The Hinky Velvet Chair (24 page)

o0o

“I want twice the time you gave my friend,” Griffy said.

“Costs more,” the instructor said.

“I’ll pay extra.” Already high on anticipation, she checked
the harness links and couplings, ran her hands over the lines of the parasail,
and lifted her head to sniff the lake breeze. The blood sang in her veins. “I
want to fly before it gets dark.”

It was just as glorious as she had hoped.

Pink light washed between the buildings to the west and
flooded the beach, making the crowds look as happy as she felt. The wind lifted
the parasail higher. Through the harness lines, she could feel the sail as if
it were part of her body. Below, the lake spun by like the ground under a
roller coaster. She passed gulls on the wing as if they were standing still.
Griffy let the wind carry her laughter away.

Faces on the beach turned up to her. It was like stripping,
only she didn’t have to glue pasties on. She could just
be.

She waved. Everybody waved back, and cheers floated up from
the beach. She felt marvelous. Maybe she
could
start over. Sovay had been telling her that she had no future.
But I have.
She didn’t have to feel
trapped with Virgil, or lost without him. The wind carried her along.
I’m free.

There was her picnic. Sovay was drinking, looking bored.
Virgil and Clay were tussling over the field glasses. She blew them a kiss. How
old and small Virgil looked down there, all by himself. No matter what she did,
he never seemed to realize he wasn’t alone.
She
had never felt alone
when
he
was there.

She felt alone now. It was glorious. She felt powerful and
free and happy.

The boat slowed and the parasail dipped lower. Griffy
sighed. That instructor must be reeling her in already. The boat whirled past
the breakwater and began its turning arc. She sank lower still. The sail
carried her smoothly over the pink and blue waves.

Down on the sand, Virgil stared up at her. Sovay came to his
side, turned him to face her, and kissed him on the lips.

The sight struck Griffy over the heart. She slipped to the
side in her seat, and the instructor, with a look of alarm, reeled her in to
the flight deck. She fumbled out of her harness, blundered off the flight deck,
tripped, and fell headfirst into the lake.

She sank, not caring.

She was thinking,
I
can make it without him. It’ll hurt, and I’ll be lonely. But I’m not broke. I
can make it.

The instructor hauled her out of the water. “Are you okay?”
he kept yelling.

Fierce, hot pain tore at her heart, though she was dripping
and shivering. “I’m fine.”
I’ve lost my
old buzzard. But I’m going to live.
She hoped her tears wouldn’t show.

Here came Clay, looking panicked.

Virgil took the towel out of Clay’s hands and wrapped it
around her shoulders. Then he pulled her into his arms.

Griffy blinked against his bony shoulder. “Virgil? I’m okay.”

As he led her away from the breakwater, their eyes met for
one moment. She almost tripped.

In eighteen years, Virgil had never looked at her like that.
Like he wanted something from her. With his heart showing.

Her breath caught.

In the next instant he had handed her off to Clay.

Clay sat her at the picnic table and poured her a
glass of wine and rubbed her back through the towel.

Virgil sat across the table and turned his attention
to Sovay.

And yet. For the next twenty minutes Virgil’s knee touched
hers under the table. He spoke to Sovay, but whenever Sovay’s eye was off him,
he smiled at Griffy. Griffy was so stunned that she forgot to smile back. Sovay
flirted with Dr. Kauz, with Clay, with Virgil, and Griffy sat like a mummy,
wrapped in her loss.

Yet every now and then Virgil would look at her. It was a
secret look that made her heart thump.

This wasn’t the face he used for business. It seemed as if
he wasn’t thinking about his face, which couldn’t be true, not Virgil. She
studied him by the light of bursting red and yellow stars, feeling her heart
jump around, feeling more noticed by him than she had since that first bottle
of champagne eighteen years ago in the back of a limo in Atlantic City.

Halfway through the fireworks Dr. Kauz took Sovay for a
walk. They hadn’t returned by the time Mike the chauffeur came to pack up their
baskets. In the dark, by colored starlight, Virgil squeezed her hand. Numbed
between the thrill of hope and the ache of loss, Griffy felt as if her feet
didn’t touch the ground.

Behind her, Clay murmured to Mike. She walked homeward,
ignoring them, her head high, her heart in turmoil.

Virgil kept hold of her hand.

It’s just for one
night, he’ll be over it tomorrow, he’ll have to tell me it’s over sometime.

Then she stopped thinking, because there might never be
another moment like this one.

o0o

Jewel fiddled with the tracking unit. The manual said it
could find the anklet within twenty-five feet. She panned slowly around the
room. A string of numbers appeared on the tiny screen. “Groovy. What does this
mean?” She consulted the manual. Ah, that was her longitude and latitude.

Now she needed to determine which anklet was to be located.

Fudge. They hadn’t bothered to check which anklet was which.
Just snapped ’em on and let ’em run like they were freaking cheetah cubs. “Can
you say ‘half-assed?’” she muttered.

She shuffled out of her room, watching the screen. New
numbers appeared. The first numbers changed as she moved, the last digits
shifting slowly. “So that’s me. And this number down here is the anklet I’m
tracking.”

The anklet, she realized, was only a few digits away from
the coordinates representing her.

That must be Randy’s anklet! It must be in the house! She
felt triumphant until she realized she already knew that.

All she had to do was move around until the numbers matched.

Keeping her eyes on the screen, she slipped out of her room
and crept up the corridor.

o0o

The whole party stopped at the entrance to the pedestrian
tunnel and looked back. A humongous fireworks star burst over the water, first
a big red bang, then a smaller white star, then a yellow star that popped and
sizzled, then an even larger green star that made Griffy think of the color of
Jewel’s aura in Dr. Kauz’s pictures. Green light flashed on Clay and on the
chauffeur with his arms full of chairs and baskets. The green lasted a long
time before it faded.

Sovay still hadn’t returned with Dr. Kauz.

She felt Virgil’s arms slide around her from behind. He
squeezed. “I’m going to be seventy tomorrow,” he whispered.

Her breath caught. “Yes.” She kept her eyes on the sky.

“I’ve missed you these past few weeks. Come upstairs?”

“Our guests,” she choked out.

“Are grownups. Clay can take care of them.”

She swallowed a lump. “Okay.”

Jewel tracked Randy to a door at the end of the corridor on
the second floor. Pulse quickening, she turned off the tracking unit and tried
the doorknob. It turned.

Inside, the room was lit by streetlight. Big paintings
covered two walls. The windows bowed out, showing Marine Drive and the
fireworks through many small panes. Master bedroom. Virgil’s. Where else would
he hide something the size of a bed?

She closed the door and ran to the bed, a high, queen-size
sleigh model with a curving headboard and footboard, piled with pillows and
covered with a patchwork quilt. Sovay’s bed!

Jewel lay her hand on the quilt.
Randy?

Her palm tingled.

She was about to hop up on the bed. Then she remembered the
massage table and seaweed on the ceiling and ran back to lock the door.
My God, I’m shaking.
Better not tell
Randy how much she had missed him. Wait, where was the anklet? Find that first.

She went over the bed until she located the anklet, wedged
between the headboard and the frame. It was small and black and easily missed
if you were, say, rolling the bed down the corridor to that so-convenient
service elevator. She pocketed the anklet.

The floor creaked outside the door.

Jewel snatched up the tracking unit and slid under the bed.

The locked bedroom door opened and the light flashed on.

She held her breath. If a maid had come to vac under the
bed, she was dead.

Not a sound but the faraway trilling of the air conditioner.

A pair of men’s dress shoes with thick, soft, black soles
approached the bed. Someone rummaged in the nightstand drawer. He opened and
shut dresser drawers, then opened the walk-in closet. Jewel eased herself
toward the footboard and peeked.

It was Mellish.

He looked big and scary in his dark butler clothes.

She scootched deeper under the bed and lay still, hugging
the tracking unit and inhaling fluff.

What the hell?

A guy with Virgil’s money, of course, must attract crooks.

Maybe Mellish was working with Sovay. She could find all
Virgil’s treasures, bump Virgil off when she was married to him, and then — get
Mellish to burgle the place?

Too complicated. Successful crooks kept it simple.

Her legs were stiffening up, squished under the bed. Then
she realized she felt another sensation, a familiar touch like a hand on her
tush in the middle of the night, asking in Braille,
Are you awake?

Randy.
Shit.
Not
now!

Not now!
she tried
to tell him by ferocious telepathy.

A warm feeling flooded her, a big joyous-puppy welcome.

Not
now! She
squirmed to another spot under the bed.

From the closet, Mellish gave a satisfied-sounding grunt.
Jewel rolled closer to the edge to see what he’d found.

At that moment, voices sounded in the hall.

Mellish whisked into the closet and closed it.

A moment later the bedroom door opened.

“I’m not the first woman you ever got out of that strip
joint,” Griffy was saying with fond severity.

“No, but you’re the best. You stuck with me, Griffy.” Jewel
peeked. Yikes. That syrupy, husky voice was Virgil’s?

Their two sets of feet came close together and Jewel felt
the hairs rise on the back of her neck.

Griffy made a little happy sighing sound. “Hey, is that the
same bed we had?”

No! No, no, no!
Distract her, Virgil!
Jewel prayed, squinching her eyes shut and crossing
all her fingers and toes.

There was a smooch sound. Virgil said, “I think I’d better
shave,” in a lewd tone. He went into the bathroom.

Whew!
Jewel
breathed again.

Griffy moved out of Jewel’s sightline.

The closet door opened silently. Mellish’s black shoes moved
past the bed toward the bedroom door. The door opened.

Griffy squeaked.

“Will there be anything further, Miss Griffin?” Mellish said
in a bored voice.

“I didn’t hear you come in!”

“I am sorry, Miss. In the future, I will knock louder.”

“Oh. Well, no, thank you. That will be all. That is, I don’t
know if Ms. Sacheverell and Dr. Kauz have come back—”

“Yes, Miss. Still no sign of Lord Darner, Miss,” Mellish
added, sounding disapproving.

Splashing noises came from the bathroom.

“What?” Griffy sounded distracted.

“Lord Darner. He has not returned to the house.”

“I’m sure it’s none of your business,” Griffy snapped.

Attababy, Griffy!
Jewel grinned under the bed.

“The cook, Miss, would like to know how many there will be
for breakfast.”

“The cook,
Mister,
can figure it out tomorrow morning. I might not come downstairs, myself. Or I
might. You can go now.”

“Yes, Miss.” The door shut behind the burglar-butler, and
Jewel prayed that Virgil would invite Griffy into the shower.

“What was that?” Virgil said, coming out of the bathroom.

“Mellish,” Griffy said with loathing. “He gives me the
heebie jeebies. I wish we could get rid of him!”

“Never mind, old girl.” The lights clicked off. “They’ll all
be gone in a few days.”

“You mean that?” Their feet shuffled within Jewel’s view in
the dimness.
Not again.
“You used to
take me out for dinner. When the job would be over.”

Silence for a moment. “No more jobs,” Virgil said softly.

A longer silence. Jewel imagined she could hear kissing,
which kind of icked her out, and then Griffy said, “Do you mean when this job
with Sovay is over?” and Jewel heard tension in her voice. “Or is this our last
night?” She seemed in pain but under control.

Jewel’s heart ached for her.

“Sweetheart,” Virgil said in a breaking voice. “Give me just
a little more time.”

They sat down on the bed, making the springs creak over Jewel’s
head. She felt Randy’s cloud of need trying to draw her up against the bottom
of the bed like a big old horndog magnet.