Resurgence (20 page)
“You don’t have to do that. Just tell me your room number and I’ll come up. I have something important to discuss.”
He complies and steps into the hall to wait for her. If she’s unsteady when she comes off the elevator, he won’t be surprised. Nor will he fault her if she’s as tipsy as she sounds. She’s overdue for release of some sort—way overdue—and if the impending announcement from the medical examiner caused her to take on a little extra wine at lunch, who is he to point a finger?
But she’s beautifully pulled together when she gets off the elevator. Her hair and makeup have been redone since he last saw her, and she’s replaced the forgettable skirt and sweater she had on this morning with a knee-skimming black jacket dress that flatters her figure and emphasizes her delicate coloring. There’s nothing drunken or ditzy about her explanation regarding an oversight.
“I simply wasn’t thinking when I said earlier that I had to remain chained to my desk,” she says. “There’s so much I’m not used to yet, so it was easy to forget that I can always check with the answering service if something seems to be brewing.”
She’s confessing the equivalent of the lapse he had only minutes ago when he couldn’t remember how to get an outside line, and now he—the teacher—could learn from her about dismissing the occasional tendency to drift.
He shepherds her into the elegant suite, where he expects a standard “omigod” or at least a gasp of amazement, and gets only an approving glance targeting him as much as the surroundings.
“I see you’re dressed to go out, so I won’t take long,” she says.
“I’m not going anywhere, take as long as you want. Have you reached a decision about my offer?”
“No, not yet, but there is something else I want to go over with you.”
“Won’t you please sit down?”
“I don’t want to keep you.”
“You are
not
keeping me. When you called I was going down to the bar for a drink, that’s all.”
“Well, still . . .”
“Dammit, Amanda, will you just light somewhere and tell me what’s on your mind?”
“Okay,
okay,”
she says and sits on the very edge of the only straight-backed chair in the room. “This Rayce business. I got thinking about it during the night and realized I never put that much importance on the
quality
of the cocaine he consumed. All I ever thought about before was him drinking it instead of snorting. I never thought about the coke being so freaking pure that even a little bit would have killed him—would even have killed him if he’d taken it the usual way.”
She continues with this thrust, enunciating the exact same thoughts he’s had since reviewing an old memo from a new perspective.
“The coke found in Rayce’s pocket needs to be compared—”
“With the drugs found on Jay Howard’s body, which we already know match traces found at Gibby—”
“Omigod! You too?”
“Yeah, Amanda, me too.”
He fills her in about the quiet revelation at his Chelsea office, “It’s all I can think about . . . that and what to do about you.”
“Me? You mean about whether I’m willing to accept your offer?”
“No, about whether you’re willing to go against conventional wisdom regarding employer-employee relationships—
potential
employer-employee, in this instance. If you are, then call your service and tell them you’ll be at this number until further notice.”
The last minute change of venue delays the Monday afternoon meeting with Laurel for only the length of time it takes Nate to walk from his hotel to the Dorchester, where Colin and company are installed for the duration. He gives no thought to taking a cab; he’s been in London forty-eight hours and hasn’t required one yet. But he hasn’t been out of his hotel suite for the last day and a half, so it’s not like he’s used up a lot of shoe leather.
At the Dorchester, he goes through the motions of announcing himself on a house phone, pretending he doesn’t already know he’s headed for a choice suite overlooking Hyde Park—one with two extra bedrooms, according to Amanda who made the arrangements.
Laurel answers the door and welcomes him with open arms. “Look at you,” she says after seizing him in a full embrace and kissing him on both cheeks.” I don’t think I’ve ever seen you looking better.”
“I can certainly say the same of you.” This is no perfunctory response he delivers. She does look better than remembered; radiant wouldn’t be an exaggeration.
“I’m so sorry about having to ask you to come here,” she says as they move from the foyer through a richly paneled atmosphere reminiscent of his Fifth Avenue library. “The baby sitter is delayed and I didn’t think you’d appreciate me showing up at your office with a couple of kids in tow.”
“Don’t worry about it. I’ve no problem coming here as long as I can be sure Colin won’t walk in.”
“As I said on the phone earlier, he’ll be tied up all day and probably half the night with an assortment of glitches they’ve run into. Something about lighting and stage setup, I think he said.”
Something else he knew about in advance.
“Have you talked to Amanda today?” Laurel asks. “I tried to reach her a few times over the weekend, but I only ever got her service. Nothing important, so I didn’t leave word.”
That he did not know but could have surmised. Just as he could have anticipated an encounter with the children inasmuch as the nanny hasn’t shown up yet. He feels as much as sees Anthony staring at him from behind one of the pillars separating the dining room from the sitting room.
“Come here, dear.” Laurel beckons the boy to her and he grudgingly obeys. “I’m sure you remember Mr. Isaacs.” She smoothes the boy’s cowlick and gives his shoulder an affectionate squeeze.
“I guess,” Anthony says.
“What did we decide about that expression?” Laurel says.
“To stop using it.”
“That’s right. So again, please.”
“Yes. I remember Mr. Isaacs. But when he lived with us I got to call him Nate. Is he gonna live with us again?”
“Never happen.” Nate steps forward and extends a hand to Anthony who gives it a limp shake. “Absolutely no danger of that now that your dad’s back and you have a new mom.”
“She’s not my mum yet. Not till August when she gets married to my dad and adopts me and Simple Simon.”
“Is that really what you meant to say? Laurel lifts an eyebrow and gives his shoulder another squeeze.
“Adopts me and my
brother
,” Anthony says and wriggles away from her touch.
To ease around the unpleasantness, Nate pretends the wedding announcement isn’t also old news and gets ready to set up shop. He’s about to open his document case when he’s ambushed by little brother, who attaches to one of his legs making accordion pleats of the crease the valet service so recently accomplished.
“Up me!” Simon demands and even a dedicated child-phobe would find him hard to resist.
Nate lifts him up and accepts a wet kiss. At this range the changes in Simon would be hard to miss. In six months he’s grown a lot taller and his present chatter is much more articulate than when last confronted. And he’s not screaming, thank god. But he is still ninety-nine percent Aurora in appearance and the remaining one percent could as easily be attributed to the milkman as to Colin.
If Laurel is consciously aware of this, she’s never given any indication other than during that difficult session in his New York kitchen when she chose to look the other way—as has everyone else. Right now, she’s only noticing his discomfort and relieving him of the clingy child.
“Time for your nap, my little love.” She kisses Simon and sets him down. “You come too, Anthony.” She smiles at the older boy as though he were a prince among eight-year-olds. “We need to get you started on your reading assignment.”
In her absence, Nate arranges bound proposals on the dining table and sets out fresh legal pads, a calculator, and a pair of Montblanc pens. From a sideboard in the sitting room, he brings bottled water and stemware. He’s eyeing a phone, estimating if he’d have time for a quick call—if he’d even be able to get through to Amanda—when Laurel returns carrying her own printed agenda.
“Do you mind if we start with this first?” She singles out the appraiser’s report from the printed material she drops on the table. “And I’d like to touch on these other things before we get down to the main business or I’ll be distracted.” She indicates the handwritten notes he sent along with the appraiser’s report—the notes describing his visit to her New Jersey property and the call paid to the nursing home housing her father.
“Start anywhere you like. I have the rest of the afternoon.” He holds a chair for her, then takes one for himself.
She begins with a review of his experience with the whacko neighbor lady the day of the house appraisal, a subject they’ve discussed more than once by phone.
“I probably shouldn’t bring it up again, but I’m still intrigued by how definitive she was with her assertions. How descriptive she was of this . . . this figment of her imagination, whose job she thinks you took. I could laugh about that if it weren’t indicative of how far gone she is.”
“Thank you for pointing out that only the deranged are apt to mistake me for a maintenance man,” he says, and they both laugh for a few seconds before she again consults his notes, obviously searching for a specific entry. He offers to help, but she finds the passage she wants and targets it with one of his pens.
“This.
This
is what gives me the most pause, this part about her creating a whole persona, a construct—a chimera, you could almost call it—and then giving it a haircut, an upgraded vehicle, and credit for knowing its place.” She refers to his almost verbatim account of the woman’s aberrations. “That worries me a lot more than her tendency to lose whole decades at a time.”
“If I may . . . Why should it worry you at all?”
“Because she helped me and my family when we had nowhere else to turn. And now it looks like she has nowhere else to turn. I’ve learned that the poor old dear has no relatives, not even distant ones, and if she has any friends among her contemporaries, they’d of course be reluctant to turn her in. So that leaves me.”
“Okay.
Now
I begin to understand why we’ve been over this so many times.”
“Yes, I’ve shamelessly used you to help strengthen my resolve. Every time I go over your notes or question you about the most telling incident so far, I’m that much closer to being able to follow through. Believe me, I don’t look forward to having to blow the whistle on her, but at some point I may have to, if only for her own safety. I’ve checked with neighbors at the far end of the court and they’ve seen nothing that would support her claims.”
Laurel stabs at the notes again. “These aren’t partial truths or misinterpretations, these are full-blown hallucinations she’s having. I doubt I have to remind you that I’ve
never
employed a maintenance man of any race, creed, or color, let alone one with a pigtail and a flashy truck with an upside-down sign on it. And I probably don’t need to tell you again how grateful I am that you were thorough about passing this information on to me. “And speaking of thorough,” she says while flipping through the pages of the appraisal, “this appraiser guy gives ‘thorough’ a whole new meaning. He was
way
out of line with some of these findings.”
“If you’re referring to his mention of conditions that don’t affect ultimate value, I can’t argue there.”
She looks off into space for a moment. “You know how this makes me feel?
Violated
. So-called break in the flooring or not, he had no business poking around in my secret hiding place. None at all. And even a partial list of what was found there has no place in a report of this kind. Gewgaws, diaries, marbles, currency . . . Who cares? And who cares if acorns are sprouting in the gutters and the eaves need caulking? So what if something was spilled in the attic when, in all likelihood, the house is going to be razed.”
“Again, no argument from me. The guy was a real pisser, especially about what he saw as squirrel poison.”
“So I noticed.” She zeroes in on a word with the business end of the pen and grimaces. “That’s just plain insulting to think I would spread a ro
denti
cide and simply leave it at that. If I have to remove a squirrel, I trap it and release it in the woods. And whatever this jerk mistook for a chemical squirrel barrier was most likely something my brothers spilled in the process of tossing their open gym bags into the storage area. Jock itch powder, common foot powder, even baby powder, would be my educated guess.” She sets the report aside, “Ridiculous.
All
of this squirrel shit.”
He’s not sure what to expect when she moves on to his notes about the nursing home. But all she says about that is how glad she is that he made the surprise inspection, and how fortunate she is that her father is receiving such good care and still has visitors from his former life—Mrs. Floss and her cherry blintzes notwithstanding.