Fast Women

by Jennifer Crusie

  “I believe it,” Gabe said. Trevor would have suggested waiting during the Chicago Fire because the flames were sure to die down on their own.

  “I didn’t want her dead,” Trevor said again. “And about a month later, he called me. He said Margie had gone to her mother’s and now was the time, that if I called her there and kept her on the phone, he could take care of Helena in the next half hour. I told him absolutely not. He said if we waited anymore, we’d lose everything. Then he hung up.”

  “So you rushed right over to warn Helena,” Gabe said. “You called the police.”

  “The police?” Trevor looked aghast. “You’re joking. No, I called Helena and Margie answered. She said Helena was acting strangely and she asked me to come over, but I knew I’d be too late. I told her to take Helena to the hospital right away, that I’d meet her there, and she said, no, that if I just came over—” Trevor closed his eyes. “While we were arguing, she heard the shot. And then I went over.”

  “Was Stewart there?”

  “No,” Trevor said, his voice flat. “Margie had found her mother and she was hysterical, so I put a blanket over Helena and called the paramedics.” He took a deep breath. “And then I went upstairs and found Helena’s suicide notes. Three of them. She’d been practicing.” His face flushed and he sounded angry. “She’d been planning on killing herself all along. If Stewart had just waited.…”

  So much for Trevor not wanting Helena dead.

  “He was a fool,” Trevor said. “I should never have let Margie marry him.”

  You shouldn’t have let him shoot your wife, either, Gabe thought, but he said, “She was shot with your gun.”

  “He’d taken it earlier,” Trevor said. “Jack had everything planned.”

  Gabe leaned against the liquor cabinet. He’d buy that Stewart hadn’t planned the murder, but the accusation against Jack was fishy, coming as it did on the heels of the Quarterly Report. And that “he’d taken it earlier” bit had been rushed. “I’m still not seeing Patrick in this.”

  “Margie had told me that her mother had on her good jewelry. When I saw the body, Helena had on her rings and her pin, but the rest was gone.”

  “Stewart had taken it,” Gabe said, playing along.

  “Just the pieces he could grab before he ran,” Trevor said, distaste making his voice curdle, and Gabe began to believe him. “The pin would take too long to unlatch and the rings were embedded in her fingers because she’d put on so much weight. I knew he’d do something stupid with the other pieces, he was a stupid man, so I called Patrick.”

  “And still nobody tells the police,” Gabe said.

  “The scandal would have ruined us,” Trevor said.

  “Your daughter was married to her mother’s murderer,” Gabe said.

  “Exactly,” Trevor said. “Imagine what that would do to her if she ever found out.”

  Gabe stared at him, Margie’s maybe-they’ll-never-know mantra made flesh.

  “Your father was magnificent as always,” Trevor said. “He followed Stewart for days until he went into a pawnshop. Then he took most of the agency’s capital and bought the diamonds back.”

  “And he told my mother and she left him,” Gabe said, thinking, What fools the two of you were.

  “Of course not,” Trevor said. “Lia wouldn’t have understood. But she didn’t understand anyway, didn’t understand what had happened to the money and didn’t understand why he wouldn’t tell her. She wasn’t a good wife, Gabe. I’m sorry to say it, but it’s true. Not trusting at all.”

  Gabe looked at him and thought, You must be from Mars.

  “And Patrick wasn’t the kind of man to let himself be run by a woman,” Trevor went on.

  “I’m sure that kept him warm at night after she left,” Gabe said.

  “I didn’t have the capital to pay Patrick back in full,” Trevor said, ignoring him, “so I gave him the Porsche. I knew he liked it, and it was my second car.”

  “Jesus,” Gabe said.

  “And then we did dummy invoices for the balance of the money, billing the law firm for fake background checks. I’d paid him back for all of it by the end of the year. Your mother was gone by then and your aunt was keeping the books. Nobody noticed.”

  “But he kept the diamonds,” Gabe said.

  “Well, I couldn’t take them,” Trevor said. “I was living with Audrey by then and I couldn’t risk her finding them. I’d told everyone they were buried with Helena. If Margie had found out I had them, she’d have gotten the entirely wrong idea.”

  No, she wouldn’t have. “So they were just going to stay in the couch?” Gabe said.

  “No. We were going to wait five years and then break the stones out of the settings and sell them. But then—”

  “Dad had a heart attack without telling you where they were,” Gabe finished.

  Trevor nodded. “And then Stewart embezzled and left, and it was all over. So we went on with our lives until Nell started to tear up your agency. You should have hired a lazy secretary, my boy.” He tried to chuckle, but his heart clearly wasn’t in it. “I tried to hire her away before she found the jewelry but…” He sighed. “And now it’s all over.”

  Gabe shook his head in disbelief. “All over? Trevor, it is not all over. Stewart is still alive and, let’s not forget, guilty of murder. And he didn’t leave for fifteen years. Jesus, the holidays must have been fun with him across the table from you.”

  “There’s a lot you could learn from your father,” Trevor said gravely. “He was never judgmental.”

  “Which explains this entire mess,” Gabe said. “If he’d dragged you off to the police—”

  “Gabriel, the police were not then and are not now a possibility.” Trevor’s voice took on the strength of his youth, and for once he was impressive. “Without my testimony, you can’t prove anything, but you can hurt my daughter and my business, so I’m asking you, as the son of my dearest friend, to let this go. It was twenty years ago—”

  “Twenty-three.”

  “—and nothing can be gained by dredging this up. Even if the police believed you, they can’t find Stewart. He’s been gone seven years. Margie’s going to have him declared legally dead. It’s over. Let it go.”

  Gabe stood up. “Trevor, I’m not the only one who knows.”

  “Nell will do what you tell her,” Trevor said.

  “Obviously, you don’t know Nell,” Gabe said. Trevor looked at him with contempt, and Gabe flushed. “And I wouldn’t tell her to keep quiet even if she did listen to me.”

  Trevor shook his head, clearly disappointed in him and his way with women.

  Gabe tried a new tack. “So where does Lynnie fit in all of this?”

  “Who?” Trevor said, looking legitimately mystified.

  “Lynnie Mason. Our former secretary. The one who turned up in a freezer a week ago.”

  Trevor blinked at him. “She doesn’t. Wasn’t she quite young?”

  “Early thirties,” Gabe said, not following.

  Trevor spread his hands. “She’d have been ten when Helena died.”

  “She didn’t have to be there,” Gabe said. “People talk. What did the woman who was blackmailing you really accuse you of?”

  “I told you,” Trevor said, his voice sharpening. “Adultery. It was a prank. Whoever it was never called back. I don’t understand you, Gabriel. You keep trying to make this personal, about your family and your business. It wasn’t. It was my family.”

  “But my family took the hit for it, too. This is why my mother left, isn’t it?”

  “Your mother,” Trevor said, his voice quelling, “left regularly. Why your father always took her back is beyond me.”

  “He loved her,” Gabe said. “And she loved him, that’s why she kept coming back, even though he pulled stuff like this.”

  “Don’t judge your father harshly,” Trevor said as Gabe turned to go. “He was a good friend. You’d do the same for your cousin.”

  “N
o, I wouldn’t,” Gabe said. “I wouldn’t have to. He’d never do anything like this.”

  “I didn’t do anything,” Trevor said.

  “Exactly,” Gabe said and drove home in his father’s car, knowing for the first time how expensive it really had been.

  * * *

  “What do you think?” Riley said that evening in the office.

  “I’ll buy that Stewart didn’t plan it,” Gabe said. “Too many people say he’s rash and stupid.”

  “Rash is taking the diamonds.”

  “That part I believe. Trevor was truly disgusted by that. But I will bet you that Trevor or Jack planned it. And my dad covered it up.”

  “Moving past that,” Riley said. “Lynnie shows up twenty-two years later looking for diamonds. Who told her they were here? It’d have to be Trevor, wouldn’t it?”

  “He might have told Stewart or Jack,” Gabe said. “But Trevor is still front and center.”

  “So why did he tell her?” Riley said. “If it was Jack or Stewart, I’d say pillow talk, she was not a difficult date, but I don’t see Trevor cuddling up to Lynnie and saying, ‘The McKennas have diamonds.’”

  “I don’t see that as pillow talk ever,” Gabe said. “Even if money did turn her on. Somebody sent her in here after them and then killed her because she knew too much.”

  “Why look now?” Riley said. “It’s been twenty-two years. The only person who’d wait that long for diamonds is Trevor, and he would just keep waiting.”

  “Maybe somebody just found out about them.”

  “Jack.”

  “Why Jack?”

  “Because he’s a son of a bitch,” Riley said.

  “As long as we’re keeping an open mind,” Gabe said.

  * * *

  “So what’s this I hear about you and Suze having sex?” Margie said when she was sitting in the Sycamore with Nell and Suze the next Sunday for brunch, and Suze choked on her orange juice and thought, Who talked?

  “Where’d you get that?” Nell asked.

  “Tim told Budge,” Margie said, picking up her mimosa. “We had dinner at Mother Dysart’s.” She sighed. “It was awful. I had to talk to Whitney and Olivia. I felt bad for you both, but now that I know you’re having sex…”

  “Okay, you know that was a joke, right?” Suze said, never sure about Margie.

  Margie cut into her eggs Benedict. “Uh-huh. Except I bet you did do something. Nell doesn’t lie.”

  “We kissed,” Nell said. “In the interests of science. In case a plague wiped out all the men.”

  “And if the plague hits,” Suze said, picking up her egg quesadilla, “you are invited to a three-way.”

  “No, thank you,” Margie said. “If the plague hits, I’m going to go find Janice.”

  Suze stopped, her mouth full of quesadilla, and thought, Margie had a Janice?

  Nell said, “Janice? Janice who?”

  “Janice was a friend I had in high school,” Margie said, frowning at her eggs Benedict. “She was the best sex I ever had until Budge.”

  “So much for Stewart,” Suze said.

  The waitress came and Margie asked for another mimosa. When she was gone, Margie said, “I learned things from Janice.”

  “But you ended up with Stewart,” Nell said. “Why?”

  “Because Janice dumped me,” Margie said. “And Stewart was somebody I’d known for a while, and he worked for Daddy. And he kept asking.” She shrugged.

  “I can’t believe this,” Nell said. “You had this secret life—”

  “No, I didn’t,” Margie said. “I never kept it secret. Nobody noticed. Nobody ever notices what I do.” She didn’t sound too concerned about that. “And when I did tell Stewart, he got so upset I just let the whole thing die.” She shook her head. “If I’d never said anything, he’d never have known.”

  “He got upset?” Nell said. “Why?”

  “Because it was unnatural.” Margie sighed. “He wasn’t much fun.”

  “I still feel awful about that,” Nell said. “I should have known you were unhappy.”

  “Why?” Margie shoved the plate away and picked up her drink. “It wasn’t that bad mostly. He wasn’t around much. But then one day there was trouble at the firm and I didn’t know what to do. We had this huge fight, it was so awful, I really lost my temper.”

  Suze looked at her in disbelief. “You have a temper?”

  “—and I just hit him. Then I went to Daddy and said I wanted a divorce, but Stewart left and didn’t come back, so the problem solved itself.”

  “And then there was Budge,” Suze said. “Did you tell him about Janice?”

  Margie dimpled. “Yes, I did. It had a completely different effect on him.”

  “Yeah, it had a completely different effect on Gabe, too,” Suze said, smiling at the memory. “I’ve never seen two people leave a restaurant so fast.”

  “What about Riley?” Nell asked and Suze stopped smiling.

  “Yeah. It interested him, too.”

  “You and Riley?” Margie said. “That’s nice.”

  “No,” Suze said, feeling like hell. “He won’t.”

  “Maybe he respects you too much,” Margie said.

  “No,” Suze and Nell said together.

  “I’m just not the woman I once was,” Suze said lightly.

  “He can’t be that stupid,” Nell said.

  “He’s not stupid at all,” Suze said and turned to Margie. “So where is Janice now?”

  “Some big law firm in New York,” Margie said. “That’s okay. I have Budge, and if the plague hits, I can take the bus to New York.”

  “I find that hard to believe,” Suze said. “You, on a bus?”

  “And I paid for half of your present,” Margie said sadly.

  “I get a present?” Suze said, cheering up a little.

  Margie opened her bag and put a clear plastic box full of decorated cookies on the table. “It’s a divorce party. We thought you should have one so you’d go ahead and get one. A divorce, I mean.”

  Ouch, Suze thought.

  “We thought you needed cheering up,” Nell said, with more tact.

  “I couldn’t figure out how to get a cake and candles in my bag,” Margie said, “so I made cookies. None of them are broken.”

  “Unbroken cookies,” Suze said, prying open the box as she tried to sound cheerful. “That’s a great present.”

  “That’s not your present,” Margie said, picking up her mimosa, “that’s your cake.”

  “Present,” Nell said, handing over a pink foil-wrapped box.

  “We spent hours in the store picking it out,” Margie said, as Suze unwrapped the box.

  “No, it just seemed like hours,” Nell said.

  “Thank you,” Suze said, taking the last of the wrapping off. The box said, “Lady’s Home Companion. Batteries Included,” and Suze wasn’t sure what to say.

  “It’s a vibrator,” Margie said.

  “It certainly is,” Suze said.

  “That’s to keep you from making any mistakes in the pursuit of orgasm,” Nell said. “Easy to do, as I know only too well.”

  “Riley was not a mistake,” Margie said. “He was an adventure.” She sighed at the thought.

  “Masturbation,” Suze said, still staring at the vibrator box.

  “I prefer to think of it as having sex with somebody I trust,” Nell said.

  “Good point,” Suze said.

  “And no wet spot,” Margie said, gesturing with her glass. “Plus you get the whole bed to yourself.”

  It’s not enough, Suze thought, and when she got home that afternoon, she put the box on a shelf in the closet. Then she made herself a drink because Jack was coming by to pick up the last of his clothes. When he was late, she made herself another.

  When he came in the front door, Suze felt her chest tighten. He looked the same as always, tall and gorgeous, those blue eyes melting at her as if they were still together, and she tried to remember what he
’d tried to do to Nell with Tim and the business, what he was still doing to Olivia. They talked politely as he gathered the last of his shirts from their closet, and then she followed him downstairs and into the hall, trying hard to breathe normally, fighting back the urge to say, “Don’t go, maybe we can try again.” She didn’t want to try again, he’d cheated, he’d been awful to Nell, he’d watched her kiss Riley in a dark street, but she wanted to say, “Don’t go,” because the future was terrifying and boundless and he was the past she knew.

  “I can’t believe we’re over,” she said instead, her throat almost closing.

  “I can’t believe it, either. We had it all.” He stood by the front door with a handful of shirts on hangers, the light from the porch showing the sadness on his face. My husband, she thought and felt guilty that she couldn’t keep him no matter what, that as much as she’d loved him, she couldn’t love him enough to forgive him for Olivia, for cheating on her to save his pride.

  “It’s not going to be the same without you, Suze,” he said, and his voice was so honest and so painful that she went to him and put her arms around him.

  “I’ll always love you,” she said. “Whatever else—”

  He dropped the hangers and kissed her, and she thought, Wait, I didn’t mean that, and then she remembered what they’d been once and was afraid she’d never feel good again, and she didn’t want to be alone, and she did want somebody, some human touch, not a damn pink vibrator no matter how liberated that was, so she kissed him back as he pulled at her clothing, sinking to the floor with him and letting him back inside in one last valediction for her marriage and the life she’d had with him.

  Then I’ll let go, she thought and clung to him and his kiss.

  * * *

  The next week, as Gabe obsessed over Lynnie’s death, Nell obsessed over Suze’s inability to let go of Jack and Margie’s growing inability to hold onto reality without a mimosa in her hand. The only stable thing in her life was the agency. She bought a mission couch with leather cushions for the outer office, and Gabe flinched at the bill but didn’t argue, so for St. Patrick’s Day she went for broke and gave Gabe and Riley new business cards. They were pale gray and had “Answers” embossed at the top in gold, old-fashioned type like the window. She left the boxes on their desks and when they came in, she waited for them to find them and tell her she’d been right all along.