Valentine, page 25
She nodded, smiling again. She has a lovely smile, he thought.
“I know that feeling, too, Richard,” she said. “Too many distractions.”
Mike Feldman laughed. “That’s the whole point behind this place. All the peace and quiet a writer needs. Except tomorrow night, of course. We’re having a party here, but it’s only a temporary distraction. I have a big collection of oldies: I hope you both like to dance.”
“I sure do,” he said. Then he turned to Jill. “May I look forward to a dance with you?”
“Why, yes,” she said. “That would be lovely.” She smiled when she said it. Yes, he thought: a lovely smile.
A dance, Jill thought. Yes. I’ve been so worried lately, so distracted. Gwen’s party will be just the thing. Loosen up, Talbot. You’re safe; you’re with friends; nobody else knows where you are.
He doesn’t know where you are. . . .
With a determined shrug and a smile for the new recruit, she forced that thought from her mind.
Tara was curled up on her couch in her beloved red kimono, discussing upcoming fashion ideas on the phone with the costume coordinator of Tomorrow’s Children, when the intercom buzzer interrupted her.
“Hang on a sec, Enid. There’s someone at my door.” She put down the receiver and went over to the speaker. “Hello?” She let go of the talk button and pressed the one marked “Listen.” At first she heard little, just sounds from the street outside the foyer and some breathing. Then, just as she was beginning to decide someone had accidentally pressed the wrong button, she heard the low, distinctive voice.
She blinked, a small thrill of anticipation coursing through her.
“Yes,” she said. “Yes, of course.” Then she pushed the buzzer that unlocked the lobby door.
Not for nothing was she an actress. She grabbed the phone, promised to call Enid back as soon as possible, hung up, and flew into her bedroom. The red kimono hit the floor. The doorbell rang just as she emerged from the bedroom in her best jeans and popcorn blouse and sandals. She pushed her beautiful hair over one shoulder à la Meryl Streep, took a deep breath, formed a dazzling smile on her lips, and opened the door.
Doug Baron stood before her in a leather coat, string tie, and jeans, holding out a dozen long-stemmed, red American Beauties. His expression of nervous anticipation disappeared the moment he saw her, replaced by a slow, appreciative smile.
“I lied to you,” he said. “On the phone the other night. I wasn’t really busy. I just . . . I just . . .” His brows came together in concentration as he searched for the words.
Tara Summers, actress, held the door wide and smiled some more.
“Won’t you come in?” she whispered.
As Jill smiled and made more small talk with Richard Farnum, she found herself unaccountably thinking of Tara, and of Doug Baron. I’ve been so wrapped up in my own problems, she realized, that I’ve barely spared a thought for anyone else. I really must not let that happen. There are other people in the world.
She laughed politely at some small joke Richard made, thinking, I’ve got to call Nate. Maybe he can straighten Doug out. Maybe Nate and I can both play Cupid. . . .
Richard Farnum was staring at her. With a deep blush, she raised her glass of orange juice to her lips.
He watched as other people began to arrive in the building for dinner, and a small blond woman—presumably Gwen, the hostess, with whom he’d spoken on the phone when he made the reservation—emerged from the kitchen to set the table. Jill excused herself, got up from the couch, and went to help her. Their host stood, too, and prepared to take drink orders from the man and woman who had just come in. As he excused himself, Mike clapped him on the shoulder again.
“Well, Richard, I hope you can get your work done here.”
“Oh, I’m sure I will,” he said. “I intend to—to get my work done here.”
He continued to smile, first at Mike Feldman, then at the beautiful woman setting the table with Mike’s wife. And as he smiled, he was thinking.
So, Jillian Talbot. How nice to see you again. Up close and personal.
Instead of through binoculars.
12
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 13
The snow began at two o’clock in the afternoon, and within ninety minutes everything was white. The heater in Cabin 12 wasn’t doing its job fast enough, so Jill put on her coat and scarf and her new boots, picked up the yellow legal pad she’d been scribbling in for the last three hours, and made her way through the snowy forest and across the white open field to the main house.
The heating, recently installed by the ancient handyman and two local assistants, was apparently a universal problem. Almost everyone was here, settled at the card table and the dining table with legal pads and laptop computers. Barbara Benson and Wendy Singer had the card table by the fire, working across from each other in amicable proximity. Craig Palmer was on a couch across from Ruth Monk, the chess set on the coffee table between them. Only the horror writer was missing: apparently, the heater in the Monk cabin was working adequately.
Richard Farnum sat alone at the dining room table, working on a legal pad. He was wearing a chocolate brown turtleneck—the color of his eyes—and jeans and boots, and he was smoking a cigarette. The ashtray on the table in front of him was already crowded: he’d obviously been here for some time. He was the only one who looked up and smiled as she came into the room. She went over to take a place across from him.
“Hi,” he whispered.
“Good afternoon,” she whispered back, smiling.
“It’s kind of like the public library in here. I was banished to this side of the room because of these.” He indicated the pack of Marlboros and lighter at his elbow. “Hope it doesn’t bother you.”
She shook her head. “How’s the quarterback doing?”
“What? Oh, yeah. The quarterback. He’s okay—if you call being chased around by two guys with guns ‘okay.’ ”
They laughed together. She pointed at his notebook. “This is your conscience speaking: get back to work.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He winked and lowered his gaze to his writing.
It was difficult for her to concentrate at first, directly across the table from the handsome man who glanced up occasionally to watch her as she wrote. He did that last night, too, she remembered; all through dinner. But soon, as always when she was hammering out a new story, she fell completely into her own reality.
Her heroine would be called Tara. She hoped her friend would be pleased. Tara Winters, as opposed to Summers. Tara Winters would be a talented young painter, and she would have Nate’s apartment and studio. . . . The mentor would be an eccentric older man, patterned after de Kooning, only not so famous. De Kooning has a place out here, she thought, in the Hamptons—no, I’ll give my man a farm in Vermont, like that one near Hartley College. . . . Tara Winters is visiting him when he has the accident . . . accident . . . what sort of mysterious accident can you have in Vermont? Well, skiing, of course—
Skiing.
Jill dropped her pen on top of the legal pad, staring down. Skiing. Belinda Rosenberg had been skiing. He must have been there, too. He must have done something, found some way to trick her, to get her over to the edge of that cliff. He must be very clever. . . .
No! she commanded herself. I will not think about that. Not now. I will concentrate on the story.
Richard Farnum was staring at her. She glanced up at him, wondering if she’d spoken aloud, or made some sudden move. No, she was sure she had not done anything to attract attention. So why was he—
With a weak smile for him and a quick, despairing grimace down at the legal pad, she stood up and went over to the telephone. Dropping two singles in the wicker basket, she dialed.
“Fleck Agency.”
“Hello, Mrs. Poole, it’s Jill Talbot again. Has Barney returned yet?”
“No, Ms. Talbot, and, to tell you the truth, I’m a little worried. So is Jane, uh, Mrs. Fleck. She’s called here several times. He told both of us he’d be back in New York by yesterday at the latest, and neither of us has heard from him in three days now.”
“Do you have a number for him, some place he’s staying?”
“No. He told me Tuesday that he’d stay at least one night, and that he’d find a motel somewhere. But I never heard from him after that. The last thing he said before he left was that he was going to Victor Dimorta’s house in Mill City. So about an hour ago I called the police in Mill City and asked them to go to the house, Seven Franklin Street, and look around. To see if there’s any—any sign that Barney was there. I’m waiting to hear back from them.”
Jill sank into the chair next to the phone table, a chill creeping slowly up her spine.
“I see,” she finally managed to say. Making an effort to keep her voice steady, she added, “I’m sure he’s all right, Mrs. Poole. I’ll call you later.”
She slowly replaced the receiver, unable to shake the feeling of dread that had suddenly come over her. She looked around the room. Everyone was busy, either writing or playing chess. Only Richard Farnum was watching her from the dining table, a curious expression on his face. She looked quickly away from him, back down at the telephone, thinking:
Where are you, Barney Fleck?
Mill City only had two policemen, a sheriff and his deputy. The sheriff Verna spoke with was obviously an old-timer, dating back to the paper mill days. His assistant, he assured her, was a very bright young man. He’d send Fergus up to the old Dimorta house on the hill to have a look around.
One hour later, the sheriff called her back. Two things, he said. The padlock on the back door of the Dimorta house had recently been tampered with, and old Mrs. Wells two doors down remembered speaking to a man who fit the detective’s description on Tuesday afternoon. He and Fergus were going to check all the motels in the area. At Verna’s nervous request, he promised to check the hospitals, too. Then he asked her what type of car Barney Fleck was driving. A rental, she told him.
This memory gave Verna an idea. As soon as the sheriff had hung up, she called Hertz Rent-a-Car at the Pittsburgh airport. She told the woman who answered that she was Mrs. Barney Fleck, and she was looking for her husband, who had been missing for three days. The anguish in her voice was genuine, which probably caused the woman to bend the agency’s rules and tell her.
The rental car had been found in a parking lot of the Sunny Acres Mall in Oakdale yesterday morning. No sign of Barney Heck.
Verna quickly asked if Oakdale was anywhere near a place called Mill City. After consulting a state map, the woman came back on the line and said, yes, just a couple of miles from it, as a matter of fact.
She hung up and called the sheriff back. He listened to the news of the abandoned car in silence. She told him what she was going to do, and he agreed.
Then Verna called Jane Fleck. Yes, Jane would go with her. Charge it to the company.
Verna spent the next hour calling airlines. Everything was booked for the Valentine’s Day weekend, but she finally found a little northeastern airline that could give them two seats on tonight’s last flight. Nine P.M. She booked the seats, called Jane and told her, and went home to pack.
Jill finished her initial rough outline by six-thirty. The party would begin at eight, so she bundled herself up and trudged back through the snow to Cabin 12 to get ready. She’d bought one dress at the shopping center in Port Jefferson, after she’d left her mother at the rest home, but the inclement weather negated that idea. They were going to have to accept her in a flannel shirt, jeans, and boots. Judging from the amount of snow that continued to fall, that would probably be what everyone was wearing anyway.
Mike and Seth had apparently been at work, and the heater was now working. There was even hot water in the bathroom. She set water to boil for coffee on the little hot plate in the corner, shed her damp clothes, and got in the shower.
As she washed her hair, she thought about her mother. The scene in the greenhouse of the rest home overlooking Long Island Sound had been a sorry disappointment. She’d gone there with some hope of seeing her mother improved, and of having lunch with her and her two friends. But when she arrived she was informed by the head nurse on duty that one friend had passed away and the other had been taken home to spend the rest of her time with her family. She’d found her mother in a chair in the greenhouse, looking out over the water. Her hair was quite white now, and she seemed so small and fragile, bundled in blankets and a wool coat Jill had given her one Christmas, years ago. Shivering with cold in the reasonably warm greenhouse, surrounded by rows of potted plants and artificial heating devices, one of them not three feet from her chair. Jill had been forced to remove her winter coat in the warm, humid room.
She’d sat in the wicker fan chair across from her mother, who looked up and smiled at her, but said nothing. Then, Jill had gone into a monologue: about Nate, about the pregnancy, about her career, and, finally, about Victor Dimorta. She talked it all out to the woman she had always gone to with her problems, knowing as she did that not one word of it was registering. Her mother continued to gaze out over the water beyond the glass walls of the greenhouse. At last, when Jill could think of nothing more to say, she rose from the chair and placed the box she’d brought with her, her mother’s favorite candies, in her lap. Only then, as she was preparing to leave, did Mrs. Talbot finally look up at her with recognition.
“Oh, Jill, there you are,” she’d said, smiling and reaching out to pat her daughter’s hand. “Your father will be home soon: would you like to help me with dinner?”
She’d stared, the tears welling in her eyes. Then, forcing a smile, she’d replied, “Of course, Mother. I’ll help you with dinner.”
“Thank you, dear. I’m making beef Wellington, his favorite. Won’t he be pleased?”
Assuring her mother that Daddy would be very, very pleased, she’d kissed her on the forehead and fled from the place. She hadn’t stopped running until she’d reached her rental car in the parking lot outside. Then, she’d leaned against the steering wheel and wept.
The shopping center had been a blur, but she’d gone into Macy’s and collected the clothing and toiletries she thought she’d need, and handed her credit card to the cashier. Then the long drive here. She’d stopped once, for gas, and arrived at the Peconic Writing Colony just as Gwen and Mike and the others were gathering for dinner.
That had been Saturday, she reflected as she came out of the shower. A mere six days ago. And in that six days, this restful, soothing place had helped her immeasurably. She couldn’t do anything about her mother, she knew, but there were other possibilities. Infinite possibilities. There was Nate, dear Nate. And the baby. And her friends. And this strong new idea for a novel. Barney Fleck was incommunicado at the moment, but she was sure he’d surface soon with concrete news about Valentine, about Victor Dimorta. Barney and the police would find him; she was certain of it.
As she went out into the main room to make coffee, the clock above the desk chimed seven times. Lucky seven. It occurred to Jillian Talbot for the first time in several weeks that maybe, just maybe, everything was going to be all right.
The van Henry Jason had leased arrived at seven o’clock, mere minutes after he and the framer had finished wrapping the twelve newly framed paintings for moving. They loaded the pictures into the back as quickly as possible. Then he jumped on his motorcycle and followed the van down to the gallery on Spring Street.
Just put in the damn paintings, he told himself as he drove. Then you can get the hell out of here. Peconic . . .
“Oh, Nate, I’m so glad you’re here!” Henry squealed as he entered the gallery. “There’s been the most awful screw-up!”
Indeed there had. He stood staring around the room as the previous tenant, a young woman named Dina Lustig, rushed about the place, shouting orders to John, Henry’s latest lover, and two assistants. Ms. Lustig’s male nudes were still in place, only now being taken down for removal.
“What the hell?!” he shouted.
“My fault,” Henry said. “Dina swears I told her Friday evening. I could have sworn I said Thursday! Last night, when she didn’t show up, I—”
“Forget it,” he muttered, already stepping forward to help. “Let’s just get her stuff out and my stuff in.”
“Right,” the gallery owner said. “Wouldn’t you know, it’s Friday the thirteenth!”
Cursing silently to himself, he went to work.
Gwen had outdone herself in the short hour she’d had the big room to herself. With the obvious help of Mike and the elderly handyman, she had festooned the place with red and white streamers. There were heart-adorned white tablecloths and napkins, and clear plastic cups rimmed with valentines. Hors d’oeuvres and party food were laid out on the dining table. Heart-shaped red balloons, hundreds of them, floated against the ceiling around the mirror ball in the center. A hundred red candles, augmented by the crackling fireplace and the flashing mirror ball, provided the room’s only light.
Jill cringed inwardly at the sight of the valentine-themed room, not because it was garish but because of the two cards it brought to mind. Then she braced herself: she had carefully avoided mentioning the particulars of her recent ordeal to Gwen and Mike. Gwen would never have dreamed of doing this had she known.
“How lovely!” Jill said as she joined her hostess in the already crowded room.
Gwen’s hearty laughter transformed her face. “Oh, tell the truth, Jill. It’s the tackiest thing you’ve ever seen! Just like the parties in the high school gym. We couldn’t afford crystal and silver and caterers, so I just went to the other extreme. Everything you’re looking at cost about fifty bucks, which is just in my budget. But we’re all going to have a good, old-fashioned, high-school-gym time!”
Her friend’s enthusiasm drove all thoughts of the past two weeks in New York from Jill’s mind. She could feel herself relaxing.
