Close to You, page 9
How could he have been so stupid?
Mack groggily remembered the resigned expression on his bureau chief’s face as she excused herself and said her good-byes for the evening, leaving Mack and the blonde at the table at Harvey Nick’s. This was certainly not the first time that dinner in the posh “see and be seen” department-store restaurant had been the prelude to an indiscreet dalliance.
As his head throbbed, the old warning about dipping your pen in the company ink passed through Mack’s mind. He had always made it a policy not to get involved with anyone where he worked. Eliza had been the notable and totally worthwhile exception.
He didn’t even know this young woman. Was she trustworthy or would she be sharing the news of their encounter with her friends in the London office? Even if she only told one person, word would get around. It always did. And what if it got back to Eliza?
Mack slipped from the bed and felt his way in the dark to the bathroom. He closed the door behind him, switched on the light, turned on the faucet and doused his face with cold water. His bloodshot eyes stared back at him in the mirror. He loathed himself.
How could he have betrayed Eliza so easily and so quickly?
Chapter 37
Eliza awoke in the semidarkness, a thin ray of white light peering through from the hallway beyond her bedroom door. She had left the door slightly open so she could hear Janie.
“Janie?”
No reply.
What she heard instead was a rhythmic tapping noise and a rustling sound. She lay still in her bed, actually feeling the beating of her heart as instinctive-danger adrenaline coursed through her. Something or someone was in her room.
The soft knocking sound continued as Eliza tried to get a fix on its source. It seemed to be coming from the left side of the room.
She lay there a few minutes more, listening to the sound, trying to figure out what she should do. She considered running down the hall to wake Paul. No, she should face whatever it was herself. Knowing that Janie was asleep nearby galvanized her to reach over and turn on the lamp on the table next to the bed.
Her eyes adjusted quickly to the full light as they strained in the direction of the noise. She saw no one. But the sound continued and as she stared she noticed that the shade on the window was moving almost imperceptibly. It wasn’t a breeze that was making the shade flutter. There was a small lump beneath the fabric.
Summoning up her courage, Eliza slowly rose from her bed, grabbed a shoe from the floor and walked deliberately toward the window. She took a deep breath as she lifted the shade and looked underneath.
For a split second she wasn’t sure what she was seeing. The dark, furry pulsating animal stared at her with beady dark eyes. It had pointy ears and a snout that looked a little bit like a fox.
She dropped the shade and ran from the bedroom, closing the door firmly behind her.
It was a bat.
On the first night in her new home, there was a brown, furry bat in her bedroom.
Chapter 38
Keith Chapel awoke early, relieved he had an excuse to get out of the apartment on Sunday morning. Cindy had been upset last night when he had gotten up the nerve to tell her he had to go to the Broadcast Center and get some work done on the holiday weekend.
“Look, honey, it won’t be for the entire day,” he promised. “Range wasn’t happy with the first FRESHER LOOK when I played it for him late Friday afternoon. I just need some time to rework the script a little so Eliza can track it again when she comes in tomorrow.”
“Eliza, Eliza, Eliza! I’m so sick and tired of hearing about Eliza Blake,” Cindy cried shrilly. “What about me?”
You’re driving me crazy and I need to get away from you.
Keith didn’t say what he thought. Instead he hugged her increasing girth, kissed her wet cheeks and suggested that when he got home they go to that movie she had been talking about wanting to see. Cindy had been mollified, for the moment. Until, inevitably, the next outburst.
He prayed things would be different between them once the baby came. And he wished to God he would stop dreaming about Eliza. Last night’s dream was so explicit that he had awakened in a cold sweat. The things he was doing with Eliza were things he would never dare suggest doing with his wife.
Chapter 39
“Mommy, why are you sleeping in the living room?”
Eliza sleepily opened her eyes to find Janie’s inquisitive blue ones staring intensely into hers. She bolted upright on the sofa, remembering the bat upstairs.
“Janie, did you go into Mommy’s room to look for me?” she asked fearfully.
“Yup. But you weren’t there.”
“Stay right here, Janie. I mean it,” Eliza said firmly as she sprang from the couch and ran upstairs to her room, slamming the door Janie had left ajar.
Katharine came out of her bedroom, tying the sash of the bathrobe around her waist.
“What’s going on?”
“I found a bat in my room last night.”
“Dear Lord!” Katharine looked at the closed door behind Eliza. “It’s in there now?”
“God, I hope so. I hope it didn’t fly out and hide somewhere else in the house.”
“What should we do?”
“I called the police in the middle of the night and they had a woman from Wildlife Control call me back. She said she would come right away if I really wanted her to, but if I could wait until morning she would really appreciate it. So I slept on the couch and the woman promised she would get here first thing today.”
“Mommy,” Janie’s voice called from downstairs. “There’s a lady coming to the door.”
“Thank God,” Eliza whispered as she hurried down the staircase.
The middle-aged woman was dressed in farmer’s overalls and a long-sleeved flannel workshirt. She carried a heavy plastic pail. Eliza saw a pair of thick leather gloves resting on top of the paraphernalia in the bucket.
Matter-of-factly the woman followed as Eliza led the way to the master bedroom.
“There really isn’t too much to be worried about, miss,” said the woman. “Bats are actually very useful. A single bat can eat thousands of bugs each night, including those mosquitoes everyone around here is so riled up about.”
“What about rabies?” Eliza asked, unready to love bats.
“That’s pretty much a non-issue. You are more likely to get bitten by a rabid dog than a rabid bat. Bat rabies cause about one human death a year in this country.”
The woman pulled on her work gloves and opened the bedroom door. “Now, you wait outside here while I go in and take a look around.”
Eliza stood in the hallway, listening. She heard the shade rolling up inside.
“He’s not in the shade anymore,” the woman called through the door.
Oh, God. Eliza’s heart sank.
But a few minutes later, the women opened the bedroom door, a satisfied expression upon her face.
“You got it?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Where was it?”
“hi the bottom of your wastepaper basket in the bathroom. As the daylight comes, they try to get as far away from the sunlight as they can.”
“So it’s in there?” Eliza eyed the bucket.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“What are you going to do with it?”
The woman looked over Eliza’s shoulder where the little girl was standing listening at the top of the staircase.
“I’m gonna take it for a nice long ride,” she answered.
Eliza escorted the woman out to her truck.
“How did it get in? I don’t want it to happen again.”
“Well, you should probably have your attic checked to see if there are any bats roosting up there.”
“I just bought this house. We moved in yesterday. I had the house inspected just over a week ago.”
The woman shrugged. “Well, it could have flown in yesterday if you had your doors open for a while with all the moving.”
Or last night when I was out looking for Zippy, Eliza thought, with a shiver.
“Are you really just going to let it free someplace?” Eliza asked as the woman climbed into her truck.
“Nah. I just didn’t want your little kid to hear. I’m going to take it out later and stomp on it and break its neck.”
Chapter 40
Abigail got to the gym early so she wouldn’t have to wait for the equipment. She started out with the free weights then did a circuit of Nautilus machines and finished up on the treadmill. She had showered and was dressing in front of her locker when she heard a voice call her name.
“Abigail? It that you?”
She turned toward the voice and saw a woman Abigail guessed to be in her late twenties.
“It’s Monica,” the woman smiled. “Monica Anderson.
Abigail tried to mask the confusion and guilt she immediately felt.
“Of course. Monica! It’s so good to see you again. How have you been?”
“Great. I finally moved into the city. I’d been wanting to do it for so long but, you know, with everything that happened, I felt I should stay with my parents for a while.”
Abigail nodded. “How are your parents?”
Monica’s face clouded. “Well, Dad died last spring. He was never really the same after everything happened. Heart attack, the doctors said. But his heart really broke five years ago.”
“I’m so sorry, Monica. If I had known, I would have come out to pay my respects.”
There was an awkward silence and Abigail folded her workout clothes and placed them in her gym bag, buying herself time. She felt she should say something about Linda.
“You know,” Abigail began haltingly, “I’m sorry I didn’t keep in touch, Monica. But after Linda disappeared, I felt I had to get away. I couldn’t work at Garden State Network anymore, with all the memories there.”
Monica nodded. “Don’t worry about it, Abigail. I think everyone understood. I was away at college most of the time when you and Linda worked together, but I remember you coming to our house for Easter that last year. Linda told me what a good friend you were, how much fun you had starting out in the business together. She treasured you.”
“And I her,” Abigail said softly. “For the first year or two, I’d call the news director every month to see if there were any leads in the case. After a while I just stopped calling.”
“It’s better that way, Abigail. They’re never going to find out what happened to Linda. I’m convinced of it It’s one of those horrible things in life that has to be accepted. Of course, my mother still calls the police all the time. She can’t let it go.”
Chapter 41
Around four o’clock, Eliza took Janie by the hand and headed across the street to the Feeneys’ house. After a day spent unpacking, Katharine and Paul begged off going to the barbecue. They wanted to relax and take naps.
As mother and daughter tentatively entered the fenced backyard through the gate, Susan saw them and hurried over with two little girls toddling behind her.
“We’re so glad you came! Let me introduce you around to everyone.”
Eliza met at least twenty people, trying to remember names and knowing that she wouldn’t, while Janie and James ran away to frolic with Buddy, the Feeneys’ black-and-white Brittany spaniel.
Chicken and steaks were cooking aromatically on the grill alongside aluminum foil-wrapped loaves of garlic bread. A long buffet table was covered with a red, white and blue-striped tablecloth and a huge centerpiece of flowers Eliza recognized as cut from the gardens that edged the yard.
James Feeney offered her a drink. “What will it be?”
“Iced tea?”
“How about a little vodka in that?” offered her host.
“Even better.” Eliza smiled.
She took a seat in one of the chairs, and took a quick count of the guests. An even number of men and women. She assumed she was the only single woman at the party.
“Eliza, if I may call you that,” said one of the women, whose name she couldn’t remember, “I can’t tell you how everyone has been buzzing about you moving into our neighborhood.”
“Please. Of course you should call me Eliza. And I can’t tell you how happy I am to be here. Janie and I were really looking forward to moving out of the city. I’m hoping we can have a more normal, quieter life here.”
“Yes,” clucked the woman. “I read in the paper about the nastiness you went through. I hope you’ll be very happy out here.”
One of the men chimed in. “Well, I hate to burst anyone’s bubble, but everything’s not perfect in suburbia. Did you hear that there was another robbery? The Palumbos got back from vacation and found their house totally stripped.”
“How many is that now?” someone asked.
“Six this summer, that I know of,” answered another. “And there hasn’t been a sign of forced entry in any of them. Either people aren’t being careful enough about locking up when they leave or someone has a key.”
“What about alarm systems?”
“You know how it is around here. Some of these people have lived in their houses for thirty years. They moved out when it was real country and no one even thought of having security systems installed.”
Eliza had been surprised to learn that the Richardses hadn’t had an alarm system. Louise had arranged for one to be installed for her, but the company was so backed up with orders that they weren’t going to be able to come out for a few weeks.
“Come on, everyone. Come and eat,” Susan called, placing a huge glass bowl full of spinach salad laced with raisins and onions and drizzled with sweet-and-sour dressing on the buffet table. People began to rise from their seats. Susan scanned the yard to make sure everything was in order for her guests. As she looked toward the fence gate, her pleasant expression changed.
Eliza looked over her shoulder to see Larson Richards approaching.
“Larson,” Susan said coolly. “How have you been?”
“I’m fine, just fine, Susan. I don’t mean to crash your party, but I stopped over to welcome Eliza to the neighborhood and was told she was over here.”
How rude of him to come by uninvited. Eliza disliked him even more now than she had at the closing.
Chapter 42
Eliza stayed in bed for a while after she woke up Labor Day morning, listening to the quiet and wishing she didn’t have to go to work. She resolved to tell Range she would work Columbus Day, but, once the election was over, she was definitely taking Thanksgiving off. Feeling the soft sheets against her bare legs as she shifted position, Eliza thought about a long weekend in London. After that slug Larson had attached himself to her for the rest of the barbecue, she had missed Mack even more.
She glanced at the clock and calculated it was lunchtime in England. She reached for the phone but thought better of it. It might be hard for Mack to talk at the office. She could call him when she got into the Broadcast Center, and, hopefully, he would be back at his hotel.
Better yet, he could call her. That was what she was really waiting for.
Staring at the bedroom wall she noted the marks left by the Richardses’ triple dresser peeking out from the side of her own smaller chest. She had to get cracking on getting this place together.
The neighbors had been friendly last night, giving her names of local workmen and a good painting and wallpaper man. The general consensus was that Bruno Taveroni did the best work around. He was meticulous and always booked.
It might take longer than she had planned to get her new house in order.
Eliza heard the soft murmur of voices coming from downstairs. She should get up and fix Janie’s breakfast. But the aroma of fresh-brewed coffee and frying bacon was already wafting from below. Katharine had things well in hand.
She prayed that Carmen Garcia would be as capable and helpful when she started her job. Eliza got up and pulled on her robe, suddenly remembering that Keith would have the FRESHER LOOK piece on child care ready for her to retrack when she got to the office.
The piece had to be good. The pressure was on.
Chapter 43
Larson listened to the soft clicking sound of the cleats on his golf shoes as he walked across the thin strip of pavement that led from the clubhouse to the first tee. Dressed in a black-and-beige Greg Norman shirt and crisply creased golf slacks, he looked every bit the prosperous country-club member. If these three guys getting ready to tee off with him in the late-summer sunshine only knew the financial trouble he was in . . .
Playing a round of golf was a great way to do business. The camaraderie grew as the foursome traversed the lush green fairways. There were plenty of opportunities to back-slap after the great shots and commiserate after the duds. Today Larson planned to lose and he would graciously and effortlessly peel off the bills from his sterling money clip to pay off his bet.
But after the eighteenth hole, when they sauntered into the Members’ Grill for drinks, Larson desperately hoped he would be able to accomplish what he must do. The oncologist, periodontist and divorce attorney had deep pockets and they were always looking for ways to make them deeper. With just the right approach, careful not to push too hard, Larson’s goal was to get them to commit to investing in his business.
Of course, he wasn’t going to tell them the business was hemorrhaging.
He carefully positioned the round white Pinnacle on the wooden tee and lined up to take his first shot. As his club made contact he knew the shot would be good and he watched as the ball flew a respectable two hundred yards straight down the fairway. A positive sign of things to come today.
While he waited for the others to take their opening swings, his mind wandered from his business worries to a much more pleasurable subject: Eliza Blake.
God, she was beautiful. And wealthy. He had read in the Wall Street Journal about her new KEY contract. Big bucks.
