original that that?”
“Odd, I thought it was clever.” When he came to her, she saw that her attempt at humor had fallen well short of the mark. “If anyone caught the person who’s sending them, it would hardly interest the police, would it? Harmless, even shopworn sayings. It would be hard to prove there was anything threatening about them. But we know differently.”
“If you’re going to tell me to give up the book—”
“I think I understand the futility of that one by now. Julia, don’t block me out of this.” He touched her, just a hand to her hair. “Let me listen to the tapes. I want to help you.”
She couldn’t turn away this time. It wasn’t arrogance, it wasn’t ego. It was love. “All right. As soon as we get home.”
Even with Julia out of the country, Lyle found a lot to interest him in the comings and goings of the guest house. A cleaning crew had spent two full days on the place. Trucks had hauled away broken furniture, shattered glass, torn curtains. He’d taken a peek at the interior before the crew had arrived. It had looked as though someone had thrown one hell of a party.
He was sorry he’d missed it. Damn sorry. The name of the partygoer might have been worth a tidy sum. But that particular afternoon he’d been happily boinking the upstairs maid. He now considered the fact that that brief—but very gratifying—fuck had probably cost him several thousand.
Still, there were other ways to earn a living. Lyle had big dreams and a list of priorities. Right up top was a Porsche. Nothing impressed the babes more than a cool dude in a hot car. He wanted his own place, a beach house where he could sit on his deck and watch all those teeny bikinis and what was packed into them. He wanted a Rolex, too, and the wardrobe to go with it. Once he was set up, picking up classy women would be like swatting flies.
Lyle figured he was on his way. He could almost smell the sunblock and sweat.
He kept careful notes in his cramped handwriting. What was taken away from the guest house, what was brought in. Who made the deliveries. He’d even had a key made so he could move through the house at will. It had been a little dicier getting into the main house, but he’d chosen his time well and had managed to make a copy of Nina Soloman’s phone log and appointment book.
Travers had nearly caught him sneaking into Eve’s bedroom. Nosy, tight-assed bitch guarded the house like a junkyard dog. He’d been disappointed that Eve hadn’t kept a diary or journal. That would have been worth big bucks. But he had found some interesting drugs in her bedside table, and some strange notes in her makeup drawer.
What the hell was she doing with notes that said stuff like “let sleeping dogs lie”? Lyle decided to keep the pills and the notes his own little secret until he could figure out what they might be worth.
It had been a cinch to get information from the guard at the gate, Joe. He liked to talk, and when you added a beer and some stories of your own, he got diarrhea of the mouth.
Even gone, Eve received lots of visitors.
Michael Torrent had been driven away after learning that Eve would be on location for the next couple of weeks. Gloria DuBarry had dropped by to see Eve, then had changed to Julia on learning Eve was away. She had driven herself, and according to Joe had been teary-eyed when she’d found no one at home.
A couple of paparazzi had tried to get through disguised as delivery men, but Joe had weeded them out. Joe’s ability to sniff out press was revered among residents of Beverly Hills.
He’d admitted Victor Flannigan, then had let him out again less than twenty minutes later. Eve’s agent, Maggie Castle, had gone in as well, and stayed twice as long.
Lyle gathered the information. He had what he considered a very professional report ready. Maybe he should go into P.I. work, he thought as he dressed for the evening. On TV those guys were always getting the chicks.
He chose a pair of black thong-style bikinis and gave his favorite member a quick pat. Some unsuspecting woman was going to get lucky tonight. He wiggled into black leather pants, then zipped a matching jacket over his tight red undershirt. Women, he knew, really went for a guy in leather.
He’d deliver his report, pick up the cash. Then he’d cruise a few clubs until he chose the lucky lady.
Julia hadn’t been sure what she’d think of Rory Winthrop’s current wife. But whatever she’d been expecting, it wasn’t that she would both like and admire Lily Teasbury.
Onscreen, the actress usually played the frothy, flighty heroine who suited her busty blond looks and guileless blue eyes. At first glance it was tempting to typecast her as someone who giggled and wriggled a lot.
It took Julia less than five minutes to revise her opinion.
Lily was a sharp, witty, ambitious woman who exploited her looks rather than being exploited by them. She was also very much at home in the traditional parlor of the Knights-bridge house, looking very cool, very British, and very wifely in a simple blue Givenchy.
“I wondered when you’d finally visit,” she said to Paul as she served aperitifs. “We’ve been married three months.”
“I don’t get to London often.”
Julia had been on the receiving end of that long, piercing look, and admired Lily for standing up under it with such apparent ease.
“So I’m told. Well, you’ve picked a miserable season for this visit. Is this your first visit to London, Miss Summers?” “Yes, it is.”
“A pity about all this sleet. Then again, I always think it’s best to see a city at its worst—like a man—that way you can decide if you can really live with all the flaws.”
Lily sat, smiled, and sipped her vermouth.
“That’s Lily’s subtle way of reminding me she knows all of mine,” Rory put in.
“Not subtle at all,” Lily said. She touched a hand to his briefly, but—Julia thought—with a great deal of affection. “It wouldn’t do to be subtle when I’m about to be treated to reminiscences about one of the great love affairs of my husband’s life.” She beamed at Julia. “Don’t worry, I’m not jealous, just avidly curious. I don’t believe in jealousy, particularly over things past. As to the future, I’ve already warned Rory that if he becomes tempted to repeat his past mistakes, I won’t be one to weep and wail and nag or run screaming to my solicitor.” She sipped again, delicately. “I’ll simply kill him quickly, cleanly, in cold blood, and without a moment’s regret.”
Rory laughed, then toasted his wife. “She terrifies me.”
As the conversation flowed around him, Paul began to listen, to feel, with more interest. He wouldn’t have believed it, but he began to think that something had clicked, something solid, between his father and the woman he had married. A woman younger than the man’s only child—and one who, at first glance, had easily been dismissed as another of the big-breasted, pouty-lipped bimbos his father often dallied with.
But Lily Teasbury wasn’t like any of the others. After he’d worked beyond an old and established resentment of one of his father’s women, he watched with a writer’s eye, listened with a writer’s ear. He saw the subtle gestures, glances, heard the timbre of voices, a quick laugh. This, he realized with no little astonishment, was a marriage.
There was an ease and companionship that he had never sensed between his father and his own mother. There was a friendship he had seen in only one of his father’s marriages. When Eve Benedict had been his wife.
When they went in for dinner, it was with a sense of relief and wonder. The relief came when he realized Lily would not fall into either of the two categories so many of Rory’s women had. She would not pretend there was an instant familial relationship between them. Nor would she allude, privately, that she was open to a more intimate relationship.
His wonder came from the fact that his own instincts were insisting that his father might at long last have found someone he could live with.
Julia sampled the pressed duck and eased her left foot free of her shoe. There was a fire in the hearth behind Rory’s back and a waterfall of crystal lig
hts over their heads. The room with its tapestries and glinting display cabinets might have been dauntingly formal, but comfort seeped through by the way the two-pedestaled Regency table was left unextended, by the vase of fairy roses as a centerpiece, by the scent of applewood, and the quiet hiss of sleet. She slipped her other foot free.
“I haven’t told you how wonderful you were last night,” Julia said to Rory. “Or how much I appreciated your going to the trouble to send tickets.”
“No trouble at all,” Rory assured her. “I was delighted you and Paul would brave the elements and attend.”
“I wouldn’t have missed it.”
“Do you enjoy Lear?” Lily asked her.
“It’s very powerful, stirring. Tragic.”
“All those bodies heaped up at the end—really all due to an old man’s vanity and folly.” She winked at her husband. “Rory’s marvelous in the part, but I suppose I prefer comedy. It’s as difficult to pull off, but at least when one crawls off the stage, it’s with laughter ringing in one’s ears rather than wails of lamentation.”
Chuckling, Rory directed his comment to Julia. “Lily likes happy endings. Early in our relationship I took her to see A Long Day’s Journey into Night.” Rory forked up some wild rice. “Afterward, she told me that if I wanted to sit around for several hours absorbing misery, I’d have to do it with someone else. Next time around I took her to a Marx Brothers festival.”
“So I married him.” She reached over to touch her fingertips to his. “After I discovered he knew whole blocks of dialogue from A Night at the Opera.”
“And I thought it was because I’m so sexy.”
When she smiled at him, a tiny dimple winked at the left corner of her mouth. “Darling, sex is limited to bed. A man who understands and appreciates comic genius is a man you can live with in the morning.” She leaned back again and fluttered her lashes at Julia. “Wouldn’t you agree, dear?”
“Paul’s never offered to take me anywhere but a basketball game,” she said without thinking. Before she could regret it, Lily burst into delighted laughter.
“Rory, what a pathetic father you must have been if your son can’t do better than a bunch of sweaty men tossing a ball at a hoop.”
“I certainly was, but the boy always had his own ideas about everything, including the ladies.”
“And what,” Paul asked as he calmly continued to eat, “is wrong with basketball?” Since his gaze was leveled at Julia, she thought it prudent to give a noncommittal shrug. She looked amazingly beautiful when she was flustered, he thought. Her skin heated up, and she had that sexy way of nibbling on her bottom lip. He decided he’d be certain to nibble on it, and other areas, himself a little later.
“You wouldn’t go with me,” he reminded her.
“No.”
“If I’d asked you to, say, a Three Stooges retrospective, would you have gone with me?”
“No.” A smile tugged at her lips. “Because you made me nervous.”
He reached across the table to toy with her fingers. “And if I asked you now?”
“You still make me nervous, but I’d probably risk it.”
As he picked up his wine, he looked toward his father. “It seems my ideas work well enough. Lily, the duck is excellent.”
“Why, thank you.” She chuckled into her wine. “Thank you very much.”
It wasn’t until coffee and brandy were served back in the cozy sitting room that the subject of Eve Benedict was broached again. Julia was still casting around in her brain for the most tactful way to begin the interview, when Lily opened the door.
“I was sorry we weren’t able to attend the party Eve gave recently. Surprised to be included in the invitation, and sorry to miss it.” She tucked up her legs cozily, revealing their long length. “Rory tells me that she’s always given incredible parties.”
“Did you give many when you were married?” Julia asked
Rory.
“Several actually. Small, intimate dinner parties, informal barbecues, glitzy soirees.” He circled a hand in the air. His gold cuff links glinted in the firelight. “Your birthday party, Paul, do you remember?”
“It would be hard to forget.” Because he understood it was an interview, he looked at Julia. He noted Lily had settled back to listen. “She hired circus performers—clowns, jugglers, a wire walker. Even an elephant.”
“And the gardener nearly quit when he saw the state of the lawn the next day.” Rory chuckled and swirled his brandy. “Living with Eve brought few dull moments.”
“If you could use one word to describe her?”
“Eve?” he thought for a moment. “Indomitable, I suppose. Nothing ever held her back for long. I remember her losing a part to Charlotte Miller—a tough pill for Eve to swallow. She went on to play Sylvia in Spider’s Touch, won in Cannes that year, and made everyone forget that Charlotte had even done a film at the same time. About twenty-five, thirty years ago it was becoming difficult to find good roles— actresses of a certain age were not courted by studios. Eve went to New York, plucked a plum in Madam Requests on Broadway. She ran with it for a year, won a Tony, and had Hollywood begging her to come home. If you’ll look back at her career, you’ll see that she’s never chosen a bad script. Oh, there were some uneven ones in the beginning certainly. The studio pushed her and she had no choice but to follow. Yet in each one, even the poorest of them, her performance was that of a star. It takes more than talent, even more than ambition, to achieve that. It takes power.”
“He’d love to work with her again,” Lily put in. “And I’d love to see them do it.”
“It wouldn’t be awkward for you?” Julia asked.
“Not in the least. Perhaps if I didn’t understand the business, it might be difficult. And if I weren’t sure that Rory values his life.” She laughed, rearranging those smooth, shapely legs. “In any case, I have to respect a woman who can remain friends, real friends, with a man she was once married to. My ex and I still detest each other.”
“Which is why Lily hasn’t left divorce as an option for me.” Rory reached out to link his hand with hers. “Eve and I liked each other, you see. When she wanted out of the marriage, she went about it in a courteous, reasonable way. Since the failure was mine, I could hardly hold grudges.”
“You say it was yours—because of other women.”
“Primarily. I imagine my … lack of discretion where women are concerned is one of the reasons Paul’s always been so cautious. Wouldn’t you say?”
“Selective,” Paul corrected his father.
“I was not a good husband, I was not a good father. The examples I set in each were less than admirable.”
Paul shifted uncomfortably. “I did well enough.”
“With little help from me. Julia’s here for honesty. Aren’t you?”
“Yes, but if I could say—as someone on the outside—I think you were a better father than you realize. From what I’ve been told, you never pretended to be anything but what you were.”
His eyes warmed. “Thank you for that. I have learned that a child can benefit as much from bad examples as he can good ones. Depending on the child. Paul was always a bright one. Therefore he has been discriminating where the opposite sex is concerned, and he has little patience for the careless gambler. It was my lack of discrimination, and my carelessness that Eve finally tired of.”
“I’ve heard you’re interested in gambling. You own horses?”
“A few. I’ve always had luck in games of chance, perhaps that’s why I’ve found it hard to resist a casino, a leggy Thoroughbred, the turn of a card. Eve didn’t object to the gambling. She enjoyed a few games herself now and again. It was the people one tended to come into contact with. Bookies aren’t normally the cream of society. Eve avoided most of the professional gamblers. Though several years after our divorce she did become involved with someone closely tied to the trade. That, too, was my fault, as I introduced them. At the time I didn’t know myself how involved he
was, Later, it was an introduction I came to regret.”
“Gambling?” Though her instincts went on full alert, Julia took a casual sip of wine. “I don’t recall coming across anything in my research about Eve being involved with gambling.”
“Not with gambling. As I said, Eve never had much interest in the delights of wagering. I suppose I couldn’t call him a gambler. One isn’t when the odds are always stacked in one’s favor. The polite term, I suppose, would be businessman.”
Julia glanced at Paul. The look in his eyes brought one name shooting into her mind. “Michael Delrickio?”
“Yes. A frightening man. I met him in Vegas on one of my more delightful hot streaks. I was playing craps at the Desert Palace. The dice were like beautiful women eager to please that night.”
“Rory often refers to gambling in female terms,” Lily put in. “When he’s losing, he attaches very creative female terms to dice or cards.” She gave him an indulgent smile before she rose to pour more brandy. “Such a filthy night out. Are you sure you won’t have anything stronger than coffee, Julia?”
“No, really, thank you.” Though impatient with the interruption, her voice was only mildly curious as she steered the conversation back. “You were telling me about Michael Delrickio.”
“Hmmm.” Rory stretched out his legs and cupped his snifter in both hands. Julia had time to think he looked the perfect English gentleman in repose—the fire crackling at his back, brandy warming in his hands. All that was missing was a pair of hounds to slumber at his feet. “Yes, I met Delrickio at the Palace after I had cleaned up at the tables. He offered to buy me a drink, professed to being a fan. I had nearly refused. Such interludes can often be uncomfortable, but I learned that he owned the casino. Or, more accurately, his organization owned it, and others.”
“You said he was frightening. Why?”