Close to You (24 page)

With James in school and her housekeeper keeping an eye on the girls, Susan tied up the laces on her running shoes, determined to get her exercise. She did some stretches against the side of the house and started briskly down the driveway. The dark gray sedan was parked in front of Eliza's again this morning. One man was sitting in the car and another was patrolling the property.

Susan's heart went out to her new friend. She had always thought it must be so exciting to be a celebrity. Now she realized that being famous had a terrible downside as well. She was more appreciative than ever of her own secure little world.

Susan nodded at the man in the car and trotted down the slight incline that led to the quiet road that circled the pond. Then she picked up her pace. She was on her fifth lap when she noticed a beat-up blue car pulling to a stop in front of the wooded lot on the far side of the pond. When she circled round the next time, the car was still there, but there was no one in it.

 

Meat had driven by the brick colonial and spotted the gray sedan. He didn't dare go back for a second look. That was a cop car, he could smell it.

He parked the car in the spot he had found when he'd cased the neighborhood on Monday morning after his conversation with the barber. The space, edging the woods, was not in front of anyone's house, so unless he left it there for an extended period of time, nobody was going to be calling the police to report it. Good thing he had come then, before those bastards were posted in front of Eliza's house.

That morning reconnaissance mission had been rewarding. The wealthy neighborhood was peaceful and landscaped with lots of trees and thick hedges. It had really been no big accomplishment to hide among the bushes and sneak round the back of Eliza's house to case things out.

That cabana was pretty neat. He could live in that place—it was nicer than his apartment. But the tree house was the place he had chosen for his viewing spot. If he could get in there at night, he would be able to peer through the slot in the boarded wall and look into Eliza's lighted windows.

That was still the plan, but the security guards would make it a little more difficult to execute. Difficult, but not impossible.

He looked forward to it, really. The tree house brought to mind his bat house. And just like his furry friends, Meat, when the time was right, would come out to feed.

 

Larson Richards was eager to meet his potential investor for lunch at Marcello's at the HoHoKus Inn.
It better go well today,
he thought as he drove to the Sheridan Avenue restaurant. He had barely met payroll this week, and if he didn't get a large cash infusion in the coming days, he wasn't going to be able to pay his workers on the fifteenth of the month. That would be the beginning of the end. If the lawyers and accountants and secretaries he had on staff didn't get their checks, they would sense the ship was sinking and bail. They would tell their spouses, who would tell their friends, and the word would be out that Richards Enterprises was failing.

The digital clock on the Mercedes dashboard told him
he had some time to spare. It was only eleven forty-five. Impulsively he turned left onto Lloyd Avenue. Eliza's daughter should be getting out of kindergarten about now.

He still hoped that he could get on Eliza's good side. If he could gain her trust, he might be able to persuade her to invest with him. Her warning not to come to the house anymore flashed through his mind. She hadn't said anything about going to the school. If he could get Janie to like him, Eliza might come around. At this point he was desperate and anything was worth a shot. Hell, even that gas-pumper Augie was nagging him.

Larson parked the car behind the row of SUVs and station wagons that waited for their treasured passengers. He didn't notice the gray sedan parked behind the white Volvo.

Within a few minutes the young students began running from the school building to their mothers and nannies. He spotted Janie walking out, her hand held by a very short woman who brought her directly to the caramel-skinned housekeeper.

Larson started to get out of the car, but thought better of it Maybe this wasn't the time. He could tell the Guatemalan woman had not liked him when he had visited the house. The last thing he needed was the foreign housekeeper complaining about him to Eliza.

Better to wait for another chance.

 

So that's how it worked.

The security car followed the maid when she went out to pick up the kid.

That could be his window of opportunity. When they were all out, he could sneak into the tree house with his gear and wait.

It was a long time between noon and night. And what if the security guys checked out the tree house every time they came back? Meat hid in the bushes and waited for the cars to return. The maid took the kid in the house and the security guys sat out front and ate their lunch in the car. Every twenty minutes or so, one of the men got out of the
car and walked around the property, coming close but never discovering Meat. At four o'clock a new pair came to relieve them.

Meat waited another hour, knowing the owner would be ticked off that he was late for work. He was going to be more ticked off when Meat told him he was taking Friday night off. No matter how much the boss moaned, Meat was determined not to work, because in the five hours that Meat had hidden in the bushes behind Eliza's home, no one had ever climbed up to check the tree house.

“Don't ask me why I did it, Doris. I just did.”

“Feeling sorry for a guy is no reason to ask him to dinner at your home, especially with all you've got going on right now.”

Doris was absolutely right, but when Samuel had called and asked if they could get together again, Eliza had blurted out all that had been happening. He had shown so much concern that she was genuinely touched. And though she hated to admit it to herself, she was relieved as well. Eliza knew it was that “man as protector” thing that was instilled in women as they grew up. She didn't care, though. At this point she liked the idea of a man in the house on Friday night.

She hadn't told KayKay and Poppie about the threat to Janie, knowing they would be wild with worry and would insist on coming out to stay with them again. What if Paul had a heart attack or something from the stress of it all? It wasn't fair to keep depending on them so.

“What's Janie going to think about a new man coming to the house?” Doris asked as she outlined Eliza's lips.

“I hope she'll be fine with it I'm bribing her by telling
her that if she is on her best behavior, she can come with me to the Bronx Zoo on Saturday.”

Doris rolled her eyes and Eliza laughed for the first time in days.

“Whatever works, honey, whatever works.”

 

The whole time he was in Israel, Mack thought about calling Eliza. He never got around to it. He could blame it on being too busy, or too preoccupied with the developing events he had been assigned to cover. But he knew in his heart he was simply a coward. Why was he able to suit up in a flak jacket each day and drive into warring territories, yet unable to pick up the telephone and try to work things out between them?

She hadn't responded to the long letter he had written her, begging for forgiveness. But he knew Eliza had been seeing his face, at least, as he reported from the Middle East.

As each day passed, the situation just got worse and worse as their estrangement grew. Now, safely back in London, lying on his back in his hotel, Mack realized that it might be too late ever to put things back together again. The newspaper clipping lay on the bed beside him.

She was seeing someone else.

Why shouldn't she? He had cheated on her—all bets were off. He wasn't there for her, now, when she needed him. Eliza didn't know that he had been calling Joe Connelly on a regular basis for updates on the threats. He'd asked Joe not to tell her.

If he had any guts at all he would march into Marcy's office in the morning and tell her that he needed to fly back to the States. He could get on a plane and be in New York tomorrow night.

Mack picked up the newspaper clipping and stared at it again. The guy looked decent enough. Maybe this man would treat Eliza better than he had. She deserved that.

The night was chilly and Meat was glad that he had been smart enough to bring his down ski jacket and gloves with him. His knapsack held a couple of bologna-and-cheese sandwiches on hard rolls, a thermos of coffee and several cans of beer. He could pee in the empty beer cans when nature called.

The house was ablaze with lights and, from his perch in the tree, Meat had a front-row seat on the action inside. It was like looking at a giant dollhouse and being able to see what was going on in every room at one time.

First there was all the chitchat in the kitchen, as Eliza tried to play the happy homemaker, pouring glasses of wine and tossing the salad. The guy with her looked like a doofus, the type who would have a closetful of those dumb preppie sweaters.

As far as Meat could tell, this wasn't the guy he had seen Eliza with in
People
magazine over the summer. He had made a point, after seeing that magazine picture, of watching the news for Mack McBride. He wanted to see what Eliza saw in him. Meat had noticed that McBride had been reporting from the Middle East lately. Nope. The guy in there with her tonight wasn't McBride.

What kind of mother was she? Going from one guy to the next and bringing him home when there was a little kid in the house?
Slut.

The saccharine scene of the three of them gathered around the dining-room table made Meat nauseous. The guy was sucking up to the little girl, big time. Turning to talk to her and listening to her and laughing at the things she said. But the worst was yet to come.

Eliza and the child left the room and the guy sat for a while sipping his wine at the table. A light behind a small window upstairs clicked on and Meat could see yellow tiles on the walls. He saw Eliza's mouth moving as her head tilted downward. The little kid was probably brushing her teeth or something.

Meanwhile the guy rose from the table downstairs, went into the kitchen and poured himself another drink. He looked out the window and then opened the back door and walked out to the pool. In the darkness of the yard, Meat couldn't see much, but he thought the man knelt down and swished his hand in the water.
Strange duck.

The bathroom light clicked off, and a few minutes after that, another light went off upstairs. The kid must be in bed now. Moments later, Eliza reappeared in the kitchen, stuck her head into the dining room and then turned around and went back into the kitchen where she realized the back door was open.

Meat heard her call out, “Samuel?”

“I'm out here, Eliza, admiring your pool.”

“Here, let me switch the lights on out there.”

The backyard was suddenly flooded with light, and Meat crouched lower in the tree house. He needn't have bothered. They weren't paying any attention to him.

“I've got to get the pool company over to cover this up,” said Eliza as she walked out with her arms wrapped across her chest against the night chill. When she got to the pool, the guy put his arm around her. They talked in hushed voices and Meat couldn't hear what they were saying.

But his eyes saw it all. Meat watched as the man leaned
over and kissed Eliza, and the rage within him grew as Eliza wrapped her arms around the man's neck and kissed him back.

Tramp.
It didn't matter that the man didn't stay the night.

The dinner guest left a little after eleven. Half an hour later, the upstairs lights flicked off. Just after midnight, as the security guards were changing shifts out front, Meat quietly climbed down from the tree house.

He stole along the edge of the bush-lined property and through the backyards of three neighboring homes that led to the street that circled the pond. His rubber-soled shoes padded silently across the macadam toward his car.

There was a ticket on the window.

Damn!

“All right, come. You can hang out with the other elephants.”

The moment the words spewed from his mouth, Keith knew he had crossed the Rubicon. Even if their marriage survived, Cindy would never, ever, let him forget what he had just said to her in exasperation.

The stunned expression on his wife's puffy face quickly dissolved to hurt.

Here come the tears.

“Damn it, Cindy. I'm sorry. But you push and push.”

“I just wanted to spend the day with my husband. What am I supposed to do, hang around this apartment by myself all day?” she sobbed.

Keith looked at her bloated ankles peeking from beneath the bathrobe stretched tightly around her protruding belly. Her once-lustrous blonde hair was limp and dull. Her skin was blotchy and there were dark circles under eyes from lack of sleep. Keith felt sorry for Cindy, yet at the same time he was repelled. He was embarrassed at the thought of bringing her along to the zoo.

He thought of how uncomfortable it would be for both him and Eliza. His wife standing there in the advanced
stages of pregnancy, while both of them knew he had made that pass. There was no way he wanted Cindy to come along on this shoot.

“Look, Cindy. This isn't going to take all day. I'll be back by mid-afternoon. We'll do something together when I get home. I promise.”

But Cindy's initial hurt had progressed to the next stage.

“Don't bother,” she said angrily. Cindy lumbered into the bedroom and slammed the door.

Meat's eyes were glazed from a night of fitful napping in his car. He had driven from his woodside spot into the HoHoKus business district and pulled into a gas station. There were several cars parked at the side of the station. His Escort slid in next to them. Just another car, waiting to be serviced. There he stayed until the morning light.