Sounds, oh, so familiar. Save that model-turned-actress for those fun-filled Hollywood nights. Keep me on hand for heart-to-hearts over coffee the next day so we can discuss your love life. I mustered up a semi-smile.
“Saylor, I am so sick of dating women who are beautiful and charismatic. I’ve reached a stage in my life where I’d rather have comfy, cozy and cute.”
“Why not get a gerbil?”
Alan threw his head back and laughed. “Even your sense of humor is delightful.”
I just sat there behind my Mona Lisa gaze. What was going on here? If this speech was supposed to make me give him Gwen’s tablet, he’d better find a new scriptwriter.
He moved closer until his lips were within kissing distance. “Seeing you at Capricia’s yesterday, sitting by the window, frankly, I’d never been so aroused in my life. Lady, whatever it is you’ve got, if you could bottle it, you’d make a fortune.”
“Bottle it?” Hmmm.
He relaxed back, grinning. “Yeah, you could be worth billions. Little Saylor’s Love Tonic.”
Had Alan simply hit a nerve using an innocent cliché? Or was he toying with me? Could he have figured out that I had the perfume Capricia was after? And now that he’s seen how real it is and the money to be made from it, he wants to switch his alliance to me, cutting out Capricia and Schumacher? I didn’t know what to think.
My hair was flopping in the strong ocean breeze. He tucked a few strands behind my ear, then cupped the back of my neck, pulling me toward him. He leaned over and kissed me. It was a Hollywood Special. The kind of smacker one only acquires after years of practice in a very competitive sexual environment. Was this the residual effect of Gwen’s perfume?
“Have dinner at my place tonight,” he whispered against my cheek. “My live-in cook is the best. Do you like to make love in a Jacuzzi?”
I knew he was the Jacuzzi type. “I can’t see you tonight, Alan.”
He looked surprised and offended. “Why are you playing hard to get with me?”
How much could I say? What was safe? “I’m sorry. I’ve got plans with Benita.”
“You can’t share euphoria with Benita. But you can share it with me, Saylor. You and I could fly, baby.”
Was that it? Was I being played here so that Alan could satisfy his addiction problems with pleasure enhancing drugs? Lana said he was a compulsive hedonist who’d been in and out of rehab three times. Or was this Gwen’s perfume talking? Was he still under the influence of Heaven’s Daughter? Either way this was not safe territory.
Alan noted my hesitation. “Listen to me making a fool of myself.” He reached out with his fingertips and stroked my cheek, his voice softening and downshifting into a solicitous croon. “Then again, I can’t help it. Woman, you really do have me under your spell. Don’t leave me stranded like this. Say you’ll spend the night with me.”
This was getting uncomfortable. I stood up. “It’s just not possible, Alan.”
He stood facing me. “You know, most women would run through fire for a chance to spend a night with me.”
Uh-oh. The “most women” thing. “I agree. So, why are you chasing the not-so-perfect Saylor Oz?”
“I just explained that to you. You have everything I want.”
(Which just happens to include Gwen’s aphrodisiac that gives men prolonged and ecstatic orgasms) “Oh, please. You really expect me to believe all this?”
Alan’s face took on a bewildered, almost hurt expression. Then he said, “I guess therapists really are as screwed up as everybody else.” He turned and walked up the path and around the side of the house to the driveway.
I watched him go. Guess I’d just lost my chance for an academy award. Not to mention a relationship with a sweet, sexy, rich, famous, handsome…
Stop it, I told myself, or any moment I’d find myself chasing after his car.
***
In addition to the directions Raffy gave us to the Circle of the Sacred Yoni retreat, Benita and I printed out a map of the area. It was almost sunset now, and we sat in Lana’s office searching the Net for anything on Lady Vivian Hatch-Oliver. Most hits were society pages from newspapers, so the photos were partial and shadowy. But we got some idea of her looks as well as her background. Lady Viv was born with money and married even more. Her husband’s family owned some bank overseas.
Benita went upstairs to dress and to set up the tape recorder in her Louis Vuitton bag. I borrowed a garden trowel from Lana and told her about my plans for tonight. When I got to our bedroom I saw Benita standing in front of the mirror in a pencil skirt, pink fifties-style eyeglasses and a wig with straight blond hair that fell to her shoulders.
She saw my stunned expression and turned to me. “I’m going in under an assumed name. Incognito.”
Terrific. I live with Inspector Clouseau. “Binnie, I’m the one with a picture on my website. I doubt Lady Viv would recognize you.”
“Curtis told you he knew who I was.”
“Because Curtis and his boys are the ones watching us. I assume that’s part of what they’re paid to do. Lady Viv—if she’s the one—might know your name, but I doubt she’s ever seen you.”
“You can’t be certain of that.”
“No. But I am certain the women at the retreat will think you’re a puta.”
She gave me a p.o.’d look and pulled off the wig.
I needed to blend into the darkness, so I donned black capris, a charcoal and gray print halter top and my black high-heeled espadrilles.
“Okay,” Benita said, now wearing a chartreuse capped-sleeve jersey dress. “We’ll have to set a time at X hour when we return to the Camry again and drive off. How long do you need in the garden?”
“Better question is—how do I recognize the tablet when I find it?”
“Come on, Saylor. It doesn’t take an archaeologist to see the difference between a clay shard covered in cuneiforms and an ordinary rock. It’s not something you generally find in most gardens.”
“Wait a sec.” I rifled through my canvas carry bag that sat on the bed and pulled out the poem. “There’s a line here in the poem that sounds like a possible clue from Gwen for identifying the tablet. ‘Over her words, a crescent moon of lapis blue set upon the heart.’ I’ll bet ‘her words’ are the prayer to Inanna that Tim said was on the tablet. What do you think?”
“Sounds plausible. And maybe a lapis lazuli stone is embedded into the clay.”
At eight thirty p.m. it was all systems go. We drove into the Northwest Woods toward the Circle of the Sacred Yoni retreat house. About a block from the retreat’s gate Benita stopped the car and said, “Okay. Time for you to get inside the trunk.”
“What? You know I’m claustrophobic, Binnie. Why don’t I curl up on the floor in the back beneath a blanket?”
“Because, A: We don’t have a blanket. And B: Even if we did, all we need is for one of those Yoni sisters to glance down at the backseat and notice something covered on the floor that is mysteriously in the shape of a body.” She got out of the car and opened the trunk. “Get in.”
“You can’t make me.”
“I’m wearing the Sacred Yoni bracelet, you’re the one playing Ninja.”
Using my penlight flashlight so I wouldn’t have a coffin attack, I climbed into the trunk and watched in horror as Benita slammed it shut. I heard the engine turn over, and we were moving.
What if we had an accident? What if Benita fell unconscious and was taken to a hospital? Who would know I was locked inside? Would anyone hear me if I yelled? And what if I’d passed out? There wasn’t a lot of air in here. The ambulance workers probably wouldn’t bother checking in the trunk. The car would be towed to some lot and left there. For days. Or, worse yet, put into one of those metal compacters and compressed into a cube.
Oh no. I was hyperventilating. Good thing I’d taken that course in treating panic attacks. Let’s see, count backwards, think good thoughts. Screw it. I started screaming, kicking and pounding on the tr
unk’s hood. “Hellllp! Get me out of here!”
The car stopped. The trunk flew open. “What is your problem?”
“Are we there yet?”
“Twenty feet to go. Now lay there and shut up.” My merciless roommate closed the lid.
About thirty seconds later, the car stopped. Soon I heard women talking to Benita and the car began to roll. That had to mean we were inside the retreat.
When the car stopped, Benita opened the trunk a crack and tossed in my canvas carry bag, leaving the lid slightly ajar. I heard her feet crunching on the gravel of the parking lot. She’d be pretending to be a member of the Circle who was on vacation in the Hamptons. Let’s hope she’d get a chance to talk with Lady Vivian.
I remained curled up in the dark, afraid to turn on my penlight until I knew if anyone was outside the car. When it seemed okay, I felt through the items in my canvas bag and pulled out the garden trowel I’d borrowed from my aunt. Leaving the bag in the corner of the trunk, I took my little shovel and penlight in hand and quietly slipped out.
I stepped onto the pebbled parking area, which had maybe eight or nine cars. For obvious reasons, my eyes had already adjusted to the blackness of the rural night. A massive old farmhouse with all its windows aglow stood a few hundred feet to my left. To my right was the street.
Out here in the woodsy far corners, passing cars thinned down to practically nothing at this hour. Though July was peak vacation season, things couldn’t get much quieter. I listened to the usual hum of crickets and cicadas, interrupted every so often by a strange shrill whistling. An owl, I guess. Forest preserves bordered the nine-acre retreat. I looked around. Nobody else nearby. I did hear the squeaky, repetitive sound of a swing and faint voices coming from the back yard in the distance.
Raffy had told me that Gwen’s garden was to the right side of the house facing the highway. I tiptoed my way across the front yard with no major mishaps—except for tripping over some football-sized rocks. When my hands hit the ground, I felt petals and earth instead of grass. I was in a garden, but which one? While searching the ground for the trowel and penlight I’d dropped, I sniffed deeply, trying to identify what was planted here.
It brought back memories of Gwen and the gardens she used to plant each year in her family’s yard. Portrait of a young archaeobotanist. She taught me to appreciate flora. Even at sixteen she used to say fragrance was all about danger and sex.
If a plant wasn’t busy trying to repel a leaf-eating insect, it was seducing a pollinator. And, like women, plants didn’t bother putting out too much if the pickings were poor. Which was why I could barely smell the snapdragons that got crushed under my knees when I fell. No lovers around for them at this hour. So I’d have to depend on my tiny flashlight and the strong sweet scents of moth-loving night bloomers like jasmine and the evening primrose that I knew Gwen had included in her flower patch.
I picked up the trowel and got to my feet. My espadrilles didn’t take to the uneven ground, but somehow the idea of bare feet and all the squooshy bugs wandering about kept me in my sandals. The dark forms of a willow tree with a smaller dogwood next to it loomed about ten yards away. Aha. Thank-you, Raffy. She told me to look for a willow, and just beyond that the oak and beech trees that were hopefully the ones Gwen described in her poem.
Inching carefully in that direction, I tried to recall anything Gwen might have said to me when she talked endlessly about this garden. Anything that might tell me where the tablet is. Dear Gwen. How many women do you know who can get that excited over lemon verbena, heliotrope and bearded iris?
When I reached a giant classic oak, I scanned the area with my penlight and saw what looked the coralbells. Aha. This must be the spot.
Without the glare of city lights, the full exhilarating brightness of the moon and stars dominated the sky. There was even a soft breeze. Sigh. What a sensuous night. And I’d be spending it digging up worms in Gwen’s garden in hopes of avenging her death. With no time for waxing romantic, I set right to work.
Squatting on my haunches, I first loosened up the soil below me with my trowel using rapid short stabbing motions. Then I sifted through the dirt, probing for objects with my fingers before digging a little deeper. My game plan was to break things up into four by four squares. Very methodical. I couldn’t help admiring the white blossoms of the moonflowers in front of me and promised myself not to do an Attila The Hun job on the garden.
Time passed. So far I’d uncovered nothing but rocks. Negativity began to seep in. Was this just another fruitless venture? I began to repeat the old line, “Quitting is not an option.” Chop, chop. Sift, sift. Up and down. Side to side. My hands started to move faster and faster. Of course, the fact that I couldn’t leave until Benita came out of the house, plus Curtis’s graphic description of what he’d do to me if I didn’t find the tablet did provide some inspiration.
Not that I intended to give over the tablet to Curtis and Chub Dubs. But what exactly did Gwen want me to do with it?
Chop, chop. Sift, sift. Up and down. Side to side. I was a human tablet-finding machine. Determined to succeed. Nothing could stop me now. In fact the more I kept going, the more empowered I felt. A sense of elatedness passed through me, giving way to an almost ecstatic high. Yes, there truly is something wonderful in working the land.
A bright light swept across my face. “Do you recognize her?” a voice said.
“Nope.”
“Identify yourself.”
I looked up and saw three women. One had a flashlight. They were not smiling.
So much for my Henry David Thoreau moment. “Me? I, ah…I’m planting some night lilies.”
One woman stepped forward. “Show us your Yoni Sisterhood bracelet.”
“Oh, right,” I said. “My bracelet. Well, actually that’s what I was looking for when you came along.”
“I thought you said you were planting night lilies.”
“Exactly. And while I was planting them, I happened to drop my bracelet.”
“What’s your name?”
Oh no. It might get back to Lady Viv if I tell them. I wasn’t what you’d call a member of the club, anyway. “Um, um, ah…”
“I think you better come with us.”
We were headed straight for the parking lot. “Which is your car?” The woman with the flashlight sounded more like a cop. Totally humorless. Guess they didn’t like trespassers.
“This is mine.” I opened the door to the driver’s seat of the Camry, hoping Benita had left the keys.
“Not so fast.” She grabbed my arm. “That car belongs to one of our members.”
I wonder who.
The hand gripping my upper arm did not release. Instead it turned me toward the street entrance, and the three women walked me to the gate.
“Get out and stay out!” They locked the gate behind me.
TWENTY-ONE
The house was a long way from the front gate. I considered yelling for Benita at the top of my lungs, but that was not an ideal move in a covert operation. My watch read nine fifteen. We’d set our time to meet at eleven. That gave me almost two hours to sit here and feed the mosquitoes.
Of course, I’d left my cell phone in my bag, and my bag in the trunk. And the trowel in the garden. At least I still had my pen light so I could see a big two feet in front of me on this ridiculously dark street. Couldn’t they spare a few more streetlights out here? Not to mention sidewalks.
There had be a way to back inside the retreat. I plodded along, checking out the high, wrought iron fence, looking for some point where I could possibly scale it. A swatch of light caught the tree branches above me, followed by an obnoxious fingers-in-the-mouth “hey you” type of whistle.
Two shadowy figures moved toward me. One of them had a flashlight. My turn to get mad. This time they were violating my civil liberties. “Listen,” I yelled. “You don’t own the damn street. So keep your freakin Yoni sisterhood mitts off me.”
They came closer. That’s when
I realized they weren’t from the sisterhood. In fact, they weren’t anybody’s sisters. They were men. And judging from the gun the tall rangy long-armed fellow was pointing at me, not very nice men.
The one with the flashlight was a hefty dude with a shaved head. With a sinking feeling, I recognized him as the chauffeur of my Hummer tour. “Let’s have it,” he said, flashing his light in my eyes.
I gave a sort of spastic headshake. “Have what?”
“The tablet.”
So that’s it. They thought I just found the tablet. And now that I supposedly had what they were looking for, they wanted to take it and be done with me. The bastards. Could it be Lady Viv heard about the odd newcomer in the garden? Did she alert her private hit squad to swoop in on me? Curtis wasn’t on board this time. What was this? The East End division? I held my ground. “I don’t hand over anything to you until Saturday. That was the deal.”
“Give it up, bitch. Now!”
The rangy one shoved me down and stood over me with the gun aimed at my face. A cold, ugly realization that I might die right here and now gripped me. But chasing the fear was rage. And my innate hatred for bullies. And the fact that I was damn sick of these dickheads threatening to rip away my life. “You want it? Here. Take it!” I reached my hand toward my hip pocket, but I grabbed a small rock that I felt under my butt and hurled it over his shoulder.
As they went for it, I sprang to my feet and tore ass down the road in a zigzag pattern. Every woman knows running zigzag is the best way to avoid a possible bullet.
From out of nowhere came a screech of tires and bright headlights. A pale-colored SUV roared down the street in my direction. I dove for the side of the road, scraping my shoulder against gravel and getting slimy dead leaf muck in my mouth. Ungraceful, but effective.
I watched the SUV swerve and, instead of coming back toward me, it raced straight for the two men, bouncing Mr. Long-lanky off its fender. It jammed on its breaks, backed up and zeroed in on the hefty guy, who went bolting for the woods across the street. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. The driver was as loony as my pursuers. It was too dim to be sure who was in the car, but the SUV looked an awful lot like the silver Pathfinder belonging to Eldridge Mace.
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