Keepsake

by Linda Barlow

  The video then segued into a familiar series of affirmations from celebrities, beginning with Daisy Tulane, newly declared candidate for the Senate from the state of Texas, who proceeded to tell the camera everything that Power Perspectives had done for her.

  Charlie Ripley pressed the remote control to stop the tape. “We’ve all heard Ms. Tulane’s spiel before. Let’s have some comments on the intro. It’s rough, essentially unedited, but you ought to get the idea.”

  “Wow—id was great!” Delores said, raising the shades and giving April a big grin. “Ya look jist like a movie star.”

  April grinned. It had been a curious rush of excitement and embarrassment to see herself on screen. This was the sort of thing she associated with Rina—this high-profile video advertising. Making a spectacle of herself on television had never been one of her dreams, but… it had been fun!

  The speed with which the video had been produced also amazed her. This was Thursday, the end of her second week at Power Perspectives. Charlie had set up the shoot and dragged her out to the site early in the morning on Tuesday. Two days later he had something that he called “rough” but that looked, to April, amazingly professional.

  “I liked it too,” said Charlie. “I was concerned about not having Rina to do the shoot, but I think we can call April an unqualified success.”

  “I’m not so sure about that,” said Isobelle, rising from her chair in the back of the conference room. “In my opinion, she lacks the charisma that was so palpable with Rina. She was better than I expected—I’ll give her that—but let’s not get carried away.”

  “Hey, I agree with Isobelle,” April spoke up quickly to say. “Not only is this something I have no experience with, but I don’t believe in it, either. Rina did.”

  “What don’t you believe in?” Isobelle asked.

  “Power Perspectives. The whole thing. Seizing your power and changing your life. I’m not convinced it works.” She shrugged. “Filming it on the Brooklyn Bridge was very appropriate.”

  “For someone who doesn’t believe in what she’s saying, you did it fairly convincingly,” Isobelle said.

  “Next you’ll be saying you liked my performance.”

  “I didn’t like it. But that video had to be filmed before the end of this week so it will have to do.”

  It was grudging progress, April thought, but progress nevertheless. Maybe Isobelle would eventually come to accept her, after all.

  “Well, I liked it very much,” said Charlie. “I think we should go ahead and print it. Get it out there as quickly as possible. There’s been too much negative publicity. We don’t want any of our clients or our potential clients to begin to worry about the future of Power Perspectives now that its founder is gone.”

  “I agree,” Armand said from the doorway. They all turned around, surprised. April hadn’t realized he was in the building, much less in the conference room. “Congratulations, my dear,” he said to April. He was shaking his head as if he didn’t quite believe it. “Even more than I’d expected, you are proving to be a worthy successor to my dear wife.”

  Isobelle rose abruptly and left the room.

  “Are you angry?” Charlie asked.

  “No, as a matter of fact I’m not,” said Isobelle.

  “It’s business. Nothing to do with us personally. She did a good job on the video. She comes across as very sympathetic. Different from Rina, but convincing nevertheless. It wouldn’t have been fair not to give credit where credit is due.”

  “Credit is due to the director and the cameramen,” Isobelle said coldly. “We both know that April went kicking and screaming to the shoot. Let’s not exaggerate her talent, okay?”

  “Look, I don’t want you to think—”

  “Oh, please, Charlie. Stop coddling me. This is the goddamn reason why nobody in their right mind beds down with a co-worker. In the long run, it just doesn’t work out.”

  “What do you mean, it doesn’t work out? It’s working out fine. Please don’t start imagining trouble where none exists.”

  She rolled her eyes at the ceiling. She was going to have to find a way out of this relationship. The pressure from him was subtle, but she could feel it constantly. He wanted more than she wanted, and it was beginning to affect both their performances at work.

  Even the sex wasn’t as good as it had been. There was something missing. She didn’t get the pleasure from him that she had found in the beginning—he wanted too much—too much stimulation, too much humiliation, too much pleasure. At the end of a lovemaking session, she felt exhausted, and not in a pleasant way. She felt as if he were slowly sucking her dry.

  He claimed to be dedicated to her, and she knew he was. Yet it was always his fantasies they were acting out, his needs that were being catered to and met. Sometimes she wondered whether he ever saw her as a real person, with needs of her own.

  He stroked the back of her neck. She wanted to shake him off. She resented his proprietary manner of touching her whenever they were alone. “I love you, my lady,” he murmured.

  Good form required that she respond, “I love you, too,” but she didn’t feel it at the moment. So she didn’t say it, despite the expectant expression on his face.

  “I know you’ve been under an unusual strain these past few weeks,” he said slowly. “I’m worried about you. I want you to know that I’ll do anything I can to help you reduce that stress.”

  “Thanks,” she said. Lighten up, she ordered herself. He’s a nice guy. Most men wouldn’t bother to be so solicitous.

  So why did it annoy her?

  Get your act together, woman!

  Charlie was sweet, thoughtful, and considerate. She was lucky to have him. Compared to some of her former lovers, he was a prince.

  All too well, she remembered how lonely and miserable she’d been before he’d come into her life. So why couldn’t she just relax? Stop feeling so damn restless? She’d chased too many men out of her life. This was one she’d better make some attempt to hang on to.

  She looked up at him and forced a smile. “Are you doing anything after work today?”

  “Nothing that I wouldn’t gladly give up on your account.”

  “Good. Come at eight, then. I’ll try to be home early. Perhaps I’ll even cook dinner.”

  He smiled and agreed.

  Charlie Ripley rejected one after another of the gemmed necklaces that the clerk in Tiffany’s presented for his perusal during his lunch hour. They were elegant, but he wanted something special.

  Saturday was Isobelle’s birthday and he wanted to surprise her. He would have preferred to present her with an engagement ring, but he knew she wasn’t ready for that yet. Isobelle was independent; it was one of the many things that had drawn him to her. It was going to take patience and care to overcome her need for autonomy.

  Sometimes he wished he understood a little better what was going on in that mind of hers. Not that she wasn’t a frank and open woman. But even so, there was a part of her that remained elusive. All too often she would get that distant look in her eyes and he would feel her slipping away from him, going into a landscape where he could not follow.

  It had been happening more and more lately. And this morning, after the screening of the videotape, she had been positively nasty. He hadn’t thought that she would take offense over his compliments to April. In the past, Isobelle had always been fair, even if people weren’t fair to her.

  He knew that Isobelle wasn’t anywhere near as hard and brittle and sure of herself as she sometimes made out to be. He’d seen her vulnerabilities. He had heard her cry. He had listened to her talking, haltingly, about her inner most feelings, her most precious dreams. Oh, yes, she was dominant during sex, and he liked it that way, but afterwards when they were lying quietly in each other’s arms, she turned to him for protection and reassurance. He took pride in being able to provide her with both.

  But lately, it seemed, they weren’t enough.

  It was April, he thought.
Her presence at Power Perspectives was very disruptive.

  “Here’s something in an old-fashioned setting,” the clerk said, opening another box. “If you want something ornate, this might have appeal.”

  “It’s lovely,” he said, excited by the flash of red. Rubies. Yes. The deep crimson fire would suit Isobelle very well.

  It was expensive, but nothing was too good for the woman he loved.

  Chapter Twenty

  April selected a black cocktail dress to wear to the mysterious party. It had a halter-type front and the back was bare from the waist to the shoulders. She pulled on a pair of black Swiss dot pantyhose with the lacy black underwear that Blackthorn had seen in her drawer. She finished the outfit off with two-inch black heels.

  She decided to leave her hair long and loose for a change. It fell nearly to the middle of her back. Jonathan, the man to whom she had been married for a few brief years, had always loved her hair. Every time she’d threatened to cut it, he’d pleaded with her not to. She’d almost cut it after the divorce, in defiance, but something had prevented her from doing so, and now she was glad. With the cocktail dress, her thick auburn tresses looked especially rich and full.

  “Whew—a good hair day,” she said aloud, grinning at her reflection in the mirror.

  Blackthorn arrived as promised at eight. He was more casually dressed in a dark sports shirt and trousers, but when she asked if she was too formal, he grinned and answered, “You look terrific. I’m impressed.” Reaching out, he touched a lock of her hair. She went still as he ran it through his fingers. “I didn’t realize it was so long. You usually pin it up in that prim knot. You should leave it loose more often.”

  Men, she had noticed, just loved to give advice!

  “I was hoping you’d have solved the murder by now,” she said jauntily as they stepped into a cab.

  He groaned. “You and me both.”

  “It’s gospel in police departments—well maybe only in fictional police departments—that if the killer isn’t found within the first three days, the chances drop considerably that the case will ever be cleared.”

  “We won’t find the killer. He’s a professional. But I hope we’ll discover who hired him. The motive will probably turn out to be as simple and as venal as motives for murder usually are. Sex, money, revenge, or fear. Those are the only reasons folks kill each other.”

  “I don’t think my mother cared very much about sex, despite her many lovers. Money was a different story. Money gave her security. I think she needed that. I’ve often wondered whether she loved Armand, or just married him because he was rich and could take care of her for the rest of her life.”

  “He took care of her all right.”

  April shot him a look. His lips were pursed tightly together. “Don’t you like Armand?”

  He shrugged. “No reason not to, I guess.”

  “I think he’s charming.” Indeed, Armand had taken her out to lunch the day before, after the showing of the new video. They had spent a pleasant hour together, and April was amazed at how easy it was becoming to overlook the fact that this was the man who had separated her from her mother.

  Blackthorn shook his head slightly. “Clearly he has that effect on women. Always has, I’ll bet.”

  “Do you think he could have killed his wife?”

  “Could he have done it—sure. But did he? Hard to figure why. We’ve searched high and low for any evidence of either of them being involved in an extramarital affair. All we have is that Rina spent many of her nights in the apartment. There are doormen there, as you know, and we’ve questioned them. No reports of a lover. Same in his building. No strange women dropping by to visit.

  “No, the worst we’ve heard about him so far is that he’s a control freak. As long as he has everybody and everything under his thumb, he’s, as you say, charming. When things go a little wrong for him, though, he apparently shows a different side. We’ve come across a number of people who have had bad experiences with what they describe as his hot temper. But Rina was murdered in cold blood, not hot.”

  “Sounds as if your investigation has been very thorough so far,” she said. She was glad to hear that she hadn’t been the only person into whose past he had probed.

  “Thorough, yes. Successful, no,” he said morosely.

  Isobelle lived in the Chelsea section of the city, in the West Twenties, an area that looked rather dark and foreboding as the taxi approached what appeared to be several old sprawling warehouses. “Do people actually live in those?” April asked.

  “Some very rich and clever people live here. They bought up the warehouses cheap and converted them into loft-type apartments. Some of them are incredibly spacious. Their value has gone through the roof now, even though it’s not exactly the Upper East Side.”

  The taxi dropped them off at one of the more uninviting-looking buildings. But there was an impressive security system inside, complete with cameras and a rather sleepy looking doorman.

  They took an old-fashioned cage-style elevator up to the third floor. They got off in a dark hallway, and Blackthorn knocked at the first door on the right.

  A stranger opened it. He was six feet tall, handsome, and proudly clad in a crisply starched maid’s uniform—black satin with white lace trim. He had nice legs, April noticed as they walked past him into the cavernous apartment.

  “Good heavens,” she whispered to Blackthorn. “This isn’t the usual Saturday night cocktail party, is it?”

  “Nope,” he drawled.

  “His figure is better than mine.”

  Blackthorn’s sexy blue eyes gave her a thorough once-over. “No way.”

  The place was hot, dark, and crowded with people wearing fetishy costumes. April saw a policeman’s uniform complete with a Sam Browne belt and shiny knee-high boots, a cowboy with spurs on the backs of his boots, -and a lasso in his hand, numerous males in black leather vests and/or trousers, and several women in tight corsets, black stockings, high heels, and very little else.

  Sensuous classical music was playing from several speakers. It covered, but didn’t entirely blot out, some strange rhythmic sounds that were coming from some other room.

  April looked around in astonishment. She felt herself blush as a man clad in nothing but boots and a vampire cloak brushed by her, leering.

  “You okay?” Blackthorn said.

  “Just a little wide-eyed. This is amazing.”

  “It’s a D&S party,” Blackthorn told her. “Isobelle and Charlie are in the scene.”

  “Uh, what scene?”

  “That’s the lingo for folks whose lifestyle includes the erotic aspects of dominance and submission. You know—bondage, spanking, that sort of thing. I mentioned black leather, you will recall.”

  Mentioned it, yes, but April hadn’t entirely expected to see so much black leather. I’m from Boston, she was thinking. I’m not used to this sophisticated New Yorker stuff!

  “So it’s a sort of sexual fantasy party?” She inched a little closer to him. Some of these folks were scary-looking.

  He noticed and slipped an arm around her shoulders. “Yes. People act out their fantasies in a controlled environment. It’s all completely consensual, and they’re dedicated to safe and sane play. It seems kinky, but you’d be surprised how ordinary most of these people are in their ordinary everyday lives. They keep business hours on Wall Street in conservative suits and narrow ties, then they let loose after dark.”

  She turned to look at him. “How do you know so much about it?”

  He shrugged. “It’s amazing what you pick up in my line of work. One of my clients was into this stuff. I had to bodyguard him during his visits to some of the local sex clubs.” He squeezed her shoulder. “If you’re too uncomfortable, we can leave.”

  In fact, she was uncomfortable, but she suspected it had as much to do with the general atmosphere of excited eroticism as with any feeling of shock. It was rubbing off on her, she thought wryly. All these bodies, all this feeling
of something in the air, and Blackthorn beside her, looking considerably sexier than most of the other males in the place, and obviously enjoying himself.

  “Where’s Isobelle?” she asked.

  “She’s probably busy disciplining some eager submissive,” he said with a smile.

  She raised her eyebrows. “Disciplining?”

  He nodded. “Isobelle is a top or a dominant. Our friend Charles is a bottom or a submissive. Most people seem to prefer one or the other role.”

  April watched a couple on the other side of the room. The man was wearing a collar to which was attached a chain-link leash. He was being led around by a woman in a red leather miniskirt and a cone-bra that looked like something out of a Madonna concert.

  “This is wild,” she murmured. “Aren’t they embarrassed? I mean, what people do in the privacy of their bedrooms is one thing, but this…”

  “I suspect it’s comforting to find that other people are into it too. If you’re a woman, for instance, who enjoys being mastered in the bedroom—hey, that’s the sort of thing that is pretty hard to admit. It’s not politically correct, after all. You might feel guilty about having such feelings. But if you could share them with others, you might not feel so bad.”

  April knew she was blushing more than ever. She had a secret passion for sexy romance novels—the kind Maggie sold in her romance bookshop in Somerville, Mass.—the ones with the pirates, cowboys, and Mexican bandits on the covers. Maggie indulged her passion by providing her with the latest hot novels in exchange for the latest mysteries. It was a good exchange.

  She cast a quick glance at Blackthorn. Had he guessed her interest in such fantasies? Perhaps he’d noticed the books in her shelves when he’d been in her bedroom that night after the breakin.

  And he? Was his interest in all this purely academic? She thought not. She sensed that he was as titillated by the atmosphere as she was.

  He caught her looking at him and smiled. He leaned his face toward her and for an instant she thought he was going to kiss her—here—in public, the way so many other couples were doing. But all he did was whisper, “April? You sure you’re okay with this?”