Designer Knockoff (18 page)
Lacey tried to blot Vic Donovan from her mind for most of the evening, but she couldn’t help making comparisons. Jeffrey was handsome, but in an Ivy League, pretty-boy way, with blue eyes, blond hair, tan skin, and perfect teeth.
He could grow on you.
Vic, on the other hand, was a more muscular physical presence, ruggedly good-looking with his dark, wavy hair and unreadable green eyes. He always looked like he had just climbed out of a Jeep, while Jeffrey looked as if he had just climbed out of, well, a Bentley.
He could grow on you.
Vic, on the other hand, was a more muscular physical presence, ruggedly good-looking with his dark, wavy hair and unreadable green eyes. He always looked like he had just climbed out of a Jeep, while Jeffrey looked as if he had just climbed out of, well, a Bentley.
Jeffrey smiled. “That’s a wonderful dress. You look beautiful.”
“Reporters hear a lot of things, but that’s not usually part of the dialogue.”
“I can’t imagine why not.” He waited for her to be seated.
“You’re flirting with me.” She briefly wondered if her alert level had been downgraded to Green, pheromone jammers put on hold—although the jammers never had an effect on how Donovan tripped her wires. “Jeffrey, I’m not denigrating my appeal as a sparkling dinner partner, but I really have to ask—why?”
“Why am I flirting or why did I ask you out? Well, I knew you’d make a sparkling dinner partner, and I felt safe asking you out because you’ve already met the family. You have no illusions about them,” Jeffrey said. “You already know that Uncle Hugh is positively dying to get his hands on that original Bentley suit.”
“But how far would he go to get it?”
“What do you mean? Did he offer you something?” Jeffrey’s complete command wavered briefly.
“Did he ever. Not one but two Bentley’s couture gowns, anything I wanted.” She flipped open the menu and glanced at the choices. “He reminds me of a little boy who wants all the toys.”
“That’s Hugh, all right. And Aaron too. Runs in the family. But don’t let him intimidate you.” Lacey thought it was a good sign that Jeffrey hadn’t asked for anything or complained about her writing.
Not yet.
Not yet.
“He’s probably just trying to get you on his side. He can’t be happy with the publicity. He doesn’t want anything to mar the opening of the museum. He’s an old man. It’s the most important thing in his life right now.”
A man alone at a nearby table rattled his newspaper, turning his page to a picture of Esme Fairchild. It threw an immediate pall over Lacey and Jeffrey. “The Bentleys seem to be at the center of several big stories,” she said.
“Yes, of course, the robbery and the missing intern.” Jeffrey’s face lost some of its good humor. “Is there any news on her?”
“No news. What happens to all the young women who disappear? A few of them run away. Many of them turn up dead.”
What happened to Gloria Adams?
What happened to Gloria Adams?
“Horrible.” Jeffrey picked up his glass and played with it. “Do you think Aaron is involved somehow? It’s not a trick question. I’d like your opinion.”
“This is D.C.; anything could happen,” Lacey said carefully. “It’s a toss-up between the men she knew and the random stranger in the street.”
“The men she knew—meaning Aaron.”
“Don’t forget the senator.” She also thought of Kenyon, the reporter Esme had been drinking with. “There may be others.”
“Yes, but Aaron is my cousin, though he’s considerably older.”
“Do you think he’s involved?”
“Honestly, I’d have to say that paying people off is more his style.”
“He doesn’t like to get his hands dirty?” There was no response. “Did you know Esme?”
“I didn’t have an opportunity to meet her,” he said. “From what I hear she’s not my type.”
Lacey wondered. Esme and Jeffrey would make an even handsomer couple than Esme and Aaron, and certainly one that was more age-appropriate. They would shimmer with a warm golden glow made for the media. A waiter quietly left a fresh basket of bread in front of them.
“Fashion is a cutthroat business, but I’d like to think we’re not that bad. I’m just not always convinced of it.”
“But you’re not in the fashion end of it.” Jeffrey did get his hands dirty with his carpentry. She reflected on how attractively his tool belt had hung when she interrupted him at the museum.
“Thank God. Lord knows I’m much better with a hammer and drywall than with all the rag trade’s infighting and back-biting. I was pretty happy running my own little residential design-and-build construction company up in Westchester, but Uncle Hugh said he needed someone he could trust to build the stores, and Aaron made me one of those offers you can’t refuse.”
“It must be nice to have a family business to join. No résumé problems.”
Jeffrey sighed. “Only if you want to work in the dark heart of the Bentley empire, and I’m not sure you would.”
“Dark heart?” Her ears were practically quivering. “You mean something more than just money, and the family business, and the glamour of the fashion scene? Something mysterious?”
Like a sixty-year-old murder? And maybe a recent one?
Like a sixty-year-old murder? And maybe a recent one?
“Something that holds us all together.” He picked up a slice of aromatic rosemary bread. “If my family has anything to do with it, this Fairchild mess, I have to know.”
“Why do you have to know?”
“Because there are no consequences in my family,” he said quietly. She wondered briefly whether he was still talking to her, or to himself. “ ‘No consequences’ was the first lesson I learned. If you’re a Bentley, things get cleaned up. They never happened.”
“But you’re a Bentley.”
“Only half.”
“You said that the other day. And aren’t you all only half? Technically speaking.”
“Sorry, it’s automatic.”
“What’s the worst thing you ever did, Jeffrey?”
“You really want to know?”
Of course not. I want to know the soup of the day.
One of Lacey’s strongest traits as a reporter, she thought, or perhaps it was a flaw, was that she always wanted to know the ending. And perhaps people sensed she couldn’t resist a good story. Or perhaps they had simply worn out everyone else they knew with endless repetitions. He grimaced at her and waved for the waiter. “Okay, but this is off the record.” She raised her eyebrows at that. “Because I don’t want to read something like, ‘Another Bad Bentley. Juvenile Delinquent Shames Fashion Family.’ ”
One of Lacey’s strongest traits as a reporter, she thought, or perhaps it was a flaw, was that she always wanted to know the ending. And perhaps people sensed she couldn’t resist a good story. Or perhaps they had simply worn out everyone else they knew with endless repetitions. He grimaced at her and waved for the waiter. “Okay, but this is off the record.” She raised her eyebrows at that. “Because I don’t want to read something like, ‘Another Bad Bentley. Juvenile Delinquent Shames Fashion Family.’ ”
“You, a delinquent? But you said there were no consequences.”
“I did, didn’t I? Well, in my case, there were consequences,” Jeffrey admitted. “I crashed my mother’s brand-new sports car when I was fifteen.”
“And she threw you in jail?” Lacey asked. Jeffrey nearly choked on his drink.
“Not exactly. Besides, she never exactly told me not to drive it.”
“What about your dad?”
“He died when I was ten. My mother was not terribly interested in me. She was busy with boyfriends, trips, the whole Bentley haute couture scene. I wasn’t terribly interested in her either, but I did like her brand-new sports car, a little red Mercedes-Benz. With my brand-new learner’s permit I was determined to take the Benz out for a joyride while she was gone on some trip. So I spun out into a bridge abutment way out in the countryside late one Saturday night and totaled the car. I didn’t have a scratch on me—the little Benz gave its all for me—but I didn’t know what to do. I had only the vaguest idea of where I was, so I just sat in the car.”
Lacey refolded her napkin to keep herself from grabbing her pen and notebook. She visualized the poor smashed Mercedes. She hated movies that ended in the carnage of beautiful automobiles. “And then the cops came. Did they nail you?”
Jeffrey approved the bottle of merlot and poured for her. “Officer Michael O‘Leary and Officer Rocco Rappoli were about to arrest me for reckless driving, speeding, driving without a license, hell, probably even grand theft auto, when I announced, in my snottiest teenage lord-of-the-manor tone, that I was Jeffrey Bentley Holmes. That backed them up a bit. Then Rappoli said, ‘Well, he didn’t get himself killed, so let’s just beat the crap out of him.’ I felt the blood run out of my face. No one had ever so much as raised their hand to me. O’Leary stopped him. ‘He’s part of that Bentley clan, you know those filthy-rich bastards. Think, Rocco, what good would it do you? You got four kids and one in college next year.’ Rappoli said something like, ‘A guy can dream, can’t he?’ Rappoli stomped off to the cruiser, no doubt to call a tow truck. Big beefy-faced O‘Leary turned to me and said, ‘You don’t know how lucky you are, kid. Rocco Rappoli here was one of the finest welterweight boxing champions in New York. His hands are lethal weapons.’ O’Leary told me to get in the backseat of the cruiser. ‘Take some advice from me, kid. You keep your mouth shut and don’t say a word. It’s going to be a long drive back to your mother’s house. I ain’t gonna touch you, but I’m not taking any lip from some bratty rich kid. Do you understand? And I won’t be held responsible for Rappoli if you open your trap.’ By this time I was so scared I couldn’t have said a word, even if I wanted to. Rappoli looked like he could have been a mob enforcer in another life.” Jeffrey laughed at the memory.
“Oh, my God. I was such a wimpy goody-goody as a teenager. If I’d been picked up by the cops I would have died on the spot,” Lacey said.
“I doubt that very much.”
Lacey picked up her glass of merlot and toyed with it. “And did you mouth off on the long way home? And how long was it?”
“It was much longer than it needed to be. I think we took several laps of Westchester County before they dropped me off. And boy, did I get an earful. ‘Those Bentleys,’ O‘Leary said, ‘they may be rich as royalty, but they are the scum of the earth.’ I was vaguely embarrassed by my family, as most kids that age are, but I had no idea how deep the resentment ran against my family. We Bentleys and Bentley Holmeses were so smugly superior. These two working-class cops lashed me with their scorn. I began to think getting the crap beat out of me would be easier than listening to it. O’Leary, who could never afford a Mercedes like the one I had just casually totaled, had been a cop for twenty years. He unleashed a litany of the offenses of the Bentleys that started with me and had no end.”
“Did that include your mother?” She wondered about the cool Belinda who had not one hair out of place.
“Oh, yeah. He spared no one. ‘With a mother like that, what can you expect? She’s a Bentley too.”’
“Everything is off the record for now, Jeffrey. But what exactly is included in that litany of offenses?” Their entrées arrived, seafood for Jeffrey, filet for Lacey, artfully arranged platters with artistic mounds of mashed potatoes and curled vegetables.
“The usual, I suppose. Uncle Hugh treated the factory girls as his own private harem. Women who said no were given the worst work, the worst hours, or they were simply fired. The cops had names and case histories, but no one dared defy him because he could ruin them. And Hugh was a smuggler, a black marketeer, a war profiteer who bought off politicians.”
This story is tilting again in Gloria’s favor,
Lacey thought as Jeffrey continued.
Lacey thought as Jeffrey continued.
“Cousin Aaron had a little drug business in his high school, where he got A’s in chemistry. And there was a girl that he got pregnant. Rappoli knew her family. The girl was fifteen. Hugh arranged and paid for an abortion. She killed herself when Aaron refused to see her again.” Lacey noticed Jeffrey hadn’t touched his swordfish. “Rappoli would turn around and glare at me and say things like, ‘I still think we should knock some sense into the kid.’ ”
“It sounds pretty punishing, even without the corporal punishment.”
“I had no idea what people thought of us. After all, it wasn’t exactly dinner conversation, not at our dinner table, even if we provided entertainment far and wide. We thought we were getting away with it all, and we were, but it was no secret. Bentley dirty laundry was hung out all over town. I had to wipe my eyes on my sleeve so they wouldn’t see I was crying. As I said, it was a long drive home.”
Lacey realized she had hung out a bit more of that Bentley dirty laundry on a line called
The Eye Street Observer. What does he really think of me?
she wondered.
The Eye Street Observer. What does he really think of me?
she wondered.
“Eventually they got tired of the Bentleys and started talking about other things.” Jeffrey stopped and took another bite.
“That must have been a relief,” Lacey said.
“O‘Leary said he was going to the eight-o’clock Mass at St. Timothy’s on Sunday morning. Rappoli wondered where my family might be going to church. O‘Leary just laughed and said Bentleys worshiped money, not God. But I thanked God myself when we finally drove up to my house. No punishment my mother could think of could compare with that trip home with O’Leary and Rappoli.”
Lacey could imagine the glamorous and beautiful Belinda, haughty and superior, meeting the police officers at the front door like the lady of the manor in some Bentley dressing gown.
“My mother thanked them graciously. After they left she just looked at me and said, ‘Well, Jeffrey, perhaps you are a Bentley after all.’ ” He took a long swallow of wine. “A Bentley was the last thing on earth I wanted to be at that moment.”
A few sleepless hours later, Jeffrey had found himself in front of the arched oak doors at the stone church of St. Timothy’s. He eased open the heavy door and stepped inside.
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