The Gray Zone (27 page)

“Not so close,” he hissed, knowing Kelly wouldn’t hear
him—or wouldn’t listen. “Giddyap,” he murmured to his horse, tapping it lightly on the flanks with his heels. The horse moved faster up the hill.

When he reached the two of them, Jake had to smile. What was it about women that allowed them to seem as close as sisters after a chance encounter? Kelly and Louise were deep in conversation about riding boots. He didn’t know that they’d already discussed manicures, chemical-free sunscreen, the latest high-protein diet, and men’s need to control everything.

“Jake!” beamed Kelly as the horseman guided his sorrel mare alongside hers. “I’d like you to meet my new friend, Louise.” Jake reached his arm across Kelly to shake Louise’s hand.

“A pleasure,” he said. “Beautiful day for riding.” He thought he saw the look of recognition in Louise’s eyes.

“It’s so nice to meet
you
,” she purred in an Americanized European accent. He could see her delight to be adding Jake Brooks, celebrity lawyer, to her mental Rolodex.

The women chatted amiably about everything and nothing for a while longer as Jake stood by, trying to place the woman’s accent. It sounded like she’d come from France, but many years before. It was a pleasant voice that matched the well-groomed woman who possessed it. Louise Orlean appeared to be a little taller than Kelly. She wore a pink baseball cap over straight, shoulder-length black hair. She was handsome rather than attractive, with a strong jawline, dark (but professionally arched) eyebrows, and a long, aquiline nose that bisected her face, not unlike a dorsal fin. Sunglasses covered her eyes, so it was impossible to see how all her features came together.

Jake tried to keep from smiling when he heard Kelly’s next question: “By the way, Louise, I have been looking for those exact sunglasses. Do you mind if I try them on?” Unable to resist Kelly’s
childlike manner, Louise took them off immediately and handed them over.

“They look so cute on you!” she squealed. Jake mentally rolled his eyes, but he watched with admiration as Kelly gazed rapidly over Louise Orlean’s face, memorizing her features and plotting how to mimic them. Even squinting against the sun, Louise’s eyes were striking—glinting green, the color of dollar bills.

Finally, Kelly handed the glasses back. “I’m sorry, but we have to be somewhere. We’ve been out since this morning.”

“Oh, you can’t go. You must finish the trail with me. Then come back to the house. It’s not far.”

“That would be wonderful, but today’s really not the day,” said Kelly sorrowfully. “Another time, perhaps?”

Even on horseback the two women found a way to kiss cheeks, promising to meet again. Louise called to Jake that her husband would love to meet him. Jake gave a wave and headed back down the trail.

It took all they had not to urge their horses to run down the hill. The ride that had seemed so short on the way up was interminable on the way down. At the stable, Jake gave the stable hand a tip while Kelly waited in the Mercedes. When he finally started the engine, he looked over at Kelly.

“Did you get her voice?”

“Darling,” said Kelly in an astonishingly accurate mimicry of Louise Orlean’s accent, “you take care of the driving. I’ll take care of the impersonating.”

Jake smiled and pulled out of the parking lot. Well out of sight of the stables, they dissolved into a fit of laughter.

WHILE THE REAL LOUISE ORLEAN WAS AT HER private Pilates lesson, Kelly, disguised as Louise Orlean, entered the offices of the Gillis Foundation.

“Good morning,” she cooed to the receptionist, in Louise’s transatlantic accent. “It’s my turn to complete the audit and report to the board. Could you set me up with the accounts?”

The receptionist, like most receptionists in offices all over the world, was used to unquestioningly carrying out the wishes of higher-ups. She knew Louise Orlean was a board member; she also knew that the quarterly board meeting wasn’t for another two months and that this woman, in particular, never prepared her audits more than a few hours before they were due. She knew that the paperwork for the audit was always sent to the board by messenger; it was extremely rare for any board member to visit the office.

But above all, the receptionist knew not to probe for details about Louise Orlean’s unusual request. She led her down a short
hall to a cubicle outfitted with a computer and a telephone, opened the computer to the foundation accounts, provided Kelly with coffee and a bottle of water, and walked unobtrusively back to the reception desk—where she immediately picked up the phone and began reporting the incident in a hushed voice.

Sitting inside the cubicle, Kelly could not see the front lobby door, but she could hear the voices of everyone around her: the receptionist fielding calls, someone on the other side of the fabric panel soliciting donations for a silent auction. Kelly went to work quickly.

She took from her purse a key ring in the shape of a sea anemone—sized pink puffball made of rubber. With nimble fingers, she unscrewed it at its base and shook something out into her hand. It was another flash drive, like the one she had used in La Jolla. She slipped it into the computer’s USB port and began downloading account information. As a nonprofit, the foundation was required to make its financial books open to the public, but Kelly wanted to look at the working files. She knew that eventually she would need a password—a password she now had, thanks to what she’d found out in Mr. Lee’s office at the bank in La Jolla.

She was progressing through the information when she felt, more than heard, the lobby doors open.

“Hello, Cynthia,” came a suave male voice greeting the receptionist, not even trying to conceal the tone of flirtation. The hair on the back of Kelly’s neck prickled.

Todd.

She heard the rumbling of another male voice. There was no escape route. Every way out led past the front door.

“Good morning, sir. I didn’t expect you this morning. Isn’t the Executive Committee meeting this evening at the Las Vegas office? I just arranged the plane and the car.”

“Thank you, Cynthia,” Kelly heard Gillis murmur. “And Senator Henckle will be joining us as well.”

Kelly froze. Senator Henckle again. He wasn’t just a big name Gillis kept on the board. They seemed to have a relationship. She remembered the password she had found in the
Spouse
column on the computer at the La Jolla bank:
Goldy.

Kelly heard the receptionist continue, “I tried to reach you … left a message. Louise Orlean … quarterly audit … a space down the hall.” She heard the men moving down the hall toward where she sat and realized she was really trapped.

She inhaled deeply to calm herself. She could not get out of the cubicle without being seen, and she knew Gillis would not pass up the chance to appear to be legitimate in front of a board member. In another instant he was standing in front of her, pouring on the charm and the elegance she had witnessed so many times before.

“Louise.”

Kelly plunged herself into character, pushing down her fears.

“Todd Gillis,” she said in Louise Orlean’s formal accent. They kissed on both cheeks.

“How’s that fine husband of yours?”

“He’s well. Very busy. And you? I trust you’re well.”

“Extremely well,” said Gillis with such enthusiasm that Kelly double-checked to see if he was looking at her funny. But he was looking at his companion. “Louise, this is Rodney Farse. He’s one of my oldest friends.”

The other man stepped up, and Kelly had to keep herself from recoiling. She had met Rodney Farse on many occasions. He was a despicable creep, and she had always hated him. He had come on to her once when she and Gillis had first been married. She never told Gillis about it, but she wondered if he knew and had threatened Farse in some way, because the man had never tried it again.

“Louise’s husband is Roland Orlean. The developer,” continued Gillis.

“Pleasure to meet you,” said Farse, shaking hands.

“Getting an early start on the audit, Louise?” Gillis said, his eyes twinkling. “Finding everything you need?”

Again Kelly cautiously searched Gillis’s eyes for recognition but found none.

“I was just finishing up,” Kelly said.

“Make sure you let Cynthia know if you need anything. Good to have seen you again. Give my best to Roland.”

“You must come to dinner soon. He’d love to see you,” said Kelly melodiously, the French lilt adding richness to Louise’s words.

The men moved down the hall toward Gillis’s office, and Kelly quietly sucked in her breath. He didn’t seem to have recognized her, but her alarm bells were clanging nonetheless. She wanted to run out of there, but there was something else she needed to know. What was the Executive Committee? Why did it need to meet in Las Vegas? Kelly knew she should drop it, but every instinct was telling her this was important.

Quickly, she worked the computer keyboard, and without any trouble found a file labeled
EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE
. A prompt for a password blocked her entry. Sending a silent prayer to the god of computer passwords, she typed
Goldy,
and bang, she was in. Surprisingly, the file contained only one document: a short list of names—all men from the foundation board, including Roland Farse and Theodore Henckle—and an address under the heading
Las Vegas Headquarters
. The address was in an area of town on the outskirts of Las Vegas. This struck Kelly as particularly odd. She knew that Gillis’s bank had an office in Vegas. Why not meet there?

Kelly memorized the address and copied the file onto her flash drive. Then, as fast as she could, she closed the file and shut down the computer. She popped out the flash drive and, looking around her, slid it back into the pink keychain. Dropping the pink rubber puff into her purse and swinging it onto her shoulder, she stood up and
headed for the front door. Gillis’s voice rumbled down the hall from his office.

Taking a deep breath, and using every ounce of willpower she had, Kelly strode away from the front door, toward Gillis’s office. The door was ajar. She knocked twice and nudged it open.

“I’m off. I just wanted to say good-bye.”

Gillis raised a hand in a gallant, yet dismissive, gesture. “Lovely to see you, Louise. Regards to Roland.”

Kelly nodded and ducked out of the doorway, trying not to walk too quickly, duplicating Louise’s stride. Ahead of her she saw Brigante, Gillis’s bodyguard, lounging on Cynthia’s desk and showing her something on his video iPod. Cynthia was smirking.

“Done so soon?” the receptionist asked as Kelly put her hand on the doorknob.

“Just off for a bite,” said Kelly, and pushed out the door.

“’Bye,” said Cynthia, her voice a singsong.

* * *

Kelly struggled to walk calmly up Cañon Drive toward her car. She couldn’t shake the feeling that Gillis had seen through her disguise, although he’d given no concrete display of recognition.

“I’m Louise Orlean. He didn’t see me,” she breathed to herself, just as she had that night when, dressed as Marilyn, she had worried that he’d found her performing at Shrake’s bar. The night she had met Jake.

It was early for lunch, but shoppers and tourists crowded the sidewalks. Kelly dodged one couple ambling along cluelessly, arm in arm. As she did so, she happened to glance across the street, and there, reflected in the glassy wall of the office building, she saw Gillis’s bodyguard. Brigante averted his eyes, but in that instant, Kelly
knew: Gillis must have suspected her. The game of cat and mouse had begun in earnest.

If she’d had more time to think, she might have made a different choice as to what she did next. Instead, she grabbed the first opportunity she saw, right in front of her. The wrought-iron-and-ficus-shaded entrance to Spago.

She had heard enough conversations among the face-lift-and-lipo crowd to know that Spago was still the reigning power-lunch spot in Beverly Hills. She wondered what sort of clout Louise Orlean wielded there. The hierarchy of tables was strictly controlled by the maître d’, who looked Kelly over
sans
expression as she glided in the door. Kelly knew that the tables outside, under the umbrella, were the social equivalent of seats on the Supreme Court; the CEOs, agents, producers, celebrities, power wives, and international significant others who were seated there had to possess a combination of power, connections, and financial backing. Even beauty didn’t count here the way it did everywhere else in Los Angeles.

The tables inside were a rung or two down the ladder, although the booths were considered the most desirable if rain made dining
alfresco
impossible. The truth was that to get a reservation at all was a status symbol, although as far as Kelly was concerned, the distinctions among the places one’s ass rested during a meal were as meaningless as the machinations of the Spanish royal court in the fifteenth century. She just needed to know the code so she could use it to her advantage.

Kelly-as-Louise-Orlean held her new spring-line Louis Vuitton handbag in such a way that the huge fake diamond on her finger flashed at the maître d’. She engaged him in light conversation while she folded a fifty-dollar bill discreetly into the palm of her hand and slipped it to him invisibly. Fifty dollars was an amount worthy of attention, even in a restaurant like this. Her husband had taught her the art of gaining an instant power image, and proper tipping was an
integral part of it. It worked like a secret code. Kelly looked anxiously over her shoulder. Brigante was not there. Either he hadn’t seen her slip into the restaurant or he was lurking outside, maybe even waiting for Gillis to get there. When she turned back around, the maître d’ was leading her to a prominent inside table decorated with a ball of peach and pink roses in the center of the white tablecloth.

The waitstaff, each as polished and pretty as a sitcom actor, swooped among the tables like swallows in their wrinkleless white shirts and black aprons. Kelly ordered mineral water and held the menu in front of her face, scanning the restaurant over the top of it.