Overseas (49 page)

“Wow,” Charlie said. “Wish I’d seen it. Vomiting blood. Awesome. Hope he’s okay.”

“Yeah, apparently it’s more common than you think. Stomach bug.” I yawned.

“Would you like us to stay with you, honey?” my mom asked.

“Stay with me? Aren’t you staying here anyway?”

“No, we’re flying back tonight,” my father said. “Work tomorrow.”

“Oh, of course. I’m sorry. Kind of forgot it was a Monday.”

Kyle snorted. “Yeah, well, we’re not all married to billionaires, you know.”

I rolled my eyes valiantly, unable to form the words to respond.

“We’ll get going, then, honey,” Mom said. “But congratulations. We’re just so happy. And as soon as you get back from your honeymoon, I want to start planning your real wedding. Home in Wisconsin. I can’t wait to show off that son-in-law of mine.” She leaned forward and hugged me.

“Yeah.” I forced back the tears as I returned her hug. “I’ll bet he can’t wait to be shown off.”

Everyone passed by with hugs and good-byes and congratulations, and somehow I kept my composure, kept the panic from rising up into my face. “Is everything all right, Mrs. L?” asked Andrew Paulson, as he leaned in against my cheek.

“Not exactly,” I said, in a low murmur, smiling brightly. “But I’m sure it will all work out.”

“Goes without saying, of course, if you need anything…” He pressed my hand.

“Of course. I know. Thank you.”

Dr. Hollander came last, probably by design. He’d been watching me closely throughout; I’d felt his eyes, needle sharp against my face. Now he came up, just as Charlie disappeared around the corner to the entrance hall, and took my hands. “My dear,” he began.

“Wait,” I hissed. “Don’t go yet.”

I moved into the hall and waved good-bye at Charlie and Michelle, who were laughing together, walking out the door. “Bye!” I called. “I’ll e-mail!”

“Yeah, yeah!” Charlie guffawed. “Like you’ll have any fucking time for e-mail!” He shut the door behind them.

I turned to Hollander. “You’ve got to help me,” I said, and burst at last into tears.

T
HE SOBS DIDN’T LAST LONG
. I gathered myself, seeing Hollander’s panicked expression, remembering Eric stood just outside the door, and wiped the tears away with swift, impatient fists.

“Come into the library,” I managed, taking the professor’s hand and dragging him with me.

“What is it? What’s wrong?”

“They’ve got him. Geoff and Arthur. They took Julian with them. I was just the bait, to get Julian out of there, to get him to go along with them. They had a gun, Professor! They’ll kill him! You’ve got to help me!”

He dropped my hand and halted, there in the center of the library rug. “Kidnapped him? Kidnapped Julian?”

“Yes!” I said, agonized. “Took him away in a black sedan, toward the FDR! Where would they be taking him? What’s going on?”

Hollander lowered his tall frame on the library sofa, his blue irises surrounded by the shocked whites of his eyes. His head sank into his hands. “It’s my fault,” he whispered. “I couldn’t let it lie. My God. What have I done?”

“What do you mean? Where have they taken him?’

He looked up at me. “Is it about Miss Hamilton? Is that what this was about?”

“Yes,” I said, pacing across the room to stare down at the small paved garden in the rear. “But it’s more than that. Arthur’s gone crazy. It’s like he’s been at a slow simmer, all these years, and the wedding just… and Geoff’s gone with him… Oh my God! Maybe they’ve killed him already! Dumped his body in the river!” I jumped up, thinking of Julian’s face, still and cold and bloody. Bobbing in the river. Gone. Dead.

“Calm down!” Hollander said sharply. “They wouldn’t kill him, I’m sure of it. They were the best of friends.
Are
the best of friends. There’s no question of killing.”

“How do you know? He was crazy, Professor. Crazy! Talking about vile lust and…” I shook my head. “He loves Julian, Professor. Maybe he’s even
in
love with him; I don’t know. I don’t even think
he
knows.”

Hollander rose to his feet with an impatient fling of his hand. “No, no. You’re mistaking him, projecting your modern ideas onto his. The sentimental convention of the time encouraged affectionate, even passionate friendship. Of course he loves Julian; he idolized him. Surely you didn’t suggest to him…”

“I guess I did. But it wouldn’t have made any difference. He just hates the modern world, the people in it. I think he was sort of living vicariously through Flora before, basking in Julian’s feelings for her, and it’s like Julian’s rejected
him
now.” I thought of Arthur’s expression on the stairs, the arctic hatred in his eyes. “I think he wants him dead.”

He shot me a contemptuous look. “Or himself. I suppose you’re aware that Arthur Hamilton had himself transferred to a front-line unit shortly after Julian’s disappearance. Suicide, in effect.”

“So what does that mean? He’s going to try to finish the job? Make Julian watch? But why would
Geoff
go along with that?”

Hollander put his fingers to his temples and began rubbing as he paced the room. “Not sure. Not sure. Where would he take them? Where
would they go?” He snapped his fingers and turned to me. “The airplane. For your honeymoon.”

“Oh no!” I jumped up. “But I don’t know where it was heading. I don’t even know which airport. No, wait,” I said, thinking, “probably Teterboro, right? That’s where all the private planes take off from. Or Westchester. I can call NetJets, right? I’m his wife. They’ll tell me.” I went to Julian’s desk. “Allegra made the arrangements, I’m sure, but maybe he’s at least got the account information here somewhere.” I flung open drawers, looking for something, anything.

“Try the computer.”

“Good idea.” I reached for Julian’s laptop, flipped it open, pressed the power button. This was good. This was doing something. I knew all about doing something, about keeping busy to stave off panic. Just one small task at a time. Stay focused.

Julian’s MacBook booted up in four rapid seconds and then paused to ask me for a password. I knew where Julian kept them. He’d shown me early on, in case I needed to find something, trusting me with heartbreaking thoroughness. I went to the bookshelf and found his worn dog-eared copy of Graham and Dodd’s
Security Analysis
and lifted the back flap. Tucked inside was a list of passwords, one for each month.

The MacBook made a satisfied noise and unfolded the desktop for me. Julian kept it tidy, no loose files. I clicked on the e-mail icon and without the smallest tinge of conscience entered “NetJets” in the search field.

Bingo. He, or Allegra, had made the reservation yesterday evening; the confirmation lay before me, account number and flight code and everything. Taking off from Teterboro Airport, expected time of departure 10 p.m.

I checked my watch. Ten-fifteen. Where was my phone? “Shoot,” I said, turning to Hollander. “Did anyone bring my handbag back from the restaurant?”

“Your
handbag
?” As if he’d never heard the word in his life.

“Of course you don’t know. I’ll ask Eric.” I got up and crossed through
the living room, but before I reached the door I saw my black satin handbag hanging by its chain from the newel post at the bottom of the stairs. Something, at least, where it should be.

I drew out my BlackBerry, ran back to the library, and dialed the NetJets number. “Hello.” I put on my calm professional voice, gave them the account number. “This is Mr. Laurence’s office. I just wanted to verify his flight departed on time.”

“Just a moment, please,” answered a friendly female customer-service voice, balanced exquisitely between intimacy and courtesy: the voice of someone who knew just how much her company’s clients were ponying up to ride its airplanes.

I tapped my fingers against the desk, waiting, watching Hollander. He stared back, without blinking, his forehead furrowed with deep anxious lines. I tried to smile. I was feeling a little better. I was doing something now; I was finding my husband.

The voice reappeared in my ear. “Thank you for holding. Yes, I have a departure confirmation for that flight, leaving Teterboro at nine fifty-eight p.m.”

I let out my breath in a gust of relief. Or anxiety: I wasn’t quite sure whether this was good news or bad. But at least I knew they’d taken him somewhere and not just killed him outright. “Thank you. Oh yes, and one more thing. Mr. Laurence indicated he was considering a last-minute change of destination. Can you confirm whether the flight was headed for”—I looked back at the computer screen—“Marrakech?” I choked at the word. I’d never have guessed Morocco.

“Just a moment, please.” Hold music. I chewed my lip ferociously, trying not to imagine myself cruising over the Atlantic with Julian in a private airplane. The voice, mercifully, returned before my will broke down. “Thank you for holding. No, according to the final flight plan, the destination was changed to Manchester Airport in England.”

“Manchester, England. As I thought. Thank you so much.” I hung up the phone and looked at Hollander. “So? Manchester?”

“Southfield,” he said, staring at the floor. “They’re going to Southfield.”

For a moment, the word confused me. Julian’s firm was headquartered only a few blocks away, in a wide limestone townhouse on Sixty-third Street, a discreet brass plaque engraved
Southfield Associates
affixed to the right of the door: a site of abomination, probably, to Hollander. And then understanding burst upon me. “
Southfield?
Do you mean Julian’s family estate?”

He looked back up at me and made a helpless shrug of his shoulders. “It couldn’t be anything else.”

“But why Southfield? What does that have to do with Florence Hamilton?”

He sat down on the edge of the desk and folded his arms. “If you’d read my book,” he said, dry and professorial, “you’d know that, according to her last will and testament, she requested the honor of burial on the Southfield estate. She had maintained a friendship with the eventual heirs, and they acquiesced. One doesn’t refuse Florence Hamilton, even after her death.”

“The nerve. Julian must have been furious when he found that out.”

“Yes, that was the greatest surprise of all, for me. Finding out the truth of the Hamilton affair. She’d done such a thorough job, you see, of constructing her narrative.”

“Yeah, okay. But why would Arthur and Geoff take Julian there? You don’t think…” A shaft of coldness split my heart. “You don’t think they meant to kill him and bury him with her…”

Hollander’s eyes went wide; he jumped away from the desk. “Surely not. Arthur might be unhinged, but Geoff’s as sound as a nut.”

“Yeah, well, he hates me,” I said.

“But he doesn’t hate Julian.”

“Did he love Florence?”

“Possibly,” he said. “I’ve never quite been able to establish it. There is some hint, some hint of a flirtation, in a surviving letter, but my general impression…”

“Whatever.” I waved that away. “We’ve got to fly there. We’ve got to stop whatever it is they’re planning for him. Because whatever it is, it can’t be good.”

“Stop them? Stop them how?”

“Well, call the police! Break in on them! You know,
stop
them!”

Hollander leaned back and pressed his hands on his forehead. “No, no! No police! Think what would happen. Think!”

“Look,” I said, “all I know is that my husband, the man I love, is being taken to someone’s grave by two men with guns. And I am damned well going to try and stop them.”

“How? We’ve got to get there in time. There aren’t many flights to Manchester, and we’re too late for them all. By the time we arrive, it will be over.”

“No!” I exclaimed, striking my fist on the desk. “I won’t accept that! I can’t just sit back and hope they’re just going to have a
chat
! I can’t just hope Julian figures out how to save himself. It’s two against one, for God’s sake!”

Don’t panic. Don’t panic.
Think
.

“We’d have to take a private plane,” Hollander said. “We’d never make it. It’s all gone to pieces. All my fault.”

“Don’t do that. Don’t tell me it
can’t
be done. Tell me how it
can
.”

Trust me. Go home. Wait for
me
.

But I couldn’t just wait for him. Wait for him to be killed? Wait for my life to be over? I pressed my hand against my belly; a surge of energy filled me.

Private plane. No problem. I was a billionaire now, right? Could I use Julian’s NetJets account? Would they take another reservation when Julian himself was supposedly on a flight already? How did the whole thing work? Would they let his wife take another plane on the same account?

Wait a minute, though. I didn’t need to, did I?

“Hold on,” I said to Hollander, and ran out of the library and up two flights of stairs to the small office on the third floor. My things from the
apartment had been left there two weeks ago, in neat white moving boxes, all labeled with a black Sharpie. Clothes. Shoes. Bedding. Towels. Photos. File boxes.

I tore open the box containing my files. Where was it? I’d just dropped the envelope in the miscellaneous folder, hadn’t I? Not knowing what else to do with it. After all, I hadn’t ever planned on using it.

I found the red hanging folder marked
Misc Stuff
and drew it out and opened it. I saw the envelope straightaway: the one Julian had handed to me that first night, the night of the MoMA benefit.

With a Marquis JetCard inside.

Amiens

W
e lay quietly for a long while afterward. I thought perhaps he was drifting to sleep, but the tips of his fingers continued to run up and down my arm, rippling the skin pleasurably. It disturbed me, almost, how this earlier Julian had the same gestures, the same loving caresses, as the one I knew. The two separate images in my mind were beginning to blur and merge together.

“Julian,” I said at last, “I’ve been an idiot, haven’t I?”

His fingers halted just above my elbow. “Oh, Kate. Have I… My God, I hope…”