by Nancy Martin
“Yes.”
“Lots of people involved?”
“I don’t know how many.”
He couldn’t contain his excitement. “Will anyone come forward? All we need is one person.”
“That person will undoubtedly pay a price,” I said. “Secrets will have to come out.”
“We can protect people. We can—” He stopped himself and looked at me. “Nora.” His voice changed. “Are you in trouble?”
I gave him a shaky smile and put my cup on the table. “You mean besides trying to help my sister escape a murder charge?”
He put his arm on the back of my chair and edged closer. “Are you being blackmailed?”
“I don’t have any money,” I reminded him. “You saw my house. It’s falling down around my ears. My paycheck doesn’t come close to covering my expenses. A blackmailer would be pretty stupid to choose me, wouldn’t he?”
“That’s not what I asked.” Bloom covered my hand with his again. “Are you in a jam? Tell me what’s going on, and I’ll help you.”
But I couldn’t. The thought of turning Tim Naftzinger’s life upside down made me feel physically ill.
“Nora.”
I wasn’t sure when it happened, but suddenly he touched my chin and tilted my face toward his. He radiated steady dependability. He was someone I could relinquish my problems to. Someone I could trust.
Next thing I knew, I was kissing him. It was a relief, almost. His mouth was sure, and his tongue tasted like caramel. I slid my shaking hand up to his smooth cheek. I realized we were breathing in unison—quick and shallow. I forgot about murder and just let it happen. My mind went blank, but the rest of my senses shivered awake.
When our lips parted, I asked softly, “Do you have a gun?”
He blinked. “What?”
“Do you carry a gun?”
He laughed uncertainly. “Why are you asking now? I never took you for the kind of woman who wanted to see—”
“I just need to know.”
“I’m a police detective. Of course I have a gun. Why?” His hand tightened on my shoulder. “Do you need that much protection?”
“No. I—I don’t know. I’m afraid of guns. I—”
“It’s locked up,” he soothed. “It’s in my closet. It can’t hurt you.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
“What, then?”
Clearly, I was confused. Scared, too. Maybe I was desperate. Maybe I was furious enough at Michael to permanently break off whatever we’d been doing together and experiment with someone new. Maybe it was time to trade in a sexy, funny, tender, infuriating man for a younger model.
Bloom said, “You’re really upset. Let’s go back to my apartment. I live a few blocks away.”
“Wait,” I said.
“I’ve waited,” he said. “There’s a lot going on between us. We can work this out. Let’s go to my place. Let me take you to bed. You’re so beautiful.”
His fingertips brushed the buttons on my blouse.
That did it. I was definitely not up for this. I pushed his hand away. My face was very hot.
He toyed with a strand of my hair and didn’t move away.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Going to bed with you—it would be a shortcut. I don’t know you. Not like—Not as much as I should.”
“We can get to know each other better. Come on.”
“No, I can’t. I’m sorry.”
“Why,” he said. “Are you afraid of me, but not of him?”
I looked up into Ben Bloom’s dark eyes and I knew what kind of pillow talk he hoped for. He was prepared to take me to bed to learn more about the blackmail. He didn’t care about me, and I wasn’t entirely sure he was sexually aroused by me either. The moment felt calculated. I had been sighted in his cross-hairs for something more than a tumble on his bed.
“I think you know,” I said.
I got my coat, went out onto the street. He watched me through the window, but I turned away hastily.
I hurried several blocks and found myself on Logan Circle looking down the length of the Ben Franklin Parkway towards the Rodin Museum, home of Rodin’s most popular work, The Thinker. I wished I could summon up some useful sequence of thoughts, but no luck. My head was whirling.
Beyond the Rodin lay the Museum of Art. From it, a freezing wind blew down the avenue, and I stood for a long time looking at the buildings—constructed and maintained by vast donations from generations of generous supporters. My own family had contributed, as did the families of many friends. The result was a city laid out with precision, designed with grandeur and great beauty. But the side streets and old neighborhoods each possessed their own nuanced complexity—with dirt and confusion and character—that fashioned a city people could claim as their own. It had its faults, but we loved it.
I shivered in my coat.
Finally, too cold to think, I cut across to the Four Seasons. In the lobby I found a telephone.
Michael answered on the second ring.
“It’s me,” I said, my voice sounding strangled.
“I can’t talk,” he said. “I’m at a deposition.”
But he didn’t hang up.
Neither one of us said a word for a long, tense moment. We listened to the silence that stretched between us, infused with so many unspoken emotions that I thought my heart would burst.
I swallowed hard and finally said, “I need to see Emma. It’s important.”
Another silence, even more painful than before, laden with disappointment.
“Call Reed,” Michael said at last. “He knows.”
“Thank you.”
“Nora,” he said.
I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to breathe, but it came out like a hiccough.
Half a minute later, I hung up without saying anything more.
Blindly, I searched my handbag for more coins for the phone, using the time to compose myself.
At last, I called Reed. When he answered, I said, “I need to talk to Emma. Michael says you can help me.”
“Where are you?”
I told him.
He said, “Give me an hour.”
I went into the Swann Café. The host recognized me and gave me the best table in the house when I would have much preferred the darkest corner. I was so hungry that I ordered a club sandwich and ate the whole thing practically without taking a deep breath. I took a longing look at the dessert display, but remembered the ballet gala was only a few days away.
Soon, Reed pulled the town car in front of the hotel and got out cautiously. “Where’s the dog?” he asked.
“You’re safe. He’s with my sister.”
When he was behind the wheel and the car was heading past City Hall, I asked, “Did you talk to Michael?”
“The boss is busy today. Meeting with a bunch of lawyers.”
A deposition, he’d said. Something he didn’t want me to know about.
Reed drove into a parking garage and left the town car on the top deck. We walked down a flight of stairs, and he put me into the back seat of a different car and we went out onto the street again. I should have been amused by this extra step in securing my sister’s safety, but today I was unnerved.
After the switch, Reed drove me through the thickening afternoon traffic until we reached the Mutter Museum.
“Oh, not here,” I groaned. “Whose idea is this?”
“Your sister’s,” Reed said. “I’m not going in there. Place gives me the creeps. Call me when you’re ready to leave.”
The Mutter Museum was one of Emma’s favorite spots, and one of my least. Originally founded to house a collection of medical specimens, it had evolved into a graphic display of frightful curiosities hyped to the visiting public as the perfect Halloween outing. Everything from the most gruesome obstetrical gadgets and deformed human skeletons to trephinated Peruvian skulls and the liver shared by the so-called Siamese twins Eng and Chang, submerged in liquid in a jar, was on display to be gawked at by tourists. A plas
ter cast of their conjoined bodies was a visitor favorite. The term gross anatomy was particularly apt.
As a ten-year-old, I had been dragged into an exhibit of deformed babies and, overcome, upchucked into Libby’s handbag. Libby threw the ruined bag into a museum garbage can, but a guard found it minutes later and kindly returned the bag to my appalled sister, having naturally noticed the sexy girl with the striped handbag as soon as she strolled through the doors.
Emma, of course, loved the place.
I found her now in the gift shop, poking through a display of novelty items. She was bouncing a pair of eyeballs in her hand and turned to me with a grin. “Think I should get these for the twins? And maybe Lucy would get a kick out of that squishy human heart?”
“Go for it,” I said. “Those kids are a lost cause, anyway.”
Emma tossed the eyeballs back into their bin and turned to me. She had gotten some sleep, and the bruise on her cheek had begun to turn green and fade, but the sight of it still made me catch my breath. She was dressed in an oversized parka I didn’t recognize and wore a knit Flyers cap over her hair. I gave her a hug and was surprised to discover she wanted to hug me, too.
“Great disguise,” I said once we were out of the shop and standing in the high-ceilinged lobby. “You look ready to sell ten-dollar Rolexes on a street corner in Alaska. How are you?”
“Life’s a bitch,” she said cheerfully “Except for Libby. I talked to her an hour ago. She seems her usual lunatic self. Who’s the new boyfriend?”
“A doctor.”
“Have you met him?”
“Barely. Why? Has there been a development since this morning?”
“No, just—well, he sounds like a typical Libby acquisition. A sexual theme park with a major personality disorder.”
“Oh, no, is she having sex with him?”
“Depends on what you consider sex, I guess.” Emma slid her hands into the pockets of the enormous black parka. It had several zippers and a dozen extra pockets suitable for carrying supplies on an Arctic mission. “What about you?”
“I’m not having sex with him, either.”
She studied me. “Are you having it with anybody else?”
“Let’s talk about you, shall we? Can we go for a walk outside? This place gives me the creeps.”
She stared at me and swore softly. “It’s true, then, isn’t it? Mick was right.”
“Right about what?”
Emma didn’t move to go outside. “He thought maybe you were going to do something drastic. It’s that boy detective, isn’t it? That kid who moons after you.”
“He does not moon. And I didn’t do anything with him, so relax.”
“Your blouse is unbuttoned.”
We were alone in the lobby, so I fastened the undone button, wondering how Bloom had managed that trick.
“You know,” Emma said seriously, “if you push Mick away often enough, he’ll eventually get the message.”
Hard-voiced, I asked, “Did he show you his gun, Emma?”
That took her by surprise. “What?”
“He’s carrying a gun now. Whatever trouble he’s in at the moment requires him to have a weapon.”
“How do you know?”
“I saw it. It fell out of his pocket.”
“Are you sure it’s his?”
“Well, why would he have it otherwise?”
“I don’t know. I just—I can’t believe he’d—”
“Believe it. I can’t be around him anymore, Em. I’ve had enough violent crime, thank you, and I don’t want to be a part of it again. If he’s going to get himself killed—”
“He won’t get killed. He’s indestructible.”
“Nobody is indestructible. We both know it. In fact, that should be our family motto.”
She shook her head in wonder. “Wow, this is hard to believe.”
“So you understand?” I demanded. “Sure, I care about Michael. Most of the time I think I’m in love with him. But I’m not going to set myself up for another catastrophe. I’ve almost got my life back on track, and I don’t think I could survive. Not if something happened to Michael.”
She touched my arm and didn’t say anything. Maybe this was what I had needed when I called for her. Some sisterly solidarity.
“I’m not going to cry,” I said.
“Okay.”
“I’m trying to be strong.”
“Right.”
“I’m trying to do the smart thing.”
“Good. Men are a dime a dozen anyway. We’ll walk around the block and find somebody worth spending a night with, I’m sure.”
“Shut up.”
“Whatever you say.”
We stood for a silent moment, and then I said, “Can we talk about something else now?”
“What do you have in mind?”
“How about Rush Strawcutter?”
She took her hand away. “My turn to be the target now?”
We went outside together. The raw cold cut through my coat, but Emma looked unfazed. I said, “I need you to remember everything you can about that morning, Em. Any little detail might help.”
“I already told you everything.”
“Then let’s back up. Tell me what you knew about Rush before he died.”
“Like what, exactly? The color of his socks?”
“Did you learn the color of his socks?”
“No,” she said. “The God’s-honest truth is I never slept with him. We fooled around a little, but he was—I think he truly cared about Gussie. He didn’t want to hurt her. I pushed him, and that was wrong, I know, but he—We only played around a little. Mostly, I liked being with him.”
We started walking.
She began to talk then. It was aimless, but she told me about her friendship with Rush and I could sense she had longed for a real relationship with him. Even before her husband’s death, Emma had been on a wild ride. Now I listened and wondered if we had both managed somehow to struggle our way out of the center of the storm. Maybe we were both on the edge of peace and quiet. Emma had found something in Rush—something that cut some of the pain in her heart. Except now he was gone, and she looked worse than ever.
After we’d walked several blocks and she quit talking, I said, “I’m sure Rush wished things could have been different with you, Em.”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. He was always on the lookout for a stray puppy to rescue. Maybe I was just one of a long line of salvage projects for him.”
“He felt that way about Gussie, didn’t he?”
“Yeah, she was his ultimate project.”
“Do you know how she felt about him?”
“She must have loved him once, but she couldn’t trust him. She was always worried about the money. Is that nuts, or what?”
“Do you think Rush married her because he wanted to rescue her, or because he also wanted her fortune?”
“He was concerned about cash,” Emma admitted. “He had to scramble to raise the capital to start Laundro-Mutt when Gussie refused to invest. He went to banks all over town, but nobody wanted to give him anything if he didn’t have the Strawcutter guarantee standing behind him.”
“If Gussie had just volunteered to do that much, he would have had an easier time.”
“I don’t think Gussie wanted to make anything easy for Rush. That was part of their relationship. She needed to test him all the time. He had to constantly prove he wanted to stay married to her.”
“So he went the venture capital route to raise money for Laundro-Mutt. Why did he choose Tottie, of all people?”
“Well,” said Emma. She stopped at the traffic light and didn’t look at me.
“Well?” I asked.
“Because.”
The light changed, and Emma hustled into the street. I followed her hastily.
“Em?”
“Do you know anything about Rush’s family?” she asked.
“Not really.”
“He grew up in fos
ter homes around here. Never far from Philadelphia. I suppose that’s why he was always adopting those dogs of his, because he was a foster kid.”
“I had no idea.”
“His mother couldn’t support him, so he bounced around from family to family most of his childhood. I think it was hard on him, but he managed to survive. That’s a testament to his real personality, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is.”
I started to feel what was coming. It was a tidal wave, building in size far off shore.
“Em, if Rush’s mother couldn’t support him, where was his father?”
“Rush didn’t know who his father was until just a couple of years ago when he married Gussie. He wanted to find his mother to invite her for the wedding, if you can imagine that. But she was dead, and he could only locate a sister of hers. The sister told Rush who his father was.”
“Oh, my God. Tottie.”
“Tottie Boarman,” Emma confirmed.
“Did Rush go to see Tottie?”
“Not at first. Rush had already experienced the Strawcutters’ reaction to a poor, unconnected young man in their midst. He figured Tottie would see him as a greedy opportunist. So he stayed away. But when he needed money for Laundro-Mutt, Gussie pushed him to go to Tottie.”
“So Gussie knew of the connection?”
“Yes. It was only fair, according to Gussie. Rush was due some of Tottie’s fortune—at least, to her way of thinking.”
“Oh, God,” I said again. I stopped walking.
Emma pulled me out of the pedestrian traffic and under the awning of a corner market. A display of fall apples stood beside us.
“What was Tottie’s reaction? Did he know Rush was his son?”
“It’s pretty obvious, when you think about it. They might be opposites in character, but they look alike. How could Tottie deny it?”
Of course they looked alike. How could I have missed it before? Tottie’s rude personality had blinded me, of course. Rush might have had Tottie’s odd walk and similar features, but they were so different in manner that no one could have guessed they were father and son.
I said, “Tottie didn’t welcome Rush with open arms, did he? It wasn’t in his nature.”
“No, Tottie acted like a son of a bitch, of course. He told Rush not to expect any prodigal-son treatment. I think Rush was pleased, though. Something must have given him hope. The eternal optimist, he probably figured he’d eventually win Tottie’s affections.”
