Sudden Mischief Part 24

"See, you are blackmailing me."

"Yes I am. You change your mind about coffee?"

"I... yes," she said and her eyes s.h.i.+fted. "I'll have some, black."

"Fine, and if you're not here when I come back with it I will show these pictures to your husband."

"How do I know you even have the pictures?"

"There are four of them altogether," I said. "They were in with some love letters signed 'J' in a s...o...b..x under Brad Sterling's bed."

I took one out of my jacket pocket. "Here's one of them," I said.

She looked and quickly looked away. "Put that away," she said.

Under the careful tan her face and neck flushed richly. I put the picture back in my jacket pocket.

"Large coffee?" I said.

She looked around the room. No one was paying any attention. She nodded yes to my question and I went up and got her a cup and one for me, cream, two sugars, and went back to the table with them. She had crossed her legs, which was a good thing, and was leaning back a little in her chair, being serene and ladylike in a difficult situation. I put her coffee down in front of her carefully, without spilling any, and put mine in front of me and got back in my chair. We sat. While we sat I surveyed the room. No sign of anyone intending to shoot me. Jeanette didn't touch her coffee. Susan did that too. You gave her something to eat or drink and she allowed it to sit there for a while. Maybe it was a gender thing. When presented with something ingestible, I began at once to ingest it. Jeanette met my eyes in a long look.

"Did you like what you saw in the pictures?" she said.

"Absolutely," I said. "My congratulations to your trainer."

"I'm not ashamed of my body."

"I'm not ashamed of it either."

"You said something a moment ago about spending the night," Jeanette said.

"It was an attempt at levity," I said.

"We could, you know."

"Spend the night together?" I said.

She smiled at me. It was a smile full of invitation and promise. A nice smile, very practiced.

"And all I have to do is give you the pictures?"

"It might be a night to remember," Jeanette said.

She made a small show of looking at her watch. It was gold and silver and had a big face.

"Maybe," she smiled again, "a day and night to remember."

"That a Cartier watch?" I said.

"Yes," she said, "a Panther."

"Nice," I said.

She looked at her coffee and didn't drink it.

With her eyes demurely on the coffee cup she said, "Are you interested in my offer?"

"More than the spoken word can tell," I said. "But no thank you."

She looked up and there was something like fear on her face. I knew what it was. She'd tried money and she'd tried s.e.x. Neither had worked. There wasn't anything else.

"Well," she said, "what the f.u.c.k do you want?"

"I'd like you to tell me about the s.e.xual hara.s.sment suit against Brad Sterling," I said.

"You'll have to talk with my husband," she said.

"Mm umm," I said.

"What do you mean, 'umm hmm'?"

"I mean you want to think that through a little?"

"Why should I?" she said. "He's my husband, he's a brilliant lawyer. You'll have to talk with him."

"Does he know?" I said.

"About me and Brad?"

"Yes.

"No."

"Does he know that the lawsuit is a fraud?"

"Fraud?"

"Fraud."

"I don't know what you are talking about. I admit to a brief period of foolish s.e.xual intimacy. But that doesn't mean he has the right to hara.s.s me."

"May I call you Jeanette?" I said.

"Of course."

She smiled when she said it. The response and the smile were automatic. Neither was appropriate to the situation.

"Jeanette," I said, "you're in a mess. And the only way out of the mess is for me to help you. But if I'm going to help you, you really have to stop trying to outwit me. I don't mean to be unkind, but you're ill equipped."

She flushed again and her eyes blurred a little as if she were going to cry.

"Here's the mess you're in," I said. "I may have a few details wrong, but I'm pretty sure about the, ah, broad outlines of it. You meet Brad Sterling while he's running Galapalooza and you're volunteering. Maybe you were interested in doing something charitable. Maybe you and your girlfriends just thought it would be fun, maybe meet some celebrities. Brad's an attractive guy, and you get involved. Then one way or another your husband gets wind of it. Maybe you love your husband, maybe you like the life he gives you, whatever, you want to save your marriage. So you say it's not what it looks like: It's a case of s.e.xual hara.s.sment."

She was sitting very still, her coffee still undisturbed in front of her. She was trying to hold my gaze but not doing it very well. Her eyes were definitely teary.

"It's not a bad ploy. But you know who and what your husband is. And you should have guessed that he'd sue the b.a.s.t.a.r.d."

The tears that had blurred her eyes were beginning to spill. She picked up her napkin and blotted them, carefully, so as not to spoil the eye makeup.

"So," I said, "you got your girlfriends to help join in, make it more credible, take some of the heat off you. And your husband sues on behalf of all of you."

"He flirted with all of us," Jeanette said.

"I'm sure he did."

"So there really was some hara.s.sment," she said.

"I'm not sure flirtation's hara.s.sment," I said. "But that's not my issue."

"Well, it's an important issue," she said.

"Sure," I said. "What I don't get is why Sterling is so pa.s.sive about it."

"Maybe he felt guilty," she said.

"About what?"

"Well, he was having an affair with a married woman," she said.

"Sure," I said. "That's probably it."

We were quiet. She dabbed again at her eyes. They looked fine.

"That about how it went?" I said.

She nodded.

"You wouldn't have any thoughts on where Brad might be now, would you?"

"No."

"You know he's a suspect in a murder case?" I said.

She nodded.

"See any connection between your lawsuit and the murder?" I said.

"My... good G.o.d no," she said. "What could that have to do with murder?"

I shrugged.

"Ripples in a pond," I said.

"Ripples?"

"Know anybody named Richard Gavin?"

"No."

"Know why your husband would hire a couple of sluggers to scare me off the case?"

"Sluggers?" She wrinkled her nose at the word. "My husband?" She was horrified. "My husband certainly wouldn't..."

"I'll take that as a no," I said. "Ever hear of an organization called Civil Streets?"

She said, "Certainly."

At last an answer.

"It's one of the beneficiary organizations for Galapalooza," she said proudly.

"Know what it does?"

"I believe it is a rehabilitating agency for criminals." She corrected herself. "Former criminals."

"Know how much they received from Galapalooza?"

"It was all pre-allotted," she said, "by share. How many tables everyone sold, that sort of thing."

"But you don't know how much they actually got."

"No."

"You know how much anyone got?" I said.

"I heard that the costs were so high that they weren't able to distribute as much to charity as they had hoped."

"I heard that too," I said.

We sat quietly. She had never touched her coffee. I had drunk all of mine and was thinking maybe she'd had the better idea.

"Anything else you can tell me?" I said.

"About what?"

"About Brad Sterling or Galapalooza or the guy got killed in Brad Sterling's office, guy named Cony Brown, or a woman named Carla Quagliozzi or what you plan to do about the s.e.xual hara.s.sment suit?"

"I don't know... What do you mean about the s.e.xual hara.s.sment suit?"