“That’s no sillier than others I’ve heard. Besides, it’s my favorite movie,” she added, defending her choice as she fished through her purse, digging deep before bringing the sound to the surface. “It’s my boss. Uh oh.” Ben turned the music off and waited to see if she would answer. “He probably wants to know why I’ve gone ‘off the grid’ with this assignment. No way I can explain all of what’s happened. I’ll try to get away with just sending a text.” Ana leaned her head back against the headrest and contemplated what might be a satisfactory answer to her boss’s question. After a moment’s pause she began to type her one-fingered response. Ben also wondered how she intended to justify her presence in the Cotswolds rather than in London, where she was expected to be knee deep in words and hovering diligently over her laptop.
He waited a few minutes and then asked, “What did you tell him? Any details?”
“Not specifically. I just said that I was pursuing a very interesting piece of back-story on you, and it required me to leave the city. I hope that keeps him at bay for a few days, but I can’t stall longer than that.”
“I’ll do whatever I can to keep you employed,” Ben said, trying to lighten the mood.
“There are worse things than losing an assignment,” Ana countered, ”But I’m in too deep with this one. I’ve convinced myself that I’m the only one who can do justice to an article about Benedict McKinnon … or maybe I should say I’m caught up in an adventure with Benedict McKinnon.” She glanced at Ben, her comment having brought a smile to his face and a certain glint to his eyes. “In any case, I can’t walk away … unless you send me.”
He glanced at her quickly then returned his focus to the road ahead. “I hope I don’t have to send you away. If I did, it would be for your safety.” He realized that very soon he was going to have to explain to Ana the fact that he had whisked her away from London for just that reason, and under false, though innocent, pretenses. “I sincerely hope the adventure part is over—at least the dangerous part.” Ben’s gut told him not to believe his own words, and that the danger was likely far from over. He paused a moment before adding, “I’m sure there’s a lot more to what’s happened than we know right now.”
“You’re probably right. I don’t think you should let your guard down.”
“No worries about that. My eyes are open,” said Ben, hoping to reassure her.
“Regardless of what’s happened on this assignment— whether it turns into a full-fledged adventure or not— I’m pretty maxed out on moving around constantly. It’s the curse of being a journalist.” Ana turned her head to look out the window, her thoughts drifting. When she spoke her voice was so quiet that it seemed she was reluctant for Ben to hear. “I went into it assuming that being on the move all the time would be glamorous.” She sighed a weary sigh, an unspoken lament that piqued his curiosity about her history.
After another half hour they exited the A40 and went through a series of roundabouts before finding the B4425. From that point the roads became increasingly narrow by the mile. Soon they were passing through a quintessential village called Bourton-on-the-Water. Ana thought the village names were often very strange. Ben mentioned in passing that the village was known as the Little Venice of the Cotswolds. She asked if they could come back another day to take a look, and he agreed. He noticed that she was trying to stretch in her seat, but was inhibited by the belt across her chest and thus settled for leaning her head against the window. Seeing that she was tired, he assured her that they hadn’t much further to go before reaching his parents’ home.
Ana’s reluctance to drive the Jaguar had kept her quiet when Ben failed to ask that she take the wheel so he could rest his shoulder. He had been so adamant about his need for assistance with the driving and she couldn’t figure out why he looked so comfortable and happy driving his ‘baby.’ She finally decided to ask. She turned down the music, now a medley by Norah Jones, and said, “I like this CD. It’s mellow and relaxing. Is that why you look so relaxed at the wheel … in spite of a sore shoulder that you thought wouldn’t hold out for two plus hours on the road?”
Ben smiled, slyly, Ana thought— and kept his eyes on the curves ahead. “Busted! Stitched up! In the frame… and whatever other terms there are for being found out. I will confess… but not until we get to mom and Dad’s.”
Something about his reaction made Ana laugh, her tolerance boosted by the fact that she really had not wanted to drive the car anyway. He seemed genuinely contrite as he tried to deflect her question with humor. Ben felt that her laughter was a reprieve, and his thoughts returned to their pub meeting and his unbidden vision of her beside him in the Jaguar, her hair swirling in the wind, the crescendo of her musical laugh as he increased speed.
Ben quickly returned to the present when he turned off of the village’s high street onto a narrow road. In a few minutes the road split and the car bore left, although the directional sign had been turned cockeyed— no doubt a prank by some mischievous youth. The road narrowed even further and required his complete concentration. He reduced speed, and with the hedgerows that grew close to the pavement as his guide, he focused on the wide swath of brightness from the car’s xenon headlights. Beyond the hedgerows on either side were small stands of trees— pocket forests as he had described them to Ana. There were no streetlamps on country roads, and the blackness was setting in quickly. They hadn’t met another vehicle since leaving the village. She was careful not to distract Ben with conversation, having become edgy as soon as the light died and the road became one lane. Moving beyond the small forests, the landscape cleared to grassy fields that climbed gently toward the hills ahead. The last vestiges of the setting sun glowed gray lavender from behind the softly rolling silhouette of the Cotswolds.
Ben broke the silence. “The driveway is just ahead, beyond that long row of trees arched over the road.”
Ana sat up straighter in her seat and became more alert to the surroundings. She rolled down the window and stuck her arm out into the cool air. It began to blow her hair, first across her face, and then as she brushed it away with her hand, it billowed out around her head. Ben was once again taken back to his fantasy of the laughing beauty riding beside him.
“I hope I remember the code,” he said. “I’ve only been here once since they added the gate security. The gate’s always been there, but it used to be secured with only a padlock. I can’t tell you how many keys my sister and I lost.”
“Maybe they added an intercom. Then it won’t matter.”
He slowed and turned the car left, coming to a stop in front of tall double gates. On either side limestone walls stood tall, covered in well-trimmed greenery now robbed of color by the moonless night. Stopping beside the lighted key code box, Ben lowered the window and punched in some numbers. His memory served him well. The gates opened slowly and he proceeded, looking back to see if they closed behind him. The gravel driveway was tree-lined and rather long, ending in a circular drive. Ana rolled her window down halfway, hoping to hear the yap of a fox or the song of a nightingale piercing the darkness. She could hear water and could just make out the colorless shapes of a hedged circular enclosure and what she imagined was a fountain. Ben pulled the Jaguar in close to the front walk and shut off the engine.
CHAPTER SIX
Valerie Amesworth McKinnon had spent the better part of the afternoon with her therapist. The aftermath of those sessions had always seemed to cause more conflict than resolution, and as a result she would feel at loose ends for the rest of the day. But on this particular day, it was more than that. She felt herself the victim of a personal attack and now wondered why she should even continue. Nothing had changed as a result of being in therapy. But she appeased her parents by assuring them that the process was helpful, and after all, they were footing the bill. So far she had refused to see that her willful nature stifled her progress. Valerie had seen each visit as a skirmish, and rather than change her own behavior she saw each verbal exchange with the therapis
t as a chance to gain what she thought was an upper hand. She had maintained the delusion that the doctor would eventually take her side.
She stopped for coffee at a corner kiosk, a quick espresso downed in two gulps. The final quarter hour of her appointment had left her slightly disoriented, so in order to clear her head she decided to walk part of the way back to her place of business, Boutique Le Bijou. Yet within a few blocks she became tired and hailed a taxi. Before reaching the boutique, she told the cabbie to pull over. She paid, quickly got out, and crossed the sidewalk to an open gate leading into the neighborhood park.
In this corner of London, spring had done its work, handing off its magic wand to summer. Color washed the flowerbeds and trees that had been laid-bare by winter’s cold. A warm wind blew the trees, once again lush with green, their abundant leaves rustling in tandem with each playful gust. She meandered along the path, pausing to observe a bed of luxuriant yellow roses, and then stopped at a green iron bench directly across. Valerie settled there in the shade, her face to the sky, listening to the occasional birdsong and the buzz of an insect around her head. Soon her thoughts began to run deep.
Once again, as she had done countless times before, she returned to the beginning, to that first moment she believed her life was set plainly before her. When she had met Ben in a London pub on her spring break, she was a senior at Vassar, and he was in his first year of grad school. After they met, he pursued Valerie daily, feeding her fragile ego with his youthful eloquence. She was the girl with the flaxen hair— the color of her eyes lay somewhere between green and violet, like the sky or sea on a sunny day—she had the body of a goddess. Though she could see now how over the top his words had been, such poetic expression from a young man her age had been unknown to her. She had never before been romanced.
The two had become mutually besotted, and within weeks she was enchanted with the idea of being married to who she believed would be a famous author. She recognized that she was a rich girl, consistently indulged and used to getting her way. It suited her. An inbred talent for manipulation had always accomplished this result. In her girlish imagination of their life and Ben’s success, she would be another version, a better version, of Hemingway’s Martha Gelhorn.
Valerie came to resent her parents. She had replayed their part in the downturn of her life many times. When she announced that with only one semester lying between her and a degree she would not be returning to school, they had all but washed their hands of the daughter who had always been their princess. She remembered the day she told them all about Ben and his aspirations. Even more unacceptable to them was her intention to marry a graduate school student who aspired to be a writer. Her father’s constant rant still rung in her ears: A world of poverty, my girl. That’s what you’re signing on for. Her mother would whine about the fact that she would never make any of the ‘right’ party lists being married to a virtual nobody, and an English fellow to boot. Of course the more they disapproved, the more strongly she set her course. The final disappointment was an elopement. Valerie could still picture their faces when she and Ben arrived at her home and announced their marriage.
Much later, after things fell apart, she had been sure that Ben always resented having excluded his parents, with whom he was extremely close. It was clear to her now: Pushing for the elopement had been her first mistake. Ben had seen, too late, that without a doubt she would require his complete and total allegiance in all things.
As memory carried her back through their relationship, she all but cursed her romantic imagination. The life of a writer’s wife hadn’t turned out to be the glamorous adventure she had envisioned. They struggled financially, and in spite of her pleas, Ben wouldn’t take help from his parents. Nor would he have allowed interference from her family, if they had offered. They did not. She saw it all going wrong, but hadn’t been insightful enough to know that her immaturity and sense of entitlement, not Ben’s emotional withdrawal and subsequent indiscretion, would be the end of them. As she sat there, eyes closed, feeling the sun’s warmth and the soft wind on her face, the reality struck her like the sting of a bee. Unbidden tears trickled down her cheeks. She accepted having driven Ben to act. For the first time in her life Valerie admitted that in spite of having tolerant and doting parents, she was not and never had been the perfect princess they had imagined.
* * *
The windows of Dr. Kate Loxley’s office provided a broad view of the Thames. It was a rare cloudless day, the low-slung morning fog having dispersed. She could see clearly across the water to the row of gray industrial-looking apartment buildings perched on the rise above the riverbank. A generous amount of landscaping softened the cold look of the architecture, and a few docks, intended for mooring boats owned by some of the residents, had been built straight down from the buildings. All in all, she had to admit she approved of the development, however glad she was not to be a resident.
It was fortuitous that she had a thirty-minute break before the next patient. Without doubt she needed some time to process what had occurred during the session with Valerie McKinnon. Dr. Kate, as she urged her patients to call her, had broken her very strict rule of treatment whereby she avoided giving opinions or advice. The stalemate in Valerie’s treatment had been going on for an unacceptable amount of time, her patient’s lapses in keeping appointments being a consideration. Kate intended to suggest at their next meeting that she find another therapist, due to the general lack of progress. The doctor had reached her breaking point during the appointment that had just ended, a result of being mired in an interminable silence with her patient. Silent, that is, until the moment Valerie’s willfulness finally caused the doctor to break her golden rule. Dr. Kate finally spoke first, and everything she had been thinking came spilling out, not only in the form of advice, but in her feelings about Valerie’s self-centered and delusional view of her life.
After telling her she was behaving like a willful adolescent in her obsession with Ben, her ex-husband, and that she wasn’t trying in the least to move on or take responsibility for her life, her patient just sat still, mouth agape. For what Kate thought could be the first time, Valerie was listening. At least Kate thought she was listening. The roles were reversed, and the doctor was doing all the talking. First, she told Valerie she didn’t really want to improve, that she was comfortable in the security of her old behaviors, primarily in her obsession with the man whom she had driven away with her unreasonable demands. Kate was aware of what Valerie had demanded from the marriage because she had revealed a litany of her unmet needs early in treatment, and assumed they would bear repeating ad infinitum.
Then Kate started on the advice. She urged Valerie to change her environment, to remove herself from the reminders of her life with Ben in London. She suggested that Valerie return to America, to the bosom of her family. Once there she could start a new chapter in her life, perhaps meet someone new or even finish her degree. Kate told her to face the fact that because she didn’t make it a priority, her business was always on the edge of a financial abyss, and the situation was draining her father’s bank account as well as his patience. The frustrated man had contacted Kate the week prior, hoping for the slightest hint of a positive outcome to his investment. She also remembered Valerie’s most recent lament about her floundering business. The outburst ended with Kate’s advice that first and foremost, Valerie must resume her maiden name, and that the finality of the act would help her to move on, to reinvent herself. Kate had said it all, everything she’d thought since the beginning, and it was cleansing to put words to her frustration.
The doctor could see that her verbal outpouring had left Valerie at a loss. She sat stone-faced for several minutes then drew forward in her chair and got up to leave. Her only retort was to tell Kate that she was considering a short vacation, a change of scene, and would probably be in touch upon her return. Kate just nodded. Her patient turned slowly and without another word left the office.
* * *
&nbs
p; Valerie spent a few minutes regaining control of her emotions before rising from the park bench and continuing on to the boutique. As she rounded the corner into the street where her business was located, she saw several potential customers standing outside talking amongst themselves. Valerie hurried up the street to her shop, and spouting apologies for their inconvenience, she unlocked the door. It seemed evident that Chloe, the shop girl who was supposed to be in attendance, had closed for lunch and not returned. The women entered the shop and moved about, inspecting the merchandise, while Valerie fussed at things behind the counter, taking a careful accounting of the cash drawer.
She had become increasingly aware that Chloe was a bit of a flake, but she had a fantastic sense of style and seemed to zero in on what would please a customer. This was her most inexcusable stunt so far. But Valerie knew how difficult it was to find someone truly qualified to work for what she could pay. Chloe was young and hip, and still lived with her parents. Valerie surmised that Chloe’s main reason for keeping the job was to take advantage of the small employee discount. Regardless, she planned to give her a good dressing down for her irresponsibility.
The women filed out, one by one, without making a purchase. Valerie sighed, having become used to that fact that most shoppers only want to look and have little intention to buy. She decided to call Chloe, to make sure it was only negligence on her part, not illness. Just as she picked up her mobile phone to dial, the business phone rang. “Hello, Boutique Le Bijou, Valerie McKinnon here,” she said in her most business-like manner.
In a hesitant and subdued voice Chloe Lambert began to speak. “This is Chloe. I know you must be beyond annoyed with me for not opening the shop after lunch, but I had a good reason.”
“What could be a good reason for me to lose business?”
“I’m sorry if you lost any business, but I couldn’t get back to the shop. I’m in the hospital.”
Good Deed Bad Deed : A Novel Mystery Page 8