by Thea Devine
She could hear MJ swallow and then whisper, “Yes.”
“If you are not at Brooke’s by three, I’m coming to get you and I will break down the door, MJ. That bastard screwed all of us, and he’s still doing it from the grave. They could arrest us for murder, MJ. All of us,” Delia went on relentlessly. “We have a better chance to survive if we stick together. Are you getting this, MJ? Are you packed to go?”
A long pause, then a sniffle. “I’m packed. I just didn’t know where to—I didn’t know what to do…”
Thank God. Delia let out her breath. “Well, I’m telling you what to do. Go to Brooke’s. I’ll be there soon.”
Brooke banged the gavel on her dining table. “I hereby call this meeting of the Mistress Club to order.”
The apartment was stuffy and smelled of disuse. Brooke had gotten hold of two racks for their clothes and two air mattresses, and bought some groceries and takeout for dinner.
“This is our brand-new life,” Brooke told them. “Though Detective Galligan hasn’t caught up with you two yet, trust me, he’ll find you—even if you can technically claim you didn’t know you were being investigated.
“So here’s the thing: We have to find out who killed Thane, and why. Otherwise we three become the top suspects, and they don’t have to look anywhere else. When Galligan finds out we know each other, we’ll be shark meat for the police and the press.” She looked at them both, one to the other. “He knows about this apartment.”
“Oh, hell.” Delia.
“It gets worse.” Brooke slumped in her chair. “I was with Thane that night.”
There was an instant dead silence that lasted an ungodly long time. Then MJ jacked up from her chair, almost as if she were going to attack Brooke. “I was with him.”
Delia grabbed her wrist and forced her back down to her seat.
“So was I,” Delia said softly.
“Oh, brother,” Brooke muttered. “And Galligan asked me if we knew each other. Now he can add the fact we all slept with Thane that night to the growing list of motive, means, and opportunity he has filed under mistress…”
“I’m leaving,” MJ said.
“You’re not going anywhere,” Delia contradicted sharply. “You have nowhere to go and no idea how bad this looks. We all saw him that night.”
“And now we’ve got to make a plan,” Brooke said.
MJ’s laugh bordered on hysteria. “You think you can solve the murder by making another damn plan?
“If not for my plans, we wouldn’t have this apartment and you’d be out in the street,” Brooke retorted angrily.
“Children, children, let’s stop squabbling,” Delia said, holding up her hands. “We don’t have much time. So, Brooke, what’s your plan?”
“We have to figure out who killed Thane,” she repeated.
“Piece of cake,” MJ muttered.
“Look,” Brooke said, “it could easily be one of the family. I mean, maybe his wife found out about the mistresses. Maybe Egan was tired of his father squandering all that money, his inheritance, on prurient pleasures. Maybe Thane came on to one of Alaina’s friends. Or maybe a girlfriend of Egan’s got an invitation to Maîtrise—hey, maybe Thane was the money behind Maîtrise! What if that girlfriend told Egan about it, and he decided to put an end to it. And that’s just five possibilities the police will never investigate.”
“So what do you propose we do?” MJ asked.
“We keep an eye on the mother, Egan, and Alaina. I don’t know what we’re looking for, but we have to do something, and watching them is a logical place to start. So tomorrow, l’m going to Pelham. Delia, you take Egan. MJ, Alaina. Maybe we’ll find out something.”
“You think?” MJ asked skeptically.
“I think,” Brooke said impatiently, “that if we sit on our butts, nursing our grudges and doing nothing, we’ll all be arrested tomorrow for conspiracy to commit murder.”
Chapter Eighteen
They’d dressed in jeans and sneakers, and Brooke had found three hats that would obscure their faces. She’d rented a car to drive out to Pelham, and they were minutes away from walking out the door when the buzzer rang.
Brooke froze. “Shit.” She took a deep breath. “Don’t move.” She went to the window. “Oh, Jeez, there’s at least one reporter down there. How did he find this apartment? Damn it. Now we have to sneak out of here.”
“Is there a back door?”
“I think there’s an emergency exit in the basement. Let’s go before anyone else shows up.”
The emergency exit unfortunately let out on the front of the building. It would be pure luck if someone didn’t notice them slipping out like thieves. Brooke took a deep breath, crossed her fingers, and pushed open the door.
Once they were down the block, their precautions seemed melodramatic. No one even looked at them on the street, or at the garage. There was no all points bulletin and no one had frozen Brooke’s credit card, so the car was no problem.
After she drove off, MJ and Delia hopped a bus to Midtown. When they saw the headline on a fellow passenger’s Daily News, they froze.
MISTRESSES, MAYHEM AND MURDER.
Delia pulled her hat lower and whispered to MJ, “Oh, my God, this is a nightmare!”
“Yeah. What good will this surveillance do now?” MJ asked.
“At least we’re doing something. Where’s Alaina’s studio?”
“Madison Avenue. I’ll just window-shop the area all day and hope I learn something before I freeze to death.”
“My plan’s pretty vague, too. I’ll figure it out when I get there, I guess. Here’s my stop,” she said as the bus stopped at Fifty-seventh and Fifth. “See you later.”
But MJ had no hopes for later, or that today’s must-do-something was better than doing nothing at all.
By late afternoon, Brooke couldn’t see the point of trailing Rae Bohansson any farther. She’d spent the morning at home, had gone to a local spa for an exercise class and a massage, and had spent the rest of the afternoon at her club, where she’d lunched with sympathetic friends and attended a meeting. Then she’d returned home and stayed there.
She’d made no calls, met no mysterious men behind the coat room, had no interaction that seemed suspicious. After all, she was in mourning, and Rae Bohansson always observed correct form. She wasn’t going to do anything that attracted undue attention.
Brooke headed back to Manhattan and was just about to enter the garage when a car blocked her way.
“Hey!” Her heart dropped. Galligan—oh, damn.
He turned, double-parked, and motioned her to enter the garage.
“I thought we were done,” she said as he pointed to his car. His unmarked car, thank God.
“We’ve barely begun. One hardly knows where to start, even. Let’s see…where are Ms. Parry and Ms. Branden?”
Did he know? How did he know? How much did he know? How much truth, how much omission?
“Why are you so certain I know the answer to that question?” she asked as he pulled into the stream of traffic.
“You have an apartment—very wise; I admire a woman who keeps her head and plans ahead. You’re all friends, and they have nowhere else to go. The only conclusion is, they’re with you.”
Damned Sherlock. “They’re out,” she said curtly.
“They’ll be back, then?”
“Let’s hope.”
“Let’s wait,” he said, “and we can get some other questions out of the way.”
Worse and worse. He circled the block to make certain the paparazzi weren’t lurking. “Lucky for you that they haven’t figured it out yet, but I bet they’ll be here in full force tomorrow morning. And this is a lousy fortress; no escape route. Do you mind if I call you Brooke?”
He clipped on his ID tags and parked.
Inside, he said, “This place is a lot smaller. Hmm…excess clothes, deflated air mattresses—looks like the other ladies are staying with you.”
He gave her a faint smile. “A
ny chance of some coffee?”
Brooke made it, then handed it to him across the counter dividing the kitchen from the living room. She stayed on the other side of the counter.
“So what exactly do you want to know, Detective?”
He straddled the stool at the counter. “Everything. From the beginning.”
She was scared to death of him. She needed her heart to stop pounding and her hands to warm up and for that icy look in his eyes to not be fixed on her. “Why?”
“Well, I’m just fascinated by this whole mistress thing. Three young women who are best friends, one old dead guy who’s been doing all three of them…Kind of heartwarming, actually, keeps it in the family, so to speak. And since you’re the one who apparently came up with the idea, you’re the one I’m going to focus on for the moment.”
“I want a lawyer.”
“I’m not here to arrest you. If you’ll just answer the damned questions, it’ll make life easier for both of us.”
“There’s nothing to tie us to his death other than the fact we were his mistresses.”
“This is true—on the surface. And it’s true that none of you rented a car Christmas Eve or morning. But there are trains. There are killers for hire…”
“And there is entrapment.”
“I don’t do things like that. I wish to hell I didn’t have to do this, too, but I need to know how you met Bohansson.”
Her insides prickled. “Why?”
“Prurient curiosity. Why do you think?”
“Maybe you’re on the hunt,” Brooke retorted venomously. “You’re just about that age.” Oh, God, why had she said that to him? What was it about this man that was driving her so crazy?
“Oh, that’s good. And what age is that, Brooke?”
“I’m sorry. That was a rude thing to say.”
“But so true. I am just at that age where some sexy young thing could flatter me into supporting her and giving her expensive gifts in return for certain personal favors. But I doubt Bohansson was that easy.”
Brooke couldn’t tell anything from his expression. His gaze was steady on hers. He took a sip of his now cold coffee and waited with the patience of a hunter. He looked like he’d been on the hunt for days, too—grizzled, wrinkled, tired, determined.
“No, he wasn’t that easy. I was.”
A hard silence fell. He didn’t like that, nor did she like saying the words.
“Right. You came to New York with that express purpose…”
“Yes.”
“All three of you?”
“Yes. Right after graduation.”
“How long did it take?”
“About a year.”
“Where would you meet someone like Bohansson? You don’t run in those circles. You’re not a model, an actress, or a groupie.”
“No. There’s—” the words stuck in her throat; it sounded so…she didn’t know what it sounded like. “—an intermediary.”
He didn’t say a word, just looked at her with those steely moral eyes.
“He was there. He was interested, we dated. He made the offer. I said yes,” she finished.
“A fine romance,” he murmured. “No kisses?”
“That’s none of your business.”
He hadn’t asked about the intermediary yet; she was scared witless he would ask.
“So painful to talk about, I know. Those billionaires dying on you, when you had such a good thing going. Only it was also going on with your two best friends, and you didn’t know. When exactly did you know?”
She swallowed hard. “Just before Christmas.”
“Interesting. You find out he’s doing your friends, and then the guy is killed. Can’t blame a man for connecting dots A, B, and C.”
“We didn’t talk to each other after we found out.”
“So maybe one of you took him out in revenge.”
“How? When? With what? He was a big man, Detective…”
Nick’s eyebrows went up. “So I’ve heard.”
Her frustration level escalated. “Are we finished here?”
“But I’m having such a lovely time. And I want to meet your friends and hear more about this intermediary.”
“I’m not saying another word.”
“Then can I have more coffee?”
“Get it yourself.” She stormed out of the kitchen just as she heard a key in the lock and voices. Damn! MJ and Delia. And no way to warn them that Galligan was here.
She blocked his view as they pushed open the door and motioned imperceptibly over her shoulder.
Delia’s eyes widened. She got it immediately. “Hello,” she called, shrugging off her coat. “Who’re you?”
The blonde at the funeral. Nick remembered her clearly as he got up to shake her hand. And the slim redhead. Of course; that was why Brooke had seemed so familiar. “Nick Galligan, Pelham Police. Which one are you?”
“Delia. That’s MJ. And obviously you’ve become way better acquainted with Brooke.”
“The whole point of the exercise,” Nick said, going into the kitchen for his coffee and then taking the stool that Brooke had occupied. “Anyone want coffee? It’s fresh.”
As if he’d made it. Irritating man. Enemy man. Brooke stalked off to stare out the window as Nick eased into questioning Delia.
Bless Delia with her ingenuous air. No one could ever think she had secrets or sorrows.
“Look,” Delia said, in response to his question about the day they’d found out Thane was screwing all of them. “The guy went to all this trouble to take on aliases, to fake a business biography for each of them, to set us up miles away from each other, and to keep us so occupied that we had no time to compare notes every day. That was his game. As for me, how much more fun could life be than a really well-heeled guy buying you an apartment and clothes and having great sex with you? You don’t get into the guy—you just make him happy.
“So when we figured out he was involved with all of us, it didn’t make a difference. He played it that way because he could, and I’d agreed to the rules. So what else do you want to know?”
Nick looked a little nonplussed at Delia’s nonchalance.
“MJ?”
“I was devastated,” MJ said tensely. “That’s all I want to say.”
“So devastated that you didn’t want anyone else to have him?”
“How could that be? He was married.”
Nick nodded. “But spending a lot of time pretending he wasn’t.”
“There was no pretense,” Delia said. “We all knew it.”
“And our knowing it, regardless of our reactions, is still no proof we had anything to do with his death,” Brooke put in from the window. “So I think we’re done here. If you’d please leave?”
“Get yourself a lawyer, Brooke. I’ll be back soon.”
As Nick closed the door behind him, she turned to Delia. “I hate him. I despise him. I never want to see him again. And I need you to tell me what happened today before we talk about him.”
They all crowded around the counter, taking the last of the coffee.
“I want to talk about him,” Delia said slyly. When Brooke sent her an exasperated look, Delia gave her knowing grin.
MJ said, “I didn’t turn up anything. Alaina runs her studio, talks on the phone a lot, doesn’t have many customers, teaches a class on the premises, and takes a two-hour lunch break. Although today, she ordered in. So basically, I got lots of exercise and my feet are frozen.”
Brooke outlined Rae Bohansson’s day. “I think she’s not going to do anything out of the ordinary that would be noticed. At least not until the mourning period is officially over.”
“Same with Egan,” Delia said. “He’s going to be in meetings from now until Easter, with the transfer of power. They brought lunch in, and he was playing musical conference rooms all day long.”
“And how do you know that?”
“I snuck into the reception room. There were so many people waiting to see hi
m, I was just one more, and I’m sure he didn’t know who I was. Or he was too busy to notice.”
“So the day netted a big fat zero,” MJ said dispiritedly. “We need a lawyer. Except we can’t afford a lawyer. We might as well just hand ourselves over to Galligan.”
“Now wait a minute,” Brooke intervened. “He can’t prove we’ve done anything except sleep with the man. If Galligan thinks we were in collusion to kill Thane, then he has to prove that we got together sometime in the wee hours of Christmas morning, somehow got to Pelham, got into the house, got him down to that family room, and then attacked him. Do we look like we could immobilize a guy as big and strong as Thane Bohansson?”
“I can think of one way,” Delia murmured. “But, be that as it may, I think I know a lawyer. I used to kind of flirt with him at the restaurant.” She bit her lip. “I wonder…Except it’d have to be a pro bono thing.”
“Don’t wonder. Let’s get hold of him before Galligan turns up on the doorstep again.”
Egan Bohansson went on the attack in the local media that night, detailing the cautionary tale of three mistresses—the three of hearts, or diamonds, depending on how you looked at it. Three sexually voracious women giving an aging but powerful old man back his youth, his virility.
“Those women, those leeches—they should give back every dollar the old man spent on them,” he spat at the cameras when reporters cornered him in front of the Bohansson building.
“Those gold diggers should rot for destroying our family,” he responded to a question from Fox News via a remote. “Taking advantage of an old man, faking everything from orgasms to their concern for him. They should fry in hell. And he gave them everything—he was a gullible old man, looking to reclaim his youth.”
Media spin, the whitewash cycle running full blast.
“It was a midlife crisis. He’d never hurt my mother like that.” Alaina, on Larry King Live. “You know how those powerful older men are—they think they can control everything, even growing old. What kind of women would take him for everything they could get? They’re prostitutes, and they should return everything he paid for.”
“We’re sitting ducks,” MJ said to Brooke as they watched the performance that night.
