The LeBaron Secret (30 page)

“Yes?”

“You must promise to learn to smoke a cigarette!”

“Quick. Toss me the pack.” She had caught it and, with some care and no small amount of trepidation, tapped out a cigarette and lighted it from the candle's flame, the way she had watched Joanna do. Now they were giggling again. “Besides,” Sari said, “it is a scientifically known fact that cats don't wear pajamas.”

“Neither do I. I always sleep in the nude.”

“Not even Jewish cats who live on Howard Street.”

“Oh … oh … oh!” They were rocking back and forth in their seats with laughter. “Why is that so funny?”

“I don't know! But it is!”

“We must always tell each other anything we don't like about the other. That's part of the pact,” Joanna said.

“Part of the pact. More champagne?”

“Hell, yes!”

And, a little later—her voice a little low and woolly from the wine, and her speech a little rambling and discursive—Joanna was saying, “… and so there's this boy here in San Francisco, this Jimmy Flood.… My parents have him picked out … for me. They say the Floods are as good as the Crockers and the deYoungs, and the Floods are
Catholic
. Anyway … where was I? He's this boy, who goes to Stanford. Did I tell you his name is Jimmy Flood? Well, anyway, I said no … I said no, I won't. I said … free spirit. I said … love someone else … not Flood, not Jimmy Flood. That happens to be his name, you see. But … love someone else … unacceptable. We … this was in Woodside, and oh, my God, it was years ago. We—did you ever do this? We dressed up, pretended to get married … found my mother's old confirmation dress … white. Wildflowers for my bouquet … did you ever do that? I was only six or seven, seventh or third grade. I mean
second
or third grade. We dressed up. It was only make-believe, of course, but I wore my first lipstick. It came off all over him when we kissed. But this was another boy … this wasn't Jimmy Flood. Jimmy Flood is Jimmy Flood, who's an altogether different person …”

“Who is the boy you really love?”

“Unacceptable. By the way, have you gone to bed with Craig Pollard yet?”

“Gabe Pollack. No, not yet.”

“Shouldn't wait too much longer,” she said, swirling the wine in her glass. “Strike while the iron is hot.”

“Hot.”

“Or he'll lose interest.”

“But when?”

“Must plan this very carefully,” Joanna said. “What does he do when he comes home at night?”

“At night?”

“Yes. Had your dinner. Everybody's gone off to their room to bed. What's he do then? 'S important.”

“Sometimes—he reads in bed.”

“Ah,” Joanna said. “'S the perfect moment. Reading in bed. You tap on his door. Some excuse why you need to see him. Into his room, close the door behind you. Sit on the corner of his bed. 'S he got hair on his chest?”

“Hair?”

“On his chest, yes.”

“I think so, yes.”

“Good. Touch him there. Then say, ‘How curly your chest hair is.' Something like that. Can't resist that sort of thing—men. Tickle him a little there. Then let your hand slide down, under the sheet, and tickle him a little more … there. Then on, everything takes care of itself.”

“Are you sure?”

“Absolutely. Won't be able to control himself. Wild. With passion. Lust. At least if he's normal. He is normal, isn't he?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Still madly in love with him, aren't you?”

“Yes, but—”

“Then watch this.”

And then, in the candlelight, as though in an erotic dream, she had watched as, at the other end of the sofa, Joanna lay back against the cushions and began to lift and turn her hips in slow, undulating rhythms, and, in her husky, throaty voice, to murmur, “Oh, my sweet … oh, my sweet … tickle me there … oh, yes … oh, oh, oh Oh, yes … more … yes …”

But hypnotic as this performance was, Assaria was suddenly stricken with a problem of far more urgent proportions. She had just lighted her second cigarette and immediately stubbed it out. “Oh,
Jo!
” she cried. “Jo—I think I—I feel so—”

Joanna quickly sat up and looked at her. “Oh, God!” she said. “You're
green!
Wait! Hold on! Cover your mouth with your hands!” And she jumped up and ran a little unsteadily in her stocking feet—she had long since kicked off her shoes—to a corner of the room, and ran back with a galvanized pail. “Here,” she said, and held Sari's head over the pail while what remained of Sari's lunch, and a good deal of champagne, came up.

“See?” Joanna said. “Club caters to members' every need.” She was stroking the top of Sari's head. “Don't feel bad. Happens to the best of us. Happened to me, even to Peter. Who has an absolutely hollow leg. Champagne should've been iced. My fault.”

When she was able to look up from the pail that was gripped between her legs, she was instantly sober again. But her face was streaming with perspiration now, and she could feel locks of her damp hair hanging stickily across her forehead.

Joanna handed her a handkerchief. “Nurse Jo to the rescue,” she said. Then she said, “I've just decided what I'm going to do with my life. I'm going to work for you, and you're going to work for me. I don't know how we're going to do that yet, but that's what we're going to do.”

It was an apt enough prediction, as things worked out.

But it was at that moment that Sari realized the two of them were no longer alone in the room. A tall and slender young man was standing there, staring at them, his expression a mixture of confusion and anger and disbelief, and she immediately recognized the face she had seen upstairs in the portrait gallery that very afternoon, though the face was now more mature.

“Peter!” Joanna cried, running toward him. “What in the world are you doing here? You're supposed to be thousands and thousands of miles away in New Haven, Connecticut.”

“I was expelled,” she heard him say.

“Will you have another drink?” Archie McPherson asks her. They are sitting in the bar at Ernie's, and it is afternoon.

“No, thank you,” Melissa says. “I'm really not sure why I accepted this invitation of yours, you know.”

“Really? Why not?”

“Because I don't trust you,” Melissa says.

“Oh?”

“That story you wrote, about me paying the rock group for their date. Where did you get it from?”

“I have my sources,” he says with a smile.

“Oh, I'm quite sure you do. But what was your source for that one—in which I was quoted, without being interviewed or asked for a quote?”

“It was accurate, wasn't it?”

“More or less. As accurate as any newspaper stories ever are. Who gave it to you?”

“It could have come from any number of people.”

“Name two.”

“It could have come from one of the Odeon's board of directors.”

“Impossible. Since I did what I did without consulting or informing the board.”

“Or it could have come from Maurice Littlefield himself, or someone else in the group.”

“Hardly likely. None of the group is what you might call smart. And Maurice is—sweet. But,” and she taps her forehead with the tip of her index finger, “again, not clever enough to find a newspaper reporter to give his story to—particularly since I'd made it clear to him that what I was doing was a purely personal and private gesture. No, Archie McPherson, there's only one person who could possibly have given you that story.”

“Who?”

“Don't think
me
stupid, too. My mother, of course. She's the only one I told about my plans, and the quote you attributed to me was substantially what I'd said to her. So I don't trust you, Archie. But I also feel sorry for you.”

“Why's that?”

“You've chosen to play the role of double agent—working for Gabe's paper, and working for my mother as well. When Gabe finds this out, as my mother will make sure he does as soon as your usefulness to her is over, he'll give you the boot. Which is just what she is planning to have done. And that will be the end of you in San Francisco.”

He looks uncomfortable. He is frowning now, and is bending his red plastic stirrer into little zigzag parallelogram patterns. “Where do you come off with this double-agent stuff?” he says at last.

“I know my mother. I know how she operates. She never approaches a problem directly. There has to be deviousness, and backstairs intrigue, and people have to be pitted against one another until they're at the breaking point, and she gets what she wants. Then she washes her hands of them. I feel sorry for you, because I can tell you're now coming very close to the last of your usefulness to Assaria LeBaron. Soon the Bay Area will see no more of you. How much is she paying you for your little services, anyway?”

“This is very insulting, what you're saying.”

She waves her hand. “It doesn't matter,” she says. “Whatever it is, I'm sure it's pitifully small potatoes. Just enough to make you feel that you're playing some important role in the future of the LeBaron family, and Baronet Vineyards, and that you're playing it on the side of the Big Enchilada.”

“I thought we were friends, Melissa.”

“You're right. We were. Which brings us to today. Why did you invite me for drinks today?”

“For drinks. And dinner, I hope.”

“I'm not sure about dinner. That will depend upon whether or not you start telling me the truth. Let me guess. She suggested that you ask me to dinner to try to find out how I intend to vote. Correct?”

“To vote?”

“Yes. There's quite a juicy takeover bid for Baronet in the works, as I'm sure Mother told you, and Eric's spearheading it, with a lot of Tillinghast money behind him. Dear little Alix's father. Apparently Daddy doesn't want his little Buttercup's husband to be crucified for taxes when Mother dies, so he's offering to swap his stock for ours. Very clever of him. So, sooner or later, we're going to have to put Harry's offer to a vote. Already Mother's marshaling her forces for the battle, trying to find out who's on her side and get a head count of the enemy. We're in the Cold War phase now, but wait until Mother brings in her big guns! And your job is to find out which side I'm going to be on—right?”

“Honestly, Melissa, she didn't mention any of this to me.”

“I don't believe you. And why, you may well ask, doesn't my mother simply ask me how I'm going to vote on the proposal? We live in the same house. Because that would be too simple, and that's not Mother's style. That would be like Hitler asking Czechoslovakia if he could have the Sudetenland. No, Mother prefers to gather her information through spies and secret agents. And by threats, real or implied. And by bribing border guards, like you.”

“Melissa, believe me. The subject of a takeover—the whole subject of Baronet—never once came up between your mother and me. I swear it. If there were a Bible in this restaurant, I would swear that, on the Holy Bible.”

“Then why this invitation? Then why this latest story in your paper?”

“Honestly,” he says, “I think she told me what you'd done because she was proud of you. You'd been outvoted by the Odeon's board, and so you simply took matters into your own hands and paid the group's fee out of your own pocket. I think she felt you did the right thing, the decent thing, and I think readers felt the same way when they read the story. I think she thought you were too modest to publicize this personal charity yourself, and that she thought you deserved some sort of public credit for what you'd done.”

“Hmmm,” she says. “I don't believe that, either. It doesn't sound at all like the mother that I know and have been dealing with for more than fifty years. No, that story was designed to make me look either like an empty-headed Lady Bountiful—to a rock group, after all, not even a recognized tax-deductible charity—or like a damn-fool spendthrift. Either way, the story could be used to suit her purposes, you see. It could be used to illustrate the point that Melissa is a crazy airhead whose voice—or vote—should not be taken seriously in any shareholders' battle. You see, I know my mother very well. I know the Byzantine way her mind works.”

“I honestly don't think that's it,” he says. “I don't think it had anything to do with any takeover offer, or with Harry Tillinghast, or with any of this, which is all news to me.”

“Ah,” she says, with a little smile. “Then
that's
it. News to you. Perhaps she hoped I'd spill this can of beans to you, which I've just done, and so she's already succeeded. See how clever she is? She's even cleverer than I thought! And why wouldn't she simply give this story of the proposed takeover to you directly? Simple. So that when you scoop the entire country with this story, her hands will be clean! ‘Who leaked this story prematurely to this reporter?' the others will all want to know. ‘Not I!' she'll say. ‘It was Melissa! Melissa's to blame, as usual! Old, unstable, unreliable Melissa, who should probably be placed in a loony bin. They don't let people out of the loony bin to vote at shareholders' meetings, do they? Well, when you next see my mother, give her my congratulations. Her little plot worked, as usual.”

“Melissa,” he says, “I'll tell you what. I'll promise you, I'll swear to you, not to write a word about anything you've told me here this afternoon. I'll treat it as a matter of strictest confidence between us. How's that?”

“Actually,” she says, “I don't suppose it really matters all that much. The lid's going to blow off this story in a few days, anyway. Wall Street has been full of rumors about it for the past week. Why so much sudden heavy trading in Kern-McKittrick stock? Have you been watching it? I have. So I don't suppose what you write about it will have the slightest effect on the final outcome of things. Except to discredit me, of course, which is part of her plan.”