Perfect Little Ladies Part 22

Yolanda stepped off the plane just before dusk and was greeted by a warm rush of tropical air. She was Cuban by blood, 100 percent, but she'd never had a desire to visit the Caribbean, even though Vincent had often asked her to go. She'd wondered if her disinterest had come from a secret fear that if she'd gone, she'd have wanted to stay.

It was her heritage, after all. Palm trees and steel drums and bright-colored clothes.

Dios mio, she thought. I might as well go out with Junior.

Slinging her Coach signature duffle-a gift from a happy, white-haired customer-over her shoulder, Yolanda headed straight for the rental-car counter. She had not checked any luggage: she'd been more concerned about what Belita would need overnight.

Using Poppy's credit card, she rented a Ford Escort and picked up a map of the island. Once situated, she turned on her phone and called Elinor. Thankfully, the call went through.

"It's Yolanda," she said when Elinor answered. "Are you all right?"

"No, I'm not all right. I'm stuck here on an island with a half million dollars."

"Tell me where you are. I'm coming to be with you."

"What?"

"Don't ask questions. Just say where you are. My brother and Poppy think you might be in danger."

Instead of going back to Poppy's for the dreaded house search, Poppy convinced Manny they should go to Momma's. She said there was something she had to do.

Momma was resting, so Poppy cooked supper-grilled cheese sandwiches, the only thing she knew how to make. But there was ice cream in the freezer-strawberry swirl, which Manny said was one of his favorites, unless he was lying because he was still hungry.

Never having had grandkids, Momma did not have a crib, but she did have a large cradle that Cain and Abel had shared before they'd been allowed to join Momma in bed.

Under Poppy's directive (Momma was feeling better by evening, but Poppy had suggested she stay under the covers), Lucky, Momma's companion, scrubbed down the cradle and brought it from the storeroom into the silver room, where they could keep an eye on the child while Poppy tended to her task. She lined the cradle with a soft comforter, though Belita didn't seem to care very much; she fell asleep right after her uncle Manny whispered something in Spanish, kissed her goodnight, and safely tucked her in.

"Now," Poppy said, "I'll need paper and a pen." She went to the secretary's desk opposite the grand piano and plucked out a sheath of engraved ivory paper and a ladies' platinum-and-diamond Montblanc.

She was aware that Manny's eyes were upon her as she went to the bookshelves and carefully started her task. The fact that CJ was sure Duane wasn't Elinor's lover did not mean he wasn't her blackmailer. Not that it mattered. Duane and his antics had nothing to do with Poppy's need to finally purge the weight of her own sins.

Sterling humidor, she wrote on one line. Grand Hotel, Mackinac Island, Michigan, 1992.

She moved a step to the left. Sugar sh.e.l.l, Queen Elizabeth II, 1986.

"Poppy," Manny said with a grin, "what are you doing?"

"I'm making a list. For when I go to prison. Everything I took should go back to its rightful owners. In the morning I'll tell Momma her trinkets have gone to a museum. That will make her feel good. Her special things on display in a big museum."

Suddenly he was behind her. "You don't have to do this."

"Yes. Yes, I do. I want a clean conscience, Manny. I don't want to give anyone power over my secrets anymore." She gritted her teeth to stop from crying.

Ashtray, Fountainbleau, Miami Beach, 1991.

His hands rested on her shoulders. "I can help if you want."

She shook her head. "You've helped me enough. If it weren't for you, I wouldn't have the courage to be doing this. When I'm in prison, I'll remember this, Manny. I'll remember how kind you were to me."

He turned her around, took the paper and pen from her hands, tilted her chin, and kissed her. Gently. Long. With warmth like Poppy never had known. This time, she couldn't hold back her tears.

"I'll do everything to help you get through this," Manny said as he pulled from the kiss and held her close.

She shook her head. "I'll get what I deserve, Manny. But maybe it isn't too late to help Elinor."

Kiley Kate sailed through the preliminaries like the star she was becoming. As did Morgan Johnson and Taylor LeDuc.

Grrr.

Unfortunately, Alice was not a good judge of whether or not the others had done well: Her focus had been not on the glitter of the stage but on her ten o'clock date, which had taken on a whole new importance.

She'd bought Kiley Kate a light supper, helped remove her makeup, then tucked her into bed. By now her granddaughter knew the routine: Alice left the girl's cell phone on the nightstand while she went downstairs for a "nightcap." She instructed Kiley Kate to call right away if she was afraid of being alone: to date, Kiley Kate never had.

Still, Alice felt guilty as she stepped into the elevator and pressed L for the lobby. Guilty and reluctant and no longer sure about much of anything.

She stepped into the lounge and scanned the long bar. A few couples, a few men alone, two women together, whom Alice recognized as mothers of contestants.

She didn't, however, see a man who looked like the rather bland Internet photo, no one who looked as if he wasn't there on business, no one who looked like a theme-park magician.

The clock over the bar read 10:05. Should she sit down as they'd planned? Or would Bud stand her up? Would that be a sign of things to come for a middle-aged woman in search of a man?

Oh G.o.d, Alice thought, will I become one of those?

Then again, she thought as she stared at a leather-covered barstool that sinfully beckoned, maybe being stood up wouldn't be the worst that could happen. Since she'd started having the hot flashes, decisions were easier when someone else made them.

"Alice?"

He was so soft-spoken that she'd barely heard him.

"It's me. Bud."

He was taller than she was, with silver-gray hair and a gentle smile. He was one of the men dressed like an executive. He did not look like a theme-park magician.

She followed him to a small table, where he pulled out her chair for her. After she sat down, he seated himself, toyed with the candle, and straightened the little tent card that advertised a fruity drink made of three rums.

"So," he said. "You're Alice."

"Yes," she said. "I'm from Topeka."

He smiled and asked her what she'd like to drink. She asked for a gla.s.s of Chardonnay, then the waitress appeared and he ordered her wine and one bourbon, neat.

Bourbon, Neal's favorite.

She s.h.i.+fted on the chair and tried to gather her feelings. Had Neal met his lover in a hotel bar?

"So," he said, "what do you do in Topeka?"

"I'm a hairstylist," she said suddenly, knowing Yolanda would get a good laugh out of that. "I have my own salon. I'm here at a hair-care products convention."

He nodded, as if he believed there were such things. "Divorced?"

"Seven years. No kids. You?"

"Three years. A twenty-five-year-old daughter."

Same age as Felicity. She pushed back a wave of shame that her daughters might somehow learn what she was doing. "I've never met a magician before."

"I'm not very good."

Alice laughed. Bud was charming. Maybe life without Neal wouldn't need to be horrific after all. "Have you been doing it long?"

"Years. I started at hospitals. Pediatric wards. When I finally mastered removing a string of two dozen handkerchiefs from my pocket, I moved on up to the theme parks."

"An interesting way to make a living."

Bud laughed. "Hardly a living. I'm a volunteer. In real life I'm an advertising executive. I started on Madison Avenue in New York. I came down here to get out of the cold."

Had he said he was an advertising executive? If so, this must have been a joke. Neal must have learned what she'd been doing. He must have set her up.

How dare he?

A tingle began in her toes and skated up her legs to her stomach.

"Would you rather I was merely a magician?" Bud asked.

"Actually, yes," she said. "My ex-husband was in advertising." It was a line she supposed she'd have to get used to saying.

Thirty-seven.

"So Alice got nowhere and CJ got nowhere and now everyone thinks Poppy's husband is coming to get me?"

"Something like that," Yolanda said after Elinor let her into her hotel room and locked the door securely behind her.

Yolanda sat down on a rattan chair. She was surprised Elinor was in such a mediocre room in such a mediocre hotel.

The paddle fan droned while Elinor paced. "And you've left your child and your business to come and protect me?"

Yolanda shrugged. "Someone had to. I know I'm not really one of your friends, Elinor, but I do care what happens to you." The last thing she expected was for Elinor to cry.

"Oh, Dios mio," Yolanda said, "it isn't so bad. We'll figure this out."

"No," Elinor whispered. "You don't understand. I was approached by a man. But it wasn't Duane."

"Who was it?"

"I have no idea. He came up to me last night. Right here. He wanted to buy me a drink."

"Did you let him?"

"No. I said I had to meet my husband. Then I left."

"That doesn't sound suspicious, Elinor. You're still a good-looking woman."

Elinor let the compliment go. "I saw him again late this afternoon."

"So?"

"So this time he didn't know that I saw him. He was sitting in the lobby, looking in the other direction."

"And?"

"And he had a wire coming out from his ear."

"A wire? To an iPod?"

"Or a microphone. If he's Secret Service."

Yolanda didn't pretend to know what was going on. She only knew Manny expected her to take care of Elinor, so that was her mission, and that's what she would do. For the first time, however, she wondered if her big brother was right-that they were in way over their heads.

"I'll stay here with you in the room," Yolanda said. "We'll keep out of sight until we leave tomorrow."

"Fine," Elinor replied. "But you take the bed, I'll sit in the chair. I won't fall asleep anyway."

What CJ would really love to do was call Cooper.

She walked Luna around the lake-not something she usually did after dark. But the moon was full and bright, the stars big and bountiful, and CJ needed some air. When they'd lived in Manhattan, CJ and Cooper had walked at all hours of the night, in any weather. Snowstorms had been their favorite. The West Village at Christmas, when the white lights twinkled like the stars did tonight, when CJ felt like they were in a storybook setting, d.i.c.kens, perhaps. They held hands and were quiet; there was comfort in love.

She wondered how he was doing in Denver, if the theater he managed had lived up to his expectations, if they knew how lucky they were to have a man of his talent. She wondered if he was still writing.

He'd sent a card at Christmas, another on her birthday, the way he'd done for years. Sometimes he sent a small gift: a music box he'd found in an antique shop, a hand-painted silk coin purse, a b.u.t.ton that supposedly had come from Annie Oakley's jacket. He'd often told CJ she belonged in the cla.s.s of independent, adventurous women.

The cards attached had said little of his life: He hadn't mentioned if he was involved with someone else.

For her part, CJ sent things like red maple leaves and a jar of pure maple syrup on his October birthday, a silly keychain that read I NY. A few years ago she'd found a Playbill from the original production of Death of a Salesman. She'd been planning on framing it, but she decided it was too intimate a gift, so she wrapped it in brown paper and packed it in the bottom of a drawer.

She folded her lightweight shawl around her shoulders and smiled. It was always nice to think about Cooper. It reminded her that she really did have happy times to remember.

She wondered now what he'd have to say about Elinor.