Taken In (20 page)

Even the clock-confirmed realization that Charles would be knocking on their hotel door in a little less than four hours wasn’t enough to make Tori set Gavin Rollins’s book down in favor of the sleep her body knew she needed. The author’s extensive research plus the short firsthand accounts sprinkled throughout the book had proven to be nothing short of fascinating, and more than a little difficult to put down.

Finding the right guy in young adulthood was hard, but finding him later in life sounded nearly impossible—a fact she’d never really considered until Gavin laid it out in a way that made perfect, if not heartbreaking, sense.

So much of a couple’s foundation came from the history they created together via a home, children, traditions, the simple passage of time, and the shared memories born from those years. They were the very things she liked to envision when she looked ahead to the years that would take her to her fiftieth anniversary with Milo.

But for those later-in-life couples, the foundation was tougher to create. What constituted holiday traditions for one rarely matched those of the other person. Their families could blend if they were lucky, but they didn’t share the same memories, upbringing, or even the same goals. And the house? That, too, was more about his and hers—his favorite chair, her favorite china—than furniture and items found and collected together.

The older couples who seemed to be most successful were those who were marrying for the first time. Those who had walked down the aisle once before seemed to have a fifty-fifty chance of survival.

That is, assuming they even got through the dating phase at all.

She finished the current chapter and paused, the sound of Margaret Louise’s snoring on the other side of the bedroom door convincing her it wouldn’t do any harm to read just one more . . . Besides, an hour or two of sleep were better than none, right?

Turning the page, she felt her stomach lurch as her gaze fell on the heading of the next section:

Protecting One’s Heart
from a Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing

If you ask the average sixty-something to name a handful of skills they’d once mastered yet no longer possess, you can probably guess some of their answers.

Understanding an algebraic equation.

Reading music.

Typing.

Riding a bike.

But what rarely finds its way onto the list is one that belongs there just as surely as the rest—dating.

By now you’re probably scratching your head and wondering why this book about finding love after sixty-five has suddenly taken a turn toward the depressing, but like every other worthwhile how-to manual you’ll come across in life, warnings have their place, too.

The words blurred on the page, prompting Tori to rub her eyes. She knew the smart thing to do was go to bed and try to make the best out of the three hours that stood between her and another day of real-life Clue, but it was hard. Somehow, despite a topic that had little to nothing to do with her, she was hooked.

The thinking part of her brain chalked up her fascination with the book to two things: the excuse it gave her to talk to Barbara Letts, the mystery woman formerly known as Ms. Steely Eye, and her own insatiable need to know what came next.

The feeling part of her brain knew it was much more.

Four of her dearest friends fell into the book’s target demographic, making its tips and anecdotes more relatable in some way. Especially when she knew two of the four still carried interest in the notion of dating.

Granted, Leona needed no help from Tori or a book when it came to getting a date. The woman’s calendar was full virtually every night. But just because Leona ate on someone else’s dime five or six nights a week didn’t mean her heart wasn’t still potentially at risk.

And even if the self-proclaimed dating pro managed to keep things casual for the rest of her life, Dixie was a different story. Or could be, if Tori got her out of jail and she ever decided to give dating a whirl again.

Dixie.

She closed her eyes and considered the image of the uptight mad-at-the-world woman Tori had met just over two years earlier against the image of the same woman who’d shimmered like the brightest star as she sat across a breakfast table from a man she was now charged with murdering.

The first Dixie never smiled.

The new Dixie couldn’t stop.

The first Dixie blamed everyone for everything.

The new Dixie had come to realize the power of a positive attitude.

The first Dixie believed her life wasn’t worth living without her beloved position as head librarian of the Sweet Briar Public Library.

The new Dixie was eagerly opening doors she’d been too busy to open during her forty-year career.

The transformation had been slow, of course, but that hadn’t made it any less awe-inspiring to witness. In fact, in some ways, it had made it more magical because each change had been inspired by something—volunteering, friendship, and even a well-timed hug and word of encouragement.

Yet in the blink of an eye, it had all changed, ripped out from under Dixie’s feet with absolutely no warning at all.

Or had there been . . .

Whoever said pictures don’t lie obviously walked this earth long before the dawn of Internet dating sites and the quest to find the perfect mate with a single self-portrait. Suddenly, a snapshot’s ability to tell the truth has been manipulated to be twenty pounds slimmer, fifteen years younger, or even a million dollars richer.

It’s a tactic that works for a while, when the only contact is e-mail. But when the ultimate goal is finding a mate, the face-to-face meeting is the real moment of truth.

Twenty pounds heavier than the picture you posted?

I’ll know the second you walk in.

Fifteen years older than you airbrushed yourself to look?

I’ll know the second you walk in.

Borrowed the clothes you wore from your next-door neighbor because you’re really living on a fixed income?

I’ll know that within the first five minutes of our get-to-know-each-other meeting when you no longer have someone coaching you on what to say and how to say it.

I suppose, if I was desperate, I could overlook the weight and the age. But if I’m looking for something in particular, and you don’t have it, I’m out the door and back on my computer before you’ve even finished wiping away the tears.

Sound cold? Maybe. But I prefer to say I’m honest.

I want something different for the latter years of my life.

I want to travel.

I want to buy expensive clothes.

I want to be the guy everyone wants to know—the one with the gorgeous house, the gigantic boat, and the private parties in exotic locales.

So I keep scrolling through the pictures and setting up those all-important first meetings.

My ticket is out there. Somewhere.

And she’s desperate . . .

Just like I want her to be.

She reached the bottom of the page only to realize the sudden pain in her jaw stemmed from the clenching and unclenching of her teeth. It sickened her to think people could be so cold, so uncaring.

How someone could prey on a lonely woman in such a calculating manner was outside her realm of understanding.

But it was the world they lived in, just as Gavin said. It was a world where the anonymity of the Internet could disguise a monster long enough for someone’s heart to be broken.

Or in Dixie’s case, for their life to be ruined.

She fought the fatigue that pulled at her lids and read on . . .

The apprehension in their eyes when they walk into my chosen meeting spot is every bit as real as the shoes they painstakingly selected or the skirt they ironed a second and third time. I’ve seen it a million times.

I’ve also seen the apprehension disappear behind an answered smile and a flush of pleasure at the slow, appreciative once-over I’ve mastered on the countless women I will never tell you about.

I compliment your eyes, your hair, your chin . . . whatever feature you’ve tried to play up in the hopes I’ll notice. Because by noticing, you become more comfortable.

I insist on buying your coffee and delivering it to your hands along with a single carnation I cleverly thought to buy five minutes before our meeting. That seemingly personal gesture makes you feel special.

I lean across the table as if I’m enthralled with every word you utter, asking questions along the way to encourage more detail. You think I’m attentive, but I’m simply gathering clues that will tell me whether you’re my golden ticket or yet another waste of time.

If I choose to see you again, I will find a way to benefit.

Maybe our leisurely stroll down Fifth Avenue will net me a new suit. Maybe I’ll become chummy with your personal driver and have little need for public transportation in the future. Maybe you’ll help pay my rent when I’m “unable to do so because I’m taking care of my poor sick mother in Idaho.”

It doesn’t matter what I get from you or how long it lasts, though, because there’s another lonely and desperate woman just around the next corner.

The blurring of Tori’s vision was back, only this time, instead of fatigue, it was caused by rage.

Where was the sense of right and wrong?

Where was the desire to do good rather than evil?

Where was the respect for one another?

She turned the page again, her eyes narrowing in on yet another painful passage.

You caught me today.

Caught me red-handed as we walked past your apartment.

At first I tried to play it off, to introduce you to my latest target in such a way neither of you would be the wiser, but it didn’t work.

I’d like to say the near eardrum-shattering tirade that ensued taught me a valuable lesson, but it didn’t.

I am a con man, and lonely, rich women are my con.

She tried to keep reading but couldn’t. Even in anger, her eyes had simply become too heavy to do much of anything except sleep.

Reluctantly, she closed the book and set it on the coffee table, the time denoted on the clock giving her little more than two hours of shut-eye before yet another round of sleuthing commenced.

It was a few minutes after ten when Tori finally stumbled out of her room to find Charles holding court from the armchair in the center of the sitting area while Rose, Margaret Louise, Debbie, and Beatrice lavished him with attention. She knew it was Charles, not because she could see his face—she couldn’t, it was pitched downward and covered from full view by her friends—but because the tips of his spiked hair now matched the purple jacket slung over the back of his chair.

Stifling a yawn, Tori stopped beside the coffee table and swept her hand toward the piles of zippers, felt, and pin backs that graced its surface. “What’s going on in here?”

Charles poked through the opening between Debbie and Beatrice and smiled triumphantly. “My gals are teaching me how to make a zipper flower pin for Mayor Georgina’s Mother’s Day Picnic. And look . . . I’m getting the hang of it!”

Tori accepted the pin he held out for inspection and turned it over carefully, the stitch work around the staggered petals impressive. “Wow, Charles, you’re a natural.”

The circle disbanded temporarily as the focus that had been so diligently trained on Charles’s every stitch moved to Tori.

“He might be the quickest learner I’ve ever seen,” Margaret Louise boasted. “All we’ve had to do is talk him through each step so far, ain’t that right, Rose?”

Rose nodded in time with Beatrice and Debbie. “It’s as if he’s been sewing his whole life.”

Charles reclaimed his pin and examined it himself, a small furrow forming between his brows as he did. “Wait. Do you see this stitch here?” He held his work in progress up for Rose to see then shifted his body away from the table lamp to afford the elderly woman the best light possible. “It looks slightly bigger than the one on either side, doesn’t it?”

Rose held the pin closer to the light then declared it perfect as Tori’s gaze fell on the pile of roughly fifteen or so completed pins. “Are those the ones we did the other night?”

“No, those are the ones from just this morning.” Beatrice took a seat on the left side of the floral couch and retrieved her own pin-in-progress from the table. “We’ve been so preoccupied that we’re rather behind on the number we told Georgina we’d get done.”

Debbie sank onto the cushion beside Beatrice. “Having this unexpected hour this morning certainly helps.”

Tori felt another yawn on the horizon and bit it back as best she could. “Yeah, about that . . . I’m sorry I overslept.”

“When you stay up reading until six thirty in the morning, you can’t really call waking up at ten oversleeping,” Leona said as she breezed into the room in a soft pink fitted suit. When she reached the wall mirror over the sideboard table, she stopped and inserted a teardrop pearl earring into each ear. “Nor can you expect your average over-the-counter concealer to mask those ugly black circles under your eyes, dear.”

“Black circles?” Charles dropped his needle and thread onto his lap, then spun his designer fanny pack around to the front, his hand poised to unzip before it came to a stop. “I have just the thing!”

Leona turned from the mirror. “You have something that will cover
those
?” she parroted, pointing at Tori the way one might point at a particularly bad sighting of roadkill.

“You bet your gorgeous brown eyes I do, sugar.” He reached into his pack and extracted a small round container of skin-colored goo. “My old roommate, Michael Anthony, used this stuff all the time when he was dancing on Broadway. He smuggled this jar of skin perfection out for me before he left on tour.”

Leona plucked it from Charles’s outstretched hand and beckoned Tori over to the mirror.

“Leona, I really don’t need that right—”

“Oh?” She felt Leona’s hands on her shoulders, saw the room go by in a blur as she was spun around to face her friends. “Ladies? Charles? Does Victoria need a little assistance this morning?”

Five heads nodded as one.

“Now hold still.” Leona uncapped the container, brushed her fingertips across the surface of the goo, and then transferred it to the skin just under Tori’s eyes. When she was done, she stepped back in utter shock. “Charles, dear, this stuff is amazing! It makes Victoria look—look . . .
decent
.”

“You sound as if that’s never been done before,” Tori mumbled before liberating the container from Leona’s hand and capping it tightly.

“I refuse to respond to that for fear I’ll be stoned where I stand.” Leona straightened her already perfect posture and turned Tori toward the mirror. “So instead, I’ll let the mirror answer for me.”

She looked at her image when the motion stopped and felt the instant slack of her jaw. “Whoa.”

Charles leapt to his feet just beyond Tori’s reflection but she barely noticed. All she could truly focus on was the flawless shading below her eyes.

“I said it was skin perfection, didn’t I?”

“Charles, you are a veritable genius,” Leona purred between dramatic bats of her false lashes. “You must know, of course, that I want one of those to bring home to Sweet Briar . . .”

Rose gasped, only to have her dramatics drowned out by a body-shaking cough. “Are you saying you get black circles, Leona?”

“Of course not, you old goat. But if Charles gives it to Victoria, it will get dropped into a drawer in her bathroom, never to be seen or heard from again.”

Tori considered protesting Leona’s erroneous insinuation but let it go when the reflection of the clock caught her attention. “We can’t do this anymore. It’s”—she turned to look at the clock to verify the translation her brain had conjured from the backward numbers—“almost ten thirty and we’ve got to decide which suspect we’re going to approach first.”

Charles’s porcelain skin took on a hint of crimson. “Would I be overstepping if I told you I’ve already got everything in place?”

Tori froze en route to her room. “You’ve got everything in place? What does that mean?”

“Meetings. With two of our suspects—one old, one new.”

She felt five sets of eyes turn in her direction as she tried to make sense of Charles’s words. Still, she came up short. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Charles perched on the closest armrest he could find and took a deep breath. “Leona called me last night before she fell asleep and told me about Susie Trotter. She also told me about the web design company she’s got.”

“I’m the one who found out the name.” Margaret Louise shifted just enough to allow her chest to puff with pride. “There I was, standin’ next to that empty subway track and lookin’ at Wurly’s fancy business card when I spotted the name of the company doin’ his website.” She leaned across the open space between the couch and Charles’s chosen perch and tapped him on the back. “Wurly is gonna be Victoria’s backup in case the band she hired for her weddin’ reception gets sick or somethin’. Ain’t that right, Victoria?”

Something inside her told her not to nod, but she did it anyway in order to get back to the part of the conversation that mattered. “Go on, Charles . . .”

He reached around, gave Margaret Louise’s hand a quick squeeze, then continued on, any hesitation in his voice quickly disappearing. “Since it sounds as if Susie could have as much motive to kill John as her mother, it makes sense we sit her down and have a chat. So I e-mailed her through her website after I got off the phone with Leona and arranged a meeting for all of us at eleven thirty.”

“All of us?” she echoed.

“Well, maybe it should just be you and me at the table so as not to overwhelm her . . . but everyone else can be nearby, at a different table.”

“We meetin’ her at McCormick’s?” Margaret Louise inquired while Beatrice and Debbie began to gather up the pin-making supplies in preparation for the group’s pending departure for the day.

“No. CupKatery.” Charles shifted backward on the armrest and let his feet dangle over the side. “That way, when Doug comes in a little before one, we’ll be ready to speak to him, too.”

“Wait. How do you know Doug is coming in at one?”

“I took a chance they start baking first thing in the morning and called to ask.” Charles slipped off the armrest and walked over to his original chair. With a quick hand, he removed his jacket to reveal Caroline Trotter’s scarf. “I had the perfect reason to contact Susie and arrange a place to meet. Doug’s place being what it is provides the perfect locale, don’t you think?”

Tori knew she was staring and knew her friends were staring back at her, but she was at a loss for what to say. Sure, Margaret Louise had been a worthy investigative assistant over the past two years, with Leona and Dixie pinch-hitting a time or two, as well. But in most of those instances, they’d been following directions or taking advantage of dumb luck.

Charles, however, had taken initiative and figured out what needed to be done all on his own.

While she read. And eventually, slept.

Charles’s fingers snapped in their three-pronged formation, only this time with a little more humility and a lot less sass. “Don’t I just feel like the Neanderthal who thinks it’s funny to share my personal sounds in the middle of a crowded elevator . . .”

“Dixie does that,” Margaret Louise interjected. “But only when she’s been eatin’ too many beans.”

Beatrice rushed to Charles’s defense. “He was just trying to be helpful, Victoria. That’s all—”

“No, I get that.” She closed the gap between her original stopping place and Charles’s position beside the chair, the awe she felt at his efforts serving as her body’s propeller. “Charles . . . you are amazing. Absolutely, positively amazing.”

“Sugar, tell me something I don’t already know.”