No Hiding Behind the Potted Palms! A Dance with Danger Mystery #7 (25 page)

Once I checked Uncle Jack’s
car in and the attendant a large number 248 on the side of the
Camry, I grabbed my two bags out of the trunk, and climbed aboard
the passenger car of the auto train. I found my seat and settled
myself down. Moments later, I hooked up to the Wi-Fi and sent off a
couple of emails, trying to convince Walter that it was imperative
he deliver the two canvases to Bliss Redux personally. I contacted
my assistant, Bella, and gave her the priority to-do list for
tomorrow. I went over issues that needed resolving, including
arrangements for the two of us to be in St. Michaels on time. She
emailed me back five minutes later and shared some of the more
insidious incidents with Warren that occurred in my absence. I made
a note to give her a bonus as soon as I was paid for this
job.

Warren Fripp was a wealthy
man. Of that, there was little question. Retired in 2010 from one
of the biggest lobbying firms in Washington, he had amassed a
personal fortune by the age of fifty, and he then transformed it
into a large, impressive multi-million-dollar art collection that
provided him with a second career, as owner of Bliss, the
Georgetown gallery. He was well-respected as an art collector
because he spent a great deal of time and money to obtain what was
considered the best, and as a gallery owner, he made sure that his
clients had access to the finest available canvases, sculptures,
and collectibles he could find in the global market. Not only did
Bliss attract Washington power brokers, it appealed to
international investors and art collectors. Warren’s expertise as a
lobbyist was in natural resources, and he had a lot of clients in
the Middle East, including a couple of Saudi princes and at least
one despot with a reputation for brutally shutting down a popular
uprising.

As a man, Warren was
arrogant, self-serving, and cantankerous. I avoided dealing with
him as much as I could. Prudence was his right-hand, and if she was
now out of the picture, even temporarily, I didn’t want to take her
place in the shooting gallery. Warren was known for using powerful
weapons against enemies and friendlies in his quest to get what he
wanted.

As his agent for
acquisitions, it was my job to locate artists and pieces. Warren
lived for the excitement of deal-making. There was nothing that
stoked his fire like beating down a competitor or undercutting an
artist. He was genetically wired to come out on top, so he never
held back in the effort to close any deal. That was what made him a
dangerous man to cross. It was also what made him a reprehensible,
thoroughly unlikable human being.

Of course, I had no idea of
all this when I naively joined Bliss. Warren had been a client of
mine when I worked for Mathilda Rothschild at Dockersby, the art
auction house, and over the years, he had often invited me to
dinner to discuss artists and artwork he wanted to
acquire.

At the time, I was married
to Tarkington Pilker and living in Westport. Tark was focused on
building his career as a sportscaster for WNYT, working long days
and nights at the studio and on the road. That left me with a lot
of hours to fill, and when Mathilda offered me a part-time position
at Dockersby, it was an offer I couldn’t refuse. She was a decent
person and I flourished under her tutelage, building up client
services for the auction house. I would travel into the city to
meet with Warren and show him pieces I thought he might want to
buy, based on his taste in art. I was heartbroken when she was
forced to retire because of ill health. When he found out Mathilda
was stepping down, Warren offered me a job. It came on the heels of
my divorce, and at the time, I saw it as a lifeline.

It’s not hard to choose the
final straw that broke the camel’s back. I felt like I had been
carrying too big a load for too long. Tark was challenging as a
husband, outspoken and opinionated by day, insatiable by night. I
often felt like I was the period at the end of Tark’s sentence. We
met in college. I was the artist and he was the jock. It was a
mismatch from the start. Over the years, we drifted apart as he
rose through the broadcasting ranks and I found an outlet for my
passion in the art world. Some months he was gone more than he was
home. By the third year, it felt like we were two ships passing in
the night. Two years later, I sat alone on my birthday, waiting for
Tark to arrive home from a trip to Atlanta. When he didn’t come
home or call, my heart hardened a little.

We talked about having kids
-- anything to fill the growing void between us. For a year, we
tried naturally to have a child. For the next six months after
that, we visited a fertility clinic. Nothing seemed to work. After
a while, I started to think it was a sign, that it wasn’t in the
cards for us to have a child together. We played around with the
idea of adopting a child, but every time we started the paperwork
for that, something came up. After a series of missed appointments
with the adoption agency, we put the plan on hold.

By our tenth wedding
anniversary, we were ready to call it quits. That effort was halted
when Tark broke his back in a snowmobiling accident in Provo, Utah,
while he was out there covering a ski championship. I flew out and
took charge of his care. I got him a medical evacuation flight to
New York once he was stable enough to be moved. When he was
released from the hospital, I set him up in the guest bedroom, in a
special medical bed. That really began the end of our physical
relationship. Over the next several months, he recovered at home. I
drove him to his daily physical therapy appointments and his
monthly doctor visits. By the second month, his assistant, Mandy,
came to the house and he was able to keep his hand in the game at
WNYT, staying in the major sports loop. The third month at home
brought more changes. He called in favors and was soon interviewing
major sports figures in our living room, once it was transformed
into a makeshift studio. From pro-golfers to basketball superstars
to legendary baseball and football coaches, Tark created a new
style of sports interview. “Tark Talk” became a hit, with my
husband, corseted in his back brace, in one leather club chair, and
his guest of the week in another.

My big mistake was in
letting down my guard, in going back to Dockersby under the
assumption that all Tark and Mandy were doing was working. Three
years later, I was blindsided by the announcement that Mandy was
now pregnant with Tark’s child. Within days, the gossip columnists
had picked up the story. We were constantly barraged by phone calls
seeking comments. Tark moved out of our Westport home and into
Mandy’s pokey little Manhattan walk-up. It turned out that Tark
found sex with Mandy a healing experience, good for what ailed his
back.

Chapter Two --

The divorce took longer than
expected, due to the complex nature of the case. Tark and Mandy had
been having a relationship long before that fateful snowmobile
ride. It turned out they had begun their passionate love affair
within the first six weeks of her hiring. He had hidden assets, not
telling me that he had received raises that amounted to nearly
ninety thousand dollars a year as he became a darling of the sports
world. That extra money went right into an account for Mandy. After
five years, with the baby on the way, Tark wanted to marry his
mistress. I felt like a complete fool, having never suspected what
was going on. The judge forced Tark to settle with me based on his
real salary, not his adjusted one. Even so, by the time I paid my
legal fees, I had barely enough to buy myself a small flat in the
center of town. I needed a job that would pay my bills as a newly
single woman. All of this came at the same time as Mathilda’s
retirement. It was one emotional blow after another, and it left me
devastated. Maybe that’s why I didn’t want to look too closely at
the offer Warren put before me that day at L’Enfant de la Mer. I
accepted the job because I needed to work and my options were
few.

The train car became crowded
as the final passengers took their seats. A short, burly man with
plenty of tattoos sat down next to me. He wore a sleeveless white
tank top, exposing plenty of chest hair, black shorts, and
huaraches. I had to move my feet as he reached over me to put his
cases in the rack above. A second man, wearing a white
short-sleeved Oxford shirt, olive green slacks, and black loafers
sat opposite him. The contrast between them was night and day.
Another look at those loafers revealed fine craftsmanship, probably
Italian. The second man was very attractive. I’d heard the term
“smoldering eyes” before, but I had never actually seen such a pair
up close. As he gazed at me, I let myself drink in all the details,
from the long, coal black lashes to the deep amber irises. His
mouth turned up at the corners in a sly, flirtatious smile. I
looked for the telltale sign of white on his ring finger, but his
tan was even. He had a black leather attache case in his lap and he
seemed unwilling to let it out of his sight. I tried to guess his
profession, but I observed no clues. He could have been any
well-to-do businessman or professional.

“Excuse me, I think you’re
in my seat,” said a little old lady with salt-and-pepper hair and a
hot pink metal cane to the man with the white tank top.

“Am I?” He vaulted to his
feet. “Are you sure?”

“See?” She held out her
ticket to show him. As he apologized profusely, I saw the man with
the smoldering eyes watching the scene with amusement. A moment
later, the smile disappeared from his face as another elderly lady
demanded he vacate her seat.

“You think I’m in your
seat?” he demanded.

“I do,” she
insisted.

“Well, let’s go talk to the
conductor, to see what we can do about it.”

A few moments later, I
looked up from my smart phone to see the man with the smoldering
eyes return. Apparently, the little old lady got her seat number
wrong, because he settled back down and gave me a smile. By that
time, a middle-aged woman with large purse and a rather wide
chassis parked herself in the last of the four seats. She seemed
rather cramped as she sat. Her seatmate beside her paid her no
attention.

The train began to leave the
Sanford station as I finished my last email. I had Bella working on
her end, tidying up the minor snafus. We would hook up tomorrow
once I got to St. Michaels. Walter promised me that he would be
arriving at the Fletcher Inn tonight and that both of his
masterpieces were ready to be hung first thing tomorrow. With all
that settled, there was nothing left for me to do but kick back and
relax.

Mr. Wilfred, Uncle Jack’s
neighbor, told me there was a wine and snacks time in the lounge
car, so I decided to head there and grab a little something to tide
me over for my dinner reservation at 9. As I maneuvered past my
seatmates and into the hall, I noticed the man with the tattoos
sitting in a seat in the next car. As I moved forward, heading to
the lounge, he raised his eyes, and for an instant, he held my gaze
with his own. I wasn’t sure what I saw in those coal black eyes.
Certainly not timidity. But then he looked away and I felt
strangely cut loose, almost abandoned.

There were several
passengers in the lounge car when I arrived. I ordered a glass of
white wine and helped myself to cheese and crackers. Some of the
people in the car were talking about disco, reminiscing about the
days of “Saturday Night Fever”.

“My favorite scene in the
movie was when Travolta slid on his knees across the floor,” said a
moustached man with a receding hairline and a pot belly.

“They should have cast a
better female lead,” said another man. “That chick was pretty
wooden.”

I left them to their
conversation and found myself a seat facing the bank of windows,
next to a quartet of elderly ladies. I gave them a bright smile as
I sat.

“This is one of my favorite
parts of the trip,” said a silver-haired woman who introduced
herself as Etheline Defenbacher. “Welcome to happy
hour!’

“L’chaim,” agreed Deeza
Horowitz. She raised her glass to the heavens. The rest of us
followed suit.

“Traveling solo?” Mary
Maloney wanted to know. I explained how I came to be on the auto
train.

“Your boss sounds like a
creep,” she decided. The others agreed.

“You should tell him to take
his job and....” Pauline Nessbaum started to say, before Eleanor
Durkee broke in.

“In this economy, the girl
is lucky to have a job, Pauline. Don’t encourage her. Not every
woman has a trust fund. Some of us have to pay for
ourselves.”

“Saint Eleanor of Boca
Raton,” Pauline sneered. “Always looking to appease.”

“Oh, blow it out your
saddlebag!” Eleanor retorted, in a tone that suggested anything but
a saint. The other women guffawed heartily. They turned out to be a
feisty bunch of senior citizens. By the second round of wine, they
were already sharing off-colored jokes about the men in their
senior citizen complex. I passed on the third round, choosing to
head back to my assigned seat. Along the way, I made a quick pit
stop at the restroom. The train hit a section of track that had me
bouncing on the toilet seat as we rounded the bend. I gripped the
tiny sink for dear life as the lights went out.

“Oh, good lord!” With great
care, I finished what I was doing, washed my hands, and fumbled for
my purse in the dark. Throwing the strap over my shoulder, I felt
for the lock on the door. Maybe there would be emergency lights in
the corridor. As I opened the door to complete darkness, I felt a
hand grab me and pull me down the hallway.