She stood at her desk and shook hands with each one as she passed, flashing that solitaire. Each woman relaxed again. Four of them gave her their cards. Moira shooed them out, promising to hold a winter fundraiser meeting very soon so they could all get to know Beth better. Then she asked Beth to lunch.
“I’m sorry, I have a commitment,” Beth said with finality in her best socialite voice.
Moira’s eyes narrowed. “Of course. Perhaps tomorrow.”
Beth gave a tiny smile. “Of course. That would be delightful.” She glanced at the clock. “I was told I may take lunch at twelve-thirty?”
With a smile just as false and tight, Moira disappeared into her office.
Not as dumb as the rest of them, Beth concluded. Probably smells a rat. She realized that she would not be working here another day. Still, she couldn’t regret having made the experiment. Next pink-collar McJob she took, she would leave her old identity out of it. But she’d wear some nice jewelry.
As it happened, she didn’t even get lunch.
Beth went back to her donor check data entry. She had lots to think about.
It troubled her that Moira’s manner had iced over when she refused lunch. She began to feel uneasy. At noon, Elaine the receptionist went on lunch break and Moira still hadn’t come out of her office.
“When she asks for them, here’s her messages,” Elaine said, casting a startled look at the diamond solitaire on Beth’s finger.
Beth smiled warmly at her. When she was out of sight, she quickly read through Moira’s messages.
Darleen Bobak. The hairs rose on Beth’s nape.
Why would her daughter be calling Moira this morning?
Darleen Bobak rtd yr call The little “returned your call” box had been checked off. When was this? She checked the time on the slip of paper. She’d called a bare twenty minutes ago! That meant that Moira had contacted Darleen after Beth refused to have lunch with her. Why on earth should that have made her suspicious?
This couldn’t be good.
Had Darleen asked Moira to call if she, Beth Saunders, contacted her? If so, maybe Darleen was in contact with a lot of Beth’s old friends. That thought would have warmed her heart if she hadn’t already told Darleen to stop calling her or trying to find her. She re-examined the little While You Were Out form, thinking furiously.
Maybe Darleen had called earlier in the day, say, during the board meeting. But if so, when had Moira had time to call her back? Maybe those calls all took place yesterday, after Beth Saunders asked for a job for Beth Asucar. Unnerving, if true. That meant that Moira would have said all those things, and blown cold, then hot, then cold on Beth, having already finked on her to Darleen. Was that possible?
Thinking of what she knew of Moira, Beth was forced to conclude that it was entirely possible.
She couldn’t trust anyone from her old life. How had she not realized that, when she was Poor Beth Saunders?
Very simply: because she had been living with someone she couldn’t trust. And rather than make herself miserable, wondering how he was lying to her every minute of every day, she chose to believe that he wasn’t.
And if after that titanic effort she could switch off her bullshit detector, as Pog would call it, for the man she lived with, then she had to keep it switched off with everyone else. She’d made herself stupid.
Street smarts, as Jee called them, were a survival trait. Beth had muzzled her own survival trait. She deserved to get flung out of her security.
At that moment the door to Moira’s office opened a crack, and Moira’s voice came. “Any messages, Elaine?”
“She went to lunch,” Beth called. “You heard back from, um,” she riffled through the slips of paper quickly. “Morgenstern, CPD, and Darleen Bobak.”
“Call Morgenstern and move my appointment up to three o’clock,” Moira commanded from out of sight. “Never mind the others.” Beth heard a clink from inside, unmistakably the sound of the neck of a bottle touching the rim of a glass.
The door shut.
Beth drew a deep breath. She found the message from Darleen and dialed. “Mrs. Bobak’s home,” came a man’s voice.
Beth froze.
The voice was Blake’s.
Beth remembered to pitch her voice lower, like Pog’s. “I’m calling for Moira Whiteside. Mrs. Whiteside is sorry, but she will have to call Mrs. Bobak back this afternoon. Is there a convenient time for Mrs. Bobak?”
She held her breath.
“Give me a minute,” Blake’s voice said. He sounded rough, as if he hadn’t slept. Good, Beth thought savagely. “How about three?” He wasn’t asking for Darleen. He was asking for himself. She could hear it in his voice.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Whiteside has a meeting at three. Perhaps she can call when she gets back from lunch. Will it be all right if I get back to you in an hour or so?”
Blake hesitated. She could picture him fidgeting with the phone cord. “Yes, that’s okay,” he said, his receptionist manner slipping. “But no later than two, all right?”
“Very well,” Beth said “I’ll let her know.”
They hung up together.
Beth grabbed her dull white Coach jewelry vault and bolted for the door. Halfway there she realized she had better do something about her appearance. She stood, frozen and dithering, as precious seconds ticked by. Then she remembered that Moira kept an emergency suit in the front closet, with shoes to match, in case she had to take a big donor out to dinner somewhere fancy, and her usual pale gray or blue Donna Karan wouldn’t serve.
Beth had thought it was so cute when Moira explained that to her, years ago. And Moira had explained to Poor Beth Saunders how working women were under a lot more pressure than men; a man’s suit worked everywhere, but a professional woman had to have five times as many clothes.
Thanks for the lesson in office feminism, Beth thought. She grabbed the bathroom key on its don’t-leave-me-behind stick off Elaine’s desk, eased open the closet door, and took the suit, which was draped in a really unworthy black plastic garbage bag. She checked—yes, the shoes hung on the same hanger in their own little bag. Why on earth a garbage bag? She could only imagine that Moira hadn’t wanted to leave this expensive outfit packaged as it deserved and hanging in the closet, to be a temptation to the staff. After Elaine’s lecture to the temp, Beth Asucar, on not stealing donor identities, she wasn’t surprised.
With a backward glance at the shut door of Moira’s inner sanctum, she slipped out of the charity office and made for the ladies’ room down the hall.
“There you are,” said Dective Doyle’s voice affably.
Beth gave a gasp and nearly swallowed her tongue. She clutched the purse full of diamonds to her chest under the drape of the big black garbage bag. “What are you doing here?”
“Your new employer gave me a ringydingy when she heard from her old buddy Beth Saunders. Nice of Mrs. Saunders to get you a job, I thought.”
Beth narrowed her eyes at him. “Why are you following me around?”
“Your new boyfriend, Blake Shanley?” Detective Doyle said. “He’s missing. He was supposed to stick around, too, in case his missing wife’s body turned up after she bled all over his secret apartment. We’d sure like to know she’s all right. I figure, if she called Mrs. Whiteside to help you out, maybe you know where we can contact her.”
Beth licked her lips. She was sweating. She had only minutes to get out of here and hail a cab that would take her all the way to the western suburbs. “I don’t know.”
Doyle took a step closer. “I’d really, really like to know that nobody has gotten killed,” he said reaching for Beth’s arm. She wriggled away until her back thumped against the ladies’ room door. Doyle smelled really good. For a wild moment, Beth considered solving this problem the sex demon way, in a locked ladies’ room.
But his hand closed tightly on her arm. She knew he was about to arrest her.
“Let go of me!” she squeaked.
Someone r
an around the corner suddenly. Detective Doyle spun violently away from Beth.
“Hands off the merchandise!” came a familiar voice.
Reg forced himself between her and Doyle with his fists clenched. “Nobody touches my girls without I say so,” he grated.
Doyle’s eyes were full of surprise. He looked from Reg to Beth, cowering behind Reg. “Who are you?”
“I’m her pimp, that’s who I am,” Reg said proudly, “and you don’t touch her unless I say so!”
Beth watched the cascade of emotions cross Doyle’s face and felt an almost Jee-like rage.
“You,” she hissed, and Reg glanced at her nervously out of the corner of his eye, “are not my pimp!”
Then she hauled off and slapped him as hard as she could.
Reg almost fell over.
Beth spun, scrambled the bathroom key into the lock, flung herself inside, and pushed the door shut until it clicked. There wasn’t a deadbolt. She leaned against it, sweating, panting, nearly blacking out from panic.
Someone tried the door. “Mrs. Saunders?” Doyle’s voice came. So much for denial. “Somebody’s bound to come along and let me in.”
“What kinda freak are you? That’s a ladies’ room there,” Reg protested, still outraged, still clueless. But he was guarding the door for her. She had time to...do what?
Beth realized she was still clutching Moira’s black garbage bag full of black suit and black shoes.
Slowly and silently drawing a deep breath and letting it out, she walked to a stall and banged the door without going in. There was generous space for her to change clothes in front of the mirror.
Swiftly, she stripped down to her underwear and put on Moira’s clothes. The suit was too big for her, ridiculously big, and it left miles of leg showing in a weird way. Cut low, too. She’d have to wear her own white camisole. Looking in the mirror, she didn’t feel in the least disguised.
Terror blitzed her. She looked into her own eyes. Can I do this? Or will I get arrested and let Blake get away?
Because there had been something in his voice on the phone that said, No later than three o’clock, because I have to catch a plane.
Was he meeting Moira and skipping town?
No, because Moira had a three o’clock with Morgenstern.
Was he skipping so he couldn’t get arrested? What if he was faking his own death?
Blake would love it if Beth got arrested for both her own murder and his.
She shut her eyes and felt her anger bang around inside her body.
Then she opened them and went into a toilet stall. She made her voice sound higher. “Is there any toilet paper over there?”
She lowered her voice. “Sure. Just a second—” She paused artistically and pawed noisly at the toilet paper dispenser. “Here.”
She raised her voice. “Oh, thank you! Thanks a million.”
She flushed the toilet in the stall, then let the door bang.
Then she ran for the mirror and shut her eyes as tightly as she could.
“Is that La Mer?” she said in the high voice.
“Strivectin,” she said in her lower voice.
She pictured the woman who wore the black suit: someone who got caught in a stall without toilet paper, someone who used anti-aging cream, someone shorter and dumpier, with dyed dark brown hair going white at the roots, a sagging jowl, and a worried yet smiley face with eyes deep-set in puffy lids. Her ankles would be a little heavy. She’d be uncomfortable on these high black shoes of Moira’s. She’d be—Beth opened her eyes and saw that woman in the mirror—she’d be wearing diamonds. Lots of them.
Beth opened the borrowed handbag and swiftly, silently frosted herself again. “Do you like it?” she said in the high voice.
“It’s okay,” she answered herself. “I don’t get a reaction. I’m a little allergic to La Mer.”
The older woman, what would her name be? Maybe Virginia. Virginia said, “Oh, that’s a shame. Such a nice product.” Meaning, so damned expensive that an ounce of it cost more than a secretary’s shoes. Although not more than Moira’s tall black heels.
She looked down at her legs. Not puffy enough. In fact, she wasn’t puffy enough all over. Beth shut her eyes and ran her hands over her body, letting it swell until the skirt was cutting into her waist and the buttons strained on the jacket. She also made herself shorter. Now she was barely five feet high.
Someone outside tried the door handle again.
“Hey, you pervert! Ladies room, remember?” Reg said loudly.
Doyle answered him, and under cover of their voices, Beth bundled all her own clothes into Moira’s black plastic garbage bag with shaking hands, and stuffed the bag as silently as she could into the ladies’ room trash can.
“Are you all right, dear?” she said in her higher voice.
The voices outside stopped.
She banged the toilet stall door again, as if she’d just shut it. “I’m fine. I just need to be quiet for a little while,” she answered herself.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” said the higher voice of fat little old Virginia in the black suit. She turned on the cold water and let it run.
As a last act of disguise, she took out her emergency nail polish and drew a big red S-curve on the outside of Amanda’s off-white Coach bag. She turned the faucet off. Then she ran the painted bag under the hand dryer until it stopped looking shiny.
Then she walked out of the restroom.
That set off a scuffle outside. She shoved past the two men struggling in the doorway.
“Oh!” she squeaked. “Excuse me!”
They stopped struggling when they saw her. Beth gave them each a timid little smile and edged past them, shutting the ladies’ room door firmly behind her.
The door lock snapped shut.
Doyle groaned.
Slowly and deliberately, Beth waddled down the hall, teetering on the black shoes, with her handbag dangling low from her hand so that she wouldn’t rub up against the still-tacky nail polish, and got into the elevator. In the lobby, she walked into the Walgreen’s. There she bought a pair of sweat pants, a tank top, a sweatshirt, and a pair of flip-flops. Then she walked across the street into the Dunkin Donuts and straight back to the restroom, where she quickly stripped, then with long sweeps of her hands fixed her hair, slimmed, and stretched herself back into Beth Asucar. Then she changed into her new clothes and put all her borrowed diamonds back into the white Coach bag, now defaced with nail polish. With a malicious smile, she left Moira’s suit and shoes folded carefully on the baby-changing table.
Then she went outside and hailed a cab. “I’ll give you two hundred dollars to get me to a house in Naperville before three o’clock.”
The cabby’s head spun around. “Uh, I don’t know where that is.”
She handed over a hundred-dollar bill and twiddled another in the air between her fingers. “Here. Get on 290. I’ll direct you from there.”
Beth made the cabbie drop her at the street end of Darleen’s driveway. The landscaping made it seem like there were ten acres back there, but Beth knew that Darleen had paid extra to make her double suburban lot seem like the grounds of a sizeable mansion. More for less, Mom. I watched you trying to keep up appearances with a house four times this size. We’re not ready for that, Darleen had said anxiously, as if offering an excuse for why she couldn’t yet live as well as her parents did.
After just over a week of bunking in the Lair, Beth thought of Darleen’s comment in a whole new way. She stopped suddenly as she approached the final curve up to the house. Did I raise that kid wrong? She thought of her single room at the Lair, furnished just now with milk crates, and the team’s single bathroom, still half under construction, and instead of landscaped acres, a basketball court with a homemade plywood floor. She felt infinitely more at home in the Lair after a week than she had felt in their Glencoe showplace after twenty years.
But Blake had wanted it.
Blake was in Darleen’s house right now,
waiting for Moira’s call so he could take a taxi to the airport and flee the country. Beth would bet her new tennis bracelet on it.
She breathed deeply. She hadn’t looked Blake in the eye since he first served the divorce papers on her.
She seemed to hear Jee say, Yes you did. You did it for two hours one night at Barclay’s last week.
That hadn’t been her. That had been Beth Asucar, five-feet-nine-inches of succubus hotness. What am I doing here? Beth couldn’t imagine facing Blake as herself.
Sudddenly she felt herself chickening out. She was old, fat, gray, wrinkled, skilless, friendless. Moira had sold her out in a heartbeat. Her own daughter was hiding Blake, for whose murder Beth would soon be arrested, if he got away before Detective Doyle could find him.
She could imagine Jee saying, Yeah, and he bounced his settlement check. You didn’t even complain to the judge.
I didn’t, did I? Beth thought. I could have. I could have had him followed until I found out about the apartment at the Doral. I could have done that nine years ago.
A week ago, the thought of that apartment had infuriated Beth. It had brought her to life with rage.
Now she felt hollow and worthless. What’s the matter with me? In that junky old lair, swilling beers in a kitchen papered with porn posters, I’ve been feeling alive. Now I’m at my own daughter’s house and I feel...dead.
He insulted your love, Reg had said. Tears started in her eyes.
She stood there on the brick driveway between the curving rows of clipped yews, her eyes closed, wondering, If I could have Blake’s love, would I want it any more? With the emptiness, she felt cold. The corrosive fire that had driven her to sign Delilah’s contract had burnt itself out.
What did she think she was doing here?
“I don’t know,” she said aloud, firmly. “But I won’t be done with him until I have a chance to ask him some things. Or just look him in the eye. I don’t know. I just want to be done with him.”
She almost walked up to the front door looking like Beth Asucar. Then she caught herself. For one thing, she’d never worn flip-flops off the beach in her life. She ran her hand over herself from head to toe, restoring Beth Saunders—with improvements—thirty-five pounds down, perfect hair, no wrinkles—before she walked the last few yards up the yew alley and Darleen’s manicured front garden burst into view.
Coed Demon Sluts: Omnibus: Coed Demon Sluts: books 1-5 Page 23