Glass Slipper Bride

by Arlene James

  “Let me get this straight,” he said, “someone is threatening your sister.”

  A brief silence alerted him, and he looked up. Jillian Waltham sat with a pensive expression on her face.

  “Not threatening, really.”

  Zach laid down the pen, feeling seriously exasperated.

  “It’s more like he’s stalking her.”

  Ice slid through his veins. Zach picked up the pen, all business now. “Any idea when this started?”

  “Oh, yes. When she broke up with him. And it’s just like him, too. Janzen never could take no for an answer. It’s like putting up a red flag, issuing a challenge. Even if he doesn’t want it, he’ll go after it just because you told him he couldn’t have it.”

  With a sigh, Zach laid down the pen again and reached for patience. “I really need a date.”

  “A date?”

  The squeak in her voice confused him. “Yes, please.”

  “Well, all right,” she said, “but we have to take care of my sister first. She’s all the family I have.”

  He stared at her for several long seconds before all became clear, and then he didn’t know whether he was amused or appalled. “Uh, you, um, misunderstand me, I think. What I need is the date your sister broke up with this boyfriend.”

  “Oh! That date!” She laughed, but it was nothing like before, and the red flags of color rose in her cheeks. “I thought...but, I should have known better! You sounded a little desperate there, and a man like you wouldn’t...” She laughed again, the sound so strained and false that it made him want to shake her. She must have sensed his mood, for she took a deep breath then and said solemnly, “It was almost two months ago when they broke up. Say, May 8 or 9. Camille would be able to tell you exactly, of course.”

  Of course. He cleared his throat, uncomfortable with the knowledge that she considered herself beneath him. But that wasn’t his problem. He tried to concentrate on business. Question number one. “Why, exactly, am I talking to you about this instead of your sister?”

  “Oh, Camille’s scheduled for every moment,” Jillian said. “You know how it is, the station’s always sending her out on public relations stuff. It’s that local celebrity thing.”

  He knew too well the demands made on and by celebrity types. “Okay, then, let’s take it from the top, Miss Waltham.”

  “‘Jillian,”’ she said.

  He nodded.

  “Or ‘Jilly,’ if you prefer.”

  He didn’t prefer, actually. The sobriquet seemed to further trivialize her somehow, but again, it wasn’t any of his business. He made himself nod and smile. “Could you start from the beginning, please, and explain exactly why you’re here?”

  She slid to the very edge of her seat and confided, “It was the broken window.”

  He opened his mouth to elicit an explanation, then closed it again, hoping that he would do better to let her tell it in her own way. The fallacy of that notion quickly became obvious.

  “Camille says it was an accident,” Jillian went on. “and it probably was. He’s not all that coordinated. I mean, you’d think someone who’s involved with music, even if it is just advertising on the radio, could at least dance, you know, but not Janzen—not that he knows it. He doesn’t. He thinks he’s the world’s greatest dancer, just as he thinks he’s God’s gift to women. So maybe he broke it when he was trying to paint it.”

  Zach realized he was grinding his teeth and relaxed his jaw to ask, “The window, you mean?”

  “Yes.”

  “He was painting a window?”

  “With words,” she confirmed.

  “Words. Ahha. And what words would those be?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. We couldn’t read them after it broke.”

  “The window, you mean.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  Of course. Zach contemplated the container of coffee growing cold on his desk and wondered if it was possible to drown in it. He rejected that particular avenue of escape and sat back again, elbows propped on the arms of his chair, fingers templed. “So your sister broke up with her boyfriend, Janzen, and he tried to write words on her window and probably broke it that way, so no one knows what he was writing.”

  “Except you.”

  “Me?”

  “No, you. The word you. That part was written on the brick next to the window.”

  Zach swallowed something hot and acrid that tasted strangely like anger, but he couldn’t have said just with whom he was angry at that moment. He rubbed a hand over his face and said, “So he wrote something that ended in the word you.”

  “Exactly.”

  Zach waited, but she didn’t say anything else; so he thought perhaps he would offer some suggestions. “What do you think he wrote? I hate you? I want to kill you?”

  She shrugged, not quite meeting his eyes.

  “But it was a threat of some kind,” he pressed impatiently.

  She sighed. “I think so.”

  He floundered helplessly. This obviously was getting them nowhere. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to speak with your sister.”

  Jillian closed her enormous eyes in obvious relief. “Oh, thank you! I’m so worried about her.”

  He nodded, “Right. So, um, shall I call her?”

  “Oh, that won’t be necessary,” Jillian said. “Just show up around six o’clock.”

  “Show up?”

  “At Camille’s.”

  “You want me to come by her house at six o’clock this evening?”

  Delicate, wispy brows drew together. “Is that a problem?”

  It wasn’t, actually. He often made calls to women’s shelters, private offices and police stations, and he could make this one on his way to dinner at his brother’s. Why, then, was he looking for excuses not to go? He shook his head. “Just tell me where, exactly, I should show up.”

  She rattled off an address in North Dallas between the Park Cities and LBJ Freeway. He grabbed the pen and wrote it down in his notebook.

  “And your sister—will she be expecting me?”

  “Absolutely.”

  He closed the notebook and laid the pen atop it. “I’ll see her, then.”

  Jillian got up from the chair and attempted to smooth her wrinkled skirt, saying, “I can’t thank you enough, Mr. Keller.”

  “No problem.” He stood and thrust back the sides of his pale, tweed sport jacket to place his hands at his waist. “Thanks for the lunch.”

  “My pleasure.”

  He nodded and forced his mouth into a semblance of a smile until she’d maneuvered around the chair and turned toward the door. Then for some reason, without even planning to, he heard himself calling her back. “Jillian.”

  She turned and blinked owlishly at him. “Yes?”

  “About that, um, date thing.”

  Her cheeks immediately flamed pink. “Oh, don’t worry about that. It was a silly misunderstanding.”

  “I know, but it’s not that I wouldn’t... That is, I have a policy about getting involved with clients. It’s not wise. Emotions tend to run high in situations like these, and I can’t let myself take advantage of that.”

  “Of course,” she said. “You’re a professional.”

  “Exactly.”

  She smiled wanly. “I understand.”

  “Good.”

  Still smiling, she pushed her glasses up on her nose and went out the door. It had barely closed behind her before he remembered that she wasn’t a client at all. Her sister might be, but Jillian Waltham was not. No reason really existed why he couldn’t ask her out on a date if he wanted to. Not that he wanted to. He just didn’t want her to think that he didn’t want to, which didn’t really make any sense even to him.

  It was the Serena thing, no doubt. Funny that she should put him in mind of Serena, though. She didn’t look like Serena—well, other than that tall, model’s build—and she certainly didn’t behave like Serena, who had been quietly confident and well-spoken. No,
it was something else. Something he couldn’t quite put his finger on just yet.

  He sat down and contemplated the brown sack containing the lunch he hadn’t ordered, but it was Serena’s face he saw. A perfect oval framed by long auburn hair, expressive green eyes, straight, slender nose, a full lush mouth. That face had sold everything from mascara to opera tickets. But as lovely as it had been, it was nothing compared with the loveliness of her soul. Serena had been that rare, true beauty who was as pretty inside as out. And she was gone, killed by a crazed, obsessive fan who had fancied himself somehow rejected by her. As was that naive, cocky young policeman who had fed the threats and complaints into the system, believing that would be enough to protect her. He knew better now.

  The system was hamstrung by minutiae and overburdened by the sheer volume of similar cases. The average policeman’s hands were literally tied by what seemed to Zach to be nonsensical laws and the unscrupulousness of the criminal population. Law enforcement was an honorable profession, one embraced wholeheartedly by his family, but Serena’s loss had convinced him that he could do more by working the system from the outside than the inside, and he had done a lot of good since then. He admitted that without vanity or ego. It was the balm that made old pains bearable.

  So why did he recoil from this case? Jillian Waltham wasn’t even the target. He probably wouldn’t even see her again. Even if he found cause for concern and took the case, he would be protecting Camille Waltham, not her sister—and for pay. Talking news heads tended to make good money, even if they were only local. So it was settled, not that it had been in question, really. He would stop by Camille Waltham’s neighborhood and see what she had to say about this broken window and her former boyfriend. If he did take the case, he’d be dealing with Camille. It should be simple enough to stay clear of Jillian’s path.

  It occurred to him that the whole thing might be blown out of proportion by a nervous sister; Jillian had said that Camille considered the broken window an accident. He’d reserve judgment until he’d heard the whole story. Then, even if Camille did need and want his services, he could see no reason for Jillian to be overly involved.

  He felt slightly foolish now. Talk about overreacting! He pictured Jillian Waltham’s pixie face behind those big, clunky glasses and laughed at himself. What was he thinking? She was nothing like Serena, really, and she wasn’t the target, so he wouldn’t have to see her even if he did take the case.

  He began to unpack the lunch sack, his stomach growling in anticipation of the treat to come. With Jillian Waltham and her arresting eyes tucked firmly out of mind, he leaned back, propped his feet and dug in.

  When she opened the door and smiled at him, his stomach dropped. The baggy khaki shorts and oversized red camp shirt were not much improvement over that awful deli uniform, and yet she had definitely improved somehow.

  “Jillian. I didn’t expect to see you here,” he said, trying not to study her too closely.

  “No? Didn’t I tell you that I live here?”

  He shook his head. “I thought your sister lived here.”

  “She does. It’s her house. She took me in after my parents died.”

  Great, he thought. Now how do I keep you out of this? He lifted a hand to the back of his neck. She stepped back and pushed the door open wider.

  “Come on in and have a seat.”

  He could think of no way to refuse and gingerly stepped past her into a cool gold-and-white entry hall with a twelve-foot ceiling and an impressive glass-and-brass light fixture that looked as though it belonged in an ultramodern office building. He followed Jillian down the hall and through a wide doorway on the right. The formal living room was done in shades of white, cream and pale green. It had an unused air about it. She waved him down onto a pristine sofa covered in cream-colored linen and decorated with pale-green fringe before opening a cabinet in one corner, revealing a small bar.

  “What can I get you to drink?”

  “Nothing, thanks. I’m not much for alcohol.”

  “Me, neither,” she said, opening the door of a tiny refrigerator to reveal rows of canned colas. “But I do like a jolt of cold caffeine on a hot evening.”

  “In that case, I’ll have what you’re having.”

  She removed two cold cans and popped the tops. “Want a glass?”

  “Nope.”

  She carried the colas over to the couch and sat down, offering one to him. He took it carefully, avoiding contact with her fingers.

  “Thanks.”

  “No problem,” she said. “You’re easy. I don’t even have to wash a glass.”

  “Stays colder in the can,” he said, taking a sip.

  She nodded and pushed her glasses up on her nose. “Camille’s not here right now, but she’ll be along in just a minute. The TV station’s got her going out to some charity gala tonight, so she had to get a dress.”

  He filed that away for future reference and turned the conversation to a subject that had been bothering him since she’d mentioned it. “You said that she took you in after your parents died.”

  Jillian nodded. “That’s right. My mom and dad were killed in a boating accident when I was eleven. Camille was only seventeen, but she insisted her mother take me in.”

  “I thought Camille was your sister.”

  “She is. My half sister, anyway. We had the same father but different mothers.”

  “I see.”

  Jillian nodded and curled one long leg up beneath the other. Her feet were bare, and he couldn’t help noticing that they were long and slender with high arches, her second toe longer than the first, the nails oval and neatly trimmed. He wondered irrationally if she would appreciate a good foot rub as much as Serena had after a long photo shoot. To block that train of thought, he searched for something else to say and came up with, “It must seem like you’re full sisters if Camille’s mother raised you from the age of eleven.”

  “She didn’t,” Jillian said, then she seemed surprised that she’d said it. “I mean, Camille was more a second mother to me than Gerry—that is, Geraldine.” She grimaced and went on. “Don’t misunderstand me. Gerry’s been great. It’s just that my father left her for my mother, who was his secretary at the time, so naturally she doesn’t look on me as another daughter, just her daughter’s half sister.”

  Zach lifted a brow at that. “Must’ve been awkward, living with your father’s ex-wife.”

  She shrugged. “We’ve gotten used to it over the years.”

  “You mean you all still live together?”

  “That’s right. Only it’s Camille’s house now. After Gerry’s last husband died she moved in with us.” Jillian leaned forward then and confessed, “There have been three—husbands, I mean—including my father, who was number one.” She sat back. “Anyway, it’s a big house.”

  Her background sure made his look pedestrian. His own parents had been married thirty-six years and currently divided their time between Montana in the summer and Texas in the winter. With one older and one younger brother, both married and settled, both cops like their father, he was the closest thing to a black sheep in the Keller family. Even among all the aunts, uncles and cousins there had been few divorces and fewer deaths. He sipped more cola and thought of another question to keep the conversation going.

  “Don’t you have any other family?”

  Jillian shrugged. “I have an aunt by marriage and a couple of cousins in Wisconsin. My uncle was still living when my father died, but he was disabled, so my aunt really couldn’t take on anything else. My mother was an only child born late and unexpectedly in her parents’ lives. I don’t even remember them. If not for Camille, I’d have been fostered somewhere or sent to an orphanage.”

  “So she’s really all you have,” he commented softly.

  Jillian nodded. “And I can’t let anything happen to her.”

  Just then a door slammed somewhere in the back of the house. Voices and footsteps could be faintly heard, then a shout. “Jilly!”


  Jillian got up and went into the hall. “We’re in the living room, Camille.”

  “We?”

  “Zachary Keller and I.”

  A long silence followed and then someone shouted, “Bring him into the bedroom.”

  The bedroom? Jillian glanced at Zach and shrugged apologetically. “She’s awfully busy, and she does have this public evening out.”

  He got up. “Maybe I should come back another time.”

  “Oh, no!” She rushed toward him. “Please at least talk to her.”

  He wanted to say no, but he couldn’t quite look into those huge, worried eyes and manage it. He nodded. “If you’re sure she has the time.” He took a long drink of the cola and handed it to her. She carried the half-filled can to the bar and left it on the marble countertop.

  “Follow me.”

  She hurried out of the room on her slender, bare feet. He took a deep breath and trailed her across the hall and through a formal dining room, glimpsing a kind of den on the way, and out the other hall into a smallish but well-appointed kitchen, which opened onto yet another hall, where she turned right. She went down the hallway to the end and led him through an open door—into utter chaos.

  He got a fleeting impression of lavender and pale green, formal draperies, graceful furnishings and plush white carpet, before the frenetic motion of several bodies moving at once enveloped him. A tall, rawboned woman with ink-black hair scraped into a sophisticated roll on the back of her head swept past him toward the bed, trailing a garment on a hanger. A small man with a gray ponytail trotted by carrying a large white leather case, a rat-tail comb stuck into the clump of hair at his nape. A petite, middle-aged blonde with beauty-shop hair and skin that looked as though it had been stretched too tautly against her skull swayed past in an expensive pink suit, barking orders to the room at large.

  “Be careful with those silk stockings,” she was saying. “Someone get the beaded handbag and the blue satin shoes. I’ll get the sapphires myself.”

  “Did anyone order flowers?” a man wanted to know. “I was told it was taken care of.”

  Zach turned his head to find a man in a tuxedo sitting in an armchair beside the bed, calmly thumbing through a magazine.