Let’s Play Make-Believe

by James Patterson

  “Technically, I think we would just be trespassing.”

  “No, I’m pretty sure you’re talking felony.”

  “Anyway…” I turned to look Marty in the eye and said, “Are you game?”

  He shrugged his bare shoulders and said, “Why not? The Palm Beach cops already love me.”

  That was all there was to it. After a little breakfast, our usual walk on the beach ended up at the beach bungalow across the street from the house. It didn’t take long for us, sitting on the beach together, to see Brennan pull out in the Jaguar. He headed south, which meant he was crossing the Southern Boulevard Bridge, and I knew he’d be gone for at least an hour. It isn’t worth leaving the island unless you’re going to be gone for more than an hour. That was plenty of time.

  We had to jump the gate at the beach and cross the street quickly, but then we just walked up the driveway, and I led Marty past the front door and through an unlocked gate into the backyard. The key I had was to the pool house, and as we walked through it, I realized that it was almost twice the size of my current apartment.

  We paused for a minute before we stepped through the door that led to one of the rear patio rooms. I listened and didn’t hear anyone. Generally, Brennan kept a very small staff, just a housekeeper and a guy who supervised the lawn and pool care. He wasn’t here every day.

  I also knew that Brennan activated the alarm system only when the house was going to be empty for a few days or more, when he was traveling. It was his typical arrogant attitude that nothing could ever happen to him. That was the attitude I was counting on.

  Chapter 19

  I opened the door and we stepped into the cool patio room that looked out on the pool. Part of the roof was made of glass panels that let the sun in. It was a transition from the main house to the outside and had been a sanctuary for me. Slowly, I led Marty into the main part of the house.

  Marty, of course, was drawn to the architecture of the interior. His face was turned up like he was a tourist in New York City. He said, “This is an unbelievable house. Some of the crown work and the fireplace have to be a hundred years old. Done by true craftsmen, too.”

  I said, “I picked out most of the furniture and the art.” As I was standing next to a landscape painted by an up-and-coming Miami artist, I decided to make myself comfortable and slipped over to the wet bar in the corner of the room. I made us a couple of Grey Goose vodkas on the rocks with a splash of cranberry, and we took them back into the patio room, which had loungers and a great view of the pool and yard.

  I wanted to prove I wasn’t scared, so I stretched out on a lounger and sipped my drink. Marty followed my lead. The house was so well made, it was difficult to hear anything outside, and I realized that if I was wrong about my calculations, Brennan could show up unannounced at any moment. I wondered what the confrontation would be like. Would it hurt him to see me here with a guy like Marty? Would Marty really try to punch him in the face? These were valid questions, but I was determined not to show any fear.

  Brennan had a temper, and I knew there were a few guns in the house. He had bought us a matched set of Walther PPKs one Christmas. He’d made it sound like they were for me, but he really wanted one and pretended I’d appreciate an identical gun for myself. The thought of the guns made me worry about a violent confrontation. Suddenly I started listening for every creak of the house or other sound. We had to be alone.

  To fight my fear, I stood up and let Marty look at me for a moment. Before he could ask what I was doing, I slipped out of my shorts and T-shirt and kicked off my flip-flops. Standing there naked, I was waiting for him to tell me I was crazy, but he did the same thing with his bathing suit and tank top.

  So there we were, naked, casually sipping drinks inside my former home like we didn’t have a care in the world. I tried to imagine what a life like that would be like. A life with Marty instead of the one I’d had with Brennan. It was a nice fantasy.

  My doing something like this was all inspired by Marty and his love of dangerous games. This was so outside my comfort zone that Brennan might believe he was seeing things if he walked in right now. I almost wanted to show off the body I’d worked so hard on since he’d given me my walking papers.

  I wondered what I might say to the cops if they showed up unexpectedly. Someone might’ve seen us slipping in from the driveway, or maybe there was a new silent alarm I wasn’t aware of. Suddenly, I started thinking of the downside of this adventure that had initially been so exciting. I resisted the urge to jump up and flee. My heart was starting to race, but I kept a pleasant smile on my face as I looked over at Marty, who was examining the room in detail from his comfortable lounger.

  Then I heard the mechanical click of a key drift through the house.

  Someone was opening the front door.

  Chapter 20

  I froze every muscle, naked on the lounger, for just a moment, making sure I hadn’t imagined the sound of the key in the dead bolt of the front door. Then I heard the door and I saw the look of panic on Marty’s face. What had I done? His games were fun and involved Disney World, and my games were creepy and could lead to jail time.

  We both sprang off the loungers and tried to slip into our clothes as quietly as possible. I could hear someone inside the house, and I didn’t see how this could turn out short of a disaster.

  Marty was dressed faster than me and stood, pulling his shirt tight like he was about to have his photograph taken.

  I could hear the footsteps on the marble floor. A steady click-clack that could be from hard-soled loafers, the stupid cowboy boots that Brennan occasionally wore, or maybe a policeman’s shoes.

  We were screwed.

  I heard the footsteps more clearly.

  Click-clack.

  Just as I was about to make a last-ditch effort to lead Marty through the pool house and out into the backyard, where we could be seen through just about every window on the first floor, the French doors to the patio room opened.

  We were caught. There was nothing to do but act casual, so I just stood there with the vodka and cranberry in my right hand. I willed myself to turn slowly and then saw the figure in the doorway.

  It was not Brennan. The wide waist and short body with flowing dark hair immediately told me it was Alena, Brennan’s housekeeper for the past ten years. She’d been here before me and would be here long after me. Most important, she had no beef with me. I’d always treated her well and, frankly, considered having her as a housekeeper as opposed to a younger, shapelier woman a major plus. It was one less thing to tempt Brennan.

  Alena gasped when she saw us; then she recognized me. She wore a simple white polyester uniform that stretched tight around her hips and bosom. She held her hands to her cheeks, then rushed toward me with her arms out to envelop me in a massive hug.

  “Miss Christy, I have missed you so much. Are you well?” She stepped back and a tear ran down her cheek. “Look at you. You look wonderful. Maybe you could eat a little more, but you are still so beautiful.”

  That made me shed a tear as I stepped forward and gave Alena my own hug. I’d forgotten how sweet this woman from Guatemala could be. I also knew that not having her phenomenal pastries around was probably one of the reasons I had lost weight quickly after I moved out.

  I said, “How are you, Alena?”

  She shrugged, and I knew what she meant. She worked for a jerk, but what are you going to do?

  I introduced Marty quickly, brushing over our exact relationship.

  Alena gave me a sly smile and said, “Very handsome, Miss Christy.”

  “He’s an architect, so I wanted to show him the place. Do you know when Brennan will be back?”

  “Not for a long time. He had to go with his father to Miami on business. I was just using the day to run errands.”

  Now it could get tricky. I hesitated, then finally said, “Alena, do you think you could keep my little visit a secret?”

  “I would do anything you asked after the
way Mr. Brennan treated you. Besides, now that you’re not around, he doesn’t even pretend to treat me with any respect. If I didn’t need the job so badly, I would walk away and never come back.”

  I gave Alena another hug before she headed out on her next errand. Now Marty and I had some time to look around.

  Chapter 21

  I decided to give Marty a grand tour of my former castle. It was a lot like the tours I had given friends and neighbors after we’d had work done around the house. As I was showing him some of the guest bedrooms upstairs and recognizing all the improvements I had made in my years as the mistress of the house, I started to realize that maybe I had been covering up flaws in our marriage by throwing myself so completely into home renovations. It wasn’t an uncommon practice among the bored housewives of Palm Beach, but I’d had no idea I was doing it at the time.

  I had purposely saved the master bedroom suite for last. It sat on the east side of the second story, and the main windows looked out over the ocean. The view was remarkable. There was a separate walk-in closet on each side of a hallway that led to a bathroom, which included a small steam room, a Roman tub with Jacuzzi jets, Italian marble counters and sinks, and even a massage table that pulled out from one of the marble counters. That saved Brennan’s personal masseuse the trouble of carrying a table with her when she stopped by to give him one of his three weekly massages.

  I enjoyed the look on Marty’s face as he inspected every inch of the house. He said, “This is just unbelievable. Even a spread in Architectural Digest wouldn’t do this place justice. And most of these renovations were your idea?”

  I nodded while trying to hide my superior smile. “That’s right, I made this place what it is today. When I got here, Brennan had literally thrown some rugs across the floors and hadn’t updated the house in any other way since the 1960s. When I found mold—and I’m talking some serious mold, like up the walls and everything—in two of the guest bedrooms, Brennan’s response was ‘No one stays there long enough to get sick, so why worry about it?’”

  “Peach of a guy. I’m glad I’ve never had to meet him face-to-face.”

  “You’re in another class. There’s no reason for you to ever have to deal with that jackass. He’ll be out of our life soon enough.”

  Marty smiled and said, “Now, that’s an attitude I can get behind. As long as you don’t need all this again, I can’t see why I won’t make you happy.”

  Instead of answering him, I turned and wrapped my arms around his neck, then planted a long, lingering kiss on his lips. It felt nice to have this kind of passion in this particular bedroom. The room certainly hadn’t seen this kind of action from me in a long time. I had no idea what Brennan was up to on the dating front, and I didn’t care. If I really had to admit it, this house had always meant a lot more to me than Brennan had. At least that was what I kept telling myself.

  I pulled Marty by his hand and said, “I have one more thing I have to show off, and this one will blow your mind.” I ignored his questions and pulled him into the walk-in closet, which was really just another room, to the left of the hallway leading to the bathroom. This was Brennan’s formal closet, with one entire wall covered by over a hundred suits, organized by cut and color. I knew it would shock Marty.

  He was silent for a moment, then whistled as he walked along a row of suits, dragging his finger across the sleeve of each one. He looked up at the dozens of shirts, in colors ranging from white all the way to black, arranged in perfect order. It looked like a paint chart from one end of the closet to the other.

  Marty said, “And he wore a different suit every day?”

  “Sometimes two; one to work and one to go out at night. The man loves his clothes.” I watched Marty poke around the closet; then I said, “Go ahead, take a couple of sports jackets. He’ll never notice. Take anything you want. Brennan might be a little taller than you, but you’re about the same size. I’m telling you, that asshole will never miss them.”

  Then I noticed Marty pulling a box from a shelf at the end of the closet and holding it up to show me. It was the box that our matched set of Walther PPK pistols had come in. Brennan’s blue steel pistol was still in the box, surrounded by foam padding; an empty space in the shape of a pistol showed where mine used to reside. Now it was safe in the nightstand in my hotel room.

  I didn’t say anything when Marty pulled the gun from the box and checked to make sure there were cartridges in the magazine. He looked at me for any sign of disapproval, and when I gave none, he slipped the gun into the pocket of his shorts. You couldn’t even notice it.

  He put the box back right where he’d found it. I knew it would take Brennan months to find out it was empty. Even if he decided to go shooting, he had other guns and might assume he’d stuck the PPK somewhere else. Things like that didn’t bother Brennan.

  As we slipped out of the house and locked the patio door behind us, I realized I was about to walk down the beach with a man who had just stolen a gun and was carrying it illegally in public in one of the wealthiest cities in America.

  This was an exciting game.

  Chapter 22

  Marty had a maniacal grin when he turned to me, raised his eyebrows, and said, “This is the big one. You ready for it?” He looked perfect, framed by the rail and the overhang where we were sitting. The sun was just over his head with the Gulfstream Park racetrack behind him.

  He held a handful of tickets for the third race and threw in a cartoon madman’s laugh. Who wouldn’t smile at an act like that? He looked cute, dressed casually in a polo shirt and jeans. This was just another one of his surprises, and I had never been to a horse-racing track before.

  Marty knew I loved horses but had been avoiding the polo fields of Wellington because I didn’t want to risk running into Brennan. I had casually mentioned it the evening before as we shared a bottle of wine on the beach. That was when he’d come up with this perfect alternative. We’d left this morning for the track in Hallandale Beach. It was a nice ride, about an hour away, and on a weekday, the place wasn’t too crowded. The hot dogs were good and the beer was cold. Marty had managed to sweep me off my feet once again.

  When the starting gun sounded, the gates opened and the horses burst out like water from a broken dam. It didn’t bother me that there weren’t enough people around to make the cheers sound thrilling; I screamed for our horse anyway. We’d put no real thought into making a dozen bets on a horse named Sullivan’s Dream. Marty had showed me how to bet on the horse by itself, as well as in combination with other horses, and now we were about to see the result of our leap of faith.

  Everything looked good until the third turn, where our horse slowed considerably, and before the race had been decided officially, we realized we were out of the money. Marty said, “Had enough of horses for the day?” He scooped up the losing tickets and stuffed them into his pocket.

  “What did you have in mind?” It was warm, and I didn’t mind the idea of avoiding Broward County rush hour.

  A few minutes later, I found myself on the shuttle heading toward the far reaches of the sprawling parking lot and my white Volvo S-60.

  Marty said, “I’ll drive, if you don’t mind.”

  I smiled as I thought about what a gentleman he was. Then we slipped onto I-95 and started cruising north.

  I said, “This is great. Just what I needed. A few hours away from Palm Beach.” I realized that was the opposite of the opinion most people held.

  Marty kept his eyes on the road as he said, “Glad you liked it.”

  “What would you like to do now?”

  He thought about it for a few seconds and then said tentatively, “I have a game in mind.”

  “Anything you want. You’ve definitely earned it.”

  Marty just gave me one of his smiles and didn’t say anything else. I was content with that. We let Adele’s music fill our silence as we zipped along the interstate northbound. I didn’t say a word when we passed our exit. Marty had already proved
that his surprise trips were always worth the effort.

  When we were more than an hour past Palm Beach, I finally said, “Is this all part of your game or are you lost?”

  He kept a smile as he said, “All part of the game.”

  “Want to fill me in?”

  He just smiled, and I liked it. He looked a little nervous, with his fingers thumping on the steering wheel and his constant shifting in the seat. I didn’t really know what it meant, but I was willing to go along with the game.

  We pulled off the interstate and took the long road east until we were on the edges of the city of Vero Beach.

  I said, “Okay, I can guess that this game has something to do with your ex-wife. She lives here, right?”

  Marty nodded. “She does. You still in?”

  “Sure, I said I’ll play.”

  “Then do me a favor and reach back into my jacket on the rear seat.”

  I twisted and reached for the Windbreaker and immediately felt something heavy in the pocket. I pulled out the pistol and held it up.

  “Is this what I think it is?”

  Marty grinned and said, “If you think it’s the pistol I took from Brennan’s closet.” He made it sound innocent, like it was a shoe he had taken.

  “What’s it for?” I kept my voice as even as possible.

  “Our game.”

  “What’s the game?”

  “It’s called scare the shit out of my ex-wife, Teal.” He kept driving, taking a few turns, and said, “Come on, it’ll be good for a laugh.”

  I didn’t say yes or no as we parked on a short cul-de-sac a few blocks from the ocean.

  Marty pointed at one of the three houses on the right side of the road. A vacant lot took up the space on each side of it, separating it from the houses next door. “That’s her house.”

  It was nice. Nothing like my old house, but it was clean and cute. A short walk to the beach. I was getting nervous as I considered all the crazy things that could happen. But I didn’t want to let Marty down, and frankly I was curious as to how he’d scare her. He was a smart guy. I was certain he had put some thought into this.