Speak Now (12 page)
I should have felt a lot worse.
But the same little bubble of excitement I’d felt that morning was percolating again. And as I turned the facts over, one thing became increasingly clear.
“Jack,” I said. “This isn’t over.”
He kept his eyes on the road. “No.”
“Tom Nelson, or whoever he is, is going to strike again.”
“Strike?” Jack echoed.
“So we have to do the sensible thing.”
“Good…”
“And the only sensible thing is to find him before he finds us.”
“Charley!” Jack slammed on the brakes and pulled over to the side of the road. “Don’t even think about it! Have you forgotten that lump on your head and this hole in my shoulder? This isn’t a game!”
I’d never seen him angry before. God, he was sexy. “Of course, Jack,” I agreed. “Whatever you say.”
He pulled back onto the road after muttering a few things I didn’t quite catch, which was probably just as well. I looked out at the ocean and tried to come up with a question he might actually answer. Which wouldn’t be easy. An hour of demands to know more about the former colleague he’d put in prison had gotten me exactly nowhere.
I chewed my lip for a while and went over the events of the last thirty-six hours. “Jack.” I decided to tug on a loose thread. “Why did you let Gordon practically perform surgery on you? I mean, he’s Harry’s cook but we all just meekly accepted that he knew what he was doing.”
Jack waited a few beats before answering, “Didn’t I mention I knew Gordon before?”
“Let’s not get into the whole list of things you didn’t mention,” I suggested. “How do you know him?” He didn’t reply. “Jack!”
“All right, all right, calm down.” He glanced over at me. “Gordon and Mike left the Navy at the same time I did, around four months ago. Mike went to Palo Alto to get his company started, and Gordon had plans to go to San Francisco and open a restaurant, but he did some traveling first. I ran into him in London about two weeks after I met you.” He shot me a quick glance. “You’d told me where you were from, and you’d mentioned Harry, but you always avoided any questions about your family.”
“Can you blame me?” I asked. Then it hit me. “You sent Gordon to spy on my family?”
Jack had the decency to look embarrassed. “Well, Pumpkin, you did seem too good to be true—I mean, can’t you see why I was a little suspicious?”
“Oh my God!” I stared at him. “You did! You sent Gordon to spy on my family!”
“Just to verify what you’d told me—nothing more. But then when Gordon met Harry, and it turned out Harry was looking for a cook…” Jack looked over again to see how I was taking it.
Not well. “Don’t tell me—he decided to stay and spy some more?”
“No,” Jack said. “He decided to earn some money and maybe meet some other rich foodaholics through Harry. He still wants to open a restaurant.” Jack tried on a smile. “Really, that’s all.”
Okay, this was another big chunk of information I somehow had to process. My husband had checked me out when we were dating. The way Harry had always checked out men on my behalf. The way I had refused to have Jack checked out. In all my obsession about not letting Harry investigate Jack, it had never dawned on me that Jack might want to investigate Harry. That he might have planted someone in Harry’s house.
Normally I would have been outraged. But somewhere along this line of thought I started to giggle. Inappropriate, I know, but I couldn’t help myself.
“Do you mind letting me in on the joke?”
“One aspect of all of this is just priceless,” I told him. “I mean, all these years Harry’s been spying on me, and now we have a mole in his house!”
“Gordon’s not a mole,” Jack said quickly, looking faintly alarmed. “He’s just a cook. And we should be glad he’s there to keep an eye on them—I mean look out for them.”
“Sure,” I agreed, putting on a completely sober face. “Of course.”
“Charley,” he said warily. “You’re scaring me.”
My husband, the commando.
***
When we got back to the hotel I was feeling wired. Possibly because I’d slept too much the day before. Or possibly because I’d married James Bond.
“Jack,” I said as he was opening the door. “Do you mind if we go out again? Maybe call Simon or Eileen? I feel like talking to people.”
“Excellent,” said a crisp, polite voice from inside the room.
Jack and I both froze. The door swung open of its own will.
“Because I’d very much like to speak with you.” Inspector Yahata stood motionless in the center of the room. He was once again dressed immaculately, his suit a dark gray with a microscopic violet pinstripe. And once again he was looking at us with hyper-alert interest.
“Inspector,” Jack said, recovering almost instantly. “I’d ask you to come in, but…”
The detective displayed a fleeting down-turned smile. “I took the liberty of waiting for you here. I hope you don’t mind.”
“Do you have a warrant?” I surprised myself with the question.
Jack looked at me as we came in and closed the door. “I can’t imagine why the Inspector would need a warrant, Charley.”
Maybe that was because I hadn’t gotten around to telling him about Yahata’s little chat with me on Sunday afternoon.
“My intent is not to search the premises, Mrs. Fairfax,” the policeman said. “Simply to ask you a few questions.”
“Have you identified the murdered woman yet?” Jack asked.
Yahata produced his ubiquitous notebook. “My questions pertain to more recent events,” he said. “Events in Mill Valley in the early hours yesterday morning?” The look of mild enquiry did not extend to his eyes. There was nothing mild about them.
I sat down, since my legs threatened to go out from under me. How the hell did he know we were involved?
Jack sat next to me and gestured for the detective to make himself comfortable. “Yes, I was just about to call you.”
“I have no doubt,” Yahata said quietly.
“Why—” My voice cracked, so I had to try again. “Why would we know anything about something happening in Mill Valley?”
A flicker of impatience crossed the detective’s face. “Mrs. Fairfax, please don’t make this difficult. You were clearly in a state of some distress when we spoke on Sunday afternoon, and your cousin’s fingerprints were found in great quantity in one of the rooms where shots were fired less than eighteen hours later. During which eighteen hours your whereabouts were unaccounted for.” He ended the statement with an air of expectation.
Jack had flashed me a look of surprise at the mention of Yahata’s previous visit, but he answered the implied question smoothly. “We were there,” he said. “My wife’s cousin was kidnapped, and her uncle chose not to involve the police. I followed the criminal’s instructions to deliver the ransom.”
Yahata’s expression registered nothing. His eyes flicked over to me.
“I followed Jack.” I left it at that.
“I see.” Inspector Yahata stood. As he had on Sunday, he seemed to consider his words with infinite care before speaking. “Mrs. Fairfax, we seem to be experiencing something of a crime wave since your return.”
“You can’t think Charley is in involved in any of this.” Jack rose and faced the detective.
“No, Mr. Fairfax, I don’t.” Yahata locked eyes with Jack. “You, on the other hand…”
“Don’t be ridiculous!” Now it was my turn to stand. “Jack rescued Cece, and Brenda and me! He nearly got himself killed—” I caught the expression on Jack’s face and stopped myself from saying more. There was a charged silence.
Finally Yahata spoke, softly and with precision. “Mr. Fairfax, you intrigue me. When I try to find out more about you, I find the standard avenues of inquiry are inaccessible. Yet there are certain facts which suggest you are,” he paused, “a person of interest.” Again he met Jack’s eyes.
I didn’t want to hear any more of this. I’d had enough of half-truths and innuendo for the day, and I was sure Jack had as well. I spoke up. “What other fingerprints did you find?”
The detective gave me a frankly startled look. Which was very satisfying. “An excellent question,” he surprised me by answering. “The federal authorities have identified two sets, both belonging to known mercenaries.”
“Mercenaries?” I echoed. “What does that mean?”
The detective looked back to Jack as he answered. “It means a number of things. It means they’re probably all long gone by now. And it means they were hired by someone. The interesting question, then, is who hired them?”
“Good luck with that,” Jack said evenly.
***
That night I woke up at about three and saw Jack standing at the window, looking at the city. I propped my head on my elbow and watched him.
After a while he spoke. “You know I can see you.”
I smiled. “But do you know what I’m thinking?”
His lips twitched. “You’re afraid you pulled my stitches out.”
“I hate you.”
After a while I sat up. “Jack?”
“Hmm?”
“Do you think the woman in the bathtub was related to all of this?”
He cleared his throat. “Remember when you asked me not to mention it to Harry? You said he’d assume it was some sort of a message or warning.”
“You think it was? She was?” The thought of some innocent person being murdered just to send us a message made my stomach flip a few times.
Jack frowned. “We’ll know more once Yahata identifies her.” The detective had remained singularly uninformative on that point. Which was only fair—Jack had remained equally uninformative about his past professional associations with the person he believed to be behind Cece’s abduction.
“We should tell Harry about the murder.” He might go ballistic, but if there was a chance the same man who had kidnapped Cece had also killed someone, Harry should know.
“I thought so too. I already told him. While you were sleeping back at the house.”
I didn’t want to know what his reaction had been. I could add that to the increasingly long list of things I didn’t want to know.
“Jack, what are we going to do?”
He looked at me. “Well, for starters, I’m going to make sure that guy I told you about is still in prison.”
“Do you think he was Cece’s Tom?”
“No,” Jack said. “But Tom could have been working for him.”
“Jack, for the sake of convenience, what should we call this guy?”
He shrugged. “Dave?”
I wrinkled my nose. “That’s not much of a name for a villain.”
“What did you have in mind? Moriarty?”
“It would help if I knew something more about him…” I trailed off suggestively. “Like maybe what crime he’s in prison for?”
Jack looked at me briefly. “Treason.” He wiped a hand across his face. “Selling things—secrets, information—to the highest bidder. He made millions before we caught him. Who knows how many have died because of it.” He turned back to the window.
“Oh.” I’d actually gotten an answer from him. Not that I quite knew what to do with it. But a name for a traitor did suggest itself. “How about calling him Macbeth?”
“Great. Now that we’ve gotten that cleared up, there’s something I want you to have.” Jack reached into the nightstand drawer and pulled out a small object wrapped in a Burberry scarf.
When I unwrapped it, the metal was dull in the dim light. I looked at Jack. “A gun.”
“I’ll teach you how to use it,” he said. “I’m sorry if it makes you uncomfortable, but it’s for the best, Charley.”
Wordlessly, I got out of bed and went to the bag I’d brought from Harry’s. I reached in and pulled out the box he’d given me. I put it on the bed in front of Jack.
“Should I be worried that all the men in my life want to arm me?”
Kate Spade doesn’t make a holster. I asked. For some reason the salesgirl seemed to regard it as an odd question, but I’m thinking it might just be an untapped market opportunity. I settled for a black zippered makeup bag with a hot pink lining. The gun fit beautifully.
It hadn’t been hard to choose between the two guns. Harry had given me a Smith & Wesson .38, a revolver that held five rounds and was, he’d assured me, a favorite of policemen as a backup gun. Since I didn’t have a license for it, I didn’t think I should ask Inspector Yahata for an opinion.
The present from Jack was a Walther 9mm automatic that held a ten-round magazine. It was sleek and silver and deadly looking, and it won me over just on style points. It was also lighter and, according to a comparison of the two owner’s manuals, it should have less recoil than the .38. Besides, James Bond carried a Walther, a fact I pointed out to Jack.
“Great. Except he’s fictional,” he replied.
I managed to surprise Jack, which pleased me no end, when I told him I knew how to shoot. Harry had sent me to an elite self-defense camp between my junior and senior years of high school. I didn’t like guns then and I still don’t, but I’d gotten revenge on Harry by making donations in his name to every anti-gun cause I’d come across since, and now I had to admit I was glad of what I’d learned at Camp Readiness.
Jack took me to a firing range in South San Francisco. Even though it had been a while, I didn’t disgrace myself. Jack didn’t shoot. From what I’d observed, he didn’t really need much practice.
With just the shooting and the holster-shopping, the occasional dinner at Harry’s, and trying to make sure Jack didn’t pull his stitches out, we spent the rest of the week pretty uneventfully. Jack took calls from Mike out of my hearing, and I came up with an unimaginative series of excuses for not meeting with Eileen’s realtor, who called daily. I figured it was more believable to tell her that I had the stomach flu than to mention that hired thugs had kidnapped my cousin and shot my husband.
I didn’t have time for real estate if I was going to look for Macbeth.
***
It took me a while to figure out where to start. But I reasoned that Macbeth wouldn’t have had any cause to target me, my family, or my friends before I’d gotten involved with Jack. So I figured I should investigate anyone who’d shown up in our lives recently to see if they, like Cece’s Tom Nelson, could be an operative of the criminal. It’s possible Jack might have disagreed with this approach, so I chose not to discuss it with him.
The two people I thought warranted immediate attention were Eileen’s new client/love interest and the new director Simon had hired at the Rep. I figured I’d meet Brian, the director, later in the week during the auditions for
All About Me
, so I put him on the back burner and called Eileen.
Her assistant put me through immediately, and I wasn’t able to get out the word “Hello” before Eileen tore into me.
“Oh, now you call! Now that you don’t need any help getting kidnapped and rescued, now that you don’t need someone to get shot at with. Now you pick up the phone.” She paused for breath.
“Hi Leenie, how’ve you been?”
“Charley, I could just kill you.”
“Never mind, it’s been tried.”
Not funny. “Don’t you dare joke about this! You could have been killed! Brenda could have been killed! Jack nearly was killed!”
“I take it you’ve been talking to Brenda?” I asked.
“It’s a damn good thing someone calls me, since you don’t!”
“Eileen, sweetie,” I tried, “please don’t take it personally—”
“Why didn’t you call me?” she demanded.
“Well, I’ve been a little distracted lately…”
“I don’t mean now, I mean when you followed Jack! Why did you call Brenda instead of me? I was closer, I have a better car—”
“You would have said no,” I interrupted. “No way would you have gone along with it.”
“Exactly!” she said triumphantly. “Any sane person would have said no. How you managed to talk Brenda into it I’ll never know.”
“Did you know Brenda is really good at tailing people? Hey, remember that Stanford paleontologist she used to go out with?”
“Don’t think you can change the subject. I’m mad at you!”
“I’m getting that,” I said. “Leenie, I’m sorry. I did think about calling you that day, but I knew you’d talk me out of it, and I didn’t want to be talked out of it.”
“Brenda said she tried to talk you out of it.”
“Yeah, but she couldn’t. You might have.”
I heard her take a deep breath on the other end of the phone. “Don’t ever do that again,” she said.
“Never,” I agreed. After all, the same situation would probably never come up again. I put on a breezy voice. “So, what’s new with you?”
“You’re unbelievable,” Eileen said flatly.
“I know. You want to tell me about the new man in your life? Or do I have to call Brenda for the good stuff?”
Eileen sighed. “Whatever. It’s over.”
“Over? You never even admitted it had begun.”
“It was short and not at all sweet,” she said tersely. “Look, I’m late for a presentation. Can you meet me tonight? Get me drunk and I’ll tell you all the sordid details.”
“Absolutely. Where and when?”
“The Bubble Lounge at eight, okay?”
“I’m there.” I felt a pang of disloyalty to Jack, but it had been quite a while since I’d had an honest-to-goodness girl’s night out.
“See you then. And, Charley, are you going to call Brenda?”
“I was just about to.”
“Make her come along. Oh, and Charley?”
“Still here.”
“Why don’t you ask her about her new car?” She hung up.
***
Damn.
Brenda couldn’t afford a new car. As an untenured professor living in one of the most expensive areas in the country, she could barely afford to put gas in her old one. That was one of the reasons I intended to call her. I was going to try to talk her into letting me buy her a new car, since it was my fault she’d lost her beloved VW.
Brenda had never accepted a loan or an extravagant gift from me in all the time I’d known her, despite my doing everything short of forcing her on several occasions. But in this case, since I was to blame for the loss, I was sure she’d allow me to make it right. Apparently someone else had made her the offer first.
Harry, of course.
Damn.
***
Brenda was staying at the Hillsborough house, which now resembled an armed compound. Gordon answered the phone on the second ring. After asking me several questions about the state of Jack’s bullet wound, he went off to find Brenda.
“Hello?” she said, breathlessly, a few minutes later. “Charley! I was going to call you right after my swim!”
“What’s new?” I asked innocently.
“I’m just having the best time here,” she told me. “It’s like being at a luxury resort.”
“Harry does appreciate the creature comforts.”
“And he’s such a nice host. I feel a little guilty because of why I’m here and everything, but Cece seems to be doing really well, and, you know, sometimes I forget that there’s a sociopath out there with my house keys and just…you know? And Gordon is an amazing cook.”
“So I guess you found someone else to handle your classes?”
“Well, I’m only doing the one seminar until August, when fall semester starts. So yesterday I went in to meet with the class—we only meet once a week, on Mondays—and Harry insisted I bring this man named Flank with me, for protection. Charley, what kind of a name is Flank?”
“I’m guessing it’s the kind of name that goes with a big neck.”
“You’d be right about that. He stood at the back of the room and looked dangerous the whole time we were having a discussion on contrasting feminist explorations of current social ethics.”
“I’m sure he got a lot out of it.”
“I don’t really think so. He didn’t say a word all the way back to Harry’s place.”
“Maybe he was concentrating on his driving,” I fished.
“No, I was driving. Oh! Charley, guess what?”
I didn’t have to guess. “Harry bought you a new car.”
“Yes! How did you know? Did he ask you what kind I wanted? I never would have picked out something so expensive, but Charley, it’s so beautiful. Did you pick it out?”
“I didn’t hear a thing about it until I talked to Eileen this morning.”
“Really?”
It made me nervous to hear how pleased she sounded about Harry’s sole responsibility for the gift. “What is it?”
“A Saab. A red convertible Saab with leather everything and the most amazing stereo. You should see how it just scoots right on to the freeway without having to think about it.”
Oh, what the hell. I’d wanted her to have a new car and now she had one. That didn’t mean Harry was trying to woo her, did it? “It sounds like you love it.”
“I love it. Do you know what Harry said when he gave me the keys?”
“Could be almost anything.”
“He said Volkswagen cabriolets want to be Saab convertibles when they grow up. Isn’t that cute?”
Right. I had to get her out of that house.
“Brenda, come have drinks with Eileen and me tonight,” I commanded.
“Yay!” she said. “Where are we going?”
“The Bubble Lounge. We’re meeting Leenie at eight.”
“Yay!” she repeated. “I’ll pick you up at the hotel so you can see the new car, okay?”
“Yay,” I said.
***
Jack didn’t grumble when I told him my plans for the evening. Perversely, I found that disappointing. Intellectually, I know I want to be in the kind of relationship where we have our own lives and are comfortable spending time apart. Sort of like Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy—or at least like the characters they played. But emotionally, I guess I wanted Jack to at least pretend he’d miss me, even if it was only going to be for a couple of hours. There was only one solution. I had to dress to kill.
At 7:40 precisely I emerged from the bedroom wearing a sleeveless black dress by MaxMara with a V-neckline that dipped to the exact optimum cleavage point and a flirty little ruffle that skimmed just above the knee. It showed off the good stuff, camouflaged the bad stuff, and hinted at the stuff in between. Insanely high-heeled strappy sandals completed the look. I had blown my hair dry with my head upside down for volume, then given the ends a hint of a flip, and used every makeup brush in my arsenal to achieve that smoky eye thing the magazines are always going on about.
When Jack saw me he dropped his book. That made all the effort worthwhile.
“You’re wearing that?” His eyes swept from head to hot-pink toe.
I was nonchalance personified. “Don’t you like it?”
“To meet the girls for drinks?” he asked.
I gave him a “didn’t we already discuss this?” look.
“At a bar?” he completed the question.
“The Bubble Lounge. It’s a champagne bar, a little too yuppified for me, but it’s close to Eileen’s office.” I’m so informative.
“Uh huh,” he said. “I have a better idea.”
Success. “Oh?” I said innocently.
“Room service. With me.”
The look he gave me melted all my resolve. My instinct was to say “okey dokey” and stand up my two best friends. Luckily, I had planned the timing perfectly, and Brenda knocked the instant before I caved.
I gave Jack a bright smile. “Too late, that’s Brenda.”
Okay, so it was an old-fashioned, sexist ploy, but I left knowing Jack would miss me after all. So there.
***
The car was beautiful and Brenda was glowing. She gushed about it all the way downtown, pointing out its perfect little accessories and clever little designs. She left it with the valet, and watched longingly until it was out of sight.
She gave a small sigh. “Charley, you know I’ve never really been into material possessions.”
“I know, sweetie.”
“And I’m probably being a traitor to my little VW.” She bit her lip. “But I just love that car.” She looked at me.
“Don’t worry, sweetie. You’re still a good person.” I put my arm around her shoulders and dragged her inside.
The bar was lit with a soft amber glow and decorated with velvet drapes and clusters of comfortable upholstered seating around low cocktail tables. Eileen was waiting for us at a table in the back corner, perched on a crescent-shaped banquette. She waved us over.
“I didn’t feel like champagne, so I’ve got three dirty martinis on the way. If you don’t want yours, I’ll drink it for you,” she announced.
“The hell you will,” I said.
“Oh, Eileen, what’s the matter?” Brenda asked.
Eileen sighed and drummed her fingers on the table. She looked around the room. “Men,” she said heavily.
There were a lot of them in the bar. All clean-cut and aggressive, vying for the attention of equally sharp-looking women. Suit jackets had been flung off, and ties loosened at the collars of Thomas Pink shirts that revealed gym-honed torsos. It’s not that there weren’t any drab, dumpy guys in the financial district, it’s just that they didn’t venture into the same bars as the esthetically elite. Frankly, I thought the joint could have used a few balding heads and beer guts just to break up the monotony.
“We shouldn’t have come here,” Eileen said. “They all look like Ben.”
“Ben?” Brenda asked.
“Drinks!” I saw the waiter heading our way. “Who’s Ben?” The waiter, yet another perfect specimen, set down three martinis, heavy on the olives, and walked away with the attitude of someone used to being watched. Too bad, we were focused on Eileen. “Is Ben the guy?” I asked.
“What guy?” Brenda demanded. “Are you seeing someone? Why didn’t you tell me?”
Eileen delicately removed the olives from her drink, then tossed back half of it in one gulp. “Why,” she asked, “just once, can I not get interested in a normal guy?”
We sipped and considered.
“Maybe you don’t meet any,” Brenda offered.
I was less concerned with Eileen’s love life at that point than I was with figuring out if her Ben was actually Cece’s Tom Nelson—in which case he was certainly in league with Macbeth. “Tell us everything,” I demanded. “Leave nothing out. Start with when you met him and take it from there.”
