It All Began in Monte Carlo (14 page)

 

 

Sunny answered on the first ring. “Allie,” she said, sounding either out of breath or choked up.

“What room are you in?” Allie asked.

“Ten-oh-one.”

“I'll be there.”

Sunny was waiting at the door. She grabbed Allie's hand and pulled her inside. Her room was in its usual chaos; Sunny never unpacked; she simply took things out and left them on chairs or even the floor.

“Oh,
Allie,
” she said.

“Oh,
Sunny.
”

The hugged, tight as two bugs, arms gripping, eyes streaming.

“You want me to sic the dog on Mac, or what?” Allie said, and Sunny gulped a laugh.

“You mean that Lab? She'd lick him to death.”

“Not a bad way to go,” Allie said and they fell back on the bed, hands clutched, laughing hysterically. Tesoro hovered worriedly over them, yapping.

Allie pulled herself together first. This was serious and she said, “You know I'll do anything. Just tell me what's going on.”

“Mac opted out of the marriage?”

“He
dumped
you?”

“Well, the wedding.”

“Oh. The
wedding.
” Allie had heard Sunny and Mac's “wedding” stories a couple of times before and couldn't help being a bit skeptical.

“He said he was too busy, we would have to change the date.”

“You mean that's all? Change
the date
?”

“Dammit, Allie, I'd bought
the dress.
”

“Yeah, well it does sound a bit last minute,” Allie admitted. She glanced thoughtfully at her. “Anyway, if you were having a wedding why wasn't I invited?”

“Nobody was. No family, no friends. Just us, the dogs and the preacher. A woman.”

“Don't tell me Mac ran off with the preacher?”

“Of course he didn't.” It was Sunny's turn to look thoughtful. “She's not bad though, you know in that buttoned-up-cassock kind of way.”

They giggled, and held hands again.

“Want a drink?” Sunny suggested.

“You bet I do.”

Sunny went to the minibar and produced small bottles of vodka, scotch, rum, gin. “Whatever?” she asked, waving the vodka that seemed to be everyone's favorite right now.

“Got a splash of cranberry?” Allie asked.

Sunny knelt at the minibar, shuffling through the contents again. She was still in the smart little black dress, though now she was barefoot, and despite her swollen eyes and tangled hair, she managed to look sexy.

“Remember when I ran away from Ron?” Allie said. “And you came to see me.”

“You'd been to see Mac first,” Sunny reminded her.

“Oh yeah. It was about Ron's mistress,” Allie said thoughtfully. “The one who was murdered.”

Sunny shuddered, remembering the story and her and Mac's romp through Italy in search of the killer.

“But then you came to see
me,
” Allie said. “And
I
asked
you
if you'd ever had a broken heart, because my heart was surely breaking, as though it had been dropped on the floor and stomped on.”

“Which in a way it had,” Sunny agreed, handing her the glass of vodka. She splashed cranberry juice into it, along with a small scoop of ice. Then she filled Tesoro's water bowl and gave her a doggie treat.

“The thing was,” Allie said, taking a gulp, “I always loved the bastard.”

“Still do,” Sunny said.

“Always will.” Allie took another drink. “What about you?”

Sunny sat on the bed, legs sticking out in front of her, an elbow propped on the pillows, gazing at the pink drink, remembering all those pink Cosmopolitans she had drunk just last summer at the charming little hideaway in St. Tropez that had sheltered her and Mac as well as a bunch of misfits, including a couple of lonely children, too old to know heartbreak and too young to understand danger.

“How quickly time moves on,” she said. “How quickly things can change.”

“They needn't change, Sunny. Believe me, you two just need to work it out.”

Chin balanced in her hand, Sunny stared into her pink cocktail. “He broke my heart,” she said. “I had the dress. Cream lace.”

“But you
hate
lace.”

“It seemed right at the time. Besides, white is no good in winter, the light is too harsh.”

“Spoken like a true publicist. Except in this case, Sunny Alvarez, you are talking about yourself. What's so goddamn fantastic about a wedding anyway? And correct me if I'm wrong, but did you, or did you
not,
turn down Mac Reilly last summer when
he
asked
you
to marry him? And tell me again if I am wrong, but when you said no Mac did
not
burst into tears and say you had rejected him. And did Mac ever say to me, ‘Sunny turned me down and she knew I had bought a white linen suit and we could have gotten married right there and then at the beach, we could have called Allie and Ron and they would have been there in an hour. And we could have decked Tesoro out in a little white tulle skirt with a flower tucked into her red harness, and given Pirate a doggie bow tie and white collar.' Did Mac say
any
of those things to you, when
you
turned
him
down, last summer in St. Tropez, Ms. Sunny Alvarez?”

“I'm a selfish bitch,” Sunny agreed mournfully. “Why did I do that?”

Allie sighed, staring into her own pink drink. “Who knows why we women do anything,” she said. “Men always think we know exactly what we're doing, and the truth is few of us even have a clue.”

“It's all instinct,” Sunny agreed. “Reacting to circumstances.”

“Aren't we supposed to be above all that? Weren't we emancipated in the sixties?”

“Seventies, I think.”

They sat quietly for a minute, then Sunny said, “There's someone else.”

“What!”
Vodka shot over the edge of her glass as Allie sat upright.
“Mac has another woman?”

Sunny glanced guiltily up at her. “No. I have another man.”

“Oh. My. God.”
They stared at each other for a long moment. “This changes everything,” Allie said. “Why did you let me go on like that? When you
knew.
”

“I didn't . . . I mean I don't really know. I mean it's just someone I met on the flight to Paris. He was sympathetic, we didn't even tell each other our names, he let me cry on his shoulder, I think. And then he found me a hotel here instead of Paris, because
I didn't know where to go and it was snowing, and then he showed up here.”

“You bet he did,” Allie said. Then, realizing, “Oh my God, it's the man in the bar. The one you left sitting there, staring after you when you took off with Mac.”

“Like I was hypnotized.”

“Like
he
was hypnotized.”

“What will I do, Allie?”

“Oh hell, Sun, let's just get some sleep.” Allie was too weary to cope with this new turn of events. “Tomorrow, we'll talk. You and me. Oh, and Pru.”

“Who is Pru?”

“You remember, the school friend I told you about. We're all going shopping in the morning. Shoes.”

“I went shopping this morning,” Sunny said. “With Kitty Ratte.”

Allie thought for a minute. “I'm willing to bet that's the flaming redhead who took over where you left off with the mystery man.”

“His name is Eddie Johanssen. He's getting divorced. And yes, that's Kitty. She's a bit odd-looking but quite nice.”

“Quite nice” was a phrase Allie had never heard Sunny use before, and she thought as far as Kitty Ratte was concerned she'd certainly gotten it wrong.

“Let's stick just to me, you and Pru,” she said. “That's about all I can cope with. Besides, we need to talk some more in private.”

“Stay with me,” Sunny pleaded. “In the morning we'll send down for breakfast, invite Pru over.”

Allie hugged her. “It's time you got some rest. I think you need to be alone for a while, think things out.”

Aware of Sunny's pleading eyes as she walked to the door, she added, “And by the way, do not answer if Mac calls. Not in the state you're in. We'll talk about it in the morning. Okay?”

“Okay.”

The door closed and Sunny sank back onto the bed. She stared
up at the ceiling, looking for answers to a dilemma of her own making.

She closed her eyes and Maha Mondragon's face floated into her mind . . . Maha telling her to take the chances life offered her. And to beware of Kitty Ratte.

 

 

Mac stood for a long time with the shower turned to hard-pulse, his head down to receive the punishment, water sluicing from his loins, cool, refreshing but still not taking away the stiffness and fatigue of the long journey, the weariness of his estrangement from Sunny, and the silence of a room that, with her, would have been cluttered with her “stuff,” and buzzing with life.

Mac's TV show was not merely “a job.” To him, he was fulfilling a need desperate people could not find anywhere else, lost as they were in the meshes of old police files, or even in those of more recent vintage, but always lost, their loved ones demolished at the hands of some psychopath, cold-blooded killers all.

It was true, his job did intrude on his life the way he imagined a dedicated surgeon's must, because, as with a patient, when someone was suffering and needed him, he had to be there. Long hours, time spent away from their own loved ones were all part of the game. And yes, he loved what he did and believed he brought some semblance of life back to people who had given up hope.
Closure
was a word that featured large in Mac's show.

He also had his “day job” as Sunny liked to call it, when he was hired by people in trouble, like Ron Perrin who had called him in when he was being accused of murder. Mac had searched for and
found runaway movie star Allie, blond hair cut to the scalp and dyed brown, turquoise eyes hidden behind dark glasses; he had discovered she was in danger, and the identity of the true killer. There were many more people who had cause to thank him, and somehow he had become known, because of his show and the publicity, as the Hollywood Private Eye.

Mac always smiled at that description. To him, Private Eye meant films noir and Raymond Chandler and the Black Dahlia murder case, stuff from the thirties, forties, even fifties with detectives in snap-brim fedoras and slouchy suits with wide shoulders. A far cry from Mac in his faded T-shirt and jeans, and the soft black leather jacket that Sunny had bought him, telling him it was Dolce & Gabbana, laughing at him when he'd said he thought that was some kind of Italian ice cream. That's how much Mac knew about designer labels.

He cared nothing for the trappings of success and still lived in his tiny one-bedroom wooden shack overlooking the Pacific, with the four-foot-square “entrance hall,” the small living room opening through glass sliders onto the wooden deck where the Pacific sometimes thundered under the wooden pilings; the old sofa where the dog, Pirate, his dearest friend, sprawled at his ease, when he wasn't on the bed that is, shedding of course and inclined to snore, but hey, Mac loved Pirate and he could do no wrong. Though he did sometimes wish Pirate would take on Tesoro. That Chihuahua could use a nip on her tiny three-pound behind, just to keep her in her place and not on Mac's back, claws out, when he made love to Sunny.

Mac turned off the shower, stepped out, toweled himself vigorously, then wrapped himself in the hotel's oversize terry robe. He didn't bother to look at the clock on the bed table. Time had gotten lost somewhere between Malibu and Monte Carlo. It no longer mattered.

He opened the glass door onto the terrace and stepped outside. The same cold wind that had chilled Sunny raised the hairs on his
arms. He leaned on the rail looking at the distant still-halogen-lit crime scene. He felt sorry for the woman who had been shot, a life taken for a bag of diamonds.

He guessed that right now, in a forties or fifties crime novel, the Private Eye would light a cigarette, dragging deeply on it while figuring out exactly who had done the evil deed. Of course the answer would come to him in a flash, and all the conspirators would line up, pistols at the ready, while he told them exactly who had done the robbery or the evil deed. And the Private Eye always won.

Not this one, though. Despite his friendship with the Inspector, and his sympathy for the victim Mac had no interest in this robbery.

All his attention, all his emotion, all his . . .
his life
. . . was focused on getting Sunny back. He missed Pirate, though.

 

 

It was late when Kitty left the sex club in Cannes she often frequented, the kind of club where swingers, men and women, or sometimes men with men, or women with women, or all together any-old-how, got together for the purpose of sex, or simply to watch. Whatever their pleasure.

The “club” was one large room, the center a crowded dance floor, the music retro-disco. Black velvet curtains swathed most of the walls as well as the windows. Leather couches, some with amorously occupied couples, lined the room. There were “private” rooms, with enormous gilt four-poster beds, some round, some hexagonal, where a couple or several together might indulge in groups, though the doors were never shut to allow the voyeur customers to indulge in their own singular dreams. Large bowls of condoms were placed on tables and a bar supplied any kind of drink, while the clientele ranged from raunchy suburbanites out for a night on the town, to serious sex addicts and voyeurs and sadomasochists seeking their like among the well-dressed crowd. No jeans were allowed, cocktail attire was preferred with obligatory no panties for the women, and “no restraints,” as the brochures so amusingly phrased it, for the men.