False Pretenses (10 page)

He'd found himself several times during the past months driving home from the office, only to realize that it was no longer his home, but Rose's. He hadn't moved out yet. Rose was in Italy with her wealthy physician. He wondered if he shouldn't get on the ball and find himself a condo. He didn't know when she would be home, but if she arrived and he was there, it would give her the greatest pleasure to boot him out. He passed another runner, a young woman, who gave him a marvelous smile, nodding as she went by him.

He was indeed free. Never before in his thirty-five years had he even considered recreational sex. Now he had several very lovely young women to thank for his education. Tonight he would see Cynthia MacBain, no socialite, but a jazzercise teacher at a local health club. It was a good thing, he thought, that he'd kept himself in shape. If he were older and flabby, he'd probably have intense performance anxiety. That or an early heart attack. She had probably consulted on different positions for the karma sutra.

Jonathan slowed to a walk, rather like a racehorse, he thought to himself, cooling down. He felt full of energy, full of renewed life. He couldn't wait to get to the office and hassle Midge.

“Well, boss,” Midge said brightly as he strolled through the glass doors, “you've got lots of calls already.”

“Business or social?”

She grinned at him. “You devil, you. A bit of both. Put them in order, and I'll pour you some coffee.”

Life, he thought, as he picked up his phone to speak to his production manager, was improving at a fine rate.

And he knew where he'd get the money he needed. No problem at all.

 

“I don't understand it,” Michael Carleton said, a
deep frown furrowing his forehead. “I just don't understand it.”

Laurette carefully laid down her soup spoon and nodded to Lydia, the maid, to leave the dining room.

“What is the problem?” she asked.

“The men I hired to . . . well, see to the problems at Millsom Steel. They're gone, disappeared. Not a word, nothing.”

“When did you discover this?”

“Yesterday afternoon. I had a meeting scheduled with my contact.”

“He didn't see you, then?”

“No, not a word, as I said.”

“I shouldn't worry about it just yet, my dear,” she said, and picked up her soup spoon again. It was fresh turtle soup, her favorite, and she didn't want it to get cold.

Michael hated turtle soup. He watched his mother eat, and fiddled with a bread stick. “It's not just that,” he said at last.

“Oh?” Laurette's soup spoon paused midway between her bowl and her mouth.

“That man James Houston. According to my vice-president of marketing, the man's not nearly as sharp as he originally appeared to be. I can't believe that the men at ACI wouldn't know that. But, they were going to hire him.”

“It's early days yet, I think. He must have something. The men running ACI aren't fools, you know.”

“Yes, I do know,” said Michael. He felt the now familiar burning pain in his belly. Damned ulcer. He forced a smile. “At least the Cordie buy-out is proceeding nicely. That has to strike a big blow.”

“Elizabeth's strategic planning group must be furious,” said Laurette placidly. She lifted the small bell beside her left hand and rang it. Lydia appeared swiftly and silently to serve the next course.

Michael liked lamb chops, particularly the way his
mother's chef prepared them, with rosemary and just a nip of garlic.

Laurette watched him eat, saying nothing for several minutes. Then, “I spoke at length with Catherine. I have no control over her any longer, Michael. Now that she's gotten hold of her father's money, she's gone wild.”

“I know. It's that Chad Walters who's responsible. I hate to tell you this, Mother, but he's a dealer, from what I hear, and Catherine is probably hooked on cocaine.”

Laurette said very slowly and very precisely, “I suggest you get rid of Mr. Walters. I will take care of Catherine.”

Michael didn't understand the shiver that ran through his body at her words. She was nearly eight-four years old. And yet . . . and yet . . .

“Yes, Mother,” he said. “I think the best approach would be—”

“I don't wish to hear the details, Michael. Just get rid of him. There will be no more scandals in this family.”

“Yes, Mother.”

“Bradley is thinking of marriage.”

That was a surprise. “Who?” Michael asked blankly.

“A girl I approve of,” said Laurette. “Her name is Jennifer Henkle, and her father is Senator Charles Henkle of Alabama.”

“But, for God's sake, why?”

Laurette frowned at him.

Michael stalled. How to tell his mother that the rumor was that her eldest grandson preferred men to women? Sometimes he wished he were a shepherd living in the Pyrenees with the Basques. Surely he wouldn't have an ulcer there.

“In any case,” Laurette continued after a moment, “this weekend, Jennifer will be here to meet all the
family. I think you will also approve of her. She's very quiet, pretty, and from good, solid stock.”

“She's not a musician, huh?”

“You are not at all amusing, Michael.”

“No,” he said on a sigh, “I suppose not.”

“Timothy was always very strong, you know.”

Yes, Michael knew. He'd hated his brother for it, many times. He remembered the times Timothy had called him a soddy little wimp. Well, Timothy was gone now.

Laurette continued, her voice a bit dreamy, “I used to be furious with him when he would disagree with me on something. He'd just give me that special smile of his and tell me to take up knitting. Yes, he was a strong man, a strong son.”

“Now you have me, Mother,” Michael said.

Laurette gently patted his cheek. “Yes, I do, don't I? We are doing well, Michael. Very well.”

When he kissed her parchment cheek upon leaving that evening, he felt the bond between them, not as strong as the one she'd had with Timothy, but it didn't matter. He felt her fragility, and was frightened, until she said quite clearly, “Do see to Chad Walters, my dear.”

 

C
hristian Hunter looked at Liam Gallagher, saw the appalled recognition in the doorman's eyes, and nodded. “She's expecting me. At seven.”

“Yes, sir, Dr. Hunter,” Liam said, “I know, sir.” He quickly buzzed upstairs.

“Dr. Hunter is here, Kogi. Yes, that's right.”

Christian fingered the gold leaf in the ancient elevator, grabbing the railing when the cage lurched between floors. Affectation is still affectation, he thought, no matter its guise. He grinned at that and tried to admire the damned elevator.

He was greeted by a Japanese houseman who couldn't have weighed more than one hundred pounds even in lead-soled shoes. His age was impossible to tell. Thirty? Fifty? Like the doorman, there was recognition in Kogi's eyes, and something else it took him a moment to identify. It was wariness, Christian realized, concern that he, Christian, would hurt Mrs. Carleton. He found himself shaking his head in response to that look.

Kogi took Christian's coat and his leather gloves, but said only, “Dr. Hunter. Good evening, sir.”

Christian nodded, then looked up and went still. He couldn't believe that he was finally seeing her, was finally in the same room with her. Alone, or very nearly.

“Good evening, Mrs. Carleton,” he said. He walked toward her, and took her hand. He didn't shake her hand, as she expected, he kissed her wrist. He breathed in the scent of her before releasing her hand. Elizabeth looked at his bent head, felt his cool fingers still holding her hand. She gently pulled away.

“How was Vienna?”

Vienna?
“Oh, it was very charming, as usual,” he said.

“Were you there for pleasure or for a medical convention?”

“Both, actually.”

“You would like something to drink, Dr. Hunter?”

“Please, call me Christian, and yes, I'd like a glass of white wine. I'm quite easy to please, just so long as it is white and very dry.”

She smiled a bit at that. “Me too. White and dry, that is.”

Elizabeth nodded to Kogi and gestured to the sofa.

“You have a lovely home, Mrs. Carleton.”

“Thank you,” she said quietly. “It was my husband's, you know.”

The phone rang loudly.

Elizabeth stared toward the phone, praying that it wasn't Rowe. She'd put him off this evening, telling him that she had a business appointment. She heard Kogi pick it up, murmur something, and that was that.

“You were expecting a call, perhaps?”

“Oh, no, not at all. Please, do sit down, Dr. Hun . . . Christian. And call me Elizabeth.” She looked at him squarely and added, “Since you saved my life, I would think that last names are a bit ridiculous.”

“I would agree,” he said as he seated himself.

“When I first saw you in the courtroom, I thought you were English.”

“An affectation,” he said, smiling at her, “that I didn't outgrow. My mother was the youngest daughter of an English baron, a country gentleman. I was raised to believe that English tweed announced a man of refined and expensive taste and that a properly trimmed mustache announced an intellect of great depth. Smoking my pipe, of course, announces that I, like many Americans, am hooked on tobacco. You don't mind, do you?”

“Not at all. My father smoked a pipe. I love the smell.”

She watched him go through the pipe ritual. He did it gracefully, easily, from long habit. The sweet smell floated through the air.

“Ah, our wine. Thank you, Kogi.”

“To your new life, Elizabeth.”

“Yes, thanks to you.”

She sipped her wine, wondering what to say to him. What to do? What to expect?

“It's been a very long time,” she said at last.

“Yes, quite a long time,” he agreed. “I see the press has at last forgotten about you.”

“For the most part. A relief, I assure you.”

“I did see you once, a couple of months ago, at Lincoln Center, with Rowen Chalmers. An impressive man.” He watched her closely. Her face paled, then grew cold and set.

“Perhaps,” she said, “one could say that about him.”

“I know his family, of course. His father is something of a fool, I believe, but his mother excels in good works and the like.”

She said nothing.

Kogi announced dinner and she had the oddest sense of déja` vu, when he seated her at the table, of
that evening with Rowe. Tonight Kogi had made his shrimp Provençale, so delicate and light it melted in your mouth.

“You're a psychologist.”

“Yes. It is something of a hobby with me. The district attorney was correct in that.”

“Have you many patients?”

“Perhaps a dozen, that's all. Since I have no need to worry about the more mundane aspects of survival, I can select the patients who interest me most.”

“I see.”

“For example, I have a middle-aged businessman, quite a successful businessman actually, who one day, for no apparent reason, took off all his clothes and marched into a meeting with his boss, who happened to be a woman. He tried to rape her.”

The bite of wild rice remained suspended on her fork. “Wh-what happened?”

He grinned, showing a deep dimple in his left cheek. “Actually, the woman was bigger than he was. She cuffed him, kicked him to the floor, and he had a heart attack. He's been in therapy with me for about three months now. He has no memory of the incident.”

The rice fell off her fork. “You made that up!”

He laughed and shook his head. “No, I swear it's true. I did, however, have a special set of suspenders made for him. They clip together in the back and cannot be unclipped in the front. Thus if he ever feels the urge again to disrobe, by the time he succeeds in getting his pants freed of the suspenders, the urge should be long gone.”

“And his lady boss?”

“She's also in therapy, I understand, for guilt. She did nearly kill the poor man. She's not my patient, however. I thought that would be something like a conflict of interest.”

“Would you like some more of Kogi's bread?”

“Why not?”

He had beautiful, graceful hands, she thought, watching him spread butter on the slice of warm bread. If he weren't so graceful, his movements would seem studied. He had an artist's hands, long, narrow fingers.

“Do you play an instrument?” she asked.

“I did try when I was younger. The violin and the piano. Unfortunately, I have about as much talent as that salt shaker there. I'm one of your great unwashed admirers, actually.”

“So you said in court.”

“That much, at least, was true.”

He sounded like he was agreeing that the weather was awful, nothing more, nothing less.

“Tell me about more of your patients.”

He did. Even as she listened wide-eyed, she suspected that he was embroidering quite freely on the truth.

“. . . you see, the daughter continued to claim, quite loudly in fact, that she'd been sexually abused by her stepfather. Very interesting, for the stepfather was impotent and had been for a number of years. It turned out that the daughter was trying to protect her mother from spiteful gossip. It was being said at their country club that the husband/stepfather couldn't get it up, and the mother/wife was very embarrassed by the gossip. By accusing the stepfather of sexual abuse, the daughter was trying to prove that the stepfather/husband could indeed perform in bed.”

“Whatever did you do this time?”

“We managed to work it all out eventually. I found a surgeon who could correct the impotence problem, and now that little girl is likely being chased about in truth by her stepfather.”

Christian listened to her laughter, felt the sweetness of it flow through him, warming him. Slowly he set
down his coffee cup. “I suppose, Elizabeth, that you have heard enough of my professional tales.”

“I don't know,” she said, looking at him straightly. “Avoidance is sometimes a necessity for one's soul, and sanity, I suppose.”

“True, but you do wish to know, don't you?”

“Yes, I do.”

“It's very simple, really. I know you didn't kill your husband.”

It was said with such candor, such simplicity, that for a moment she could only stare at him.

“How could you be so certain?”

He lit his pipe, taking his time. “I have heard every concert you've ever given. You create, you interpret, you birth beauty and emotion. You have lived your life from within, if you will. I don't believe that individual people ever touched you, touched that deep inside part of you enough to engender anything like a hatred that could lead to murder. You couldn't kill anything, it would be meaningless to you, something that couldn't even exist in your worst nightmares. In fact, I'll bet you can't bring yourself to kill a spider.”

He paused a moment, sucked in on his pipe, but she remained silent.

“You see,” he continued gently, “you don't even understand the concept of taking another life. It is as alien to you as it would be to me to strip off my clothes and try to rape a woman associate.”

Elizabeth studied her coffee cup. “You make me sound like some sort of unfeeling being who has sacrificed humanity for art, that it's something in my genes that has made me odd, different.”

“Different, certainly. The attainment of perfection in any endeavor requires immense inner focus and drive. Some aspects of a normal person's development couldn't appear in you. There was no room for them. I'd even be willing to wager that as a teenager you
went through none of the awful throes young girls experience with the opposite sex.”

She smiled at that. “Actually, the tendency was there. However, my father was much stronger than hormones. I suppose that he convinced me that a healthy dose of contempt was the only appropriate response to boys.”

“Is that why you married Timothy Carleton? To replace a strong father?” He watched her withdraw, and said quickly, “Forgive me. I don't mean to pry. I suppose it's those shrink genes in me that demand to know things about people, to understand things. Nosy genes, I guess you'd call them if you were being kind. Occasionally obnoxious genes.”

“That's all right. Perhaps you have a point. I really have never dissected my motives about Timothy. If I had, perhaps I would never have married him in the first place. I wasn't all that young when I married him, so I can't use the excuse that I was too immature, too young to realize what I was doing.”
Lying, Elizabeth, and to a shrink.
She lowered her eyes, hoping he couldn't see the lie in them. Never would she tell anyone why she had married Timothy.

“Ah, but you were. Years don't mean a thing, you know.”

“Dr. Hun . . . Christian, am I going to have to pay you a fee for this analysis?”

“Forgive me again, Elizabeth.” He was quiet, refilling his pipe, going through what her father had always called the calming ritual.

“Do you use that as a way to gather your thoughts?”

“What? Oh, the pipe. Probably, yes, quite probably.”

“You still don't know that I didn't kill my husband. You spoke words only, marvelously logical words, but still only words. No one can guess what drives another person to do things, even violent things. If you will remember from the trial, I did have the opportunity,
my fingerprints were on the weapon, and I supposedly had an excellent motive.”

“The motive being money?”

“That and of course freedom from a distasteful marriage to an old man.”

“You could never be so stupid.”

“Stupid? As in leaving my fingerprints on that ridiculous silver ice pick? For not having something of an alibi during the time he was being killed?”

“What were you doing that evening? Where were you?”

“Actually, I was in Central Park, inviting the muggers to have a go at me, which none of them did, fortunately or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it.”

“I had understood that you were to be at a special fund-raiser that evening.”

Elizabeth cocked her head at that. “Yes, how did you know?”

“It all came out, as I recall.”

“There was so much—I suppose I've forgotten just how much. Well, I didn't go, as it turned out. It was a pity. Think of how many people could have given me an alibi. Of course, then the D.A. would have claimed that I'd hired someone to kill Timothy.”

“You're still very bitter.”

“Wouldn't you be?”

“Yes, but unlike you, my first priority would be to get even. For instance, I'd back a troll if he were running against Moretti. I think I'd also try to stuff a sock in Catherine Carleton's big mouth. That young woman is a menace, though more to herself than to anyone else.” He paused a moment. “I read about your confrontation with her at that restaurant.”

“It wasn't particularly pleasant. Catherine is a sad case.”