciate the favor you and the rest of the troupe did for me, great job. Now it’s time you left.”
“Left?” Danny looked even more cluelessly cherubic than usual.
“Departed. Went elsewhere. Became absent.”
Danny’s face darkened. “Hey, wait a minute, I thought that you and me…”
“You keep making that mistake, Danny,” Tiffany said. “Don’t think. It’s not your area of expertise.”
“Hey,” Danny said.
Tiffany waited for a moment and then realized that that was his entire comeback. Right. This was Danny she was talking to, not Jason. “Look, honey, your performance was great. You have a huge future; I thought so when I saw you at the comedy club in Annapolis, that’s why I hired you for this gig, and you were so amazing this morning that I think it’s time you went to Chicago.”
“Chicago?” Danny said, still not following, but visibly perked up by the “your performance was great.”
“Second City,” Tiffany said. “You’re ready to leave this two-bit coast and head west.” She reached up on the shelf over the freezer and took down her purse. “Go to Chicago and audition. It’s time. I even have your ticket.” She pulled the airline folder out and gave it to him. He opened it, still looking confused, so she gave him a hint. “It’s your ticket to the big time, Danny.”
“Wow,” Danny said. Then he looked closer. “This is for today. This is for this afternoon.”
“Tomorrow’s Monday,” Tiffany said. “You want to be there bright and early to audition, right? You fly in tonight, get some sleep, plan your strategy.”
Danny frowned.
“Rehearse,” Tiffany said, “and you’ll be in. When opportunity knocks, Danny, you open the door.”
“Right,” Danny said.
The next job I do, Tiffany told herself, I’m going to work with people who can understand words of more than one syllable.
“But what about us?” Danny said. “You and me? We never—”
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