“Frankly, I don’t think being a condescending smart-ass is any more socially acceptable than what you call ‘sexual desire’ for someone who’s living with another man—”
“And so very comfortable doing so,” he interjected sarcastically.
Got me there, I thought. But I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of knowing he’d hit a raw nerve.
“Look, Forrester. I don’t know who you think you are to—”
“Knock, knock!” a high-pitched female voice called gaily. “Anybody home?”
My landlady and close friend Betty had just poked her head inside the front door.
Betty never opened the door without knocking.
“Hello, Jessica.” Feigning surprise—and not doing a particularly good job of it—she added, “Oh, heavens! I had no idea you had someone over!”
Right, I thought. That SUV the size of a UPS truck sure is hard to miss.
“Come on in, Betty,” I told her.
She floated into the living room, the image helped by her long, flowing sundress made of batik fabric splashed with bright oranges, yellows, and greens. To ward off the coolness of the early October afternoon, she had wrapped a shiny green silk shawl around her shoulders. It was covered with tiny mirrors the size of dimes and edged with gold metallic fringe. Her delicate silk slippers were elaborately decorated with colorful beads that matched the beaded earrings dangling below her smooth, white hair, worn in a neat pageboy.
As was often the case, her outfit looked like something a costume designer had dreamed up. Betty Vandervoort had moved to New York City from Altoona, Pennsylvania, decades earlier to pursue her dream of conquering Broadway. Dancing in the chorus of hits like South Pacific and Oklahoma! had been only the beginning of what I considered a fairy-tale life, even though it had been marred early on by the death of her husband, Charles. I was pleased that she’d recently returned to the theater, even though this time around she’d set her sights on community productions rather than the Great White Way. Getting back into show biz had made her already sparkly sapphire-blue eyes shine even more brightly. Of course, the recent appearance of a new beau on the scene had catapulted the sparkle to even more dazzling heights.
Lighting on the edge of the couch like a butterfly, she asked sweetly, “And who, may I ask, is this?”
“Forrester Sloan,” I replied. “He writes for Newsday.”
Betty stiffened. “Oh, yes,” she said with a touch of haughtiness. “I’ve heard all about you.”
“Only good things, I hope,” Forrester returned, flashing her a grin.
“Hmm” was all she said, making no bones about the fact that she was looking him over. She also made it clear that she had no intention of going anywhere.
“Forrester is helping me find out everything I can about Cassandra Thorndike’s murder.”
“Oh, yes,” Betty said, her eyes clouding with concern. “Jessica told me all about the predicament her poor friend is in.” Her look of concern quickly turned back to coldness as she pointedly said, “I suppose that’s the reason you’re here, then.”
Forrester cast Betty a wary glance, then stood up. “And our business is just about done, so I guess I’ll get going.” He reached into his pocket and handed me a business card. “Here’s the person I told you about. Call her. She’s expecting to hear from you.”
“I’ll think about it,” I replied, taking the card.
After he’d left, Betty twisted around to face me. Crossing her arms, she demanded, “And what, may I ask, was all that about?”
“All what?” I asked innocently.
She drew her lips into a straight line. “Attractive young men dropping by to visit you during the day.”
“Do you think he’s attractive?” I asked coolly. “Actually, I always thought Forrester was kind of—”
“Jessica, you know perfectly well what I’m talking about. I wasn’t born yesterday, you know. And I recognize chemistry when I see it.”
“Speaking of chemistry,” I said, pointedly changing the subject, “what’s up with you and Winston? I’ve noticed he’s been spending a lot of time at your place. In fact, it looks as if he’s practically moved in.”
Betty hesitated, as if wondering if she should go along with my obvious ploy to shift the focus from my love life to hers. “Actually, it looks as if he’s going to do exactly that. Tomorrow, as a matter of fact.”
My eyebrows shot up so high they practically grazed the ceiling.
“Someone is interested in buying his house,” Betty went on. “It’s such a lovely estate, and Old Brookbury is an extremely desirable area. The buyer is anxious for the deal to go through quickly, which would leave Winston without a place to live. He and I have been talking about making a deeper commitment to each other—”
“That was fast,” I said, thinking aloud.
“People our age experience time differently, Jessica. At any rate, with him having no place to go and me rattling around that huge house all by myself...Well, we’re going to try living together.”
“I wish you the best,” I told her sincerely. “I’m sure you’ll both be extremely happy.”
“Seems to me you and Nick have been considering a similar arrangement,” Betty noted.
“Yes, and we’ve decided to give it a try,” I said, noticing that my mouth was suddenly dry. “But it’s mainly because his landlord is making it very clear that he can’t wait for him to vacate the apartment so his daughter can move in. Besides, it’s just an experiment. We’ve agreed on a time frame of a few months. Then, if it isn’t working out...”
“Well, I couldn’t be more pleased that you’re finally making a commitment to Nick. You know how much I adore him, and I love the idea of the two of you going hand in hand into the sunset.” Betty glanced at the front door, as if wanting to make sure Forrester had really made his way onto the other side of it. “Without anything—or anyone—getting in the way.”
“Betty, Forrester and I are just friends, I assure you.”
“Well, you might think that,” she said. “But I can assure you that he doesn’t.”
I shrugged. “Can I help it if the guy has an overly active imagination?”
“As a matter of fact, you can.” She paused to take a deep breath. “Jessica, I’ll be blunt.”
That’s a change, I thought crossly.
“I can’t help feeling that you’re sending that young man signals.”
“Betty,” I replied, trying not to sound too exasperated, “I’ve reminded him that I have a boyfriend so many times that even I’m sick of hearing it.”
“There are the things we say—and then there are the things we don’t say.”
I was about to point out that she sounded like a badly written fortune cookie when she added, “Just be careful, Jessica. This one isn’t just flirting. This one is serious.”
Chapter 8
“I’ve never understood why women love cats. Cats are independent, they don’t listen, they don’t come in when you call, they like to stay out all night, and when they’re home they like to be left alone and sleep. In other words, every quality that women hate in a man, they love in a cat.”
—Jay Leno
Screech. Crunch. Bang! Even before I flung open the door on Tuesday morning, I knew I wasn’t going to like what I found on the other side. Sure enough: There in the driveway right outside my cottage was an orange and white U-Haul truck that was only slightly smaller than my van. Harder to maneuver too, at least if the fact that it had just smashed into the low brick wall on one side of the driveway was any indication.
“Nick?” I cried as Max and Lou rushed past me, both of them barking wildly. “What are you doing?”
He hopped out of the passenger’s side of the cab, wearing a sheepish grin. Tucked under one arm was a shoe box. “Sorry. I guess Ollie’s not that great a driver.”
Just then, the other door of the cab opened. A chubby man with a complexion that would make a dead man look rosy-cheeked climb
ed down awkwardly. “I hope I don’t have whiplash!” he whined. “I can already feel shooting pains in my neck!”
I strode over to Nick. “You let him drive?” I whispered hoarsely.
“It’s okay. His father owns the franchise.”
“That’s a relief. Hopefully, Daddy will pay for damage.”
Oliver J. Sturges III—Ollie, as his friends called him, assuming he had any—was a member of Nick’s study group. First-year law students apparently found it helpful to get together once a week to pool their notes and share their insights—although having met the other four members, I found it hard to believe they had much of anything to offer Nick, aside from convincing him he was one of the few normal people at the Brookside University School of Law.
“Hello, Ollie,” I greeted the man wearing jeans pulled up nearly to his armpits and a plaid flannel shirt that his mother had no doubt ordered for him from the L.L. Bean catalog. The shirt was still creased from being folded in the package. I just hoped the pins had been removed. “Thanks for helping.”
“I forgot that you have all those...those animals in your house!” he rasped. “Dogs and cats and...and... Oh, my God, I forgot my inhaler. There’s no way I’m going inside that death trap, Nick!”
“That’s cool, Ollie,” Nick replied patiently. “I can handle unpacking the truck. You’ve already done enough.”
“I’ll say,” I muttered, checking out the huge dent that was the result of his obvious intellectual deficiency in the area of spatial relations. Turning back to Nick, I said, “I’ll help you unpack.”
“Thanks!” Nick leaned over and gave me a kiss. Unfortunately, it was the kind Mike Brady used to give Carol Brady on The Brady Bunch.
“Hey, don’t I get a real kiss?” I protested. “After all, you and I are about to start cohabitating. Shouldn’t we mark that with something symbolic?”
He grinned. “Later. After Ollie’s gone and I’m all settled in.”
With that, he handed me the shoe box.
“What’s this?”
“You mean who’s this. Leilani. Her tank is packed up with the rest of my stuff.”
Leilani was the Jackson’s chameleon Nick and I had brought home from our fateful trip to Hawaii a year earlier, a trip that had almost meant the end for us. While I thought we were there to snorkel and eat shave ice, Nick had surprised me by asking me to marry him. My less-than-enthusiastic reaction had prompted us to split.
Fortunately, fate—or, more accurately, my first foray into murder investigation—had brought us back together a few weeks after we returned home. But I still thought of Leilani as the best part of that entire episode. I suspected that Nick did too. I carried the box carefully, not wanting to add to the trauma the poor creature had already endured simply from driving over. I brought her into the house, placed the shoe box on the bed, and closed the door to keep curious kitty cats away from their new housemate.
By the time I got back outside, Nick had opened up the truck. He grabbed a carton of what looked like very heavy books and began U-Hauling them toward the front door. I wandered around to the back, figuring I’d do my share of the heavy lifting—then froze.
“What’s all this?” I asked, blinking in disbelief as I glanced inside.
“Just some of my stuff,” Nick returned cheerfully.
I felt as if my cottage had just been selected to be the winter headquarters of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. I checked behind me, hoping I wouldn’t see a team of elephants trundling up the driveway.
No elephants, thank goodness. But plenty of clothes on hangers and in shopping bags, cardboard cartons of books and CDs, electronics with long, dangling cords, must-have housewares like a rice cooker and a juicer, boxes piled high with dress shoes and worn-out sneakers, lamps, rolled-up posters, and black Hefty bags whose contents I could only imagine.
“I guess I never realized you owned so many things,” I said feebly.
Nick just laughed. “Don’t worry. We’ll find a way to make it fit. I’m really good at that kind of thing.”
I was wondering what else I’d be learning about Nick in the days and weeks to come when I noticed Betty trotting toward me from the Big House, waving.
“So today’s the big day!” she cried, her blue eyes twinkling.
“This is it,” I replied hoarsely, already wondering if I’d made the biggest mistake of my life.
“How exciting! In fact, why don’t you and Nick stop by tonight for a little celebration? After you’ve both had a chance to get settled, of course. I’m sure Winston and I can find a bottle of bubbly to mark the occasion.”
“Sounds like fun,” I told her.
Certainly more fun than watching my beloved little cottage being transformed into a climate-controlled room at one of those self-storage facilities.
“Isn’t this nice!” Betty cooed, glancing over at me and beaming. “To think that just last week, Jessica and I were the only ones who lived here on the estate. And now we have two fine gentlemen in residence!”
I had to admit that taking a break at the Big House was a great relief. While the U-Haul was long gone— along with its whiny driver, thank goodness—my worst fantasies about Nick moving in were already being realized. We were up to our earlobes in boxes. As if that wasn’t enough to induce acute claustrophobia, there was no place to sit, since cartons of books and CDs occupied all the good spots. No place to lie down either, with piles of clothes stacked on the bed and shopping bags filled with socks and belts and shoes covering the floor. As for the impossible-to-live-without rice cooker, it took up nearly all the counter space in my tiny kitchen.
Just stepping into Betty’s large, clutter-free parlor had been a great relief. I was able to breathe normally for the first time all day. In fact, I felt like the four of us were making a Merchant Ivory film. The whole setting was so darned civilized: the roaring fire in the fireplace, the crystal fluted glasses filled with bubbling champagne, the recording of a string quartet playing softly in the background, and of course Winston’s lovely British accent and Old World charm.
Even the dogs were on their best behavior. I’d wanted to leave them at the cottage, but Betty and Winston insisted it was high time Max and Lou made Frederick’s acquaintance.
I could already see that my canines were adjusting to the sudden increase in population here at the Tallmadge estate much more easily than I was. Especially Max, who had instantly taken to Winston’s wire-haired dachshund. The compact, friendly dog with fawn and tan fur was as energetic as my terrier. They bonded immediately, which I figured was due at least in part to the fact that dachshunds and West Highland whites had both originally been bred to hunt the same type of frisky critters, especially badgers.
Lou, however, was being treated a bit like the odd man out. While the two little guys romped together, sniffing and nipping each other and having a grand old time, he hovered a couple of feet away, doing his share of romping but acting more like a spectator than an active participant. I hoped that, sooner or later, they’d include him. These play dates were so difficult to orchestrate.
“It’s nice that Frederick has some new friends to romp around with, right here in his own backyard,” Winston observed, beaming like a proud father.
“And it’s lovely that we have a new neighbor, too!” Betty was glowing as she raised her champagne glass into the air. “I propose a toast to Nick. Welcome!”
“Thanks, Betty.” Nick clinked his glass against hers, then insisted that they weave their arms through each other’s before drinking. She giggled like a schoolgirl.
“Now, now, you two,” Winston quipped, “I hope I won’t have any competition, now that there’s a younger man living on the premises.”
“I promise to keep him in line,” I said.
“You don’t have to worry,” Nick added, slinging his arm around my waist. “I’m a one-woman man. Believe me, I’m smart enough to know a good thing when I’ve got it.
“In fact,” he added, �
�the entire world—or at least all of Long Island—is about to discover what a star Jessie is.”
“Come on, Nick,” I mumbled, feeling my cheeks grow warm. “You know nothing’s certain yet.”
“What’s this?” Winston boomed. “Sounds like you’ve got something exciting in the works, Jessica!”
With three pairs of eyes focused on me, I had no choice but to come clean. “I’m meeting with a television producer tomorrow to talk about the possibility of doing a weekly show on pet care. It’s only Channel Fourteen—”
“That’s wonderful!” Betty cried.
“Goodness, I watch Channel Fourteen all the time,” Winston chimed in. “It’s the best way to find out what’s happening locally.”
“Nothing is certain yet,” I insisted. Being in the limelight—even among friends—was already making me uncomfortable. I wondered if I had what it took to be on television.
“I think that’s just marvelous!” Betty exclaimed. “And, Jessica, if there’s anything I can do to help—teach you makeup tricks or give you pointers on how to make an entrance—I hope you won’t hesitate to ask.”
“Thank you, Betty.”
“How are you progressing with your other...endeavor?” she asked hesitantly.
It took me a few seconds to realize she was talking about Cassandra Thorndike. Before I had a chance to respond, Winston said, “What’s this? Another foray into the arts?”
“Not exactly,” I told him. “I’ve been investigating a murder.” I filled him in on the case, especially Suzanne’s involvement. Then I updated my small audience on everything I’d learned so far, leaving out any mention of my secret e-mail buddy. Nearly 48 hours had passed since I’d received that creepy anonymous communiqué. Yet every time I checked my e-mail, my heart started to pound. While I hadn’t heard from him or her again, I had a feeling that, sooner or later, I would.
Still, I’d made a point of not telling Nick about it. I was feeling so frustrated by my lack of progress that the last thing I wanted was him trying to hold me back because he was worried about me. There was simply too much at stake.
Hare Today, Dead Tomorrow Page 16
