The voice was Blake’s.
Beth remembered to pitch her voice lower, like Pog’s. “I’m calling for Moira Whiteside. Mrs. Whiteside is sorry, but she will have to call Mrs. Bobak back this afternoon. Is there a convenient time for Mrs. Bobak?”
She held her breath.
“Give me a minute,” Blake’s voice said. He sounded rough, as if he hadn’t slept. Good, Beth thought savagely. “How about three?” He wasn’t asking for Darleen. He was asking for himself. She could hear it in his voice.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Whiteside has a meeting at three. Perhaps she can call when she gets back from lunch. Will it be all right if I get back to you in an hour or so?”
Blake hesitated. She could picture him fidgeting with the phone cord. “Yes, that’s okay,” he said, his receptionist manner slipping. “But no later than two, all right?”
“Very well,” Beth said “I’ll let her know.”
They hung up together.
Beth grabbed her dull white Coach jewelry vault and bolted for the door. Halfway there she realized she had better do something about her appearance. She stood, frozen and dithering, as precious seconds ticked by. Then she remembered that Moira kept an emergency suit in the front closet, with shoes to match, in case she had to take a big donor out to dinner somewhere fancy, and her usual pale gray or blue Donna Karan wouldn’t serve.
Beth had thought it was so cute when Moira explained that to her, years ago. And Moira had explained to Poor Beth Saunders how working women were under a lot more pressure than men; a man’s suit worked everywhere, but a professional woman had to have five times as many clothes.
Thanks for the lesson in office feminism, Beth thought. She grabbed the bathroom key on its don’t-leave-me-behind stick off Elaine’s desk, eased open the closet door, and took the suit, which was draped in a really unworthy black plastic garbage bag. She checked—yes, the shoes hung on the same hanger in their own little bag. Why on earth a garbage bag? She could only imagine that Moira hadn’t wanted to leave this expensive outfit packaged as it deserved and hanging in the closet, to be a temptation to the staff. After Elaine’s lecture to the temp, Beth Asucar, on not stealing donor identities, she wasn’t surprised.
With a backward glance at the shut door of Moira’s inner sanctum, she slipped out of the charity office and made for the ladies’ room down the hall.
“There you are,” said Dective Doyle’s voice affably.
Beth gave a gasp and nearly swallowed her tongue. She clutched the purse full of diamonds to her chest under the drape of the big black garbage bag. “What are you doing here?”
“Your new employer gave me a ringydingy when she heard from her old buddy Beth Saunders. Nice of Mrs. Saunders to get you a job, I thought.”
Beth narrowed her eyes at him. “Why are you following me around?”
“Your new boyfriend, Blake Shanley?” Detective Doyle said. “He’s missing. He was supposed to stick around, too, in case his missing wife’s body turned up after she bled all over his secret apartment. We’d sure like to know she’s all right. I figure, if she called Mrs. Whiteside to help you out, maybe you know where we can contact her.”
Beth licked her lips. She was sweating. She had only minutes to get out of here and hail a cab that would take her all the way to the western suburbs. “I don’t know.”
Doyle took a step closer. “I’d really, really like to know that nobody has gotten killed,” he said reaching for Beth’s arm. She wriggled away until her back thumped against the ladies’ room door. Doyle smelled really good. For a wild moment, Beth considered solving this problem the sex demon way, in a locked ladies’ room.
But his hand closed tightly on her arm. She knew he was about to arrest her.
“Let go of me!” she squeaked.
Someone ran around the corner suddenly. Detective Doyle spun violently away from Beth.
“Hands off the merchandise!” came a familiar voice.
Reg forced himself between her and Doyle with his fists clenched. “Nobody touches my girls without I say so,” he grated.
Doyle’s eyes were full of surprise. He looked from Reg to Beth, cowering behind Reg. “Who are you?”
“I’m her pimp, that’s who I am,” Reg said proudly, “and you don’t touch her unless I say so!”
Beth watched the cascade of emotions cross Doyle’s face and felt an almost Jee-like rage.
“You,” she hissed, and Reg glanced at her nervously out of the corner of his eye, “are not my pimp!”
Then she hauled off and slapped him as hard as she could.
Reg almost fell over.
Beth spun, scrambled the bathroom key into the lock, flung herself inside, and pushed the door shut until it clicked. There wasn’t a deadbolt. She leaned against it, sweating, panting, nearly blacking out from panic.
Someone tried the door. “Mrs. Saunders?” Doyle’s voice came. So much for denial. “Somebody’s bound to come along and let me in.”
“What kinda freak are you? That’s a ladies’ room there,” Reg protested, still outraged, still clueless. But he was guarding the door for her. She had time to...do what?
Beth realized she was still clutching Moira’s black garbage bag full of black suit and black shoes.
Slowly and silently drawing a deep breath and letting it out, she walked to a stall and banged the door without going in. There was generous space for her to change clothes in front of the mirror.
Swiftly, she stripped down to her underwear and put on Moira’s clothes. The suit was too big for her, ridiculously big, and it left miles of leg showing in a weird way. Cut low, too. She’d have to wear her own white camisole. Looking in the mirror, she didn’t feel in the least disguised.
Terror blitzed her. She looked into her own eyes. Can I do this? Or will I get arrested and let Blake get away?
Because there had been something in his voice on the phone that said, No later than three o’clock, because I have to catch a plane.
Was he meeting Moira and skipping town?
No, because Moira had a three o’clock with Morgenstern.
Was he skipping so he couldn’t get arrested? What if he was faking his own death?
Blake would love it if Beth got arrested for both her own murder and his.
She shut her eyes and felt her anger bang around inside her body.
Then she opened them and went into a toilet stall. She made her voice sound higher. “Is there any toilet paper over there?”
She lowered her voice. “Sure. Just a second—” She paused artistically and pawed noisly at the toilet paper dispenser. “Here.”
She raised her voice. “Oh, thank you! Thanks a million.”
She flushed the toilet in the stall, then let the door bang.
Then she ran for the mirror and shut her eyes as tightly as she could.
“Is that La Mer?” she said in the high voice.
“Strivectin,” she said in her lower voice.
She pictured the woman who wore the black suit: someone who got caught in a stall without toilet paper, someone who used anti-aging cream, someone shorter and dumpier, with dyed dark brown hair going white at the roots, a sagging jowl, and a worried yet smiley face with eyes deep-set in puffy lids. Her ankles would be a little heavy. She’d be uncomfortable on these high black shoes of Moira’s. She’d be—Beth opened her eyes and saw that woman in the mirror—she’d be wearing diamonds. Lots of them.
Beth opened the borrowed handbag and swiftly, silently frosted herself again. “Do you like it?” she said in the high voice.
“It’s okay,” she answered herself. “I don’t get a reaction. I’m a little allergic to La Mer.”
The older woman, what would her name be? Maybe Virginia. Virginia said, “Oh, that’s a shame. Such a nice product.” Meaning, so damned expensive that an ounce of it cost more than a secretary’s shoes. Although not more than Moira’s tall black heels.
She looked down at her legs. Not puffy enough. In fact, she wasn’
t puffy enough all over. Beth shut her eyes and ran her hands over her body, letting it swell until the skirt was cutting into her waist and the buttons strained on the jacket. She also made herself shorter. Now she was barely five feet high.
Someone outside tried the door handle again.
“Hey, you pervert! Ladies room, remember?” Reg said loudly.
Doyle answered him, and under cover of their voices, Beth bundled all her own clothes into Moira’s black plastic garbage bag with shaking hands, and stuffed the bag as silently as she could into the ladies’ room trash can.
“Are you all right, dear?” she said in her higher voice.
The voices outside stopped.
She banged the toilet stall door again, as if she’d just shut it. “I’m fine. I just need to be quiet for a little while,” she answered herself.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” said the higher voice of fat little old Virginia in the black suit. She turned on the cold water and let it run.
As a last act of disguise, she took out her emergency nail polish and drew a big red S-curve on the outside of Amanda’s off-white Coach bag. She turned the faucet off. Then she ran the painted bag under the hand dryer until it stopped looking shiny.
Then she walked out of the restroom.
That set off a scuffle outside. She shoved past the two men struggling in the doorway.
“Oh!” she squeaked. “Excuse me!”
They stopped struggling when they saw her. Beth gave them each a timid little smile and edged past them, shutting the ladies’ room door firmly behind her.
The door lock snapped shut.
Doyle groaned.
Slowly and deliberately, Beth waddled down the hall, teetering on the black shoes, with her handbag dangling low from her hand so that she wouldn’t rub up against the still-tacky nail polish, and got into the elevator. In the lobby, she walked into the Walgreen’s. There she bought a pair of sweat pants, a tank top, a sweatshirt, and a pair of flip-flops. Then she walked across the street into the Dunkin Donuts and straight back to the restroom, where she quickly stripped, then with long sweeps of her hands fixed her hair, slimmed, and stretched herself back into Beth Asucar. Then she changed into her new clothes and put all her borrowed diamonds back into the white Coach bag, now defaced with nail polish. With a malicious smile, she left Moira’s suit and shoes folded carefully on the baby-changing table.
Then she went outside and hailed a cab. “I’ll give you two hundred dollars to get me to a house in Naperville before three o’clock.”
The cabby’s head spun around. “Uh, I don’t know where that is.”
She handed over a hundred-dollar bill and twiddled another in the air between her fingers. “Here. Get on 290. I’ll direct you from there.”
Beth made the cabbie drop her at the street end of Darleen’s driveway. The landscaping made it seem like there were ten acres back there, but Beth knew that Darleen had paid extra to make her double suburban lot seem like the grounds of a sizeable mansion. More for less, Mom. I watched you trying to keep up appearances with a house four times this size. We’re not ready for that, Darleen had said anxiously, as if offering an excuse for why she couldn’t yet live as well as her parents did.
After just over a week of bunking in the Lair, Beth thought of Darleen’s comment in a whole new way. She stopped suddenly as she approached the final curve up to the house. Did I raise that kid wrong? She thought of her single room at the Lair, furnished just now with milk crates, and the team’s single bathroom, still half under construction, and instead of landscaped acres, a basketball court with a homemade plywood floor. She felt infinitely more at home in the Lair after a week than she had felt in their Glencoe showplace after twenty years.
But Blake had wanted it.
Blake was in Darleen’s house right now, waiting for Moira’s call so he could take a taxi to the airport and flee the country. Beth would bet her new tennis bracelet on it.
She breathed deeply. She hadn’t looked Blake in the eye since he first served the divorce papers on her.
She seemed to hear Jee say, Yes you did. You did it for two hours one night at Barclay’s last week.
That hadn’t been her. That had been Beth Asucar, five-feet-nine-inches of succubus hotness. What am I doing here? Beth couldn’t imagine facing Blake as herself.
Sudddenly she felt herself chickening out. She was old, fat, gray, wrinkled, skilless, friendless. Moira had sold her out in a heartbeat. Her own daughter was hiding Blake, for whose murder Beth would soon be arrested, if he got away before Detective Doyle could find him.
She could imagine Jee saying, Yeah, and he bounced his settlement check. You didn’t even complain to the judge.
I didn’t, did I? Beth thought. I could have. I could have had him followed until I found out about the apartment at the Doral. I could have done that nine years ago.
A week ago, the thought of that apartment had infuriated Beth. It had brought her to life with rage.
Now she felt hollow and worthless. What’s the matter with me? In that junky old lair, swilling beers in a kitchen papered with porn posters, I’ve been feeling alive. Now I’m at my own daughter’s house and I feel...dead.
He insulted your love, Reg had said. Tears started in her eyes.
She stood there on the brick driveway between the curving rows of clipped yews, her eyes closed, wondering, If I could have Blake’s love, would I want it any more? With the emptiness, she felt cold. The corrosive fire that had driven her to sign Delilah’s contract had burnt itself out.
What did she think she was doing here?
“I don’t know,” she said aloud, firmly. “But I won’t be done with him until I have a chance to ask him some things. Or just look him in the eye. I don’t know. I just want to be done with him.”
She almost walked up to the front door looking like Beth Asucar. Then she caught herself. For one thing, she’d never worn flip-flops off the beach in her life. She ran her hand over herself from head to toe, restoring Beth Saunders—with improvements—thirty-five pounds down, perfect hair, no wrinkles—before she walked the last few yards up the yew alley and Darleen’s manicured front garden burst into view.
The garage door was open. The back of Blake’s new Mercedes showed inside.
“Mom?”
Beth walked firmly up to the open garage door.
Darleen squeaked and ran to hug her.
Blake stood behind Darleen, a briefcase in his hand, staring at Beth with incredulity and fear. Accustomed as she had become to seeing a perfectable Beth in the mirror for the past week, Beth thought he had let himself go contemptibly. He looked ragged and puffy.
His bloodshot eyes widened as she pushed Darleen aside and walked up to him.
“We need to talk,” Beth said.
Blake looked behind her, turned, pressed the button to shut the garage door, and marched into the house through the interior door.
Darleen was weirdly quiet. She had an almost Blakelike air of furtive guilt. “Dad, you don’t have a lot of time,” she said. She looked her mother up and down, and Beth could see her pricing the sweat pants and flipflops, assessing how far her mother had fallen.
“It’s a company plane,” he said. “They’ll hold it.” He laid his briefcase on the kitchen counter and turned to face Beth agressively, his shoulders lifted in a way she knew well, as if to bulk himself up to look intimidating.
Beth put her purse on the counter. “Aren’t you going to offer me a glass of water?”
She remembered now. The company junket. It happened every year, twice a year. This would be the first time in twenty-three years that she was not joining Blake on that private plane. Which would soon take him to Mexico, out of reach of the law.
She rushed out, “Did they find out about your secret identity? The IRS, I mean.”
“Mom, you’re so melodramatic.” Darleen handed her a glass of water.
In that moment, Beth knew that Darleen would help her father escape, no matter what Bet
h wanted. Yet, a week ago, she was calling the cops because she thought I was dead.
Two weeks ago, she offered me the au pair’s room and job.
Beth looked from one face to the other, people she thought she knew, who had become a part of her identity so deeply that she had never drawn breath without wondering what she owed them from one minute to the next.
“Come on, Beth. I don’t have all day. What do you want?” Blake said brusquely.
She pulled her message together. “Your settlement check bounced.”
“I’ll give you,” Blake began, and his eyes went to the briefcase. Boy was he obvious. “Twenty thousand dollars cash.”
“The check was for a hundred thousand,” Beth reminded him.
“Take it or leave it,” he said. “I’m broke.”
“You lie,” Beth said calmly.
“It’s a good offer, Mom,” Darleen said, and Beth turned on her, her eyes narrowed.
“Did he buy you off? Funny, he didn’t buy me off.”
Darleen wouldn’t meet her look. “Mom, I don’t want to get in between you two.”
“That would sound so much better if you hadn’t been hiding him from the police while he liquidated all the assets he’s been hiding from me,” Beth said calmly. “Very well, we’ll take this conversation into the living room.” Blake reached for his briefcase and Beth slapped a hand down on it. “Darleen, you stay here. You can guard your father’s ill-gotten gains for him for a few minutes. I’m sure he trusts you.”
Beth actually enjoyed watching Blake look from her face to Darleen’s to the briefcase. Clearly, Blake didn’t quite trust his daughter, bought off or not. It was a nice, fat briefcase. How many millions would fit in there? She raised her eyebrows at her ex-husband.
There, that didn’t hurt did it? Jee’s voice seemed to say in her head. Ex. Ex-husband.
Beth turned and walked into the living room.
“You’d better talk to her,” she heard Darleen say. Her voice was resigned.
A moment later, Blake joined her in the living room. “All right, what is it?”
This was his Busy Man mode, one of several with which he had silenced her in years gone by. Beth saw with new eyes how shifty he looked. She also realized that she’d always noticed the shiftiness...and chosen to ignore it.
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