“Do we know him?” Lily asked brightly.
“He looks like Mr. Phillips. You know, Arthur Phillips, Papa’s dear friend who had banking interests?” Rose said.
“Do you know him, Mr—um, Deke?” Pansy asked him.
“No,” Deke growled. What was his Dorian doing with an old fogy like that?
Dorian and her escort proceeded to a table not far from the one where Deke sat with the Larsons, who were all atwitter about Dorian, who looked stunning.
“I doubt if those pearls are real,” Pansy said, sniffing with a disparaging glance in Dorian’s direction.
“I doubt if that hair is real,” said Rose.
“Oh, it’s real hair, sister, but I doubt that the color is real,” Lily said. “How old do you think she is?”
“Twenty-eight,” said Pansy.
“Twenty-nine,” said Rose.
“Thirty if she’s a day,” said Lily.
Deke leaned back, crossed his arms, and fumed. Dorian had had a date. She’d lied to him. Probably she was embarrassed that her boyfriend was old enough to be her father, maybe even her grandfather. What did Dorian see in the man, anyway? She was beautiful enough to go out with anyone she wanted. Why would she spend her time with this old geezer?
One good reason came to mind. She had to pay her bills. Dorian, now sitting at a table with him, must be this guy’s mistress.
Deke closed his eyes, suddenly feeling sick to his stomach. He opened them when he heard Dorian’s escort say in a clear voice, “I don’t care why you spoke to him, my dear. You know the rules—no other men. Period.”
“But Edwin, Harry and I grew up on the same block. It’s been ages since we’ve seen each other,” Dorian replied plaintively.
Edwin stuck his chin out and leaned menacingly closer. “If you so much as look at that musician again, I’ll cut you off. I swear it.”
Dorian reddened, then stood up abruptly, knocking her gilt chair backward. Everyone in the room had stopped eating and talking, and all eyes were upon her.
“I won’t take this from you, Edwin!” she said, her voice trembling. Tears were coursing down her face, and Deke felt his muscles tighten. He couldn’t bear to see her cry.
“You’ll take that—and more, if I say so. Waiter, I’ll have a martini, please,” said Edwin.
Dorian burst into sobs, and Deke leapt from his chair. He crossed the space between their tables in a second or two and grabbed the despicable, prune-faced Edwin by his tie, lifting him halfway out of his chair. A woman gasped. A waiter tried to restrain Deke, but he shook him away.
“Don’t you dare talk to her like that!” Deke said before he smashed his fist into the old geezer’s nose.
The man flew through the air like a rag doll and landed on the floor. The piano player stopped playing. Edwin started to bleed all over his starched shirtfront.
“Oh my God, Deke, you’ve killed him!” Dorian shrieked, falling down on her knees beside the bleeding man. She looked up at Deke accusingly. “What are you doing here, anyway?”
“Protecting you,” he said, as the place erupted into a melee, with waiters and customers scurrying around.
“Well, I must say I never expected the evening to end in bloodshed,” said Lily Larson indignantly as the three sisters swept past on their way out the door. “We’ll never be back here, you can be sure of that,” Pansy told a waiter who stood nearby, wringing his hands. “Never,” agreed Rose.
“Charles, are you all right? Charles?” Dorian was saying. She was sitting with the man’s head in her lap, glaring up at Deke as she tried to stanch the flow of blood with a napkin.
“What do you care, Dorian? The guy was verbally abusing you,” Deke said, kneeling at her side.
The man—Edwin? Charles?—began to moan. Deke began to feel sorry for him. He hadn’t meant to knock the guy senseless. He’d only wanted to teach him a lesson.
“Dorian?” the man was saying woozily.
“We should get him to a hospital,” Dorian said. “Will someone call 911?”
“I don’t want an ambulance driving up to my restaurant,” said a firm-jawed fellow wearing a dark business suit. “People will think the food is giving our customers ptomaine.”
A man with a clipboard and a harried air was trying to impose order upon the scene. “Harry, keep playing the piano,” he said. “Ladies and gentlemen, please go on enjoying your dinners. It’s all part of the show. I mean, it’s not part of the show. Waiter, bring on the main course.” He lowered his voice. “Shouldn’t someone call the police and get this bozo out of here?” He jerked his thumb in Deke’s di-rection.
“I was going to take, uh, Edwin here to the hospital,” Deke said, feeling more than a little guilty about the guy’s bloody nose. “My Wagoneer’s parked right outside.”
Dorian noticed him again. “Would you? I think he needs to see a doctor, I honestly do,” she said as Edwin-Charles sat up and groaned.
“This—this assailant can’t drive anyone to the hospital because the police are going to want to talk to him,” said the manager.
“Here,” said Deke, handing the man a hundred-dollar bill. Money seemed to talk around here louder than words.
“No need to call the police,” agreed Edwin-Charles, speaking slowly and distinctly. “You might say that this is one of the hazards of my occupation.”
“It shouldn’t be,” Dorian said, helping him to his feet. He had bled down the front of her suit.
“Help me to the door,” Edwin-Charles said, reaching out toward Deke, who was pleased to provide a shoulder for the man to lean on. At least lending the old guy a hand would get him, Deke, out of the Moon-light & Magnolias restaurant, where he had felt distinctly uncomfortable ever since he’d walked in. And it would provide a way for him to stay near Dorian, who, Deke suspected, would like to be very far away from him.
The buzz of conversation resumed around them as the main course was served, and the piano player segued into a Strauss waltz. Dorian supported the other side of Edwin-Charles, who couldn’t walk very fast. Deke felt reprehensible for hitting the guy, who, now that Deke had a better look at him, seemed much older than he’d originally thought.
It took another twenty-dollar bill for the parking attendant to speed up the process of driving the Wagoneer right up to the restaurant door, but once it was accomplished, Edwin-Charles insisted on sitting in the back seat and Dorian refused to sit up front. The two of them occupied the back seat, Dorian hovering over her escort and clucking like a mother hen. Deke realized that he had made a tac-tical mistake here: he should have managed to get himself punched. That would have made Dorian interested in him for sure.
The nearest hospital was about two blocks from the Goodwill store, and he parked the Wagoneer while Dorian walked Edwin-Charles inside. When Deke arrived in the emergency room, Edwin-Charles was being pushed in a wheelchair toward a cubicle, and Dorian was standing in front of a bank of hard plastic chairs and sniffling into a handkerchief.
“Dorian—” Deke said.
She turned on him furiously. “How dare you hit him?” she said.
“He was insulting you,” Deke said, barely able to control his voice. “How could I let him go on demeaning you in front of all those people?”
“He was supposed to insult me! It was in the script!” Dorian shouted, oblivious to the stares of the other people in the emergency room’s waiting area.
Deke stared at her in dead silence. She looked as if she’d like to kill him.
“Script?” he said.
“Yes, script. It was a mystery dinner, you idiot, and you’ve ruined it,” she said bitterly.
“Mystery dinner?”
“Moonlight & Magnolias hosts a mystery dinner twice a week. I’m a member of the acting troupe hired by the restaurant. I don’t know what the rest of the cast can possibly do now. Charles was supposed to be murdered, and you’ve given him a bloody nose,” said Dorian.
A woman who had walked in through the swinging doors
in time to hear Dorian’s last sentence gave them a funny look and moved hastily to the other side of the room. Deke thought of pointing out that a bloody nose was preferable to being murdered but thought that Dorian wouldn’t appreciate his reasoning.
She was still talking. “The cast can’t very well put the play on without Charles and me. Who are they going to murder now? Besides, I was the chief suspect. You cause trouble wherever you go, Deke Wash-burn,” she said.
“I did bring Edwin or Charles or whatever his name is to the emergency room,” Deke pointed out.
“He was playing a character named Edwin, but his real name is Charles. And he wouldn’t have had to come here in the first place if you hadn’t hit him,” Dorian reminded him. She buried her face in one hand and massaged her temples. “I hope he’s all right. He’s one of my best friends.”
“It was only a bloody nose. I didn’t really punch him very hard,” Deke told her solemnly.
“He’s sixty-five years old. Last year he had his gall bladder removed,” she said.
“I didn’t touch him in the area of his former gall bladder,” Deke said.
“That’s a big consolation,” Dorian told him sarcastically.
“I hit him for you,” Deke said.
“Thanks. Don’t do it again.”
Deke gave up and sat down on one of the chairs. The hard plastic bit into his spine, but he thought maybe he deserved the discomfort. He looked up at the ceiling and counted the holes in the acoustical tile for something to do. He was multiplying the number of holes in one tile by the number of tiles in the room to figure out the number of holes altogether when Dorian’s friend Charles, pale but composed, strolled in from the cubicle area.
Deke jumped to his feet. “I’m really sorry. I didn’t know it was a play. I thought you were insulting Dorian, and—”
“Is he a friend of yours?” Charles asked Dorian, looking confused.
“No,” Dorian said. “I’ll call a cab and we’ll get you home. I’d better go with you, just to make sure you’re okay.”
“I’ll drive you. Both of you,” Deke said quickly. “No need to call a cab.”
Charles sized him up. “I’m Charles Lurie,” he said, extending a hand. “And your name?”
“Deke Washburn,” Deke said. They shook hands, and Charles said, “It would be nice if you’d take me home.”
“Sure,” Deke said. “I’ll bring the car around. Dorian, I’ll drop you off, too.”
Dorian looked suddenly exhausted. He hadn’t noticed before, but her mascara had run and the eyeliner on one eyelid jagged messily toward her eyebrow. Also, she had lost an earring.
“All right,” she said. “Cabs do cost money.”
“Right this way,” Deke said to Charles, who kept blotting at his nose with a piece of gauze and looking at the gauze to see if he was still bleeding. He wasn’t, fortunately.
Deke brought the car around to the exit door and picked them up, for once not offering any suggestions. His role, he had decided, was to be helpful. Period. And to continue to pursue Dorian. As much as she would allow it, anyway.
This time Charles, seemingly recovered, rode in front with Deke. Dorian sat in the back, her arms folded over her chest in body language that revealed her defensive attitude. Every time he glanced in the rearview mirror, Deke saw her expression, which could only be described as peeved—or maybe worse.
He actually enjoyed talking with Charles, who surprisingly showed no rancor. On the contrary, Charles seemed to think that he had succeeded as an actor by drawing Deke into the plot and suspending his disbelief. Deke had to agree. The scene with Dorian had seemed real.
“I know an actor who took a dart in the rear once from a couple of kids who thought he was really a dogcatcher,” Charles reminisced. “The crew was filming a scene early one morning in an alley in Los Angeles, and some neighborhood kids were on their way to school and didn’t see the cameras, which were hidden so the dogs would do their tricks. He was supposed to round up the dogs, but kids distracted my actor friend so that the dogs got away. The dogs came back to their trainer later, of course. The scene was ruined.” He laughed, and Deke did, too.
Dorian did not. From time to time she would toss terse directions Deke’s way, such as, “Get in the left lane” or “Turn right at the stop sign.”
Finally Deke drove up in front of a neat townhouse in a development off Lenox Road, not far from the mall where he’d met Dorian.
“This is it,” Charles said. “Thanks for the ride. Would you like to come in for a while? Have a cup of coffee or something? I was thinking of making sandwiches. None of us has eaten, I suppose.”
“We could send out for a pizza,” Deke said. “I’ll buy. This is all my fault. I’m so sorry.”
Charles got out of the car. “Dorian?”
She scowled, first at him, then at Deke. “Are you insane, Charles? Inviting this—this madman into your house?”
“He’s rather a nice madman,” Charles said consideringly. Deke grinned, glad for the show of support. He felt sure that Charles was trying to help him in his pursuit of Dorian.
Dorian looked put out. “If he’s coming in, I’d better come in, too. To protect you,” she said darkly before scrambling out of the car. She refused to walk beside Deke but straggled behind, mumbling to herself.
Deke couldn’t think of anything to say, so he said nothing as Charles fumbled with his keys. He had an idea that the right thing to do in this situation was just to go away, but he couldn’t make himself do it. He had to hang on, had to get to know Dorian, had to follow this to its ultimate conclusion. Because he had never met anyone as fascinating as this woman, and he probably never would again.
* * *
DORIAN, BY THIS TIME, had had enough. Enough of Deke and enough of Charles, especially when she heard him confide under his breath to Deke, “Dear Dorian, she tends to be rather high-strung.”
“I heard that, Charles,” Dorian said warningly as she followed the men into Charles’s comfortably furnished living room.
“Then you are to be complimented for your keen sense of hearing,” Charles said with a wink at Deke. “I believe I’ll change clothes. Dorian, why don’t you get out the cheese and the bread? We’ll grill sandwiches.”
Charles disappeared into his bedroom, and Dorian, who was accustomed to making herself at home here, slipped off her shoes and marched in her stocking feet to the kitchen.
She knew exactly where to find things, slamming a griddle down on the range, tossing individually wrapped cheese slices on the counter, finding bread in the freezer.
“You really know your way around here,” Deke said, sounding as if he hoped to get a civil conversation started.
“I told you, he’s a friend of mine,” Dorian said through her teeth.
“A really good friend?” Deke ventured.
Dorian treated him to a penetrating look. “Not the kind of friend you’re thinking about. I’m twenty-eight and he’s sixty-five, after all. We’re colleagues in the acting profession. Buddies. Is that what you want to know?”
Deke seemed to be fumbling for an answer when Charles reappeared wearing a sweatsuit. He poured them all glasses of iced tea.
“Hmm,” Deke said, having recovered his voice. “I’m happy to see that you serve Dr. Feelgood’s Aromia, my original blend of twenty-two special herbs and spices.” Deke explained his connection to Dr. Feelgood’s Herbal Teas.
“Oh, I’ve been a devoted customer for years,” Charles assured him, whereupon Deke launched into a mostly boring account of how he started out by digging ginseng roots in the mountains and developing contacts at health-food stores around the country who later helped him by recommending his first herbal tea to customers.
It wasn’t that Dorian minded the sound of him; he talked slowly, in an agreeable drawl, kind of laid-back and countrified. But Dorian wasn’t the least bit interested in how this good ole boy from the country had made his way to the big city, and she could only wish he wo
uld go back to whatever rustic community he came from—permanently.
When the sandwiches were ready, Dorian and Deke followed Charles out onto a terrace planted with dogwoods and overrun with ivy. A sultry breeze stirred the leaves overhead, and Charles and Deke talked of this and that. Dorian didn’t talk at all. She made a point of sulking.
Deke and Charles covered the subjects of the Atlanta Braves’ previous season, the Atlanta Braves’ coming season, the Atlanta Braves’ season after that, and why the Atlanta Braves weren’t hitting better. They also discussed hunting dogs, Mercedes’s superiority over BMW, Jaguar’s superiority over Mercedes, and what Japan was up to in the current trade talks.
“You’re not saying much,” Charles said to Dorian after a while. She only swallowed the last of her sandwich and said, “It’s time for me to go. My car is in the parking lot at the mall, an easy walk from here. You, Charles, seem to be recovered, although from the way you’ve taken to Deke, I suspect that you’ve suffered a brain injury that has affected your judgment. I’ll see you at Moonlight & Magnolias next time we’re on. And if you find out what they did to salvage tonight’s show, please don’t let me know. I never want to think about it again.” She tossed her head and walked smartly toward the door to the accompaniment of Charles’s applause.
“Bravo, my dear. A wonderful speech. You improve as an actress each day. It is a joy to watch.”
Dorian whirled. “I wasn’t acting. And don’t see me out,” she said as Charles made a move to get up. “I know my way.”
Her head was high as she walked out the door, inwardly cursing Charles for his insight. Of course she had been acting. What she had really wanted to do was break down in tears.
But not in front of Deke Washburn.
* * *
“DORIAN LIED,” Charles said to Deke. “She was acting.”
Deke gulped the last of his tea. “Her car wouldn’t start earlier,” he said. “I’d better give her a ride and make sure it starts this time.”
“Good idea,” Charles said approvingly. “My car’s in the shop or I’d do it myself. I don’t suppose you’d like me to come along?”
The World's Last Bachelor Page 3
