by Ellen Crosby
“About that dinner,” he said.
Later he came back to bed with me, but this time we lay in each other’s arms.
“Get some sleep,” he said into my hair. “You look exhausted.”
I didn’t want to close my eyes. I wanted to remember everything that we did and said to each other and what it felt like to be in his arms again in bed. But wine and lack of sleep the night before and physical exhaustion from our lovemaking finally caught up with me.
I fell asleep and dreamed I was dropping into the abyss.
When I woke up the next morning, I was alone. I could still see the impression of Quinn’s head on my pillow and his body on the sheets, but his clothes were gone. The smell of coffee floated up the staircase. He always made coffee when we spent the night together. I sat up and pulled the wedding ring quilt I used as a bedspread around me.
He appeared in the doorway, holding two mugs. “Morning, sleepyhead. You all right? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“I thought you’d left.” I took the coffee from him. “Then I heard someone on the stairs.”
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I already talked to Antonio. All quiet last night.”
I nodded. Already our torrid night in bed seemed like it had happened to other people. And Quinn looked ill at ease, a warning sign that maybe he had regrets about what we’d done. I could take anything but his remorse.
“Speaking of talking to people, your cell was ringing when I came downstairs. I brought it with me.” He pulled it out of his jeans pocket. “I wasn’t trying to pry, but you’ve got a missed call from Mick and a message. Kind of early to be calling, so I thought it might be important.” He said it without emotion.
“I have no idea why he’s calling at this hour.”
“Call him back and find out.”
“I’m sure it’s business. Probably something about his vines.” I set the phone on the bedside table and sipped my coffee. As usual he’d made sludge that tasted like rocket fuel. “Good coffee.”
“I didn’t want to make it too strong since I know you prefer that dishwater you drink.”
“It’s not dishwater!”
My phone rang and we both glanced at it at the same time. Mick, calling again. Did he have radar or a hidden camera so he knew to call only when Quinn was around? Quinn picked up the phone and gave it to me.
“Don’t keep the man waiting.”
For the past few months I’d lived a life of total celibacy—not by choice. All of a sudden, one ex-lover spends the night in my bed and the other calls on the phone while he’s there. What are the odds?
“Do you mind?” I hoped Quinn would take the hint and leave.
He had the unfair advantage of being fully dressed while I was naked underneath the quilt. Last night it was erotic. This morning it felt awkward. I was stuck where I was unless I wanted to drag my quilt and my dignity elsewhere.
He crossed his legs. “Not at all. Go right ahead.”
I glared at him, answering the phone in my most brisk, businesslike vineyard owner manner.
“Morning, Mick. You’re calling awfully early. What’s up?”
“Wanted to hear your voice, love. I know you’re an early riser.”
Quinn grinned and I shoved him with my foot. He didn’t budge.
“It’s seven thirty.”
“I know. I’m just off to the stables.”
“That’s nice,” I said. “Do you want to tell me what this is about? You didn’t really call just to hear my voice.”
He laughed and Quinn smirked.
“Lucie.” He sounded reproachful. “So suspicious when my intentions are honorable. I found out that you’re invited to the opening of the Asher Collection at the Library of Congress tomorrow. I thought we might go together.”
Fortunately I hadn’t been in the middle of drinking my coffee. He was calling at this hour about a date?
“How did you know I was invited?”
“Is that a yes?”
“Who told you, Mick?” I wasn’t kidding around.
“Simon. We were talking about it when he came over for dinner last night and your name came up. He wondered if you planned to attend since you never formally replied. I took the liberty of saying yes.” He paused. “Told him I was bringing you.”
I felt a chill pass through me. “Why did he specifically ask about me?”
“We were talking about your cousin,” he said. “So naturally your name came up. How about if I pick you up at half-five tomorrow?”
“Mick …”
“Come on, love. There’s something I’d like to talk to you about.”
“What?”
“Tell you tomorrow.”
“What’s wrong with right now? Especially since I’m wide awake.”
“I’d rather do it in person.” He paused. “So, five thirty okay?”
He wasn’t going to give up.
“Sure,” I said. “Five thirty.”
When Quinn was upset a muscle worked in his jaw like he was chewing something. He got up off the bed and went over to the window, but not before I saw that muscle twitch.
I hung up. “Well, that was strange.”
“At least I know you’ll be okay Saturday night,” he said. “Mick’ll take care of you. Maybe even all night.”
“Don’t,” I said. “Don’t say that.”
“You’re right. That was out of line.” He ran a hand through his unruly hair. “Guess I’d better get home and shower and change. Boss’ll expect me at work as usual, no excuses.”
“You could always shower here.” I let the quilt drop away. “With me.”
He caressed my cheek. “Tempting offer, but no thanks. I gotta talk to Antonio and figure out what we’re going to do today.”
“You mean about the vineyard?” My cheeks burned as I gathered the quilt around me again.
“I mean about you.” He walked to the door and turned around. “See you later.”
His work boots clattered on the stairs. The front door opened and closed, followed by the noise of a car starting.
I lay back against my pillows. More filaments in that web were breaking, and soon it would become unmoored from everything we’d built together.
I was losing Quinn. And I had no idea how to stop it from happening.
Chapter 21
Quinn was out in the field when I arrived at the villa an hour later. Frankie gave me one of her all-knowing looks the moment I walked into the kitchen so I realized she’d been clued in about my new bodyguards—though I couldn’t tell whether she knew or guessed that Quinn had taken his assignment to a more intimate level.
“Sleep well?” She handed me a cup of coffee.
“Why am I the last person around here to find out everything?” I said. “Were you part of this scheme of Antonio and Quinn’s?”
She smiled and raised an eyebrow. “What scheme?”
“So it was your idea, huh?” I said after a moment.
“It was everyone’s, Lucie. With you staying by yourself in that big house, no alarm, no nothing for security, it just seemed like a good idea to have the guys keeping an eye on things for a while.”
Things. She meant me.
I added sugar and milk to my coffee. “Someone should have told me.”
“You would have nixed it if we did.” She sipped her coffee. “By the way, Books & Crannies called. The book you ordered is in.”
“That was fast. Guess I’ll go into town and pick it up. You need anything while I’m there?”
“All set, thanks.” She eyed me. “What’s wrong?”
“I talked to Quinn. I think he got caught up in the Asher mess. He wouldn’t say, but it sounds like his investors might have backed out on him.”
“He wouldn’t tell me anything, either,” she said. “I found him reading the Trib when I got in this morning, looking like he was ready to put Sir Thomas through the destemmer. His picture is on the front page, looking like Charlton Heston when he played Moses just before he p
arted the Red Sea. Calm and in control in the face of looming disaster. You’ve got to hand it to the man. How does he do it? Yoga? Meditation? He ought to be a mess.”
“Self-delusion. Where’s that paper?”
“The bar. Calm down, Lucie.”
How many times had she said that to me lately?
“I am calm.” I set down my mug and sloshed coffee on the counter.
Frankie picked up a sponge and wiped up the spill. “Go on. Go and read it. You won’t be happy until you do.”
I found the paper folded so that Tommy Asher stared back at me. Somebody—Quinn, probably—had childishly given him a devil’s horns, a tail, and a pitchfork. But Frankie was right about the photo. Asher looked serene as though he didn’t have a care in the world. Where did he get that kind of chutzpah? Maybe it came from telling the same lies for so long that eventually he believed them and so did everybody around him. I wondered what he saw when he looked in the mirror. Maybe he never looked anymore.
I sat down on one of the sofas by the fireplace and skimmed the article. David Wildman’s byline. Kit’s colleague.
Investors woke up this morning to a potential tsunami in the financial markets as billionaire investment guru Sir Thomas Asher continued to plead for patience while authorities investigate his allegation that Rebecca Natale, Asher’s former star protégée who went missing five days ago and is presumed dead, embezzled millions of dollars from his clients by falsifying trades, creating dummy accounts…
I kept reading. Wildman must have worked Summer Lowe over pretty good, because he knew all about Harlan leaning on Senator Vaughn to make Ian’s hearing go away now that Ian was dead. By the time I finished reading it was clear David Wildman had Tommy Asher in his journalistic crosshairs. I hoped his life insurance was paid up. People who took on Asher Investments seemed to come to a bad end.
Turned out I was more right than I knew when I called Summer Lowe. Her terse voice mail message was a polite version of “Go to hell.”
“You’ve reached Summer. I’m no longer working at the Senate and I’m not taking any calls at this time. Thanks.”
Stunned, I hung up. Harlan and Asher had successfully strong-armed Cameron Vaughn into canceling the hearing—but had they also gone after Summer and made her the scapegoat? Was that supposed to be a lesson to any other Senate or House staffer who decided to probe Thomas Asher Investments? Unless she was also being punished for talking to David Wildman. The information in that article could only have leaked from her. I wondered if she’d talked to him in Vaughn’s Capitol hideaway like she had with me.
I had no other number for Summer, no idea where she lived or where she might have gone. I wondered if David Wildman knew. Tomorrow I’d ask him. Maybe he wanted to meet me but, increasingly, I wanted to meet him, too.
With Rebecca and Ian gone and Summer now out of the picture, it seemed there were only two of us left who were still players in whatever great game Rebecca had set up before she disappeared. I liked our odds less and less.
I picked up the book of Alexander Pope’s poetry at the bookstore later that morning and stopped by the General Store on my way home. If there was anyone in Atoka who would know everything there was to know about how deeply Tommy Asher and Harlan Jennings had reached into the bank accounts and investment portfolios of friends and neighbors, it was Thelma Johnson.
Just as all roads once led to Rome, all news in Atoka—that is to say, gossip—eventually ended up at the General Store, where it was rinsed and spun through Thelma’s quirky worldview before being rereleased as something that belonged in a supermarket tabloid. I figured it was her addiction to soap operas that made her find drama and evidence of at least one—and usually more—of the seven deadly sins in every corner of our sleepy little village.
She was sitting by the space heater in her favorite spindle-back rocking chair reading one of her soap magazines when I arrived. Though seventy was probably in the rearview mirror, Thelma always dressed with the giddy joie de vivre of a teenager whose parents hadn’t seen her before she left the house on a date. Too much makeup and not enough fabric. At her age, the effect could be more Halloween scary than vampish flirt. Today she was dressed entirely in lilac—short skirt, plunging V-neck sweater, matching stiletto mules, and a mauve and lilac scarf tied around her carrot-colored mop of curls. Though I expect the effect was meant to be stylishly chic, the ends of the scarf flopping on either side of her head reminded me of Bugs Bunny.
She set her magazine on a small table next to the rocker and adjusted her trifocals, beaming when she realized who I was. I knew that look well enough. Thelma could get a monk who had taken a vow of silence to talk. If she thought I knew something, I wouldn’t leave until she knew it, too.
“Why, Lucille, honey! Aren’t you a sight for sore eyes?”
She jumped up and scooted around to the vintage enamel-top table where she kept three kinds of coffee brewing in pots labeled “Regular,” “Decaf,” and “Fancy.”
“Looking a mite tired, aren’t you, child? How about a nice cup of coffee? I got the usual, but you look like you could use an extra bit of pepping up. Today’s special is ‘Java Good One.’”
“I’ll take your special, thanks,” I said. “I could use a good one.”
Thelma never wasted time beating around the bush. “So what’s all this about you being with that young woman who went missing in the Potomac River?” She clicked her tongue. “What’s this world coming to, anyway, finding everything but her skivvies in that rowboat?”
I opened my mouth to answer, but she motored on as she handed me a large cup.
“Here you go. Fixed just the way you like it. One sugar, a little cream. Pull up that rocking chair, will you, child, and set a spell.” She gave me a significant look over the top of her glasses as I obeyed. “Rebecca, that’s her name, wasn’t it? Now that Asher fellow is saying she stole folks’ money. And then there’s that other hanky-panky I heard about. That affair.”
The Inquisition had commenced. Next would come the questions. Had Thelma found out about Connor, or was she referring to Harlan?
I drank some coffee, feeling my cheeks grow warm. “Wow, you’ve really ferreted out a lot of information, Thelma. Plus you have such an amazing memory for details.”
She smiled, looking pleased with herself. “Well, I tend to put things under a sharper microscope than most folks, Lucille.”
I kept a straight face. “I know that.”
“So, tell me.” She crossed one leg over the other and leaned forward as though we were coconspirators. “What kind of person was she? I know you know the truth about her. I promise, what you say won’t leave this room.”
Of course it wouldn’t. It didn’t need to go anywhere since everyone in Atoka would drop by the General Store and hear it right here from Thelma. I gave her the answer I’d given everyone from Detective Horne to Ian to Summer Lowe, knowing full well she wouldn’t be satisfied with it.
“I hadn’t seen her in twelve years and she didn’t confide any details about her personal life to me in the hour or so we spent together,” I said. “But I don’t believe she stole that money the way Tommy Asher said she did.”
Thelma nodded. I could tell I hadn’t convinced her, either, but she moved right along to the next subject.
“Well, then, what about the affair? You may as well come clean, Lucille.”
“Rebecca didn’t say anything to me about her love life.” Technically, she hadn’t. Everything I knew I’d learned from other people.
Thelma let one of her mules dangle flirtatiously off her foot. “Aren’t you the sly one? I can’t believe you don’t know about it.”
“About what?”
Her eyes searched my face through her thick lenses. Thelma knew better than anyone when I was holding back. “You know, you’re like me, child. We share that same psychotic ability when it comes to figuring out other people. We can sense the truth about what’s going on. Your sainted mother was like that, too. You kno
w perfectly well that your friend was carrying on with Harlan Jennings, don’t you?”
I gave in. “I knew, but Rebecca didn’t tell me. How did you find out?”
“Oh, I’ve known for a while Harlan was having an affair. I just didn’t know it was your friend until the other day.”
“But how …?” I said, surprised.
She took off her glasses and rubbed them absently against her head scarf. “Why, because of Ali, of course. She’d come in here after driving back from Washington and teaching all day. She seemed so … melancholy, I guess. The boys were away at school and I know what buying dinner for one looks like.” She pressed her lips together. “You want to say something when you know someone’s heart is aching, but she’s got her pride—and a person’s got to respect that.”
“Oh, Thelma, how sad.”
I’d seen Ali’s outrage. Thelma saw through to her loneliness and hurt. Maybe she did have those psychotic sensibilities she talked about.
“What I don’t understand is how someone so book smart could be that blind to what’s going on right in front of her nose,” she said. “Him moving into town and setting up his little love nest. Why in the world did she put up with that?”
“Because she adores him,” I said. “And the boys.”
“Well, she’d certainly do anything to protect him, wouldn’t she?”
It hung in the air as Thelma waited for my reaction. Sure, Alison hated Rebecca. And I’d had my suspicions about just how far she would go to get rid of Rebecca and save her husband’s reputation. But I didn’t want to believe Ali would actually commit murder, nor did I want to admit any of this to Thelma.
“Define ‘anything.’”
“Whether Ali was involved in your friend’s disappearance.” Thelma put her glasses back on and watched me.
“I just can’t believe … she wouldn’t.”
“I don’t believe it, either, Lucille. It’d be a turrible waste of a good person. Just turrible. I mean Ali, not Harlan. I won’t say murder’s not on folks’ minds, but Harlan’s the one everyone wants to skin alive. The Romeos are madder ’n hornets they took up with him and let him pass all their money on to Tommy Asher.”
