Shaded Light: The Case of the Tactless Trophy Wife: A Paul Manziuk and Jacquie Ryan Mystery (The Manziuk and Ryan Mysteries Book 1)

by J. A. Menzies

  “My wife says I can’t miss her, so I’m sure she’s correct. That is, if I’m there on time. Otherwise, I’ll just have her paged.”

  “Of course.”

  He gave her several folders. “These letters need to go out today. By courier.”

  “Yes, sir. The courier is coming,” she said, glancing at her watch, “in half an hour. That will give me plenty of time to make copies and get them ready.”

  She was gone as quickly as she had come. George cleared his desk and packed up his laptop computer. He glanced around, wondering if he’d need anything else. He pulled one file from his in-basket and added it to the papers in his briefcase. Then he checked his pocket for his wallet and keys.

  “Have a good weekend, Mr. Brodie,” his secretary said as he strode through her office.

  “I hope so,” he replied. Then, in afterthought, “You, too. See you Tuesday.”

  He was soon driving his black Lincoln in the downtown traffic. But his mind was on the weekend. Ellen had wanted a simple house party with themselves, Kendall, and Lorry. Inviting his partners and their wives had been his idea. He and Douglass and Peter had a few things to discuss and it had seemed to him they could do some work on the side. Now he was starting to realize it had been a stupid idea. You couldn’t talk business with the wives hovering in the background. The naked truth was he’d forgotten that the other two women weren’t like Ellen. She never got in the way. But Anne and young Jillian? Another kettle of fish entirely.

  Then there was this thing with Kendall. Stupid to get talked into offering Nick a job. Even though he showed a strong streak of brilliance, the last thing they needed was a woman-chasing, part-time lawyer. And now Kendall seemed to expect him to sweet-talk Nick into accepting the offer! That was a rum job! Why he’d ever let Kendall talk him into doing it!

  But he wasn’t sure either of these things was what was bothering him. There was something else. An intangible. Nothing he could put a finger on. Just a sixth sense that something was going on behind his back. Something he couldn’t control.

  His sixth sense had never failed him in the past. People thought he had achieved what he had because of his brains. Maybe a little. But it hadn’t been his brains that had told him to face up to the owner of the local newspaper forty-odd years ago when he was a wet-behind-the-ears kid of seventeen. Cocky. That’s what he’d been. But that particular owner, Mr. Anscotti, had liked the cocky kid from Cabbagetown enough to promote him several times and eventually put up the cash to send him to college. He’d made his money back, in spades, as silent partner of the law firm of Spencer, Jones, and Brodie, with Brodie the only one who actually existed.

  Later, when George’s intuition told him to risk everything and branch out from Cabbagetown into the business center of Toronto, he’d done it. And it had paid off. His clients now were primarily millionaires. The elite business class.

  Luring Douglass Fischer from a rival firm had been a solid coup—once again due to his intuition. Convincing Peter Martin to join had completed his quest for rock-solid respectability.

  And his private life was solid, too. For thirty-eight years, Ellen had been there, seeing that his home was kept the way he liked it, doing everything a man could expect of his wife. She had never interfered. Always agreed that he should do whatever he wanted. Encouraged him to stretch.

  And she’d never worried about finances. Early on, when they’d lived in one room in a basement, not knowing if there’d be food on the table the next day, Ellen hadn’t once complained.

  The truth was, she took no notice of the things money could buy. She’d still be choosing her dresses from the nearest Walmart if he hadn’t put his foot down and told her it didn’t look right for his wife not to wear things from the designer shops. And the new house he’d bought her! He chuckled. He’d almost had to force her to agree to the move. But she deserved a house like this. A setting worthy of the wonderful person she was. And he could certainly afford it.

  No, Ellen was not the cause of his concern. Neither was Kendall. Their only child was doing well. Joining the firm. What a terrific thought! His own son carrying on.

  Not like George’s life. His old man had been a failure from start to finish. An Irish immigrant, cast off by his family because he lived in a fog, incapable of manual work. A dreamer, writing poetry and earning dimes and nickels for his readings and his ability to dazzle children with coin tricks. Nothing there for a son like George to emulate. What had impressed the young boy was not his father’s golden words but his mother’s rough, reddened hands, made that way from washing floors so she could put bread on the table. Well, Kendall would have something more to remember of his father. And, unlike George’s own mother, Ellen had never worked a day in her life. It would have killed him if she had. No. He shook his head. Whatever was bothering him had nothing to do with Ellen or Kendall.

  He relaxed. Perhaps this weekend was going to turn out to be a good idea after all. Give him opportunity to talk to his partners in a casual way. His feeling of anxiety likely had something to do with them. Maybe it was his intuition noticing something that didn’t quite jibe. He’d have opportunity this weekend to discover what it was. Likely nothing important.

  Like his partners, Douglass Fischer had been busy in his office for most of the day. Consequently, he arrived at his Rosemont home later than he would have chosen. The traffic flowing north out of the city was always heavy by four o’clock. Douglass had hoped to be soaking in the pool on the Brodies’ new estate by that time. But it hadn’t worked out. It never did.

  He drove past the triple garage to stop his car in the circular drive which swept in front of his three-story brick home. A red Ford Mustang was already parked there. Douglass grimaced. Did Luc have to spend every waking hour here?

  He strode heavily up the steps and through the front door. If Anne had the packing done, they could still be at the front of the rush hour traffic.

  He found his daughter Trina and her boyfriend Luc in the family room. Music was blaring and he had to turn it off to make himself heard. They broke guiltily away from each other.

  Aside from a cold stare at Luc, he ignored them. “Where’s your mother?”

  Trina shrugged. “I think she’s upstairs.” She paused, then added, “She’s in one of her moods.”

  With a grimace, Douglass turned away and headed for the stairs. After the day—no, the week—he’d had, that was all he needed!

  The heavy drapes were closed, making the room dark. Anne lay under an afghan on the king-size bed, her back to him.

  “I suppose it would be too much to expect you to be ready to go to George and Ellen’s,” he commented from the doorway.

  She rolled over, and he saw she was clutching an ice pack to her forehead. “Is that you, Douglass?” Her voice was thin and tired. “What did you say?”

  “I asked if you had packed before—before this.”

  “This?” Her voice was sarcastic. “It’s called a migraine, Douglass, as you well know.” She spoke softly, as if afraid someone might overhear. But there was a querulous tone, too.

  He was too preoccupied to care. “I know what the name is,” he said roughly. “Are you packed?”

  “No, I’m not.”

  He sighed. “I had hoped we’d be there by now.”

  “Well, we aren’t.” She turned away again.

  “You’d better get up and pack now. We’ll leave after the traffic has gone. That gives you a couple of hours. Surely you can be ready by then.” Without waiting for an answer, he walked out.

  Ignoring Trina and Luc, who were back in their own world in the family room, he strode into his den and used a key to open a locked cupboard. After a moment’s thought, he chose a bottle of rye and poured himself a drink. He swallowed it quickly, without any enjoyment. Setting the glass down, he loosened his tie, then undid the top button of his shirt. He took a deep breath, and his chest expanded, stretching the rest of the buttons on the Italian silk. He needed to buy some new sh
irts. All of his seemed to be shrinking. Nobody made quality anymore.

  After a moment, he walked to his desk and, picking up his phone, pressed familiar buttons and waited. When a woman’s voice answered, he spoke quietly, holding his hand cupped around the receiver. “It’s me.” He listened for a moment, then said, “I’m not sure. She has a migraine.” A pause while the voice on the other end of the line murmured. “I’ll do my best,” he said roughly.

  The other voice spoke again.

  “You have no right to say that! I’ll manage!” His voice was louder now, and angry. “I already told you I’d do it as soon as possible! You’ll get what you want!”

  He hung up, then turned to pour another drink. Again, he took it straight and swallowed quickly. His eyes stared at the glass for a moment. Then he poured a third drink. Raising it to his lips, he held it there, suspended in space, his eyes focused on a spot in the air five feet away. Tears suddenly flooded his eyes. Forgetting about the glass in his hand, he made an involuntary movement to wipe his eyes, and the contents of his glass poured onto imported rug.

  Hand still raised, he stood motionless, as if awestruck. When he finally broke from his trance, he half-ran to the door, calling, “Trina! Trina, I need you! I’ve spilled something on the carpet.”

  But when Trina discovered her father wanted her to clean up, she only laughed. “Sorry, I don’t do housework. We pay somebody for that, you know.”

  Luc whistled. “Boy, if my father spilled his drink on our carpet, my mother would have a fit. Boy, would she be mad! If we so much as spill water, she goes crazy. She’d have a field day with a full glass of beer, or whatever. Does your dad drink a lot?” he asked Trina as the two went back to their interrupted tête-à-tête in the family room.

  As they passed the foot of the stairs, Trina called, “Hey, Mom, you better come look after this mess!”

  Douglass was trying to wipe up the spill with a towel from the powder room when Anne walked in. She was wrapped in a pale blue housecoat with matching slippers. Her medium-length brown hair was unbrushed and limp. Her voice was flat and cold. “What happened?”

  “It’s nothing. I just spilled something. It was an accident.”

  “I’ll clean it.”

  “No. I can do it.”

  “You don’t know how. I’ll do it.”

  He stood and watched while she went for cloths and cleaning solution from the laundry room.

  “Where’s Mrs. Young? She should be doing this,” he said as she came back. “Isn’t she here yet?

  “I told her we’d changed our minds.”

  “You what!” His face took on a deep red shade and, as he towered over Anne, he felt the urge to teach her once and for all that she couldn’t do things like this to him. Instead, he made himself walk away. “What’s her number?”

  Half an hour later, they were still in the den, no closer to being ready for the house party. Douglass was insisting that she get packed and Anne was moaning vehemently that she wasn’t well enough to go.

  Trina walked in without knocking. “Are you two still at it? Now what’s the problem?”

  “Your father tells me I should just forget my migraine and hurry up to get ready for the wonderful weekend party. Of course,” Anne added bitterly, “he’s never had a migraine, so naturally he knows more about them than I do.”

  “Anne, I only—”

  Trina tilted her head to one side. “Luc and I are going out. I’ll be back around midnight. I’ve got my keys. See you on Monday.” Douglass watched her leave. Her torn jeans and oversize shirt looked like something a street person would be ashamed to wear; her makeup and hair made him think of a horror movie. Was this how teens dressed nowadays?

  “And besides,” Anne said, watching him, “I don’t think we should leave the kids alone that long.”

  “You can’t leave them alone for two lousy days? Trina’s nineteen and Jordan’s sixteen. What are you worried about? And they won’t be alone! Mrs. Young is supposed to be staying with them. She’d be here now if you hadn’t told her not to come.”

  “I don’t want to go!” Anne screamed. “Don’t you know that? I hate them! All of them!”

  “George and Peter are my partners,” he said evenly. “They’ve never done anything to you. And you’ve always gotten along okay with Ellen.”

  “Aren’t you forgetting someone? Or do I mean omitting? You wouldn’t forget her.”

  He sighed. “I don’t see why you can’t get along with Jillian. She’s never done anything to you, has she? Well, has she?”

  Her eyes raked his. “Fine,” she said. “I’ll be the good little wife. Look after the house and the kids and be your loving spouse and ignore when you flirt with other women. That’s all you want from me, isn’t it? I’ll go and pack and I’ll spend a weekend being miserable just so you can have an excuse to be near Jillian!” She walked out of the room, then came back. “By the way, Jordan isn’t home from school yet. Or hadn’t you asked?”

  She went upstairs. Douglass’s shoulders sagged, and he stared after her for a long moment. Something told him he should try to reason with her, but what was the use? Instead, he thumbed through his address book until he found the phone number for Mrs. Young, the lady who came in twice a week to clean the house and occasionally stayed with the kids for a weekend. When he found it, he told her they’d changed their minds again and he’d be over in half an hour to pick her up. Then he trudged wearily up the stairs to make sure Anne actually was packing their clothes.

  As for Jordan, surely at sixteen he was old enough to take care of himself!

  As Peter Martin unlocked the door of his penthouse apartment for the second time that day, he was relieved to be greeted with silence. Immediately, he began to worry that the silence might be of the icy variety.

  But no. As he entered the living room, he saw his sister-in-law reading a paperback bestseller he’d picked up the week before when he and Jillian had spent five days in Tampa. A number of friends had told him he should read it, but he hadn’t managed to get past the first few pages even though those pages had tried very hard to do their job of grabbing his interest. They appeared to have succeeded in grabbing Shauna’s interest. She was so engrossed in the novel that she didn’t even look up as he entered the room.

  “Good book?” he asked as he came within a few feet of her.

  She jerked as if someone had hit her. The book fell. “Oh! I—I didn’t hear you come in. I have your book. It’s one I wanted to read. I saw it and Jillian said you wouldn’t mind. But I’ll get my own copy. I meant to, only…”

  “Hey,” he said, “you’re welcome to the book. Keep it if you want. I never find time to read anyway.”

  “Oh, no, I wouldn’t dream of keeping it. I just thought—Jillian said I could take it so I have something to read if…”

  “If you find yourself bored to tears by the rest of us. Bring it along by all means.” Tired of keeping up the conversation with Shauna, who always seemed to be apologizing for something, he changed the subject. “Are you ready? Did Jillian find you some suitable clothes?”

  “Oh, yes. They’re very nice. Too good for me. Expensive. Not for a small-town librarian.”

  “Well, for this weekend, pretend you aren’t a librarian. Pretend you’re a—” His eyes took in the cover of the book she was reading. “Pretend you’re the heroine in one of these books. Off for a weekend at a castle someplace or jetsetting around the world. Having a romantic weekend. There’ll be a couple of young men there, you know. Anything might happen.”

  Her cheeks turned pink, and he was afraid she was going to lecture him about the difference between fiction and reality. “Is Jillian here?” he asked quickly.

  “In the bedroom. She was having trouble deciding what to take. She sent me out because—well, because I was in the way.”

  Peter grinned, then sauntered along the passage to the enormous bedroom he shared with his young wife.

  As Shauna’s words had led him to expe
ct, Jillian was standing at the door of her walk-in closet holding up two expensive dinner dresses. “Petey, which one should I wear tomorrow? I have something for tonight, but I don’t know what to take for tomorrow.”

  “I think I can help with that decision.” He took a small box from his jacket pocket. The box was covered in gold foil, with a red ribbon tied jauntily around it.

  “For me?” she breathed, tossing both dresses over the nearest chair and coming toward him.

  “See which dress goes best with this.” He held the box out and received the kiss which she dutifully paid before she grabbed the box and tore it open.

  “Oh, Petey, it’s gorgeous!”

  “Just a little something I picked up on the way home. To make sure you’re in a good mood for the weekend.” His smile took any intended sting out of the words.

  “Silly,” she said. “I was selfish not to want to take Shauna. You were right.” She came to him. “Put it on. I want to see how it looks.”

  He placed the large diamond pendant around her neck and fastened the clasp. His hands moved down, along her shoulders.

  She gazed at her image in the mirror. “It’s gorgeous, Petey. And I know just what to wear with it. What a wonderful way to solve my dress problem!”

  She turned in his arms and lifted her face to be kissed. As he responded, she wrapped her arms around his neck.

  He had shut the door on the way in, and he knew Shauna wouldn’t bother them. She was likely deep in the book again, imagining herself as—as what? The heroine? Or perhaps the villain. Who knew? Or cared. Anyway, she wouldn’t notice how long it took them to get out of the bedroom.

  He had been wrong to become angry over Shauna. He didn’t want Jillian wondering if he was becoming unhappy with her. The pendant would assure her that everything was okay. For a while at least. Give him time to figure out his next move.

  Across town in an underground garage, Kendall Brodie unlocked the trunk of his graduation present, a black Porsche, and tossed in a leather suitcase. “Come on, Nick, hurry up!” he called to his friend, who had stopped to talk to another resident of their apartment building.