“Why would she want to do that when you send such fascinating people to visit with her? There’s Clyde from Accounting. He comes—what is it?—three times a week? Hoskins from Internal Affairs. And my favorite: Mrs. Simpson from Foreign. What a jolly lot they are.”
“And she has Goodwin to mow her grass. I hear he’s half in love with her. Maybe she’s the grandmother he never had.”
“Speaking of which, I think you’d better get a real gardener in there to look after the place. It looks good now, but it won’t last. And my Dana knows good gardening.”
Jeff gave Roger a hard look. “You can’t possibly be thinking of allowing Dana to visit her again.”
Roger gave a laugh. “What am I supposed to do? Forbid my wife to visit a woman I’m not supposed to know? Besides, Althea must have asked them to keep their visit a secret because Dana hasn’t said a word to me about it. What about you? Did Cassie tell you she spent the morning having tea with the Great Lady?”
“Not a word,” Jeff said, “but I’ll get it out of her.”
“Spoken like an unmarried man.”
“I was married,” Jeff spat out, “but you know how that ended.”
“Yeah,” Roger said, his voice lowered. “Listen, I know you just want to protect the women, but I don’t know how to do it without telling them too much. I think we should let the three of them have their little secret. After all, what trouble could they get into? Althea is how old now?”
“Not even the United States government is powerful enough to find out that information. The woman has four passports that we know of, and each one has a different birth date.”
“Okay, but we agree that she’s an old woman, so how much bad can she do? Her days of sticking her nose into the governments of foreign countries are over. Besides, maybe meeting a great actress will cheer Dana up.”
“Still down, is she?”
Roger rolled his eyes. “Skylar is a real bitch to her. Sometimes I want to…”
“Yeah, I know. Strangle her.”
Roger laughed. “I wouldn’t quite put it that way, but I could see that. Is she really nasty to Cassie?”
“Horrible.”
“And Elsbeth?”
Jeff smiled. “Except for one hilarious incident involving a jacket, when Skylar makes one of her remarks meant to draw blood, Cassie just lowers her head and takes it. She’s a pouter. She goes into her room and holds on to her wounds. But Elsbeth is like me.”
“What does that mean? She’s devious, underhanded, and living more than one life?”
“Exactly,” Jeff said, smiling. “When Skylar makes a remark that Elsbeth doesn’t like, my daughter gets her back. When we went on the trip to DC and had to go to the formal embassy party, Skylar was hysterical because her makeup bag was missing. It was night, we were late, and she didn’t have so much as a tube of mascara. When my daughter is around, Skylar refuses to take off her shoes because of all the things she’s found in them.”
Roger laughed. “With your daughter’s ancestry, how can she be anything but devious? Tell me, have you ever seen Elsbeth do anything to Skylar’s possessions?”
“Not one single thing,” Jeff said with pride. “Nor has Dad.”
Roger gave a low whistle. “I am impressed. And here I thought she was an ordinary little girl.”
“She is, and she’s mad about Cassie.”
“Who isn’t? Last time I saw her at the pool in that red swimsuit, I—” He broke off at the look Jeff gave him. “Just kidding. I’m happy with my wife, even if she is the gloomiest person on the planet right now.”
Jeff was frowning. He didn’t like the references to Cassie in a swimsuit. She was built like a real woman: big on top, big on the bottom, with a twenty-four-inch waist in the middle. More than once when he’d seen her and his daughter getting ready to go to the club pool he’d had to leave the room and get into a cold shower. “Okay, we’ll let the women have their little social mornings, but let’s keep an eye on them.”
“Aye, aye, captain,” Roger said mockingly. He looked at his watch.
“I have to go or Dana will think I’m having an affair.”
“I think she already does. Cassie hinted that she thinks you’re doing something you shouldn’t on that boat.”
“I am,” Roger said, grinning, then he lost his smile. “You don’t mean…not another woman? Dana couldn’t think I’m having—” He shook his head in disbelief. “Anyway, it’s a good thing that young Brent didn’t believe Althea’s story. He did just as you’ve taught him and checked it out before calling for backup. He showed me tapes from two cameras that clearly show that she fired the shots.”
“Thank heaven for hidden cameras.”
Roger chuckled. “Hidden? I hope you don’t mean you think they’re hidden from Althea. She turned to the one that’s embedded in the wrought-iron casing of a flowerpot and said, ‘I’m ready for my close-up now, Mr. Goodwin.’”
“Why was I given the job of guarding her?” Jeff groaned, running his hand over his face. “I’d rather take on the Mafia.”
“We know why you took it on,” Roger said quietly.
Jeff looked away for a moment. At the time, he had a pregnant wife, and the agency had offered him a low mortgage on a great house in an outstanding community. The catch was that his new house would be next door to a mansion that would house a living treasure: Althea Fairmont. At the time, all he knew about her was that she’d made some great movies and she’d helped the United States in time of need. He’d felt guilty to be given such a cushy job.
It was months before he found out the truth. An angry agent, embittered by his lack of promotion within the agency, had spent his last years writing a tell-all book. To Jeff’s mind the man was the lowest form of scum. He’d betrayed his oath of secrecy. When he died, his will instructed his children to send the book to a publisher. Some smart lawyer for the publishing house, concerned about lawsuits, had called the CIA and e-mailed the manuscript to them. Within three hours, all copies of the book had been destroyed.
But even the government couldn’t keep all the information secret. The names of people who had secretly helped the United States government, spies, were leaked. The agency was able to keep the public from knowing, but the inner circle of the espionage world knew. A man who’d helped during World War II was found facedown in his swimming pool. Another man disappeared one night and was never seen again. After the second death, the president of the United States got involved.
One of the names on the list was that of Althea Fairmont, the most beloved actress who had ever lived. There had been no sign of any attempts on her life, no threatening letters or phone calls, but the order came down from the highest offices that she was to be protected. If nothing else, the United States didn’t want to bear the humiliation of the public knowing that an actress had helped them in every major war since the 1920s.
But how to protect her? They couldn’t put one of the most famous people in the world in witness protection. How could such a famous person be anonymous? In the end, they decided to put her in a gated community near the military bases and the CIA school.
When she was told what needed to be done to protect her, Althea said she’d rather live in the Gulag than in suburbia.
But her desire for life won out. A mansion was built at government expense, with the plan that, later, after Althea passed away, the house would be used for visiting dignitaries.
Jefferson Ames and his well-trained, well-respected father were put in a house on one side of Althea’s, and the attorney who’d take over her financial and legal affairs on the other side. Althea’s house was liberally sprinkled with concealed buttons. If she pushed one of them, an alarm would go off in both Jeff’s and Roger’s houses, as well as in agency headquarters. But no alarm had ever sounded.
When Althea was told that a third man had to live in her house with her, she’d protested so loudly that they’d let her choose the man herself. She went through a stack of photographs and
chose the rookie Brent Goodwin. He was a pupil of Jeff’s and was to report to him by phone every day. Jeff hadn’t liked the choice. He thought Goodwin was too young, didn’t have enough training, and was too attractive to women. He didn’t think the young man would keep his mind on the job.
But in spite of Jeff’s worries, in the years since it was set up, it had worked out well.
Jeff had met Althea repeatedly and they’d been cordial, but he’d kept their relationship on a business level. Not so Roger. Brent said Althea kept Roger at her house for hours, and he told her all the gossip of the entire community.
“She knows more about the people who live here than I do,” Brent said, making Jeff frown. So far, nothing bad had happened, but Jeff spent his life expecting it to all fall apart. Now, here was the news that Althea had stupidly fired a prop pistol in the air. Why? To get the attention of the women who lived near her?
“I’ve warned you that something like this would happen,” Jeff said.
“That woman is smarter than you and me combined. And I don’t trust her. You shouldn’t—”
Roger cut him off. “Okay, so sue me. I like the woman. Not all of us can have hearts made of steel.”
Jeff gave him a sharp look.
“I apologize. You have your father and your beautiful daughter.” Roger sighed. “Lucky you.”
Jeff’s anger left him. He well knew that what Roger wanted most in life was children. Jeff was missing a wife; Roger was missing kids. Put us together and we’re one whole person, he thought.
“I’ll deal with Althea later,” Jeff said. “I need a favor from you. Could I borrow your old cabin for the weekend after next? I, uh, thought I’d take Skylar up there.”
Roger gave Jeff a hard look. “The last person you want to be alone with is Skylar. You’re meeting someone there, aren’t you?”
Jeff hated the way Roger saw things he didn’t want seen. Roger had every security clearance that Jeff had, but caution was built into him. “Yeah, I’m meeting an old friend of mine,” Jeff said.
“I heard Leo’s in town. Couldn’t be him, could it?”
Jeff said nothing. It had been instilled in him since he was a child to give out as little information as he could.
“Leo Norton,” Roger said thoughtfully. “I’ve met him. There’s something about him…. What is it he does?”
Jeff gave a sigh. If he didn’t tell, then he had no doubt that Roger would start snooping. Roger’s lawyerly curiosity would get the better of him. “Leo is the most brilliant at disguise of any operative we have. What that man can do to change his appearance is fascinating. He’d give Andy Serkis a run for his money.”
Roger laughed. Serkis had played Gollum and King Kong. “Fan of his, are you?”
“Yeah.”
Roger waited, but when Jeff gave no more information, he asked, “Does he have anything to do with the mystery weekend?”
Jeff groaned. “Don’t remind me of that thing. And, no, Leo has no part in it. That’s just my burden to bear.”
Roger smiled. “Sure wish I could join you.”
Jeff grimaced. Next summer, at Althea’s request, he was to go to a “mystery weekend” at the house of a man named Charles Faulkener, a man who’d once been a friend of Althea’s. As a young man Faulkener had desperately wanted to be an actor, but his lack of talent got him few roles. But Faulkener couldn’t face the fact that he didn’t have the gift for acting. Instead, he blamed his lack of success on a murder that happened in his house in 1941. Over the decades, he’d become obsessed with the unsolved murder, and every ten years he re-created it. The problem was that since no new evidence had come to light in the ensuing years, the dramas produced nothing new.
Three years ago, Faulkener, who was as good at making money in the international market as he was bad at acting, had accidentally run across some information that the U.S. government wanted. Jeff hadn’t been told what it was, but he thought it was a list of names. But Faulkener had refused to turn the info over unless he was told what Althea, who had been there the weekend of the murder, knew.
As always, Althea had her own ideas about how to do things. She said that she wouldn’t just tell. Instead, she wanted one of her agents, Jefferson Ames, to play Hinton Landau, the young man who had been accused of the murder. She said she’d tell Jeff what she knew just before the weekend.
“Wasn’t this Landau married?” Roger asked.
“Yeah.” Jeff grimaced. “And Skylar is to play my wife.”
Roger laughed. “You shouldn’t worry about her so much. She never stays with any man very long.”
“I’m not ‘with’ her and never have been.”
“Does she know that?” Roger asked, then laughed again at Jeff’s expression. “Trust me, I’ve known her for ages. She’ll get bored and dump you.”
“It wouldn’t matter if she did. Althea wants her to play my wife.”
“Hmmm, wonder what she’s up to?”
“Why don’t you ask her?” Jeff said. “You’re so good at getting information out of her.”
“That’s a joke! Althea charms me into telling her every piece of gossip I hear, but she tells me nothing. To find out the truth about the shots I have to work for her for free for the next six weeks.” Roger looked at Jeff. “What you ought to do is get Cassie to go up to the cabin with you.”
“Cassie? Are you out of your mind? Cassie is—”
“Is what? The babysitter?”
“Whatever she is, I want to keep her that way.”
“How fatherly of you.”
“Don’t you start on me too. I get enough of this from Dad. Why did Althea fake a shooting? Other than to meet our women, that is.”
“Since when have you had ‘a woman’? Other than Skylar, that is.” Roger said the last with a derisive laugh.
Jeff looked out at the dark James River. “You know we need Skylar, and Cassie’s fine. Except that she thinks I’m about to marry someone she detests and throw her out on that beautiful rear end of hers.”
“The way you lead that girl on is horrible to watch,” Roger said without animosity. “It’s a wonder she doesn’t dump cake batter on your head and tell you to go stuff yourself.”
Jeff shrugged. “I told you that Cassie’s fine. We’re all doing well. In my book, everyone is fine except for Goodwin.”
“Don’t be so hard on the kid. He’s up against one of the great espionage brains of the century.” Roger smiled. “So you’re taking Skylar up to the cabin. Are you sure that you and she are just an act? Maybe you two could get married and—”
“And let her near my daughter?” Jeff asked, his voice fierce with protecting his child.
Roger put his hands up. “Okay, don’t take it out on me. I was just asking.” He looked at his watch again. “I really do have to go. I better get home and prove to my wife that she’s the only woman for me.”
They said their good-byes and Jeff watched Roger leave, then he thrust his hands in his pockets, frowned, and started walking, his frown deepening with every step. He shouldn’t allow Dana and Cassie to spend time with Althea, he thought. What Althea Fairmont knew was important to the U.S. government and she had to be protected, but he should do everything he could to keep her away from other people. On the other hand, she was an old woman and she’d had a life of being around people. Isolation was the worst form of punishment for her and she didn’t deserve to be penalized. And Jeff knew the two women who would be visiting her well. No, he hadn’t checked their backgrounds, but Roger had known Dana since they were in elementary school together, and Jeff had known Cassie for almost as long.
His frown was replaced by a smile as he remembered that time when he’d pulled her from a swimming pool and saved her life. He’d been well aware that she’d been following him all that week, and he felt sorry for her. She had a mother who made piranhas seem nice, and Cassie had been the only kid at the convention, which had been fraught with tension and anger. Part of his job had been to know about ev
erything, even about little girls hiding in the bushes.
But on the last morning there, Lillian had arrived the night before, and so he was late for his early morning swim—almost too late. They’d found a half-dead kid floating facedown in the pool. For several minutes it had been touch and go as to whether she was going to make it. But she had, and as soon as she could, she’d run away in embarrassment.
For the next several years, Jeff had kept an eye on Cassandra Madden. Maybe he felt so responsible for her because he’d saved her life. Or maybe it was because her mother seemed so tough. Whatever the reason, he’d had his office check on her whereabouts a couple of times a year, and he’d even had copies of her college grades sent to him.
But after Lillian died, he lost contact with Cassie, and with most of the rest of the world. He stayed close only to his father and daughter. It wasn’t until he checked out the credentials of Elsbeth’s new nursery school teacher that he saw her name again. For months he’d laughed every time Cassie called him to report on whatever Elsbeth’s nannies had neglected to do. And when Cassie told him she wanted the job of nanny, Jeff had had to work hard to keep a straight face.
She’d moved into his house and taken over his life in a way that made everyone comfortable. Her mother was reputed to have no heart, but Cassie had one as big as the moon. She loved Elsbeth and Thomas as though they were her own family. And, yes, Jeff had to admit that she loved him too. As he loved her. It hadn’t taken long for him to fall in love with Cassie. She had a quirky sense of humor and…Well, there wasn’t anything about her that wasn’t good.
The problem was that Jeff too often remembered that little girl who had hidden in the bushes and watched him. And he remembered that he’d saved her life. It was as though he now had a lifelong commitment to take care of her, just as he did with Elsbeth.
Living with Cassie caused him a lot of indecision and anxiety. Lusting after her gorgeous twenty-five-year-old body one minute, the next feeling like he wanted to tuck her in bed and kiss her forehead, sometimes made him crazy.