Reilly 04 - Breach of Promise (3 page)

“Oh, Mike. She’s got to be thirty years younger than you are,” Lindy Markov said.

“Mike and I are in love. Aren’t we, Mike?” The girl moved to take his hand but Markov pushed her away.

“Be quiet, Rachel. This isn’t the place. . . .”

“We’re getting married! You’re out, Lindy. We don’t want to hurt you. . . .”

“Oh, shit,” said Mike. “Shit.”

Nina, who for all the attention they were paying to her might as well have been invisible, silently agreed with him.

“Marry you?” Lindy said, her voice shaking. Nina didn’t think she had ever heard such fury contained in two words.

“That’s right,” said Rachel.

“What kind of crap is this? Mike? What’s she talking about?”

In a high, triumphant voice, Rachel said, “Look at this. See? A ring! That’s right. A big fat diamond. He never gave you a diamond, did he?”

“Get out of here before we both kick you from here to kingdom come,” Lindy replied, her voice wobbling.

There was silence. “Lindy, I’ve tried to tell you,” Mike said finally. “You just won’t listen. It’s over between us.”

“Mike, tell her to leave so we can talk,” said Lindy.

“I’m not going anywhere!”

“Calm down now, Rachel,” Mike said, sounding remarkably composed, Nina thought. “Now, look at me, Lindy,” Mike said. “I’m fifty-five years old tonight and I feel every minute of it. But I have a right to choose my own happiness. I didn’t plan this. I’m sorry it had to happen this way . . . but maybe it’s for the best.”

“Five minutes alone with you, Mike. That’s my right.”

“We don’t expect you to understand,” said Rachel.

“Who are you to talk to me like this! Mike loves me!”

“Oh, now she’s playing that game, where she can’t see the nose on her face,” Rachel continued, lifting her words over Lindy’s. “This is real life, Lindy. Pay attention for once.”

“Shut up!” Did only Nina notice the menace in Lindy’s voice?

“You had twenty years! Five more minutes won’t change anything. Mike, come on. Tell her.”

But Mike apparently could think of nothing to add.

“I said shut up!” Lindy rushed toward the girl, knocking her off balance against the railing. The girl fell backward. Nina and Mike both winced at the sound of her cry, then the splash as she hit the lake.

“Lindy!” Mike said. “Jesus Christ!”

Nina searched for a float to throw to the girl. She found one, but a rope was snagged around it. She fumbled to get it loose, her fingers working clumsily at a knot.

Lindy and Mike stood by the railing, their backs to Nina, too deeply engulfed in their own private hell to care what she did. Mike leaned over the side, peering into the darkness. “Rachel can’t swim!” he yelled.

“Good!” Lindy said.

“Look what you’ve gone and done now, Lindy! My God, you just don’t think! Now, listen. You keep an eye on her. I need to get help.” But before he left, he hurried back and forth along the railing calling to Rachel, reassuring her.

“What I’ve done?” Lindy said, standing close behind him. Nina recognized that she was beyond reason, out of control. “Look at what I’ve done?”

The lifesaver suddenly fell into Nina’s hands.

“Mike!” Nina said, preparing to toss it the few feet between them. He knew where Rachel might be. She didn’t.

Mike turned to face her, putting his arms out to catch.

And Lindy, catching him completely off guard, bent down and took his legs in her hands, heaved mightily and tipped him neatly overboard. “Go get her, then!” she yelled, and the explosion of maledictions that followed was swallowed up by the sound of a second splash.

N
INA THREW THE LIFESAVER IN AFTER HIM
.

As it turned out, Mike did not save Rachel. Somewhat the worse for the champagne he’d drunk, Nina supposed, he paddled feebly around shouting her name, his voice indistinct, his image a dark blur upon the darker smear of lake.

Not too far from Mike, Nina saw Rachel clinging to the lifesaver. Apparently she could dog-paddle.

Lindy, who had put her hands over her eyes, now pulled them away. “Mike! I’m sorry, Mike!” She shouted into the blackness, into the stars, and finally into the ears of her guests, who heard her cries and flocked to her side.

“Well, what have we here?” said a tall, skinny woman with short, streaked hair, looking amused as she strolled over to the railing and looked out into the night. “Hey, Mikey!” She waved. “How’s the water?” She turned to Lindy. “What happened?”

“Oh, Alice. I pushed them in!”

Alice put her arm around Lindy. “Well, well, well. I guess you showed him. Who’s the woman? There is a woman?”

“Rachel Pembroke. From the plant. I told you about her.”

“Hair to her hips and twenty-five years old. That’s so classic,” said Alice, nodding.

“Man overboard!” an alarmed man in a silk jacket called. “You okay down there?” he shouted.

“Fine, fine,” Mike’s strangled voice replied.

“Hang in there, pal!”

A large, handsome man sporting a black tie and long hair jostled for a place along the railing. “Rachel? It’s me, Harry. Is that you?”

“Help!” Rachel replied, her voice very faint above the sound of the ship’s motor. “Get me out of here before my legs freeze off!”

Leaving Lindy anchored by a couple of concerned guests, Nina ran for help.

But the captain had heard the cries. The paddle wheel slowed to a stop, the engine drone quieted, and the boat halted. A spotlight—hauled out of a musty cupboard and hoisted by Nina and a young man with tattoos—located the wet pair in the black lake not more than a hundred yards away, midway between the boat and Fannette Island.

Before Harry could remove his shoes and jump in after them, the crew lowered a dinghy into the water and rowed swiftly out, first to Mike, who was closer, and finally to Rachel, whose hair stuck to her body and covered her face like tattered black rags.

By the time the dinghy returned to the
Dixie Queen
and the pair was climbing a ladder to safety, Nina had relinquished her beacon to a nearby crewman. She was standing at the front of the crowd with Paul.

Someone wrapped a wool blanket around the shivering girl’s shoulders. The music had stopped. The guests bunched together to make room for Rachel and Mike, with the exception of the man named Harry, who glared at Mike as he passed. Lindy stood off to one side like a casual spectator, drawn to the event but uninvolved. Red-eyed, with black mascara streaming down her bloodless cheeks, Rachel walked slowly over to her and stopped.

Nina edged toward Lindy, wondering if Rachel was as angry as she would be under the same circumstances. Taking deep, gulping breaths, the girl just looked the older woman over. “I feel sorry for you,” she said finally. Mike came to her side, took her arm, and they walked away together.

Lindy watched them go.

Afterward, very late, Nina treated Paul to a drink at the bar at Caesar’s and then they went up to bed. Paul was playful and warm, and while her body responded with mindless happiness, she couldn’t yank her thoughts entirely away from the evening’s events. When she finally tried to untangle herself, explaining that she had to get home to Bob, Paul pulled her back.

“Don’t leave yet. There’s something I have to tell you,” he said.

So here it was at last, whatever had been bothering him all evening. “What?” she asked, positioning herself on the side of the bed while a dozen unpleasant possibilities flashed through her mind. Another woman. A fatal illness. He was broke. He had committed murder. . . .

“They’ve offered me a job. A permanent job.”

“They?” she repeated, as her speculations ground to a screeching standstill.

“A private company. Worldwide Security Agency.”

“But . . . you didn’t go to D.C. to apply for a job, did you?”

“No. I was hired to consult on the design of some new security systems for a block-long office and shopping complex they’re building right outside the city in Maryland. I ran into a friend I worked with years ago back in San Francisco. . . .”

“When you were with the police.”

He nodded.

“And . . .”

“We were talking, and this thing came up. At first, I thought, no way. Then I discovered I’m interested.”

“I knew there was something.”

Paul, who was facing her, pushed a pillow that had gotten between them out of the way and sat up straighter. “They want me to run all the checks, hire all the personnel, and work with the systems designer to eliminate bugs when the complex opens sometime early next summer.”

When she didn’t say anything, he continued. “It’s a long project, big on money, high on hurdles. My kind of thing.”

“What about your business?”

“I’ve hired a guy to learn the ropes while I’m traveling back and forth between D.C. and California for the next six months or so. I plan to keep the business on a small scale.”

“Until . . .”

“Until I can come back.”

She didn’t like the way his answer sidestepped the issue so neatly. “What if you fall in love . . . with Washington? You’d lose everything you’ve worked for.”

“I’m already in love . . . with Washington,” he said with a sly grin. “That doesn’t mean I won’t come back.”

“You talk like you’ve already decided.”

“Do I?” He raised his eyebrows. “I’m just giving it serious thought.”

“Why now?” asked Nina.

“I wanted to talk to you about it. I could have more free time.”

“Free time? For what?”

“There are a few things I’d like to do before they put me out to pasture.”

“Such as . . .”

“Never mind.”

“No, really. Tell me what you want to do that you aren’t doing.”

He shrugged. “Climb Everest to the top before I croak?”

“Oh, come on,” she said. “You love what you do.”

“Sure,” he said, “but the job does not make the man, my workaholic friend.”

Worried, Nina rubbed his whiskers with her finger. “What about our work here? What about . . . I thought . . . I mean. Don’t you want. . . .”

“Nina, it’s not over. Right now, this job in Washington is still long-term, but temporary.”

“What’s that mean?”

“I can keep things alive in Carmel, and maybe come back here when you need me.”

“That won’t last,” Nina said. “They’ll book you for every minute.”

“I need to know how you feel about this.” He waited quietly, and only a slight tension at the corner of his lips suggested to her his question was anything but casual.

She got up, reaching for a hotel robe and covering herself. “I don’t know what to say.” Rummaging under the bed, she located her party dress and underwear.

Paul grabbed for her, taking hold of her wrist. “Oh, no. You’re not getting off that easy.”

“Okay, Paul,” she said, trying not to blow up under the pressure of the moment, afraid to say the wrong thing and damned if she’d beg him to stay. “Imagine yourself working under a jerk, with a lot of other jerks. Imagine how you’ll love that after being your own boss for years.” Paul had been fired from the police department for insubordination.

“Ah, but I was so much older then,” he said, his tone light again.

Why had he bothered to ask her what she thought of his job offer? He would decide whatever he decided, and she had no real say in the matter. She let herself be drawn back to him. Putting her arms around him, she said, “Don’t . . .” then paused.

“Don’t what, Nina?” he asked. He had his hands around her waist and had moved his head in closer to her neck, where he breathed softly. “Don’t go?”

“Nothing,” she said. She stayed long enough to leave him happy. Then, slipping back into her clothes, she said good-bye with a kiss to his forehead. She couldn’t tell him how to live his life. They were colleagues and friends. He would come and go, and that was the way it had to be. She could not allow this to drag her down. Right now, she needed the strength of a light spirit in order to carry the heavy weight of her own responsibilities.

Early Monday morning, alone in the office, feeling the way a sculptor might on the day a big block of uncut marble was to be delivered, Nina abandoned herself to a feeling of edgy anticipation. A new case was about to materialize. On Sunday, Lindy Markov had left a message that she would be coming in first thing in the morning to see her about an urgent matter that concerned the party on the boat. When Lindy had assaulted Rachel, she had turned a private problem into a public one, and in America, a public problem usually ended with the parties in court.

Setting an armful of pending files down on the credenza, she squirmed around in the chair until it fit, kicked off her shoes, and picked up the recorder. First case: petty theft, a senior citizen caught shoplifting a carton of Camels from Cecil’s Market after his Social Security check had run out for the month. An ornery man in his seventies, Fred wanted to go to trial on the matter. The trouble was, he had no defense. Better to go to the deputy DA assigned to the case and coax, barter, ingratiate, and con. Maybe she could get the charge dropped.

But not today. Time to get other things mobilized. “Sandy, please set up an appointment for me with Barbara Banning at the DA’s office for tomorrow,” she said into the recorder, clicking it off as a soft knock interrupted the silence.

Nina felt a thump inside her chest as her heart responded within her rib cage like an answering knock. Lindy Markov had arrived, announced by the scent of her French perfume.

And because Nina had been waiting for exactly this—this strained face peeking around the door, that fabulously cut vermilion suit, and that sheaf of official-looking papers in a long, manicured right hand—she felt a thrill run right through her, and she thought, God, I love practicing law in spite of everything.

She got up and showed her to a client chair, making pleasant small talk and pouring coffee. Lindy Markov sat down, pulled a finely embroidered handkerchief out of a brown leather handbag, and blew hard into it, collapsing like someone who has just found a safe haven.

A lawyer’s chair was about as safe as the copilot’s seat in a burning airplane. Still, this spot must be preferable to sitting back in the cabin, choking to death on smoke and not knowing why.