“After it was tore?”
That meant there had been more to the note. Sammy and Ulysses and at least one more person—I was guessing Frank, the author of DIRTY!!!—had seen the whole thing. I’d seen only part. Maybe that meant I was only a little bit doomed to be dead. Or that the saving grace of the note was on the torn off part I was almost certainly never going find out about now.
Good luck to you, too, Sammy. I won’t write. I won’t call. I’ll forget I ever heard your name.
Chapter Thirty-nine
Thursday, August 27
Here’s something I’ve learned about Time. Big money—Mondo-sized Money—accelerates it. If Einstein never mentioned this, he should have. The formula, which I made up myself, goes something like MM>>>T, with the >>> standing for “triple speeds up.” While we were chilling out, putting together our plans to get back together with Rune as soon as possible, Time was approaching the Speed of Mondo. Again.
On our first morning at the Wyndham, which was Thursday, while we were having breakfast and trying to figure out how to spring Rune from foster care, my phone played “Lawyers In Love” and it was our excellent, cute, nice lawyer.
The Skipper, Esquire, was calling from the venerable Cleveland law firm of Gallagher, Gallagher & Barnes with great news: Mondo money can even speed up itself. Tom’s was in the bank. Figuratively speaking, of course. The cash was now squirreled away in all the assorted places where it was supposed to lie around accruing interest and earning more of itself, and Skip and Tom now had control of it. Tom was officially über rich.
When I’d realized what the call was about, I’d passed the phone over to Tom so Skip could give him the word about his money. Now they were winding up the conversation, and I saw the opening I’d been waiting for.
I asked for my phone back.
After confirming Skip’s jubilation about his victory over Mondo red tape, I oozed on in. “Skip. Can we talk about Nan for a second?”
Nan’s job was toast for sure. GG&B was all about discretion. It was engraved on their philosophical wall like “To Boldly Go” on the bridge of the Starship Enterprise. Only for them it was “To Discreetly Go.” I was sure, however, that they would never have split the infinitive.
Unless I could intervene somehow, Nan’s fifteen years of devoted service were down the drain. I’d been able to find out that no one was looking at her for accessory to kidnapping anymore. Nor anything related to her being in the plan that resulted in somebody’s—namely Dan’s—death. The plan and the death were all Dan’s now.
Nonetheless, her having been Dan’s sister and accessory to his hiring by the Arco folks was indiscretion aplenty for the firm.
Skip heard where I was headed. “Allie, I’m sorry. I don’t think there’s a prayer.”
“Skip. Her brother is dead because he was a criminal and a stupid man.”
“That may be, but—”
I cut him off, “I know, I know. GG&B can’t tolerate the slightest hint of…” I didn’t want to speak the indiscretion word because of the power of its position in the firm’s vision statement. I thought fast. “…un-toward…ity.”
Skip couldn’t help himself. A chuckle escaped. He stifled it immediately, but the damage was done.
I gathered up all my dignity and poured it into the phone.
“Please remind your partners, Mr. Castillo, that Dr. Bennington III and I now wield a considerable fortune. There’ll be tax issues, real estate issues, estate estate issues, gifts, bequests, all that. Legal crap. Out the wazoo. In perpetuity. Tell them that, unlike another of their partners who comes to mind in this context, Dr. Bennington III is a compassionate man. And way rich. Remind them about that.
“He and I would take it very badly indeed should Nan become unemployed. I’d say a couple of weeks unpaid leave should satisfy their need for righteous retribution. If not—”
I left the rest to his formidable capacity for filling in the blank.
The chuckle was fighting to get out again. “Ms. Harper. Would you and Dr. Bennington III mind very much if I don’t say ‘legal crap out the wazoo’?”
I released a grin I hoped he could hear. “Use your discretion, Skip. Use your discretion.”
***
“No, Tom. This money is good,”
I could tell that Tom was delighted about my apparent success with the Nan conversation, but not particularly elated about the money.
“Now you’re out of limbo. Whatever you want to do, wherever you want to go, the money will make it all easier.”
And probably three times faster.
He raised his eyebrows over his sexy dark glasses. Skeptical. But then he put his palms up in a gesture of surrender. “Okay, lady. I give. I’m going to stop being so negative about having 190 million dollars to spend any way I like.”
“It’s180 million. You’ve already contracted to spend ten of those millions for the—ah, shall we say—friendship of a gentlewoman.”
“Well, I should have five or ten million left when you get through with me. We ought to at least be able to afford tickets to the Rock Hall.”
“See. It’s all turning out fine. Let’s call Marie Clark right now and get her off the dime.”
***
In the midst of the ongoing Mondo Turbulence, we’d established what Rune wanted to do the next time we got together. He wanted Tom to take him to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and Museum. I could come, too.
I hoped Marie was beginning to see we wanted to be in Rune’s life for the long haul. That we wouldn’t take the money, wander off, and abandon the kid after everything he’d been through. I was certain she’d been holding us responsible for Renata in some circuitous way. I didn’t blame her. I thought so, too, a lot of the time.
Tom volunteered that the jackpot had paid out and told her he hoped that meant we could now maybe rent a house with some security until we decided how we wanted to proceed. His expression had been grave as he reiterated to her our understanding of how vulnerable our situation was.
“Yes.” He’d nodded and then shook his head. “No. Of course not, Marie. We understand. We’ll be with him all the time. Both of us. I promise Allie will never take her eyes off him.” He nodded again. “Absolutely. And it’s a very public place. There’ll be lots of people around. We’ll be fine. Thank you. Thank you very much.”
She’d been diplomatic, for her, Tom reported, about whether our situation had gotten any more “stable.” Whatever that meant. Maybe she believed we were a bad influence, drifting from hotel to hotel and brand-name bed to brand-name bed without benefit of matrimony. Degenerate nomads. Marie was wrapped pretty tight. I would bet I could bounce a quarter off her suits.
He’d clicked off, beaming. “She thinks we can count on Sunday. She said if she can work it out she’ll bring him here for breakfast. She said, ‘Don’t make me sorry’ like she always does, but I could hear her smiling.”
For this and the aforementioned fiscal reason, we were in the mood to almost celebrate. Both of us were inexperienced in the management and enjoyment of very large sums of money, but we felt we’d been responsible about handling it so far. All in all, I was confident the elevation of Tom’s FICO score to maybe 850,000 should entitle us to a major splurge. Therefore we went to Morton’s The Steakhouse for dinner. My lottery fantasies were starting to come true.
We Ubered. The RAV 4 was history. We’d ditched it at the Marriott for pickup on October 1. Anybody watching it and waiting for us would be watching and waiting quite a while.
Chapter Forty
Morton’s is Splurge Central. Its menu offers a wide variety of “Signature Entrees” and a tempting array of “Legendary Desserts.” We snagged a quiet table in a more or less secluded corner. Not that it made any difference to Tom, but I found the subdued lighting romantic. Our waiter, Austin, was efficient and well-versed in the explanations of food and d
rink, though not as much fun as Sean at Zocalo Mexican Grill and Tequileria.
“What is a ‘Spa-tini’ anyway?” Tom asked after Austin had delivered my rose-colored concoction and Tom’s austere old Jack and ginger.
“Mmm. It’s a drink in a shiny glass with fluffy delicious foamy stuff on top and…let’s see…mmm…yes. A nice amount of vodka in the middle. For only two hundred calories. Wanna sip?”
“I’m afraid your drink and my drink are one of those twains that should never meet. Enjoy, though. I want you to be happy tonight.”
After that ’tini, my evening took on quite the shimmery glow. Everything was luxurious, delicious, and XXL. I had a super time eating large delicious stuff and admiring Tom. He had a super time, he said, caressing my ankle with his ankle. I was almost relaxed.
I messed up the mood some, though, in spite of myself. Looking around that lavish room, everything buffed up glossy and built-to-last—even our fellow diners—the last thing I would have expected would have been a shiver of dread. But surprise. There it was. Black and oily, murky as death. I remembered Margo’s malediction. “There’s a killer out there.” And because my mouth was open from realizing this, my dread/surprise blurted itself out in a tiny, insuppressible “Oh.”
And because Tom had fine-honed ears he said, “What?”
And because I didn’t want to spoil the evening, I said, “Nothing. Goose walked on my grave, I guess.”
And because he still had the de-fib-ulator, he said, ”You’re lying, aren’t you?”
And because my heart was Tom-putty, I told him the truth. “I guess I just realized, we’re never going to be safe again. I must have been in denial until right now.”
He reached out his hand, palm up, the gesture that was becoming our secret symbol of everything, the wonderful and the terrible, that we’d shared. I fit my hand in there, palm down. He curled us closed and sighed.
“Alice Jane. I’ve been able to see that from the night we met.” He gave my hand a small, encouraging squeeze. “But, honey, that’s always been true, even before we woke up the Mondo Earthquake. It’s true for everybody in this world. ‘Security is a superstition.’ You know who said that?”
“No clue. Who?”
“Helen Keller. And if she thought that, I’ve always figured, who am I…?” He shrugged. “I don’t know why it makes me feel better to know that no place is the perfect safe place for anybody. But it does.”
“Me, too. It’s funny. But me, too.”
“The expensive luxury is hanging heavy in here, don’t you think?”
“I do. It’s unlike me to agree about that. But I do. Let’s get the check before they need two guys named Austin to haul it over here.”
***
Once we’d Ubered on back to the hotel, the evening was still youngish. “Let’s stop here in our own bar for a nightcap, Tom,” I suggested. “I don’t want this evening to end.”
“I suppose that depends on what you had in mind for the ending, babe.”
He employed the dimple which had its usual inspirational effect.
The Wyndham people called their bar The Blue Bar, and the city light at that time of the night was a definite moody blue. The bar itself curves through the center of the space in an arc of polished inlaid wood. Considering our most recent bar experience, I was delighted to be the only woman sitting with Tom. I was hoping for another Spa-tini, but those turned out to be a signature beverage of Morton’s The Steakhouse. I settled for an ordinary but quite serviceable cosmopolitan and sipped it slowly so as to keep the shimmer alive.
We’d been comfortably ensconced with our drinks, our light conversation, and some modest nuzzling for maybe fifteen minutes when I became aware of an exceptionally handsome couple standing in the entranceway, his striking pale blue eyes sweeping the room, her sleek dark head inclined toward him, fall of black hair spilling, her manicured claws sunk into his manly dinner jacket as she leaned into his shoulder.
My shimmer expired.
“Tom,” I spoke as calmly as I could over the pandemonium in my head, “why would your Diana be here in the company of my former D.B.?”
Chapter Forty-one
“Money and meanness.” I answered my own question. “That would be D.B’s usual motive. How about hers?”
Tom had vanished into silence, his hands encircling his glass—tight—like it was somebody’s neck. My neck? Her neck? D.B.’s? I hadn’t a clue, but I would have voted for hers. I’d take care of D.B.’s neck myself.
He drained his glass. Clunked it down on the bar. “Sign the check, Allie. Get us out of here.”
He paused. I sat and breathed and waited him out.
“Allie, I swear I’ll explain once we’re upstairs. Can you tell if they know we’re here?”
“The light’s not that dim. Anyway, if I know D.B., they’re here because we’re here. What I don’t know is why.”
“Let’s go.”
I signed the check. We went. With alacrity. D.B and Diana had taken chairs around the curve of the bar. I heard the bartender say, “What can I get you this evening, Mr. Harper? Your usual?”
As Tom and I hustled by, Diana made a small, startled sound and D.B. called out, “Allie!” I ignored them both. We kept walking.
When the elevator door closed, Tom said, in a rush, “She—Diana—she’s the woman from when I wasn’t blind. My fiancée from Atlanta.”
I watched the lights count up the floors: 8. 9. 10. We arrived with a slight jerk. The doors opened onto a little foyer. A demilune console with an opulent arrangement of fresh flowers. A mirror. I saw us. A pale man, a frazzled and flushed-looking woman. We continued on into our corridor and Tom started talking again.
“That first night, I told you the truth, Allie. As far as it went. She broke off the engagement, but she’s still entangled with me. In her head. With the past. With what her life was going to be. Some fantasy she had about being a professor’s wife. Living in Atlanta. The house. The children. The faculty teas. She doesn’t have any idea what life with me would have been like. It’s a dream world for her. But, trust me, she’s my nightmare.”
“She’s very beautiful, Tom.”
I thought, but didn’t say out loud, “so silky and smooth.” And, I reminded myself that he must still remember how she looked when she was twenty-one. The complete Diana package. We were well down our long hall now. He stopped and turned to me.
“She’s very unstable, Allie. And she drinks. When she drinks, she resents me and how she got frozen in some plans she had ten years ago. When she resents me and drinks, she calls. And when she calls—” He stopped and scrubbed at his cheek with one hand. “She tells me she’ll kill herself and it will be all my fault.”
“That’s—”
“I know what it is. But when it’s you and someone you’ve…known, it’s hard not to get caught up. She was working on her PhD back when I was working on mine. She quit when we broke up. She was even hospitalized for a while. Then she got better. Finally finished an MA. She came up to Case about six months ago. Looking for a job.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah. ‘Oh.’ There weren’t any teaching positions. It’s a relatively small department. When I found they’d offered her an admin job, which was an insult to her education, I was sure she’d walk away. She accepted it. I don’t know exactly where she lives, but now when she drinks and calls and threatens, she can also stop by.”
I used the card key to let us into our room. Spacious and serene. Cool and quiet. I inhaled the unique scent of a well-manicured hotel suite—eau de fresh linens and careful cleaning, a thousand packets of lovely soap torn open to release their French-milled goodness for a thousand pampered guests—plus, a soupçon of bleach thrown in for good luck. I find this fragrance combination very comforting. I bet there’s a marketing department somewhere at Hotel Central that put the formula tog
ether for the express purpose of entrapping scruffy little human animals like me. It smells like money.
“I’m sorry, Tom. I thought—The ringtone.”
He winced. “That. We met for lunch about a month ago. Somewhat safer to be with her in a public place. Fewer scenes. She programmed it into my phone.”
“I used to love that song. It’s about love. And sex.”
“Allie. It’s also about drinking.”
Well, there was that.
“Why is she with D.B. tonight?”
“The money. You were right. I don’t know how, but it’s the connection. She’s been even more delusional than usual since she found out about the Mondo. She believes I owe her. She feels she’s entitled to a share of everything in my life. It’s like the way she wanted to be married to me, living in an antebellum mansion, surrounded by well-mannered children and devoted servants. On a teacher’s salary. I’d laugh if it weren’t so terrible. She wants, she wants. And what she wants is smoke and mirrors, even to her. She’s purely the wanting.”
“Now I see how this all fits. Good old D.B. is the legal arm of wanting. You want it. He can sue somebody and get it for you. I don’t like it. What it means is she’s thrashed around enough to wake up a shark. There are worse sharks than D.B. in the waters around here.”
I never thought I’d hear myself say that.
Plus, I was thinking, this was perfect for D.B. He might not feel entitled to anything I had, but he’d relish helping somebody snatch it all away—and, no doubt, taking his percentage.
“I don’t care about the money. If I thought I could pay her to leave me alone and she’d stay gone, I would. But she wouldn’t. She’s threatened to make trouble for me at the university. Make me lose my job. Threats and rumors. That’s a case of Diana for you.” His tone was deep bitterness.
I opened my mouth to console him with “But Tom, you don’t need your job. You’re rich.” when “DOINK!”
I got it.
I clamped my mouth shut, walked over to our magnificent floor-to-ceiling windows, and stared down on Euclid Avenue, barely registering a handful of pedestrians, the twenty-foot chandelier hanging over the street, the theaters spilling jewels of colored light onto the pavement.
Too Lucky to Live Page 19
