False Premises (36 page)

Audrey didn’t acknowledge me as I entered the kitchen, apparently too focused on the recipe cards she was thumbing through. Much as I adored every square inch of this room, tonight not even the sweet, tantalizing aromas emanating from the oven could cheer me. I chucked my drawing pad onto the counter and dropped onto a wooden bar stool in front of her. These caned seats were a new purchase and were wonderful; painted the same snow white as the cabinets and trim, they brought the casual elegance of the classic country kitchen chair into the space.

Audrey swept back her bangs.“You’re looking a little down, Erin. Are your injuries still bothering you?”

“No, just the bandages.” Pembrook’s knife had nicked my neck at the shoulder. The wound was, thankfully, shallow, and had only required a butterfly adhesive. It was the cuts from the glass shards in my right hand that had required stitches and splints and would take longer to heal. With Audrey at last granting me a willing audience, I whined, “They’re driving me nuts! It’s been two days now! I can’t draw . . . I can’t grip a pencil or a brush. And the worst thing is, I’m going to be like this for at least a week or two, and that’s assuming everything heals properly. In the meantime, I’m going to be unable to work.”

“I thought John Norton was helping you.”

“He is.” To my surprise, John Norton had insisted upon taking time off work and serving as my “right-hand man.” Furthermore, last night he announced that he’d decided he wasn’t giving up so easily, that he’d fight even his good friend Steve Sullivan for my affections. “But by next Monday, he has to get back to his own job, and I’ll be completely on my own.”

“In that case, this will be an excellent opportunity for you to concentrate on all the other aspects of your job,” Audrey said with a one-shoulder shrug. “Surely the first few steps to designing interiors have nothing whatsoever to do with putting your plans down on paper. Don’t you visualize, plan, find creative solutions to your clients’ problems, all in your head before you begin to draw?”

“Yes, of course,” I retorted, a little annoyed at how she’d dismissed my troubles as though they were mere specks of lint on a velvet pillow. “And then I draw the design. With this!” I held up my useless, bandaged hand.

“So you’ll have to adjust your schedule such that, by the time you need to put pencil to paper, your bandages will have been removed.” The timer on the stove dinged. She donned her poppy-patterned oven mitts and opened the oven. “In the meantime, you’ll have been forced to put all your energy into those ultra-important initial steps of design. I’m telling you from experience, Erin, your end results will only be the better for all of this.”

“From experience?” I mocked; the woman hadn’t worked a single day as a professional interior designer. Instantly I felt a pang for taking out my frustrations on her. Noting the splendid dessert she was removing from the oven, I said, “Your lemon meringue pie looks like something off the cover of a recipe book! I’m thoroughly impressed. I can make a delicious lemon pie, and my meringue looks great with its fluffy white peaks as it’s going into the oven. But it always comes out all sunken and runny and pathetic.”

“This is what I’m saying, Erin.” She removed her oven mitts and wagged her index finger in my face. “You’ve got to concentrate on getting the initial steps absolutely flawless. To make meringue, for example, you have to chill the bowl first. You have to get fresh eggs, straight from the farm.”

I frowned and sighed, certain that even if I did those things, my pie would still look nothing like Audrey’s.

“You’re obviously not convinced.” She arched her brow and crossed her arms, regarding me for a moment. “How old do you think I was when I had my first dance lesson?”

I leaned my elbows on the cool, glassy surface of the counter, anticipating a story, which, truth be told, I yearned to hear; I was so sad about how things had ended with Robert Pembrook that I was sorely in need of some old-fashioned, home-and-hearth family connections at the moment. “I don’t know. Five or six?”

“I was sixteen.”

I sat up.“You’re kidding me!”

“No, I’m perfectly serious, Erin. I was sixteen years old and fully grown.” She grinned and gestured at herself in her slinky gold-and-indigo silk caftan.“That is, if you consider five foot two as fully grown. In any case, I was the same height then that I am now.”

“That’s . . . amazing, Audrey. Aren’t many dancers already starting to realize by sixteen that they don’t have the talent to make it professionally?”

“Oh, absolutely. In fact, George himself used to comment about that very point. He would—”

“George?” I asked, thinking this was probably some ex-husband that I hadn’t yet heard her mention.

“Balanchine. He used to—”

“Wait.You knew George Balanchine?”

“Of course.There’s only one New York City Ballet company, and George was its prominent figure.”

I furrowed my brow, worried that she was pulling my leg. “So you were on a first-name basis with George Balanchine? With the greatest choreographer of the twentieth century?”

She clicked her tongue. “You’re really interfering with the flow of this story, Erin, and I do have a point.”

“Sorry. Go ahead.” I tightened my one good fist under the table to force myself to concentrate on not blurting out a host of questions that had popped into my head about her days of hobnobbing with such a famous person.

“Mr. Balanchine used to ask me, ‘How did you do it, Audrey? How did you get so accomplished at dance when you started so late in life?’ I had to tell him that I honestly didn’t know, but that it probably all boiled down to the fact that, by the time I finally began to learn dance, I knew that I simply did not have the time to unlearn any bad habits. So you know what I did?”

Not wanting to again be accused of interrupting her, I waited a beat and then said cautiously, “No. What?”

“At the dance school, they tried to enroll me in a class with beginning adults, and I said,‘Absolutely not. Put me in with the youngest students. Those are the ones who are going to be getting the best instruction on all the basics.’ After all, at age five or six, virtually every student has a chance at becoming a prima ballerina. Not so in an adult-beginners class. Granted, the teachers and the little students would give me funny looks . . . this young woman in a class with girls ten years younger than she. But I went into that class determined to learn the fundamental steps of ballet to absolute perfection. I knew that then, and only then, could I get to where I needed to be.”

“Huh,” I muttered, impressed and surprised by her tale. I thought a moment about the very design that I was working on now and realized that she was right. Half of those clients’ problems stemmed from a slight flaw in the foundation in their house, which then led to a crack in the wall. I was now working on a furniture plan for the very room with the cracked wall, but what really needed to be done was to rebuild that wall with a new foundation. I could do that by extending the dimensions of the room a little—and thereby give them that reading nook that the wife so craved.

“That is truly unbelievable, Audrey. So, you somehow managed to—” I glanced at my watch as I was speaking and leapt to my feet when I saw that it was already a couple of minutes past six P.M. “Oh, shoot! I’m late for a meeting!”

“With a client?”

“No, with Steve Sullivan.”

“Oh, good. I’m glad you won’t be alone tonight. I’m going to an old friend’s house for dinner. And by ‘old friend,’ I mean both literally and figuratively. You’d be bored out of your mind.” She nodded at her perfect pie. “I’m bringing dessert.”

I retrieved my purse from where I’d dropped it, gingerly angling the strap onto my right shoulder with my left hand, and headed for the door. “I’ll see you in the morning, then, Audrey.”

“Take care. And I mean that literally, Erin. Do not get into trouble!”

“I’ll be fine.” I smiled at her as I snatched my keys, again in my left hand, resisting an urge to hug the dear woman.

“I hope so.” She narrowed her eyes at me, apparently not confident that I was not charging off to once again confront a murderer. “Between Sullivan’s broken leg and your bandaged hand and neck, all you’ll need now is a fife and a drummer boy with a bandaged head.”

I chuckled and said goodbye, then made the short drive downtown, deciding I’d be better off parking at my office and walking than looking for a space at this hour. Ever since the arrest two days ago, I’d barely spoken to Sullivan. He’d suddenly dropped by my office early this afternoon and insisted that I join him at Rusty’s this evening. Frankly, though, I was a little hurt that it had taken him that long to get in touch with me.

I waited for the pedestrian light to change and hurried across the street. Rusty’s was now within sight.

Someone’s cell phone went off nearby, and I glanced to either side of me. Nobody seemed close enough for the tune to be playing quite so loudly. I slowed my pace, puzzled. The phone continued to ring, and I realized that the sound was emanating from my own purse. That was bizarre, because, with my right hand out of commission, I had stashed my cell phone in my left jacket pocket, and this phone was literally playing a different tune—a familiar one that I couldn’t quite place.

As I struggled to sort through my purse with my good hand, I realized just as I located the silver phone that it was playing a Gilbert and Sullivan song. A joke from Sullivan?

“Hello?” I said tentatively, coming to a standstill. If this was Sullivan calling to say he’d be late, there was little reason for me to race to Rusty’s.

“You found the present, I see.” Sullivan’s voice.“Good.”

“You got me a cell phone? I already have one, you know.”

“It’s just a loaner. I borrowed it from someone I know. That’s not the gift, just the wrapping. Did you recognize the song?”

To my annoyance, I had butterflies in my stomach and my pulse was racing. Was this his way of suggesting more emphatically that we become partners? If so, I might need to point out to him that the collaboration between the original Gilbert and Sullivan had been very stormy; supposedly the two men were constantly at each other’s throat. Sir Sullivan’s fault, no doubt.

Besides, ever since Pembrook’s arrest, John had been treating me like a queen. In addition to waiting on me hand and foot at work, he had sent me a gorgeous bouquet, with a touching get-well card urging me to give him a second chance. I longed to accept the offer and choose an easier path, for once in my life.

“Gilbert?” Sullivan prompted. “Do you know the song?”

“Yes. It’s a Gilbert and Sullivan tune. From The Mikado.”

“Right you are, little lady,” he said in a game-show-host voice. “And now, for the bonus question, Miss Gilbert, what is the title of that song?”

I had to think for a moment, but was able to replay the notes in my head until the words came back to me. “ ‘Let the Punishment Fit the Crime.’ ”

“Ladies and gentleman, we have a winner!”

I grinned and peered at Rusty’s storefront, just a block away. I wondered if that’s where he was calling from. “I don’t get it, Sullivan.”

“It means I’m hereby going to stop punishing myself and everyone who tries to get close to me because of what Laura did to me.”

I smiled, delighted and very surprised at this anti-Sullivan-like pronouncement. “Good for you. I’m really glad to hear that.”

“Thanks. And one more thing before we hang up. I’m really sorry I’ve been such a jerk.”

“Hey! Wait a minute, buster!” I said with a chuckle. “Is that my long-overdue apology?”

“Yep.”

“Over the phone? Jeez, Sullivan! I’m, like, two seconds away from Rusty’s! You couldn’t wait and do this face-to-face?”

“Turn around, and I’ll repeat myself.”

I whirled around. He was behind me, standing a block or so away. I must have passed him moments ago.

He stuck his phone back in his pocket, cupped his hands around his mouth like a megaphone, and shouted,“I’m sorry, Gilbert.”

I laughed, but then held my hand behind my ear and called, “What did you say? I can’t quite hear you.”

He limped toward me. When he reached me, he announced,“I said,‘I’m starving, Gilbert.’ Let me take you to dinner.”

He looked positively scrumptious in his preppy baby-blue polo shirt and khakis, that Hollywood smile on his handsome features. Maybe he’d truly changed. Maybe this was a new start for us. Just as Audrey had advised, we could now concentrate on getting our initial, fundamental steps right, and we’d be able to proceed from there—to get along, to quit bickering over every inanity that arose.“It’s a deal,” I said, beaming at him. “But I’d like to choose the restaurant.”

“I made reservations at a sushi bar.”

“I hate sushi,” I blurted out.

“You’ll like this place.”

“Fine. Just so long as it’s not Jimmy Sum’s. I got food poisoning there.”

He scoffed, “No way did you get food poisoning from Jimmy Sum’s. I’ve eaten there at least a dozen times, and I’m telling you, the food is great. You probably got the stomach flu and jumped to the conclusion that it was the restaurant’s fault.”

I gritted my teeth, but was determined not to leap down his throat at the implication that he knew more than I did about my own health history. “Let’s just go to Rusty’s. All right?”

“Can’t. It’s packed. And you were late. They made me relinquish the reservations, so that’s why I made new ones at Jimmy Sum’s.”

“Let’s get Mexican.”

He shook his head and snapped, “I had that for lunch.”

“Jeez, Sullivan!”

“Hey! You’re the one who was late and made me blow off the reservations!”

“You didn’t tell me we had reservations! I’d have been on time if I’d known!”

“In other words, you could be on time for a free meal, but can’t be bothered to be on time for me otherwise. Thanks, Gilbert.That makes me feel great.”

“Oh, whereas you’re making me feel just peachy, Sullivan!”