Once More With Feeling (40 page)

"What did I like here?" she asked.

"Nothing you'd admit to."

"Everything looks good." She ordered
manicotti stuffed with chicken and spinach and handed the menu to
the waiter.

"That's what you always ordered," Casey
said.

"I'll have to remember not to rave about
it."

They chatted about the show and shared a
bottle of inexpensive burgundy until their salads arrived. She tore
into hers ravenously.

He let her eat for a while, working on his
salad, too. When she started to slow down a little he got out his
notebook. "I've completed the list of people I was supposed to
investigate."

"And?"

"Nothing interesting. I looked them over
pretty good, too."

"Damn." She swallowed the last of her olives
with regret.

"I gather you haven't had any better luck
than I have."

"Neither has Kendra."

"Well, I'll go over what I've found and you
can do the same. Maybe one of us will notice something the other
one missed."

They were finishing dessert by the time they
finished their respective lists. She had opted for assorted
biscotti and cappuccino. Casey was working on amaretto
cheesecake.

"I even delved into the Lucy McNeil story
again," Casey said, closing his notebook. "No go there. McNeil
doesn't strike me as the sort of woman who would seek revenge,
anyway. Too classy. And if she did, it wouldn't be against you. You
were new to the show, and you didn't have anything to do with it.
Kevin was the one who exposed her."

Gypsy sipped the cappuccino, made just the
way she liked it with a mountain of foam and espresso so dark and
rich it was dangerous to leave the spoon in too long. Elisabeth had
always finished a meal with Darjeeling tea and a slice of lemon.
"Lucy McNeil. The congresswoman who was sleeping with a married
man."

"Congresswoman who quickly became an
ex-congresswoman."

She remembered a discussion about Lucy
McNeil at the last dinner party she'd given as Elisabeth. "That was
the biggest story of the season, wasn't it?"

"Our story. Our scoop. Lucy McNeil put us on
the map."

"Our scoop? Is that right? I don't remember
that part."

"Ours alone. We left the networks in the
dust."

Elisabeth had been in Europe with Owen
during the scandal and rarely able to watch television. Still, she
was intimately acquainted with the events from watching hours of
tape. Lucy McNeil, Democrat and feminist, had been caught with a
married man, an associate of her attorney husband. She had lost her
seat in the next congressional election by a landslide. Until that
upset she had been the odds-on favorite to run for governor in the
next election on the Democratic ticket.

Now Richard Adamson held that dubious
honor.

"Let's talk about that a moment," she said
carefully. "Tell me what you know."

"What do you mean?"

"How did we get the story?"

"I really don't remember. It was a little
before my time. I was just starting to move up. Why?"

She debated telling him about her encounter
with Richard at Owen's apartment. She improvised a little instead.
"I met Richard Adamson at a party several nights ago. He was just
short of hostile. I don't remember meeting him before." She tapped
her spoon against her saucer until she was two stanzas into "Hey
Jude." "Look, I'll level with you. I did a little digging. Richard
is a friend of Des's from Yale. Has Des ever mentioned that to
you?"

"Des?" Casey frowned. "No. Never. Are you
sure?"

She nodded. "Here we have Des, who was
Richard Adamson's former bosom buddy. There we have Lucy McNeil,
who was conveniently caught on our cameras with her skirts up just
before the election. Plus we have Richard, who suddenly has a clear
shot at the governor's mansion. Do you think I've hit on something
here? Are you going to run to Des with it?"

"Yes and no. And you should know better than
to ask that last question."

"Thanks." She set her spoon back on the
table before she could launch into "Octopus's Garden." "Where do
you suppose we should go from here?"

"I'll look into Adamson's background."

"I know it inside and out." She smiled in
answer to Casey's cocked brow. "And not for the reasons you think,
oh ye of the small, narrow mind. I've followed his career, that's
all. But go ahead and check him thoroughly. Maybe you'll find
something I don't know."

"What are you going to do?"

"I think I'll check out Des. I really don't
know--at least I don't remember--anything about his
background."

"I don't know a whole lot that will help. He
worked for CBS for a while before Tito offered him the job here.
Before CBS he was in Hollywood working at one of the studios.
Before that your guess is as good as mine."

"I know he went to Yale. I wonder if he
graduated."

"I bet you'll find out."

"Bet I will, too."

Casey slipped his notebook inside his
jacket. "I'll ask around and see what I can come up with."

"Good." Casey glanced at his watch. "Going
somewhere after this?" she asked.

"Flying to D.C. on the earliest shuttle in
the morning. I've got to get home and see if I can grab a few hours
sleep."

She set down her cup. "We can go right
now."

He put his hand on her arm. "You finish.
I'll get a cab. It'll be just as quick for me, and you can take
your time."

"I don't mind."

He stood and leaned over the table. She
looked up as he ducked his head to kiss her. His lips brushed hers.
A friend's lips. A friend's kiss. "I'll see you when I get back in
a day or two. I'll do some checking in the meantime."

She smiled up at him. "Thanks for
everything."

He stepped back, and she followed his
retreat with her eyes. Her vision broadened, and suddenly she
realized that Casey wasn't the only person in the restaurant that
she knew. Standing right behind him, with Anna tucked in at his
side like a shapely appendage, was Owen Whitfield.

"Gypsy," Owen said, inclining his head in
what was almost a nod. His voice sounded oddly tight, like a
baritone sax with a sticky valve. Her name was being forced through
places it really wasn't meant to go.

Gypsy's throat wasn't performing well,
either. Owen's name emerged like tires spinning on a gravel
driveway. Casey's eyebrows drew closer together, a look he'd
perfected when confronting serial killers and terrorists who
maintained their innocence. "Gypsy?"

"Casey, this is Owen Whitfield and--" She
stopped herself just in time. She wasn't supposed to know Anna
Jacquard. She wasn't supposed to know that Owen had traded
Elisabeth for this woman with the waterfall of mahogany hair, the
tiny waist and ample breasts, the brain that could design entire
housing developments and compute the costs down to a dollar between
the soup and salad courses at a leisurely business luncheon.

"Anna Jacquard." For a professional woman,
Anna's voice was soft, almost breathy. Marilyn Monroe had sounded
more sure of herself.

"Anna." Gypsy wanted to choke off that
altogether feminine wisp of sound. She wanted to wrap her long,
strong fingers around the graceful column of Anna's neck and
squeeze and squeeze.

"I'm Charles Casey." Casey held out his hand
to Owen. Owen looked the way he had years before when Grant had
presented him with earthworms or dying flies and crickets. He took
Casey's hand with grim determination and he gave it back
immediately.

Casey and Anna shook just as briefly. He
turned to Gypsy. "I'll see you when I get back?"

She didn't know what possessed her, or at
least which of a wide variety of emotions possessed her first and
hardest. She turned on her smile and flashed dimples as deep as
Donald Trump's pockets. "I certainly hope so." Had she whipped out
a pre-nuptial agreement and a box of Trojans' finest, her
intentions couldn't have been clearer.

Casey's brows were now a seamless, shaggy
line, but he played along. "I can't wait."

There were few women who would have made him
wait. Heat seemed to radiate from every pore of his body. His eyes
alone raised the room temperature to something worthy of high
summer. "Go--od." Gypsy trailed the tip of one scarlet nail along
the back of his hand before she sat back in her seat and turned her
gaze to Owen. "Is Elisabeth . . . Is your wife still holding her
own, Owen?"

He nodded curtly. She turned her attention
to Anna. "Take good care of Owen. He needs . . ." Her hesitation
was brief enough to be deniable. . . "friends."

Anna's cheeks went from fashionably pale to
ruddy. "He certainly does. Real friends, who've known him for a
long time. Friends he can trust."

"Of course. And so does his wife."

Casey touched his fingertips to his forehead
in silent salute, then he drifted toward the exit, his sexy amble
followed by every pair of female eyes in the place.

The brass ceiling fans seemed to work harder
to stir the overheated air. Gypsy gazed down at a cappuccino that
suddenly looked as appetizing as the bottom of the Hudson. "I have
to be going, too. Why don't you two take this table? It's nice and
private." She raised her hand to signal the waiter. Owen caught it
firmly in his.

"That's not necessary--"

"It really isn't," Anna said, overriding
whatever he'd intended to say. "I've got a lot of work to do
tonight, and it's later than I thought." She didn't even glance at
her watch to give the lie substance. "I'm going to fix something at
home, I think."

"You're obviously committed to keeping your
boss happy," Gypsy said pleasantly.

"You're sure?" Owen ignored Gypsy. He
dropped her hand to take Anna's.

Anna nodded. "Have a good dinner. I'll see
you Monday." She turned, her long skirt swishing against her
calves, and followed Casey's path out the door.

Gypsy slid to the edge of the bench seat.
"Looks like you're alone for dinner. Bad luck."

"What was that all about?"

She wrinkled her forehead in question and
didn't reply.

"Why did you insult Anna that way?"

"Insult her? We were just making casual
conversation."

"You were implying all sorts of things."

Her hands were shaking. Her body was
familiar with the role of vixen, but her heart was contracting
painfully. "There's nothing I'd have the right to imply, is
there?"

"Is this Casey more than a friend?"

"That's something you have no right to
imply. Why does it matter who either of us sleeps with, Owen? We
don't sleep with each other."

He caught her arm as she stood and started
past him. "You're direct, aren't you?"

"I make my living that way, remember? I
pretend to be something I'm not while I'm sneaking past all your
defenses. Then I grab you by the balls till you scream for mercy."
She touched his cheek the way she had touched Casey's hand. "And
when you're done screaming I just leave you in an exhausted,
used-up heap by the roadside."

"Who the hell are you?"

No one else could have heard his question,
so softly was it voiced, but every cell in her body grabbed a
companion for comfort. "I'm the woman who could have made you happy
forever, if I'd just been given the chance."

His fingers clenched spasmodically, sending
pain shooting through her arm. Then his hand fell to his side.

She slipped past him and didn't dare another
glance at his face.

Hours later she was still furious with
herself. Elisabeth, who'd had every reason to be jealous and
vindictive, had held herself above either--except in her dreams.
She had never confronted Owen about his relationship with Anna, not
even by innuendo. Until the accident she had remained in rigid
control, cool to his touch and aloof from him emotionally--at least
on the surface. She had played the hand he'd dealt her with the
calm precision of a master bridge player. They had built too much
together to see it dismantled publicly and at great expense to them
both. Owen could have his little fling, and if she didn't make a
fuss about it, when he was finished, they could resume their life
together as if nothing had ever happened.

Now she knew what a fool she'd been. That
sort of self-restraint, bred into her by generations of upper-class
women who endured infidelity with the same skill with which they
played tennis or organized charity teas, was as abhorrent as
Gypsy's dinner temper tantrum. As Elisabeth she had manipulated her
world and her husband with a demented, repressed serenity. As Gypsy
her manipulations were less subtle and just as destructive. She had
learned so much from living Gypsy's life, but she still hadn't
learned to be honest.

She was no closer to living the life she
really wanted, the life she needed to make her feel whole, than she
had been as Owen's wife. She had yearned for freedom, for the paths
she hadn't taken, but all along she'd had what she needed at her
fingertips. She had needed to take charge of her life. She had
needed to go to Owen and tell him clearly, plainly what she wanted
and needed from him. Then, she had needed to listen carefully to
his responses and make her decisions based on that information.

Now she wondered what he would have told her
if she had confronted him. Had her distance driven him away in the
first place? Somewhere along the way had he looked to her for a
reason to remain faithful? She knew she wasn't to blame for his
adultery. She would not make the traditional mistake of believing
that a woman was responsible for whatever her man did. But at some
critical juncture in Owen's life, had she been so wrapped up in her
own unhappiness that she had handed him a reason to follow his
inclinations?

From somewhere above her, she heard music.
Someone was playing one of Chopin's Preludes on a piano not
completely in tune. The hum of traffic was a poignant background
drone. Manhattan at midnight could be the saddest place in the
world.