"Bert surely did love the game," Calebow continued, "and he was a good man to work for."
"I'm certain he was." Each prolonged syllable she uttered was a breathlessly delivered promise of sexual debauchery, a promise Viktor knew all too well Phoebe had no intention of keeping.
He realized how nervous she was when she turned and held her arms out to him. Guessing correctly that she wanted Pooh as a distraction device, he stepped forward, but just as she took the animal, a maintenance truck that had entered the cemetery backfired, startling the poodle.
Pooh gave a yap and leapt free of her arms. The dog had been restrained too long, and she began a wild dash through the crowd, yapping shrilly, her tail wagging so wildly the pom-pom looked as if it might fly off at any moment and whistle through the air like Oddjob's hat.
"Pooh!" Phoebe cried, taking off after her just as the small white dog bumped against the slender metal legs that supported a towering arrangement of gladiolus.
Phoebe wasn't the most athletic of creatures under the best of circumstances. Further hampered by her tight skirt, she couldn't reach the dog in time to prevent disaster. The flowers teetered and toppled backward, knocking into the wreath jammed next to them, which, in turn, upset a massive spray of dahlias. The arrangements were packed so closely together that it was impossible for one to fall without knocking into another, and flowers and water began to fly. The mourners who were standing nearby jumped away in an effort to protect their clothing and knocked into more of the floral tributes. Like dominoes, one basket tipped against another, until the ground began to look like Merlin Olsen's worst nightmare.
Phoebe whipped off her sunglasses to reveal her exotically tilted amber eyes. "Stay, Pooh! Stay, dammit! Viktor!"
Viktor had already rushed to the opposite side of the casket in an effort to head off the rampaging poodle, but in his haste he knocked over several chairs, which, in turn, flew into another group of floral arrangements, setting off a separate chain reaction.
A Gold Coast socialite, who fancied herself an expert on small dogs since she owned a shiatsu, made a leap for the frenzied poodle only to draw up short when Pooh dropped her tail, bared her teeth,, and snapped at her like a canine Terminator. Although Pooh was generally the most congenial of dogs, the socialite had the misfortune to be wearing Calvin Klein's Eternity, a fragrance Pooh had detested ever since one of Phoebe's friends, who had been drenched in it, had called her a mutt and kicked her under the table.
Phoebe, whose side-slit skirt was showing far too much of her thigh for respectability, shot between two defensive linemen. They watched with open amusement as she gestured toward the poodle. "Pooh! Here, Pooh!"
Molly Somerville, mortified by the spectacle her half sister was making, tried to hide herself in the crowd.
As Phoebe dodged a chair, the heavy gold fig leaf dangling from the links of her belt bumped against the part of her that fig leaves had been designed to shield. She began to grab for it before she was permanently bruised, only to have the slippery leather soles of her pumps hit a batch of wet lilies. Her feet shot out from under her, and, with a whoosh of expelled breath, she fell.
At the sight of her mistress sliding across the ground on her rear, Pooh forgot about the menacingly perfumed socialite. Incorrectly interpreting Phoebe's actions as an invitation to play, the dog's yips grew delirious with excitement.
Phoebe tried unsuccessfully to scramble to her feet, giving both the Mayor of Chicago and several members of the rival Bears' organization a generous view of the top of her thigh. Pooh dashed between the legs of a pompous network sportscaster and shot under the graveside chairs just as Viktor came toward her from the other side. The dog loved to play with Viktor, and her yips grew more fervent.
Pooh made a quick jog, but braked sharply as she realized she was blocked by overturned flower baskets and a large patch of sodden grass—a formidable barrier for an animal who hated getting her paws wet. Cornered, she leapt up onto one of the folding chairs. When it began to teeter, she gave a nervous yip and jumped to another and from there up onto a smooth, hard surface.
The crowd gave a collective gasp as white roses and streamers of sky blue and gold ribbon went flying. Everyone fell silent.
Phoebe, who had just managed to get to her feet, froze. Viktor cursed softly in Hungarian.
Pooh, always sensitive to the humans she loved, cocked her head to the side as if she were trying to understand why everybody was looking at her. Sensing that she had done something very wrong, she began to tremble.
Phoebe caught her breath. It wasn't good for Pooh to get nervous. She remembered the last time it had happened and took a quick step forward. "No, Pooh!"
But her warning came too late. The trembling dog was already squatting. With an apologetic expression on her small, furry face, she began to pee on the lid of Bert Somerville's casket.
Bert Somerville's estate had been built in the 1950s on ten acres of land in the affluent Chicago suburb of Hinsdale, located in the heart of DuPage County. In the early twentieth century the county had been rural, but as the decades slipped by, its small towns had grown together until they formed a giant bedroom for the executives who boarded the Burlington Northern commuter trains that took them into the Loop each day, and also for the engineers who worked in the high-tech industries that sprang up along the East West Tollway. Gradually, the brick wall that bordered the estate had been enclosed by shady residential streets.
As a child Phoebe had spent little time living in the stately Tudor home that sat among the oaks, maples, and walnut trees of the western suburbs. Bert had kept her in a private Connecticut boarding school until summer, when he sent her to an exclusive girls' camp. During her infrequent trips home, she had found the house dark and oppressive, and as she climbed the curving staircase to the second floor two hours after the funeral, she decided that nothing had happened to make her alter her opinion.
The condemning eyes of an elephant illegally bagged during one of Bert's African safaris stared down at her from the maroon-flocked wallpaper at the top of the staircase. Her shoulders slumped dispiritedly. Grass stains soiled her ivory suit, and the sheer nylons that sheathed her legs were dirty and torn. Her blond hair stuck out in every direction, and she'd long ago eaten off her peony-pink lipstick.
Unbidden, the face of the Stars' head coach came back to her. He was the one who had picked Pooh off the casket by the scruff of her neck. Those green eyes of his had been cold and condemning as he'd handed the dog over to her. Phoebe sighed. The melee of her father's funeral was another screwup in a life already full of them. She had wanted everyone to know she didn't care that her father had disinherited her, but as usual, she had gone too far and everything had backfired.
She paused for a moment at the top of the stairs, wondering if her life might have been different if her mother had lived. She no longer thought very much about the showgirl mother she couldn't remember, but as a lonely child she had woven elaborate fantasies about her, trying to conjure up in her imagination a tender, beautiful woman who would have given her all the love her father had withheld.
She wondered if Bert had ever really loved anyone. He'd had little use for women in general, and none at all for an overweight, clumsy little girl who didn't have a high opinion of herself to begin with. For as long as she could remember, he had told her she was useless, and she now suspected that he might have been right.
At the age of thirty-three, she was unemployed and nearly broke. Arturo had died seven years ago. She had spent the first two years after his death administering the touring exhibits of his paintings, but after the collection went on permanent display in Paris's Musée d'Orsay, she'd moved to Manhattan. The money Arturo had left her when he'd died had gradually disappeared, helping to pay the medical expenses of many of her friends who had died from AIDS. She didn't regret a penny. For years she'd worked in a small, but exclusive, West Side gallery that specialized in the avantgarde. Just last week, her elderly employer had closed the
doors for the last time, leaving her at loose ends while she looked for a new direction in her life.
The thought flickered through her mind that she was getting tired of being outrageous, but she was feeling too fragile to cope with introspection, so she finished making her way to her sister's bedroom and knocked on the door. "Molly, it's Phoebe. May I come in?"
There was no answer.
"Molly, may I come in?"
More seconds ticked by before Phoebe heard a muted, sullen, "I guess."
She mentally braced herself as she turned the knob and stepped inside the bedroom that had been hers as a child. During the few weeks each year when she had lived here, the room had been cluttered with books, food scraps, and tapes of her favorite music. Now it was as pin-neat as its occupant.
Molly Somerville, the fifteen-year-old half sister Phoebe barely knew, sat in a chair by the window, still dressed in the shapeless brown dress she'd worn to the funeral. Unlike Phoebe, who had been overweight as a child, Molly was rail thin, and her heavy, jaw-length dark brown hair needed a good trim. She was also plain, with pale, dull skin that looked as if it had never seen the sun and small, unremarkable features.
"How are you doing, Molly?"
"Fine." She didn't look up from the book that lay open in her lap.
Phoebe sighed to herself. Molly made no secret of the fact that she hated her guts, but they'd had so little contact over the years that she wasn't certain why. When Phoebe had returned to the States after Arturo's death, she'd made several trips to Connecticut to visit Molly at school, but Molly had been so uncommunicative she'd eventually given up. She'd continued to send birthday and Christmas presents, however, along with occasional letters, all of which went unacknowledged. It was ironic that Bert had disinherited her from everything except what should have been his most important responsibility.
"Can I get you anything? Something to eat?"
Molly shook her head and silence fell between them.
"I know this has been tough. I'm really sorry."
The child shrugged.
"Molly, we need to talk, and it would be easier on both of us if you'd look at me."
Molly lifted her head from her book and regarded Phoebe with blank, patient eyes, giving Phoebe the uneasy feeling that she was the child and her sister the adult. She wished she still smoked, because she was in desperate need of a cigarette.
"You know that I'm your legal guardian now."
"Mr. Hibbard explained it to me."
"I think we need to talk about your future."
"There's nothing to talk about."
She pushed a wayward blond curl behind her ear. "Molly, you don't have to go back to camp if you don't want to. You're more than welcome to fly to New York with me tomorrow for the rest of the summer. I've subleased an apartment from a friend who's in Europe. It has a great location."
"I want to go back."
From the pallor of Molly's skin, Phoebe didn't believe her sister enjoyed camp any more than she had. "You can if you really want to, but I know what it's like to feel as if you don't have a home. Remember that Bert sent me to school at Crayton, too, and packed me off to camp every summer. I hated it. New York is fun during the summer. We could have a great time and get to know each other better."
"I want to go to camp," Molly repeated stubbornly.
"Are you absolutely sure about this?"
"I'm sure. You have no right to keep me from going back."
Despite the child's hostility and the headache that was beginning to form at her temples, Phoebe was reluctant to let the issue pass so easily. She decided to try a new tack and nodded toward the book in Molly's lap. "What are you reading?"
"Dostoyevski. I'm doing an independent study on him in the fall."
"I'm impressed. That's pretty heavy reading for a fifteen-year-old."
"Not for me. I'm quite bright."
Phoebe wanted to smile, but Molly had delivered the statement so matter-of-factly that she couldn't. "That's right. You do well in school, don't you?"
"I have an exceptionally high IQ."
"Being smarter than everyone else can be as much a curse as a blessing." Phoebe remembered the trauma of her own school days when she'd been brighter than so many of her classmates. It had been one more element that had made her feel different from everyone else.
Molly's expression never altered. "I'm quite grateful for my intelligence. Most of the other girls in my class are dolts."
Despite the fact that Molly was acting like an obnoxious little prig, Phoebe tried not to judge her. She, of all people, knew that Bert Somerville's daughters had to find their own way of coping with life. As an adolescent, she had hidden her insecurities behind fat. Later, she had become outrageous. Molly was hiding behind her brains.
"If you'll excuse me, Phoebe. I've reached a particularly interesting section, and I'd like to get back to it."
Phoebe ignored the child's obvious dismissal and made another attempt to convince her to come to Manhattan. But Molly refused to change her mind, and Phoebe eventually had to concede defeat.
As she got ready to leave the room, she stopped at the door. "You'll call me if you need anything, won't you?"
Molly nodded, but Phoebe didn't believe her. The child would eat rat poison before she'd come to her disreputable older sister for help.
She tried to shake off her depression as she headed back downstairs. She heard Viktor on the living room telephone with his agent. Needing a moment alone to collect herself, she slipped into her father's study, where Pooh was asleep in one of the armchairs that sat in front of a glass-fronted gun cabinet. The poodle's fluffy white head shot up. She sprang from the chair, her pom-pom tail wagging, and raced across the carpet to her mistress.
Phoebe sank to her knees and gathered the dog to her. "Hey, sport, you really did it today, didn't you?"
Pooh gave her an apologetic lick. Phoebe began to retie the bows that had come undone at the dog's ears, but her fingers were trembling, so she abandoned the effort. Pooh would just work them loose again anyway.
The dog was a disgrace to the dignity of her breed. She hated bows and rhinestone collars, refused to sleep on her doggy bed, and wasn't the slightest bit picky about food. She detested being clipped, brushed, or bathed and wouldn't wear the monogrammed sweater Viktor had given her. She wasn't even a good guard dog. Last year when Phoebe had been mugged in broad daylight on the Upper West Side, Pooh had spent the whole time rubbing against the mugger's legs begging to be petted.
Phoebe buried her hair in the dog's soft topknot. "Underneath that fancy pedigree, you're nothing but a mutt, aren't you, Pooh?"
Abruptly, Phoebe lost the battle she had been fighting all day and gave a choked sob. A mutt. That's what she was. All dressed up like a French poodle.
Viktor found her in the library. With more tact than he usually displayed, he ignored the fact that she'd been crying. "Phoebe, pet," he said kindly, "your father's lawyer is here to meet with you."
"I don't want to see anyone," she sniffed, searching futilely for a tissue.
Viktor extracted a plum-colored handkerchief from the pocket of his gray silk jacket and handed it to her. "You'll have to talk with him sooner or later."
"I already did. He called me about Molly's guardianship the day after Bert died."
"Maybe this has to do with your father's estate."
"I'm not involved with that." She blew noisily into the handkerchief. She had always pretended that being disinherited didn't bother her, but it was painful to have such clear and public proof of her father's scorn.
"He's quite insistent." Viktor picked up the purse she had left in the chair where Pooh had been sleeping and opened it. It was a gently used Judith Lieber clutch he had found in a consignment shop in the East Village, and he gave Phoebe a disapproving glance as he spotted' a Milky Way nestled at the bottom. Pushing it aside, he pulled out her comb and restored her hair to order. With that done, he extracted her compact and lipstick. While she
repaired her makeup, he took a moment to admire her.
Viktor found the off-kilter features that had inspired some of Arturo Flores's best work far more appealing than the puffy-lipped faces of the anorexic models he posed with. Others had, too, including the famous photographer Asha Belchoir, who'd recently done a photo session with her.
"Take off those torn stockings. You look like you belong in the chorus of Les Mis."
While she reached under her skirt to do as he said, he returned her makeup to her purse. Then he straightened her fig leaf belt and walked her to the door.
"I don't want to meet with anybody, Viktor."
"You're not going to back down now."
Panic filled her amber eyes. "I can't pull this off much longer."
"Then why don't you stop trying?" He brushed his thumb over her cheek. "People may not be gloating as much as you think."
"I can't tolerate the idea of anyone feeling sorry for me."
"You'd rather have everyone dislike you?"
She forced a cocky smile as she reached for the knob. "I'm comfortable with contempt. It's pity I can't stand."
Viktor took in the clothes that were so inappropriate to the occasion and shook his head. "Poor Phoebe. When are you going to finish inventing yourself?"
"When I get it right," she said softly.
Chapter 2
« ^ »
Brian Hibbard shuffled the papers in his lap. "I apologize for barging in on you so soon after the funeral, Miss Somerville, but the housekeeper informed me that you were planning to fly back to Manhattan tomorrow evening. I hadn't realized you'd be returning so soon."
The lawyer was short and plump, in his late forties, with ruddy skin and graying hair. A well-cut charcoal suit didn't quite hide the slight paunch that had formed around his middle. Phoebe sat across from him in one of the wing chairs positioned near the massive stone fireplace that dominated the living room. She'd always hated this dark, paneled room presided over by stuffed birds, mounted animal heads, and an ashtray cruelly made from a giraffe's hoof.
It Had to Be You Page 2
