Perfect, page 60
part #2 of Second Opportunities Series
Surprised and momentarily irritated by Ted’s prying, Paul hesitated, then nodded curtly. “I’m in love with her.”
“Katherine said as much. She also said that Julie’s conscience is tearing her to pieces, though if anyone deserves to feel guilty it’s that bastard, Benedict. All Julie did was offer him a ride because she thought he’d fixed her tire. As a result, there are 200 million people in this country who’ve seen that film of him being beaten in Mexico City, and now they blame her for it. The same people who applauded her courage for turning him in now think of her as some sort of scheming witch who brought an innocent man down on his knees. At least the people around here don’t feel that way, and that’s something. Not much, but something. The press still hounds her, trying to get her to talk, and their questions are vicious.”
Katherine walked out of the bedroom in a robe and slippers, obviously determined to join the discussion, and sat on the arm of Ted’s chair. Disregarding the subject of public opinion, which she felt was a trivial problem, she brought up the main issue. “Julie wrote letters to him when he was in prison, and he returned them unopened. Since he got out, she’s written to him in care of his attorneys— simple, polite letters, this time asking him how to return the car he gave her. He won’t answer those either. Until he does—until she or someone else can make him understand that Julie did not lie about wanting to join him in Mexico so that she could spring your trap, she’s not going to let herself care for you or anyone else. Nor will she let any man care for her. Among other things, she’s punishing herself.”
Paul stared at her in frowning surprise. “That’s all that’s stopping her from going on with me . . . with her life? She needs absolution from Benedict?”
“As far as I know for certain,” Katherine hedged.
“Fine,” he said curtly after a moment. “If that’s what it takes, I can get it for her, and she won’t have to wait another six weeks or even six days.” He stood up looking like a man with a mission. “I’ll get it for her within forty-eight hours. Tell Julie something came up and I had to cut our weekend short.”
Twisting around, Katherine watched him walk toward the guest bedroom. “But, he won’t even talk to her, Paul.”
“He’ll talk to me!” Paul said over his shoulder.
“What makes you think he’ll talk to you?” Ted said when Paul emerged from the guest bedroom a few minutes later carrying his overnight bag.
“This,” Paul said, flipping his identification badge into Ted’s lap and getting his suit coat from the closet.
“That may get you into his house, but it’s not going to make him believe you.”
“The son of a bitch doesn’t have to believe me. Who has the letter that Julie was going to leave for you when she ran away with him?”
“I do,” Katherine said, getting up to look for it, “but that’s not going to convince him either. You can’t prove to him she didn’t write this yesterday,” she added when she returned from the bedroom with the letter and gave it to him. “Remember, he’s rich and famous now; he’ll be doubly suspicious of anything that looks like an attempted reconciliation on Julie’s part.”
“Maybe so. But I have something in my office in Dallas that he’ll have to believe!”
“What?”
“Videotapes,” he said shortly, holding out his hand to Ted for his ID badge. “A videotape of that press conference she gave when she was trying to sway the world to his side.”
“That won’t do it either. He’ll presume it was all part of her grand scheme to trap him for you.”
“And,” Paul added, shoving his tie into his coat pocket and picking up his overnight bag, “a confiscated videotape of what really took place in Mexico City—the part showing Julie’s reactions when Benedict was being taken into custody. Any man who can watch her in that film without feeling torn up has a stronger stomach than I do. In case you haven’t already figured it out,” he added wryly, reaching for the door, “I’m driving to Dallas to pick up what I need, then I’ll fly to L.A. in the morning. We’ll have his California address somewhere in our files.”
Ted grinned sardonically. “Surely you aren’t going to crash his party?”
“Screw his party. He’s fouled up my life and Julie’s for months, and I’m fed up with it. And if this fails,” he added to Ted, “if he still won’t listen to me or look at the evidence I give him, then I suggest you file a civil suit against him for kidnapping Julie and for the mental torment she’s been under as a result of that. If Benedict won’t listen to me, he can listen to you in court and pay up with a nice, fat check!”
“Thank you, Paul,” Katherine said, kissing him after he shook hands with Ted. “Good-bye,” she added with a catch in her voice. “Call us after you’ve seen him.” She watched him walk down the sidewalk for a moment, then she closed the door and found Ted watching her with an odd, speculative look. “You sounded very sad when you said goodbye—like you were telling him good-bye forever. Why?”
“Because,” she said with a guilty look, “I am a truly terrible person who does not deserve to be loved by a man as wonderful as you.”
“Translation?” he asked with a wary smile.
“There’s something I didn’t mention to you or Paul,” she admitted. “You see, Julie may think all she wants is Zack’s forgiveness, but what she really wants is the man. She always did. Even when he was a hunted fugitive. If Paul accomplishes his goal, Julie will get more than peace. She’ll get Zack Benedict.”
“The guy’s a hotshot movie star again. You saw him on television tonight with women hanging all over him. You saw the mansion he lives in. He doesn’t have to settle for little Julie Mathison.”
“I read the letter he wrote her,” Katherine said with absolute conviction as she blandly studied her manicure. “That was love, the real thing. At least I think it was.” Looking up, she added with a smile, “And if he did love her, then he’d better hope ‘little Julie Mathison’ is still willing to settle for him after what he’s put her through. She’s angry, Ted. Deep down inside, she is furious, really furious at the injustice done her. She blames herself for losing faith in Zack, but she blames him for everything he’s deliberately put her through, starting with taking her captive and lying to her about how his brother died and refusing to read her letters or see her when she went to talk to him in prison.”
“She laughs all the time and most of it’s real,” Ted argued, because it worried him to think otherwise. “She had us in stitches tonight, telling us that story about accidently dumping glue down the principal’s suit.”
“She’s angry,” Katherine insisted, “and she has every right to be. In fact, I rather hope I’m around when she gives him what he deserves. It’ll be a test of his merit if he can take it and overcome it.”
“And if he can’t or doesn’t want to bother?”
“Then she’ll have gotten it out of her system, made her peace with him, and she can still have Paul.”
Standing up and turning out the lamp, he asked, “Who are you rooting for, Richardson or Benedict?”
“Julie.”
72
SEATED IN THE SUNNY SOLARIUM, Zack worked his way carefully through the sheafs of data that Matt had provided to bring him up to date on his financial holdings. Outside, beyond the glass walls that were tinted to prevent anyone from being able to see into the solarium, someone called his name, and he looked up, not to answer, but simply to luxuriate in being home again and to pleasure himself with the familiar view. On the other side of the glass, a lush expanse of green lawn sloped down to an enormous curving swimming pool with graceful Roman columns and marble statues. At the edge of the yard were guest pavilions in the same Roman architecture as the main house—all of them filled with people now. Zack’s tenants had kept his gardener on during his absence, and the results of the aging man’s painstaking care were evident in the colorful flowers that bloomed ecstatically beneath carefully pruned shrubbery and shade trees.
The thick glass surrounding the solarium muffled the sounds of the party in full swing a few feet beyond, where a hundred people were cavorting in his pool, using his tennis courts, or sunbathing. The remaining three hundred guests would return tonight for the second night of festivities, and the caterers were already setting up beneath a white tent on the east edge of the lawn.
“Where is Zack Benedict?” a woman in a green string bikini called to her friends, without realizing Zack could see and hear her. “I’ve been here all day and I still haven’t laid eyes on him. I’m starting to think he’s a legend who doesn’t exist.” It wasn’t surprising she hadn’t seen him, since this wing of the house was off limits to all but Matt and Meredith Farrell. They were Zack’s only actual houseguests, the only people he permitted into his inner sanctum. For that reason, he scowled when he heard another woman’s voice calling from the hallway just beyond the solarium, “Hey, has anyone in here seen Zack?” He was going to have to put in an appearance out there, he realized, or that chant, which had been escalating for the last hour, would continue unabated until someone came to find him.
Behind him, Meredith Farrell’s soft, cultured voice laughingly said, “Have you seen Zack Benedict?”
“No, I’m afraid not,” Zack joked, politely coming to his feet.
“Everyone seems to be looking for him,” she teased, putting her hand in his outstretched palm.
Zack leaned down and kissed her cheek, slightly startled by the instantaneous affection he’d felt for Matt’s wife. Until he actually met her two days ago, Zack had been inclined to dismiss most of Matt’s praise of his wife as uncharacteristic infatuation, but having met her, he was completely impressed. Meredith Bancroft Farrell had the poise and beauty that the society columns always credited her with, but none of the cool hauteur Zack had expected. Instead, she had a gentleness, a gentility, and an unaffected warmth that both disarmed and touched him. “I hear,” he confided, “that Benedict is an antisocial sort who doesn’t particularly like big, sprawling parties very much, at least not this one.”
She sobered, her eyes searching his. “Really? Why do vou suppose that is?”
He smiled and shrugged. “I guess I’m not in the mood right now.”
Meredith considered bringing up Julie Mathison, as she’d considered often during the last two days, but Matt had not only asked, he had instructed her not to mention Julie’s name “Am I interrupting your work?” she said instead, glancing at the thick folders on the table beside his chair.
“Not at all, I’d enjoy the company.” Zack looked around her for the Farrells’ enchanting two-year-old daughter, who he rather hoped would come flying into the room with her usual demand for a hug from him. “Where’s Marissa?”
“She’s having a tea party with Joe before her nap.”
“The little flirt,” he said, glancing toward the antique Sevres china tea set he’d had his housekeeper put on the coffee table a while ago, “she promised to have a tea party with me!”
“Do not even consider,” Meredith warned, “letting Marissa touch those exquisite cups. Lately she seems to think you drop teacups on the floor when you’re finished.”
Matt strolled in on the end of that conversation looking rested, relaxed, and amused. “She obviously does that because I told her she’s a princess. Which she is. Where’s Joe?” he added. “I need to send him—”
As if the mention of the good-natured chauffeur’s name had conjured up the man, Joe O’Hara strode purposefully into the solarium, but he wasn’t smiling. “Zack,” he said, “your housekeeper just stopped me in the hall. It seems you’ve got yourself a visitor who flashed his badge at her and put her in a tizzy. He’s FBI. Name’s Paul Richardson. She put him in the library.”
Swearing under his breath at the thought of having to talk to an FBI agent, Zack started out of the room.
“Zack?” Matt called behind him. When he turned, Matt asked, “Alone? Or with witnesses?”
Zack hesitated. “Witnesses, if you don’t mind.”
“Are you up to this, whatever ‘this’ is?” Matt asked Meredith
She nodded and they both caught up with Zack, walking alongside him down the long hall and into the mahoganypaneled library.
Rudely ignoring the tall, dark man who’d been looking at the books on the shelves, Zack waited until Matt and Meredith were seated, then he sat down behind his desk and snapped, “Let’s see your identification.” The FBI agent, who Zack had already recognized from Mexico City, removed a leather case from his inside jacket pocket and held it out. Zack glanced at it and then at him. “It’s a lousy picture, but it looks like you.”
“Let’s skip the games,” Paul countered with equal discourtesy, testing for the best way to deal with his adversary. “You knew damned well who I was the minute you saw me just now. You recognized me from Mexico City.”
Benedict dismissed that with a shrug. “Either way, I have no intention of speaking to you or anyone else from the FBI without the presence of my attorneys.”
“This isn’t an official visit, it’s a personal one. Furthermore, you don’t have to say a word. I’ll do all the talking.”
Instead of inviting him to sit down, Benedict inclined his head slightly toward a chair in front of his desk. Squelching his annoyance at the tone the meeting had already taken, Paul sat down, put his briefcase on the floor beside him, and opened the locks. “Actually, I’d prefer to discuss this in private . . .” he said, glancing over his shoulder at the man and woman watching him from the sofa, identifying them at a glance, “ . . . without Mr. and Mrs. Farrell present.”
“What you would ‘prefer’ is of absolutely no interest to me,” Benedict said. Leaning back in his leather chair, he picked up the gold pen lying beside a tablet on his desk, rolling it between his fingers. “Let’s hear what you have to say.”
Hiding his mounting temper behind a coolly polite facade, Paul said, “I will begin by reminding you that you are in an extremely vulnerable position regarding the kidnapping of Julie Mathison. Should she decide to press charges against you, there’s an excellent chance she could put you behind bars for what you did to her. For purely personal reasons,” he added pleasantly, “I would thoroughly enjoy prosecuting that case.”
He watched Benedict’s expressionless face, and when he saw no reaction at all to his jibe, Paul tested out a tone of genuine courtesy. “Look, in return for my personal guarantee that she will not press charges against you, all I ask is that you give me five minutes and agree to listen to what I have to say.”
“Was that actually a polite request I just heard from you?”
Paul squelched the urge to smash his face. “Yes.”
Benedict glanced at his watch. “In that case, you have four minutes and fifty seconds left.”
“I have your word to let me finish?”
“So long as you can do it in four minutes and forty seconds.” The gold pen began to tap on the pad in a clear indication of impatience, and Paul said curtly, “So that you don’t doubt my credibility or the validity of my information, I want you to understand that I was in charge of your case. I was in Keaton while she was in Colorado with you, I was there when she returned, and I am the one who had her put under constant surveillance when we left Keaton because I had a hunch she would try to get to you or you to her. I am also the one she called on the night before she was to join you in Mexico City. Now,” Paul said, his voice gaining emphasis as he came to the point he needed to make, “despite what you think and how the media has made it sound, I also know beyond all doubt that Julie did not agree to join you in Mexico so that she could entrap you and hand you over to us. The truth is that my office did not know anything about her plan to join you until the night before she was supposed to do it. She finally panicked and called me for two reasons: Three days before she was to leave, she went to visit your grandmother, Margaret Stanhope, out of some hare-brained notion of healing old family hostilities for your sake. Instead of accomplishing her goal, she was shown proof that you’d confessed to the accidental killing of your brother, and she was further informed by your grandmother that she herself believed you’d deliberately murdered the boy and later your wife.”
Paul expected those verbal bombs to get a reaction, but except for a muscle that began to twitch in Benedict’s jaw at the mention of his relative, there was none, and he continued doggedly. “Julie returned from Ridgemont, and that night, she learned that the cast and crew of Destiny were receiving threatening calls, allegedly from you, and she still did not turn you in to us. Not until the night before she was supposed to leave, when Tony Austin wound up dead, did she finally notify us of your intention to meet her in Mexico City.” He waited again and when Benedict continued to sit there, staring at him with contempt, Paul lost his temper. “Did you hear me, damn you? It was not a trap from the beginning! Is that clear to you?”
Benedict’s face tightened, but his voice was ominously soft. “Use that tone of voice just one more time, and I will personally throw you out on your ass, regardless of my promise to hear you out.” Sarcastically he added, “Is that clear to you?”
Forcibly reminding himself of the need to succeed here for Julie’s sake, Paul said tersely, “Let’s knock off the adolescent sparring. We don’t like each other, so let’s drop it. The point is, I did not come here to antagonize you, I came here to give you proof that Julie did not originally set a trap for you in Mexico City. The truth is that what she saw happen to you there combined with your refusal to let her explain or answer her letters have hurt her more than you can possibly know or imagine. Her family is worried about her, and so am I.”
“You are?” he repeated with insolent amusement. “And why is that, I wonder?”
“Because unlike you, I feel a responsibility for the part I played in Mexico City and the damage it did to her.” Reaching into his briefcase, Paul withdrew a large envelope, then he closed his case and stood up. Tossing the envelope distastefully onto his adversary’s desk, he said, “And because I’m in love with her.”
