Speak Now
Speak Now
Copyright © 2004 by Margaret Dumas
First U.S. Edition 2004
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2004106082
ISBN: 1-59058-121-0 Hardcover
ISBN: 9781615950492 epub
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in, or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.
Poisoned Pen Press
6962 E. First Ave., Ste. 103
Scottsdale, AZ 85251
For Mickey
Contents
This book couldn’t have been written without the love and support of my family and friends—especially my parents, Dolores and Keith Dumas. Thank you for everything.
Thanks to the fabulous people at the Book Passage Mystery Writers Conference; who introduced me to a whole new world, and Penny Warner—the most generous person alive—who introduced me to just about everyone in it. Thanks to the lovely people of the CWA, especially Kay Mitchell.
Thanks to Mame Hunt for her invaluable information about the world of non-profit theatre, and to Dave Oberhoffer of the SFPD for answering all my police questions. Commander John Dumas, USN, and Commander Richard Dumas, USN (Ret.), gave me no help whatsoever. Anything I got wrong about the theatre, police procedure, the Navy, or meteorology is entirely my own fault.
Many, many thanks to everyone who suffered through the early and not-so-early drafts: Denise Lee, Robert Hall, Erick Vera, Christine Dorffi, Lilah Koski, Colleen Casey, Carole Dumas, and Rosanne Annoni.
I’m hugely grateful to Barbara Peters, Robert Rosenwald, and the whole gang at Poisoned Pen Press, and to Ann Parker and Claire Johnson for leading me to them.
Finally, inexpressible thanks to Denise Lee and Rosanne Annoni, who held my hands as I jumped off the cliff, and kept reminding me I could choose to fall up.
Okay, here’s the stereotype: A woman will date a serial killer because he has cute eyes and she’s the only one in the world who truly understands him. A man will dump a supermodel who holds a Ph.D. in physics because she gets a hangnail.
Right. Well it’s safe to say I’ve never been the kind of girl who fits that profile. In fact, there are more than a few men who might say I start looking for the exit signs on about the third date. And it’s true I once broke up with a senior partner at Goldman Sachs because he used the word “surreptitiously” when he meant “vicariously”—and this man had won a George Clooney look-alike contest.
It’s not that I haven’t wanted a relationship, really. It’s just that I seem to have looked for any excuse not to be in one. I mean, why bother? The whole concept of needing someone to take care of me has always rubbed me the wrong way. I have friends for all my emotional needs, and enough money to meet the financial needs of a small country. As for sex—well, just being in a relationship isn’t any guarantee, is it?
So I’ve been called commitment-phobic. Okay, I’ve been called worse. My friends have concluded that I’m the most romantically-challenged woman in the Western Hemisphere. Which was going to make it a little awkward to explain how I came to be sitting in the first-class compartment of the British Airways flight from London to San Francisco beside my new husband.
My very new husband. I checked my watch and realized we’d passed the forty-eight-hour point. I think they say the first two days are the hardest. I looked over at Jack’s sleeping profile. He didn’t seem to be suffering. Neither was I.
I’d known him six weeks if you count the humiliating incident at the Victoria and Albert museum. He’d been living in London and working as a liaison to the Royal Navy while waiting for his discharge papers from the U.S. Navy. He was thirty-eight and a Commander, which I gathered was a fairly impressive rank. I think James Bond was a Commander.
I’d been in London for the theater. I’d spent the past year working as an intern for one of the oldest true repertory companies working in the English language. Admittedly, at thirty-four I was a little over the hill to be an intern, and as I ran my own non-profit rep company in San Francisco, it hadn’t exactly been an upward career move. But what I’d learned had been priceless. And, of course, if I hadn’t done it I’d never have met the man sleeping in Seat 4A.
Jack was a meteorologist. He looked at weather maps and computer screens and told the fleet when they’d run into fog and things. I’d yawned when he’d first explained this to me. Mistake. He’d shown up the next day with that movie where the fishing boat gets lost in the huge storm.
“It’s about weather,” he’d said, his eyes flashing.
I’d watched it and thought it was more about the noble futility of man’s struggle against nature. But then I tend to be dramatic. And anyway, I hadn’t been interested in the movie. I had been interested in the man with the flashing eyes. Jack Fairfax.
Now, stretched out in the comfortable airline seat, I studied Jack, willing him to wake up. Tall and lean, with a jawline sharp enough to cut diamonds, he was chiseled without being all muscles. To me he looked like Gregory Peck in his prime.
Roman Holiday
Gregory Peck. It would be nice if I could say I looked like Audrey Hepburn, but I’m not delusional.
Actually, I’m more the Isabella Rossellini type. Curvy. Earthy. Dark-eyed and full-lipped. Unless you catch me on a bad day, in which case I’m fifteen pounds overweight and in need of a brow wax. It’s all in the attitude.
One dark curl had flopped onto Jack’s forehead, making him appear unexpectedly vulnerable, a look I couldn’t imagine on him when awake. There was something powerful and self-contained about him. He was, among other things, the most secure person I’d ever met.
He’d need that when we got to San Francisco. I could predict fairly well how my friends and family would react to my marrying a man I’d known for only six weeks. My uncle Harry, who had taken over-protectiveness to an extreme ever since becoming my guardian twenty years ago, would assemble a team of private investigators to turn over every rock they could find in hopes of something filthy crawling out of Jack’s background. That would be if he liked Jack.
My friends, on the other hand, would be surprised but supportive. Then they’d start placing bets on how long it would last.
The flight attendant noticed I was awake and sprang into action. “Good afternoon, Mrs. Fairfax.” Mrs. Fairfax. After a lifetime of being Charley Van Leeuwen I hadn’t actually decided to change my name yet. “Would you care for a drink? Tea? A biscuit?” She was English, and had that desperately concerned way of looking at you with wide eyes until you let her do something for you.
“Tea would be great,” I said, trying and failing to return my seat to an upright position. I would miss English tea. San Francisco is a coffee town.
I turned on my side to face Jack. I knew the questions every one would ask. Why him? Why now? Why so fast? Why marry at all? And I knew the only way I’d be able to answer them would be to point to Exhibit A, the man in question. I considered rehearsing some sort of secretive smile that would keep people guessing.
Jack interrupted my train of thought. “Charley, you know I can’t sleep with you gazing at me adoringly.” He smiled, his eyes still closed. “Stop it right now or I’ll have to do something about it.”
“Oh good, you’re awake!” I leaned over and wrapped my arm around his.
“Apparently,” he said, finally opening his eyes.
“Did you miss me?”
“While I was sleeping?” He cleared his throat. “No, Pumpkin, I’ve trained myself to dream of you so even when I’m sleeping you’re always there.” He looked at me in total seriousness.
I grinned. “I do appreciate a good line of bullshit.” And I kissed him.
“Why else would you have married me? Where are we?” He glanced at the TV monitor that showed a little cartoon airplane following a dotted line all the way to San Francisco, just like in the Indiana Jones movies. Jack yawned and pulled me closer. “How long until we land?”
“A while yet.” I yawned too. “Don’t worry, tea’s on the way.”
But by the time the flight attendant came back we must have fallen asleep, because the next thing I knew she was shaking me gently and asking us to prepare for landing. We were home.
***
I had sold my North Beach flat when I’d moved to London, so Jack and I were planning on staying at a hotel until we found someplace together. I wasn’t even sure what hotel. I had left everything up to my friend Eileen. She’d even arranged for the car that picked us up.
“Where are we going?” I asked the driver.
“The Mark Hopkins, ma’am.”
Jack looked at me. “Good choice for a honeymoon?”
It hadn’t occurred to me that this was our honeymoon. I had just thought of it as going home. “It’s great,” I said. “Although Eileen wouldn’t have known to book the honeymoon suite.”
“You really didn’t tell her?” Jack asked, pulling me across the seat towards him.
“Not her. Not anyone.” I made the universal locking-my-lips-and-throwing-away-the-key gesture.
“Won’t your friends be mad?”
“Probably. Probably furious.” I thought about it. “Eileen will be upset because of the spontaneity. Here was a fabulous opportunity for her to plan something gigantic and I didn’t let her.”
Eileen lived to organize things. She was a hugely successful financial manager, and had once confessed—after several tequilas—that her secret hobby was alphabetizing.
“What about your other friends?” Jack hadn’t asked much about my San Francisco friends before. He’d been kept pretty busy trying to sort out who was who in the London set.
“Brenda will be…worried, I think, more than upset. She made me promise once that I’d never get serious about a man until she’d done a Tarot card reading on him.” Jack raised his eyebrows. “She’s not a flake,” I rushed to protest. “She’s just…she went to Berkeley, and then she taught at U.C. Santa Cruz, and…she’s very open to alternative ways of thinking.”
“She sounds fascinating,” he said dryly.
I punched his arm. “Don’t mock her. She’s one of my best friends.”
Jack held up his hands. “I’m prepared to be nuts about her.”
“You’d better be.” I stroked his jacket sleeve where I’d punched him. “Did I hurt you?”
He grinned. “I’m tougher than you think.”
I resumed counting off my friends. “Then there’s the gang from the theater, Simon and Chip and Paris and Martha…I can’t wait for you to meet everyone.” I meant it. I wanted to show him off and I wanted him to love all my friends. The gang from the Rep—the repertory theater that I’d established and run before I’d gone to London—could be a little rowdy, and more than a little catty, but I was sure Jack could hold his own.
We turned up Nob Hill toward the hotel. “What about your family?”
He’d asked about my family before, and I’d always successfully dodged the questions. I wasn’t about to break that streak now. “Look, there’s the hotel!” I pointed. “We’re here!” I kissed him quickly to stop him from replying. “God, I can’t wait to get into a hot bath!”
***
There are newer hotels in San Francisco, and swankier hotels. But the Mark Hopkins has the distinction of being the place where Brenda, Eileen, and I had wound up after ditching our dates during a particularly hideous high school dance. We’d produced fake IDs and gotten first silly and then deadly serious over several bottles of mediocre champagne. Sixteen years had passed since then, but we still had a tradition of returning to the Mark for celebrations.
The suite was reserved in my name. After we registered it took a swarm of bellmen led by an intrepid concierge to escort us to our room.
As soon as we stepped through the door Jack summed up the place. “It looks like a duke’s drawing room.”
At the far end was an elaborate green marble fireplace with an overstuffed couch and two comfy chairs in front of it. Bookshelves lined either side of the mantle. There was a huge armoire which I assumed would discreetly contain a huge television. A round table big enough to seat six was off to the side, buried under a pile of gift baskets, champagne bottles, and flowers. Apparently word of my return had gotten out.
The most spectacular thing about the room was the view. I pulled Jack over to the window and swept my arm out theatrically. A classic, fog-free, pink and orange evening on the bay. Alcatraz island formed a black silhouette on the purple water. The buildings spilling down the hills to the bay were blushing with embarrassment at being so well-lit. “There it is. Isn’t it gorgeous?”
He looked from the window to me and back out the window again. His mouth twitched with a suppressed smile. “I suppose it’ll do.”
A polite cough interrupted us. We turned to find the bellmen gone and the concierge waiting to give us the grand tour. There were two bedrooms, one on either side of the main room. I’d told Eileen I was bringing a friend from London, and apparently she had assumed it was a separate-bedroom sort of friend, or at least she’d wanted to give me the option.
“Never mind,” I told the concierge. “I’m sure we can find everything. Right now all I want is a long hot bath.”
Jack tipped the man and closed the door behind him. Then he caught my arm and pulled me towards him. “Are you sure all you want is a bath?”
Tempting. I wrestled with my options as Jack flicked his tongue down my neck. But didn’t someone once say marriage was about compromise? “I know,” I said, backing away slowly and hooking my finger in his belt. “How about we both take a bath?”
Jack grinned and started unbuttoning. “I knew it wasn’t a mistake to marry a smart woman.”
I turned and went through the bedroom. It had a massive bed, a walk-in closet, and assorted chaises, benches, and chairs. None of which interested me at the moment.
“How do you feel about bubbles?” I asked, flipping the bathroom switch.
The light was bright on the white tile floor and shining fixtures. At first I blinked, not really understanding what I was looking at.
And then I screamed.
***
Jack pulled me away from the door, but I couldn’t take my eyes off it. Off her.
She was about my age, with dark curls half-hiding her face. She was in the bathtub, her left arm hanging over the side. She was naked. She wasn’t moving.
“Jack, is she—”
“Don’t look. And don’t go in there.” He put his arm around me as I took a step towards her.
“Jack, her eyes are open. She might—” I struggled to break his hold on me. There had to be something I could do.
He pulled back. “Charley—” he spun me around to face him. “She’s dead.”
I realized I was holding my hands over my mouth. Part of my mind registered this as a hopelessly theatrical gesture, while the other part knew it was necessary to keep from screaming again. Jack moved me away from the door.
“Just breathe,” he said, walking me slowly back to the living room.
He called the police and the hotel manager. The manager, a man with the look of a former high-school jock and an attitude that implied we must have been mistaken about a naked dead woman in our room, was there in roughly seventeen seconds. He made I’m-sure-this-is-just-a-misunderstanding noises until he was joined by the head of hotel security. Then he said “In there?” and gestured in the direction of the bathroom. Jack nodded grimly.
When they came back, the manager had lost his reassuring look. The security man was the first to speak. “You’ve called 911?”
“Yes,” Jack said.
The man nodded, then asked the question that would be repeated at least a hundred times in the next several hours. “Who is she?”
***
The police came. There seemed to be dozens of them, but only a few actually went into the bathroom. “They must be the crime scene people,” I said to Jack, having watched enough television to figure that much out. We’d been waiting and watching and answering the same questions for long enough that the immediate horror of what we’d seen was fading. I was trying to focus on the activities of the police, hoping if I concentrated hard enough I’d stop seeing the image of that pale white skin in clear still water.
