Puppet (23 page)

“When did it stop being enough?”

“When he started talking about having babies.”

“Babies don’t appeal to you?”

“Hell, no.
I
wanted to be his baby. Why else does a woman marry a man twenty-five years her senior?” She pauses, looks around the crowded room, wonders if any of the other women present is talking to her first husband about her second. “Everything was fine in the beginning, as things usually are. He put me through law school, bought me anything my little heart desired, took me everywhere I wanted to go. Didn’t give me a hard time. Showed me off. I liked that. But then suddenly he started talking about how now that I was finished school, maybe we should be thinking about starting a family, and I’m going, whoa, hold on a minute here. Who said anything about starting a family? ‘I don’t know nothing about birthing babies,’ I kept joking. But it turned out he was deadly serious. He wanted kids. I didn’t. I believe he said something about it being time to resolve my ‘issues’ with my mother, that until I was able to do that, I’d be stuck in this kind of prolonged adolescence. I countered with a terribly mature ‘Fuck you, Charlie Brown.’ … Oh, hell. It doesn’t really matter what either of us said at that point. The marriage was over.”

“And yet you kept his name,” Ben observes.

“Whose name was I going to use?” Amanda frowns. “I’d never been very happy as Amanda Price. And I couldn’t very well go back to being Amanda Myers, now could I?” She finishes her soup, signals the waiter for a refill of her coffee. “Besides, Sean was a good man. It wasn’t his fault I had ‘issues.’ ” She lifts her freshly filled coffee cup to her lips, blows at the rising steam. “So what
about you and Miss Jennifer? Think there’s a baby carriage lurking in your future?”

Ben shrugs. “Anything’s possible, I guess.”

Wrong answer, Amanda thinks, stabbing at the butter with her knife, then smearing it across the top of a bun she grabs from the bread basket. “Ever come up against her in court?”

“It’s happened a few times.”

“Who wins?”

“I think the record’s tied.”

“That means she’s, what, two up on you?”

“Three.” They laugh. “This is nice,” he says.

“Yes, it is.”

“It doesn’t mean I’m still not pissed at you for going off half-cocked last night.”

Amanda smiles, restrains herself from adding,
So to speak
, although she can tell by the glint in his eyes, he’s thinking the same thing. “You think I might be onto something?”

“Like what?”

“I wish I knew.” Again they laugh, something Amanda notices gets easier each time it happens. “Maybe if we do a recap …”

Ben puts down his soupspoon, gives her his full attention.

“Okay, so last week, my mother meets her friend, Corinne Nash, for tea in the lobby of the Four Seasons. She sees John Mallins and his family returning to the hotel, and according to Corinne, she looks like she’s seen a ghost. So, John Mallins is obviously someone my mother thinks she recognizes. Okay so far?”

Ben nods.

“The next day, she returns to the hotel, waits for John Mallins to show up, and pumps him full of bullets. So John Mallins is not only someone she recognizes but someone she hates enough to kill.” Amanda pauses, trying to corral her thoughts, put them in some form of cohesive order. “Now, according to
Hayley
Mallins, her husband was here to settle his mother’s estate. But the death notices in the local papers show nobody by the name of Mallins having died recently, which lends credence to
Rachel
Mallins’s theory that the man calling himself John Mallins is really an impostor, a man she knew only as ‘Turk,’ who may, or may not, have murdered her brother, the
real
John Mallins, twenty-five years ago, in order to steal his identity. Still with me?”

“Hanging by a thread,” Ben admits. “But Hayley Mallins told you her husband was brought to England as a child by his father after his parents divorced.”

“That may be what he told her.”

“Or it may be the truth.”

Amanda nods. “Which would mean that my mother either shot the wrong man or that she’s as crazy as everyone seems to think.”

“What do you think?”

“I think we need to find out who this man calling himself Turk really was.”

A
MANDA
accompanies Ben back to court after their lunch, watches him succeed in having the case dismissed on a technicality, and derives more pleasure than she probably should from the pout of dismay that renders the crown attorney’s face even less attractive than it already is. “Way to go, Mr. Myers,” Amanda says, watching both Selena and her mother throw their arms around Ben’s neck in a congratulatory hug, and fighting the urge to do the same.

“Piece of cake.”

Amanda smiles, finding his arrogance even more alarmingly attractive than she had a decade earlier. “So what now?”

“Hopefully she manages to stay out of trouble.”

“I meant, with us?” A nervous laugh, an unnecessary clearing of the throat. “I meant, with our plans for the rest of the afternoon.”

“Well, I don’t know about your plans, but I have to get back to the office.” Ben thrusts a fistful of papers into his briefcase and starts walking toward the escalator. His pace is brisk and Amanda struggles to catch up.

“What about my mother?”

“What about her?”

“I thought we were going to see her.”

“Can’t today.”

“But aren’t we due in court tomorrow?”

“There’ll be plenty of time to talk to her in the morning.” They ride in silence down the escalator. Amanda is about to ask why the rush to get back to the office all of a sudden, when Ben points toward the corridor on his left. “Room 102. Try to get here by eight forty-five, if you can.”

“Wait!” Amanda runs to catch up with him as he steps off the escalator and marches toward the side exit. A splash of cold air whips against her cheek as he pushes open the door, causing her to cry out with equal measures of shock and pain.

Ben stops. “You all right?”

“Do you think you could do something about the weather?”

“What’s the matter—you don’t like minus ten degrees?”

“Why do you think I moved to Florida?”

“I can’t answer that,” he says simply. “Can you?”

Amanda ignores both the question and its implication. “I was thinking I should probably stay in town a few more days.”

“I think that’s probably a good idea,” he concurs, his voice as crisp as the outside air. His lawyer’s voice, she thinks, the one he uses to talk to clients.

“Look, how about dinner tonight?” She tries to make the invitation sound casual and spur-of-the-moment and is grateful her teeth are chattering loud enough to hide the tremble in her voice.

“Can’t tonight.” He offers no further explanation as he strides south along University Avenue.

“Ben, we really need to talk about my mother,” Amanda says quickly, as if her mother is the reason for the dinner invitation.

“What’s to talk about?”

Amanda grabs Ben’s arm, forces him to a stop at the corner of University and Queen. “You’re not really going to let her plead guilty tomorrow, are you?”

“Of course not.”

“How are you going to stop her?”

“It’s a bail hearing, Amanda. She doesn’t get the opportunity to enter a plea until Friday.”

Amanda feels something akin to relief, then puzzlement as to why. “Okay. Well, at least that buys us a little time.”

“You might think of buying something else if you’re planning on sticking around,” he says.

“What’s that?”

“A new coat.” He smiles, then hurries across the street before the light changes, waving good-bye over his shoulder without looking back.

Amanda spends the next several hours navigating the stores in the Eaton Center, a huge, indoor, three-story shopping mall and office tower located in the heart of downtown Toronto. She remembers when Eaton’s was the number one store in the country, but that all changed sometime in her absence, and the once venerable department store chain went into receivership and was taken over by its chief rival. Can’t leave you alone for a minute, she thinks, spotting a black parka
in the window of a small shop on the main level and going inside.

“Can I help you?” a young woman, whose name tag identifies her as Monica, asks before Amanda even has a chance to browse. Monica has frizzy blond curls and a bare midriff that protrudes over a pair of low-slung designer jeans.

“Aren’t you cold?” Amanda can’t help but ask. Even though the girl can’t be more than five years her junior, Amanda is starting to feel as if she belongs to another generation entirely. When did I start to feel so old? she wonders.

Monica shakes her head, frizzy blond ringlets bouncing across her forehead and into close-set, gray-blue eyes. “Gets pretty hot in here. You looking for anything in particular?”

“That coat in the window …”

“The black parka?”

Amanda nods as the salesgirl leads her through the crowded racks of merchandise to the fleece-lined parkas at the rear of the store. She quickly removes her coat and drops it to the floor, allowing Monica to help her into one of the black parkas, then appraising herself in the full-length mirror against the back wall.

“Have you considered red?” Monica asks.

“Red?”

“The black’s nice and everything—don’t get me wrong, it looks great on you—but the red is fabulous. You should try it.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Trust me,” Monica says, and Amanda smiles. Since when have frizzy blond ringlets and a pair of low-slung
jeans ever served as a shortcut to trust? However, in the next instant, she is willingly exchanging the black parka for the red one. “I knew it,” Monica says. “You look gorgeous. The red really suits you.”

Amanda studies herself in the mirror, surprisingly pleased with what she sees. Gone is the dejected little waif, waving after her former husband on a cold and windy street corner. Here instead is a true scarlet woman, the famed lady in red. “I’ll take it.”

“Great.” Monica claps her hands together in girlish enthusiasm. “Will there be anything else?”

“I don’t know. You have any ideas?”

“There’s this to-die-for purple sweater.”

“Purple?”

“Trust me,” Monica says.

Half an hour later, Amanda watches in bemused wonderment as the girl rings up her various purchases, thinking, What am I going to do with all these winter clothes in Florida?

“Let’s see. One purple mohair sweater, one blue cashmere turtleneck, a pair of navy pants, some black leather gloves, and of course, one fabulous red parka. How would you like to pay for these things?”

Amanda pulls out her credit card, hands it to Monica. “Is it all right if I wear the coat now?”

“It’s your coat,” Monica says with a smile that reveals two rows of perfect teeth. “Here. Just let me get the tags off.” She expertly removes the various tags, then slides the shiny red parka across the counter. “I can put your old coat in a bag for you, if you’d like.”

“No, that’s all right. Keep it.”

“What?”

“Give it to someone who needs it.”

“You’re sure?”

“Positive.”

“Well, that’s very nice of you … Amanda,” she says, reading the name on the credit card and ringing up the sale. “You bought some wonderful things. Wear them well.”

“Thank you.” Amanda slides her arms into her new coat and wraps it around her torso, luxuriating in its comforting warmth. Who needs Ben Myers? she is thinking as she pulls the parka’s fleece-lined hood up over her head and walks from the store.

“Amanda?” the salesgirl calls after her. “Excuse me, Ms. Travis?”

Amanda stops and turns around, hugging the coat tighter to her chest, in case Monica tries to pry it from her.
There’s been a mistake
, she hears the salesgirl apologizing.
I’m afraid this coat has already been sold. You’ll have to give it back.

“You wouldn’t want to forget this,” Monica is saying, holding out her hand. Amanda sees a bankbook and a small key resting in the salesgirl’s open palm. “Looks like a key to a safety-deposit box.”

“My God.” Amanda realizes she’d forgotten all about the key and the passbook she took from the shoe box in her mother’s closet.

“Good thing I checked the pockets.”

“Good thing,” Amanda repeats.

“You’re sure about leaving the coat?”

“Positive.”

“Okay. Thanks again.”

“Thank
you.”

“Have a good day.”

I don’t know about
good
, Amanda is thinking as she leaves the store. But the day just got a lot more interesting.

It is almost four o’clock when Amanda arrives at the address on the bank’s passbook, a thirty-five-minute drive from downtown. “Where are we?” she asks the driver, noting that the meter reads $14.75, $7 more than the balance on her mother’s account. She pulls a $20 bill from her purse and dangles it over the front seat. This trip is proving to be expensive.

“North York,” the man replies in a heavy Eastern European accent.

Why would her mother have chosen a bank all the way up here, when there are TD banks all over the city?

“Should hurry,” the man advises. “Bank close in two minutes.”

Shit, Amanda thinks, watching several people exit the establishment, wondering if they’ll even let her in. “Keep the change,” she tells the cabbie, pulling open the car door and making a beeline for the bank’s entrance, seeing a bank employee walking toward her with a heavy set of keys, about to lock up for the day.

“I won’t be long,” she tells the skinny young woman whose helmet of curly black hair adds at least three inches to her height.

“Take your time,” the woman drawls in a soft Jamaican lilt, locking the front door after her.

Amanda takes a quick look around the bank’s interior, trying to plot her next move. She is relieved to see that the bank is relatively large and modern, and that half a dozen other customers are still milling about. Perhaps the fact it’s closing time will work to her advantage. The tellers are
preoccupied with closing up and balancing. They are therefore less likely to pay too close attention to a stranger in their midst, to look too carefully at the signature she offers to gain entry to the safety-deposit box in the vault at the rear of the bank. Not that she couldn’t fool them. Years of forging her mother’s signature to high school report cards has made her something of an expert.