Taken In (19 page)

Unable to keep her mouth shut any longer, Tori heard herself speaking before she even realized what was happening. “But you did.”

Startled, he pulled his gaze from Leona and fixed a far less seductive version on Tori. “Excuse me?”

Leona moved her hand upward on Timothy’s arm, moaning ever so softly at the feel of the muscles beneath his shirtsleeve. “Mmmm, you spend a lot of time in the gym, don’t you?”

He looked from Tori to his arm and back again, Leona’s magic obviously starting to pale against the reality of his job. “Yeah, but I really shouldn’t say anything else. I could lose my job.”

Leona stepped closer to Timothy, angling him in such a way as to remove Tori from his field of vision. “My lips are sealed . . . except with you, Timothy.”

But it was no use. The spell was broken. If he’d been ready to share more information before Tori piped up, that was no longer the case.

“Look, I really can’t say anything more. Ms. Trotter has a lot of clout in this place, and by extension, so does Susie. If either one of them got wind I was talking about them like this, they’d have my job.”

Tori knew her disappointment was palpable. She could feel it as certainly as she could Leona’s. But the window had closed. She’d seen to that all on her own with her inability to keep quiet.

After a few beats of uncomfortable silence, Leona sashayed her way over to the counter and made a dramatic show of leaning over the top in search of a piece of paper and a pen. When she’d commandeered both, she jotted down her cell phone number and handed it to Timothy, her free hand closing around his in the process. “If you change your mind and want to talk, give me a call. Just don’t make me wait too long, okay?”

They stepped onto the subway and settled in for the thirty-plus-block ride south to their destination, Rose’s head sinking onto Tori’s shoulder the second the doors swooshed to a close.

“Are you okay, Rose?” she inquired over the unending swirl of self-recriminations still parading around in her head. “Do you want me to take you back to the hotel?”

“No. I just want to rest my eyes for a minute.”

“I’ll take her back and see that she gets some sleep.” Leona slid onto the bench seat beside Rose.

Margaret Louise followed suit, her loud, boisterous voice drawing more than a few looks in their direction. “I know what you’re doin’, Twin. It’s as plain as the nose on my face.”

Leona’s right elbow disappeared into Margaret Louise’s side, drawing a yelp in the process. “I’m just lookin’ out for Rose is all. Like any friend would do.”

“But we’re not friends,” Rose mumbled without opening her eyes.

“Rose Winters, that’s not nice!”

“But it’s true—”

“Would you lookee there . . .” Margaret Louise pointed toward the door at the front end of their subway car, a broad smile making its way across her face as she did. “It’s Wurly! And his magical ukulele!” The grandmother of eight stood and started waving her hands wildly from side to side. “Woo-hoo, Wurly! It’s me . . . Margaret Louise. Your southern-fried friend!”

She felt Rose and Leona sinking into the seat beside her as riders to their left and right stared at them in shock. But it was too late. Wurly had spotted them and heeded the invitation that was most likely a rarity in his world.

“Hello there, southern-fried friend of mine.” Wurly tipped his ball hat at Margaret Louise.

“Wait! Wait! I know what that means now.” Margaret Louise reached into her tote bag, pulled out a five-dollar bill, and pushed it into the hat, which was now back on his head. “You play a real nice ukulele, Wurly.”

The subway musician plucked the money from the space between his hair and his hat and stuffed it in his pocket. “What can I play for you today, friend?”

“How ’bout ‘Sweet Caroline’? Rose, over there”—Margaret Louise leaned across her sister to tap Rose, earning herself a wary eye from both—“loves that song, don’t you, Rose?”

Wurly shook his head. “Can’t do it. This is New York, not Boston. And I don’t want to get shot.”

The subway hurtled through the underground labyrinth, then screeched to a stop near Rockefeller Center. Riders exited and entered while Margaret Louise scratched her head. “Hmmm. Then how ’bout ‘New York, New York’? I’ve always liked that line ’bout people ridin’ in a hole in the ground . . . just like we are now.”

“Don’t know that one.”

“You don’t know that one?” Margaret Louise echoed in shock, only to have Beatrice throw out a request.

“How about a Kenny—”

“No!” Rose and Leona said in unison.

“But—”

“No!”

“You southern ladies sure are a handful, aren’t you?” Without waiting for an answer, he began gently plucking at his ukulele. “So where are you off to today?”

“The Empire State Buildin’.”

“Going all the way to the top of the observation tower, eh?”

Leona blanched.

“We sure are. All the way to the tippy, tippy top.” Margaret Louise returned her sister’s earlier elbow. “Ain’t that right, Twin?”

“Oh, shut up!”

Wurly laughed then reached into his pocket, extracted a slightly crumbled business card, and handed it to Margaret Louise, jerking his head toward the door as the subway came to yet another stop. “This is your stop, ladies. I’ll play you off . . .”

The first few notes of Rose’s favorite song disappeared along with the subway as they stepped onto the platform and Margaret Louise looked at the card in her hand. “Oh, would you lookee here, Victoria, Wurly does weddin’s!”

She laughed over Rose and Leona’s groan. “We’ve already got a deposit on the band, Margaret Louise, but I’ll keep him in mind in the event that falls through.”

Then, turning her attention to the wall-mounted map and the route they needed to travel to reach their final destination, Tori left Margaret Louise to study the rest of Wurly’s card alone. She was about two blocks into the mental journey when she was yanked back to the here and now.

“Well, wouldn’t you know, Leona’s winkin’ and blinkin’ sure can help our investigatin’, can’t it?”

When she didn’t respond, Margaret Louise continued, “’Cause if you hadn’t shared what she learned while the rest of us were sittin’ in the park, I would have looked right past this.”

She looked from the map to Margaret Louise and waited, the woman’s words making little sense for all of about two seconds.

“Caroline Trotter’s daughter
does
run a web design company. It’s called Trotter Web Design, and she designed Wurly’s page for him.”

*   *   *

If the way Leona white-knuckled her way through the elevator ride to the observation deck of the Empire State Building hadn’t been enough of a clue to her feelings about heights, the fact that she refused to go near the Plexiglas walls that afforded its world-renowned view of the Big Apple sealed the deal.

“How did I not know you were afraid of heights?” Tori whispered in Leona’s ear.

“I’m not afraid of heights, dear.”

She felt the laugh building but did her best to hold it back. “You’re not?”

“Of course not, dear. I’m above such things. You know this.”

“Then how do you explain the death grip you had on my arm in the elevator just now?”

Leona’s stab at confusion was almost Oscar-worthy. Almost. “Death grip? What death grip?”

Pushing the sleeve of her white blouse upward, Tori gestured toward the red mark on her forearm—a mark that still bore the distinctive shape of at least three fingers. “Um, perhaps this one?”

The flinch was lightning fast, but still, Tori caught it before it disappeared behind yet another stellar acting performance. “You’re deficient on iron, dear, that’s all.”

She let her sleeve slip back down her arm and then gestured toward their friends, who were oohing and ahhing at the view of Manhattan looking north. “Okay, then why are you hovering back here instead of up there with everyone else?”

“I don’t want to crowd them. I’m very generous that way.”

“Well, then your generosity has paid off.” She gestured toward an elderly man now walking away from the clear walls. “There’s a wide-open spot right next to your sister.”

“No, I’ll wait. You take it.”

“Victoria, it ain’t no use,” Margaret Louise said. “There are times when the big dog just won’t hunt.”

“Excuse me?”

“You can’t make chicken salad out of chicken feathers.”

She looked to Leona for help in deciphering Margaret Louise’s crazy expressions but got nothing but a sheepish shrug in return.

“It means there ain’t no way you’re goin’ to get my sister over by this wall. Not unless the same view can be seen from the first floor.”

She let that fact take root in her head then pushed it into the land of impossibilities. “You can’t be afraid of heights, Leona. I mean, didn’t you spend time at the top of the Eiffel Tower when you were in Paris?”

Margaret Louise laughed. “That would imply my twin was actually in
that
Paris.”

Leona’s eyes narrowed to near slits just before she smacked her sister. “I’m warning you, keep your mouth closed, Margaret Louise.”

“No, no, no . . . you don’t get to leave me out of this one, ladies.” Tori looked from Leona to Margaret Louise and back again. “What Paris was Leona in?”

“The one in Kentucky.”

Suddenly, all the evil glares Leona had shot in Beatrice’s direction whenever Paris was brought up made perfect sense. Leona hadn’t been there. At least not the one in France anyway.

She opened her mouth to give Leona some much-needed ribbing but closed it when she saw the hurt and humiliation on her friend’s ghostly white face. Sometimes having the last laugh wasn’t always worth it . . .

“So you’re really afraid of heights,” she finally asked.

Leona’s chin jutted upward in a show of defiance, only to sink back down at the realization that her long-held secret in regards to Paris was safe, at least with Tori. Seconds ticked by before the woman finally spoke, but when she did, it was apparent things were back to status quo.

“Does having me confirm my one flaw really mean that much to you, dear?”

She considered protesting the singular number but let it go when she saw the pain Leona’s weakness added to an already awkward moment. Instead, she wrapped her left arm around her friend’s shoulder and pulled her close. “Would it help if I walked
with
you? Maybe step by step until you simply can’t go any further?”

Before Leona could answer, the elevator off to their right opened and five naval officers in dress whites spilled onto the observation deck and made their way over to the glass wall where Rose, Beatrice, and Debbie were setting up for a picture with Bobblehead Kenny.

The tallest of the officers placed a respectful hand on Margaret Louise’s shoulder and offered to take the picture, earning him four wide-mouthed smiles in the process. “Well, aren’t you a nice young man? You remind me of my son, Jake. He thought ’bout joinin’ the Navy but he met Melissa and decided to be a husband and a daddy instead.”

“I hope to be both those things myself one day, ma’am.” The sailor tipped his head at Margaret Louise then took a step back to frame the picture, adding more with each fellow officer Beatrice and Debbie waved into the picture. “Is that everyone?”

“Not quite. You’re missing Victoria and me.” Leona ran a grooming hand down the sides of her soft gray hair and strutted across the deck and into the welcoming arm of the most attractive officer in the group.

“Don’t look now, Twin, you’re eighty-six floors above the Big Apple.”

With a dramatic bat of her eyelashes, Leona glanced over her shoulder to the glass wall at their backs, shrugged, and then flashed an alluring smile at the man behind the camera.

“Well, don’t that just put pepper in my gumbo,” Margaret Louise proclaimed as the shutter snapped once, twice.

She could feel Leona watching her as she hoisted her legs onto the couch and pulled them close to her body, but what exactly her friend was thinking was anyone’s guess. If similar looks in the past were any indication, Tori had forgotten a vital makeup tip or committed an unforgivable fashion faux paus. But considering it was ten o’clock at night and even Leona wasn’t wearing makeup, she went with the latter.

“My pajamas aren’t really that bad, are they?” She clipped her pen to the notepad she’d been feverishly writing in for the past thirty minutes and stretched her arms above her head. “I mean, the pink top matches the stripe in the pants perfectly.”

Leona peered at Tori above her glasses but said nothing, her hand stroking its way down Paris’s back again and again.

She dropped her hands to the bottom of her shirt and tugged it down beyond the waistband of her pants. “It’s not too short, Leona.”

“Did I say anything, dear?”

“With words? No. With your eyes? Yes.”

“Will the many ways in which you misunderstand me ever cease?” Leona released an exasperated sigh loud enough to stir Paris in her sleep. “Sometimes I don’t know why I bother being a part of this group. No one appreciates me and the many things I have to offer.”

The guilt that Leona was a master at serving up on a silver platter attached itself to Tori’s heart and made her squirm. “I’m sorry, Leona. I guess I just saw you looking at me the way you were and figured I’d dropped the ball on something.”

“I was simply wondering if you miss him.”

“Miss him?” she repeated. “You mean Milo?”

“Is there another man in your life, dear?”

Milo.

It had only been a week since she’d last seen him, but it felt like both yesterday and years all at the same time. She said as much to Leona.

“Help me understand what you mean by that,” Leona replied.

She took a moment to compose her thoughts into some semblance of order, the emotion they triggered making her both happy and sad at the same time. “I guess it feels like just yesterday because he’s so vivid in my mind all the time. I can be walking down the street thinking about something and hear his laugh as clearly as if he’s right there beside me. I know him so well that I know the things he likes and doesn’t like and can picture his reactions, his expressions, et cetera. And when I hear his voice at night before I go to sleep, it’s like he’s here. With me.”

Leona’s eyes never left her face as she continued, her thoughts switching to the part that hurt—the part that made it feel like it had been years since she’d last seen Milo. “But because he’s such a part of me, it feels like something is missing when he’s not there. It’s almost as if the sun is a little duller, the joy in my day a little less special, my presence in this world a little less important.”

“Then why did you tell him not to come here for his spring break?”

Why indeed.

It was a question she’d asked herself every night after they hung up the phone and she’d turned down his offer yet again.

She did her best to explain and hoped saying it aloud would convince her she was making the right decision. “I guess it’s because I’ve worked really hard the past few weeks to focus our time together on the happy things coming our way—the wedding, the honeymoon, and starting our life together. Here, all of that is shoved in a corner while we try to get Dixie out of this mess. I don’t want him to see or feel that, you know?”

“But he talks about it on the phone with you, doesn’t he?” Leona slowly lifted her hand and smiled down at her sleeping rabbit. “And if he’s offering to come, it’s so he can help.”

“I know that. I just want to concentrate on figuring out who really did this to John and getting everyone home . . . together.”

“And if we can’t?”

She felt the knot of dread in her stomach and pushed it away with her words. “We can. I’m sure we can.”

“I hope you’re right, Victoria, I really do.”

“We’ve got some good stuff to go on,” she said, glancing back down at her notepad. “There’s the fact that Doug faked his surprise about John’s death when—based on what was in the actual article—he obviously already knew. Then we have your top choice, Caroline Trotter, who not only has a confirmed connection with John, thanks to Charles, but it’s now been reconfirmed by Timothy, who went so far as to say she really seemed to be smitten with him. And then, last but not least, is Ms. Steely Eye—aka Barbara Letts—who
we
can place around John
twice
on the day he died.”

Leona gently shifted Paris into the cozy space between her hip and the chair and folded her hands neatly in her lap. “But you don’t know Doug . . . Caroline has disappeared into thin air . . . and Steely Eye is one of a half-dozen members in a book club. You can’t accuse someone you don’t know of murder, and you can’t prove someone did it if you can’t find them.”

There was a measure of truth in Leona’s words, but only a measure. After all, if she’d learned nothing from the slew of murders she’d been roped into solving over the past two years, when it came to finding out information, where there was a will, there was a way. The written fruits of her solo brainstorming session simply outlined some of the steps she needed to take come morning.

“I can treat John’s neighbor to coffee and a treat at CupKatery and see if Doug is the same man she remembers seeing through her peephole the night before the murder.”

“Assuming Doug is there, of course.”

It was a potential snafu she’d already considered. “I’ll call beforehand to confirm.”

“And Caroline’s disappearance? How are you going to work around that, dear?”

“I’m going to arrange a meeting with her daughter. See what she can tell me.”

Leona drifted forward ever so slightly in her chair, uncrossing and recrossing her ankles as she did. “Have you considered the fact that perhaps you should add her name to your list as well?”

“Whose name?”

“The daughter’s.”

She looked from her list to Leona and back again. “For getting rid of Caroline the way Timothy implied? No. I think he’s just a doorman with way too much time on his hands.”

“I tend to agree with that assessment but maybe we need to look at other possibilities. Like maybe Caroline simply disappeared to grieve John’s death out of shock, and maybe she disappeared to grieve her
daughter’s
hand
in that death.”

She heard the thump as her own legs dropped to the floor. “Wait. You think
Susie
could’ve killed John?”

“If there’s even a shred of truth to the picture Timothy created of her, then why not? People have killed for far less than the kind of money Caroline apparently had.”

She hated to admit it to herself, but she hadn’t even considered that possibility. “But the offspring of two very different women? Are we stretching too far?”

“Different motives for different kids. Doug’s is easy. His beloved mom was duped. But Susie’s is easy, too. If things between John and Caroline developed, there may have been less money later on, when Caroline was gone.”

She unhooked the pen and added Susie’s name to the list then drew an arrow to the same course of action she’d planned for Caroline. Only this time, instead of trying to learn as much about the missing woman as she could while pretending to have an interest in setting up a web page, she’d be soaking up everything she could on Susie, too.

When she was done writing, she looked up to find Leona still studying her over the top rim of her glasses. “Now what?”

Leona offered the faintest hint of a shrug then gestured toward the pad of paper in Tori’s lap. “And Ms. Steely Eye?”

“I’m going to get to see her tomorrow night, at Vanny’s book club.”

“Are you going to sit down next to her and ask her, point blank, why she was at the Waldorf during Dixie’s breakfast and by John’s apartment later that afternoon?”

“I’m not planning on being that blunt.”

“Oh?”

She pushed the notepad from her lap and replaced it instead with Rose’s copy of
Finding Love After Sixty-Five
, her finger slowly tracing the letters of the title from left to right. “No, I plan on reading as much of this book as I can tonight so I fit in as naturally as possible with the group.”

“Because you look like you’re sixty-five, of course,” Leona mumbled beneath her breath. “With an engagement ring on your finger . . .”

“I’ll figure it out, Leona.” She heard the exasperation in her voice and rushed to soften it. Talking to Leona, after all, had already helped more than she could have imagined. An occasional snide comment was simply par for the course and helped keep her grounded at a time when differentiating up from down wasn’t necessarily easy.

That said, she was more than a little relieved when Leona plucked Paris from the corner of the chair and rose to her feet, the call of her nightly beauty sleep winning out over any further digs, disguised or otherwise. “Reading some of that book probably isn’t such a bad idea, dear, but not if it’s at the expense of your good-night call to Milo.”

Tori dropped her gaze to the silver link watch on her left wrist and noted the time. She was already ten minutes late for her promised call . . .

“It won’t be, Leona. I miss him much too much to go even one night without hearing his voice.”

Leona marched toward the room she shared with an already sleeping Beatrice and Debbie, but stopped just shy of the closed door. “Before we head home to Sweet Briar, dear, you and I are going shopping.”

“For?”

“Suitable bedroom attire.”

*   *   *

Maybe it was her talk with Leona, maybe it was the simple fact that a trip that was supposed to be three days had stretched into a full week, with no sign of ending anytime soon, but whatever the reason, the sound of Milo’s voice in her ear was more upsetting than it was encouraging.

She missed him. Terribly.

But was that a reason to make him give up his much-needed week-long break from teaching to traipse across New York City in a haphazard hunt for a killer?

“You sound kinda blue, baby. You okay?”

She took a deep breath and let it release along with the urge to change her mind and ask him to come to the city. His being there wouldn’t change anything. Dixie would still be in jail, and the hunt for the real murderer would still claim her days. No, she needed the promise of normalcy that was Milo to be the ultimate carrot that guided her through her days until they could be together again.

“Yeah, I’m okay. Just tired, I guess.” She filled him in on their day—bringing him up to speed on Ms. Steely Eye’s proper name and the addition of Susie Trotter to the list of possible suspects, before finishing up with Leona’s true travel history and the discovery of, and the miraculous end to, the woman’s lifelong fear of heights.

“Kentucky, eh?” Milo’s laugh chased the sadness from her bones and made her smile. “And the fear of heights? Wow. I’m shocked Margaret Louise never thought to use a man in curing her sister’s phobia all these years. It seems like such a no-brainer now, doesn’t it?”

“But that would almost imply Leona is an easy puzzle to solve.”

“When you’ve only got four pieces in your puzzle, you’re not all that difficult,” he joked. “There’s the unwavering-love-for-men-in-uniform piece, the belief-she’s-thirty-years-younger-than-she-really-is piece, the never-leave-your-house-looking-like-anything-less-than-a-runway-model piece, and the I-like-to-run-Victoria-Sinclair’s-life piece. How hard is that?”

She smacked her hand over the laugh that threatened to wake the masses. “Wait. Wait. Don’t forget the I-pretend-I-hate-Rose-but-I-really-don’t piece . . . Oh! Oh! And the my-precious-Paris-is-the-most-beautiful-creature-on-the-face-of-the-planet-next-to-me piece!”

His speech grew raspy, sexy even. “Those are the best two pieces, aren’t they?”

“They are?”

“If they make you sound as adorable as they just did, then yeah, they are.”

She felt her face warm just before the sadness tightened its grip on her heart once again. “I miss you, Milo.”

“I miss you, too, Tori.”

Her breath hitched at the intensity in his voice, and she allowed it to nurture the smile she hoped would chase the mist from her eyes. “I’m going to figure this out and get back home to you just as soon as possible. I promise you that.”