“You were awesome!” Avery said when they’d left the body shop behind. “You handled the King of Chrome perfectly.”
They did an exaggerated high five, and Nicole laughed freely, something Avery realized she hadn’t heard before. “You’re hereby elected to pick up the finished pieces and deliver the next set. If anyone can get us a better price, it’s you.”
Avery tilted her head back against the leather headrest, enjoying the play of sunshine and fresh air on her cheeks as she thought about Nicole’s manner with Alfred. Nikki was extremely attractive, but she didn’t use her looks overtly, they were just part of her package. And she didn’t play the helpless female; Avery couldn’t imagine anyone forcing Nikki into the Vanna role that Avery had been relegated to on
Hammer and Nail
. But she wasn’t a battering ram, either. Her persuasive skills seemed to work equally well on the high-net-worth individuals who were her clients as well as the more blue-collar variety.
“How do you do it?” she asked Nicole when they’d driven through Pasadena and on to the Corey Causeway Bridge. “How do you get people to do what you want without them even realizing it?”
On Gulf Boulevard they waited while a stream of beach-goers crossed with the light. “Handling people isn’t all that complicated,” Nicole said. “It doesn’t really matter whether they’re men or women, young or old . . .” She shrugged. “Because it’s not really about them.”
“No?”
“No.” Nicole smiled, but there was no humor in her voice, and her chin was set. Avery wished she could see behind her sunglasses, to what might be revealed in her eyes. “It’s really a matter of knowing exactly what it is that you want to achieve in each situation; you can’t be hoping for some vague outcome. You have to be specific. Then you simply help them think it’s what they want, too.”
The light turned green and Nikki eased her foot down on the accelerator. “It’s all about force of will. Mind over matter,” she said as the Jag sprang forward. “You just have to make sure that it’s your mind, your will that dominates theirs.”
“How did you learn all that?” Avery asked, surprised by the depths lurking beneath Nicole’s sophisticated surface.
“The hard way,” Nikki said so quietly her words were almost lost in the wind. “Out of necessity.”
Avery had cause to remember this when they got back to Ten Beach Road and found large furniture boxes sticking up over the edge of the Dumpster.
“There’s no way Deirdre unpacked and carried that bedroom furniture upstairs on her own, is there?” Nicole asked as they passed the Dumpster and headed up the drive.
“No. My money’s on her having found some poor schmo to do it for her.” They entered through the kitchen door and found Deirdre standing at the center island. A sketch pad sat in front of her, a tape measure next to it. She was studying the kitchen cabinets with a thoughtful expression on her face. “But feel free to ask,” Avery said as she went to the refrigerator to retrieve two Diet Cokes.
Nicole paused beside Deirdre and took a sip of the proffered Coke before asking, “How did you get the furniture upstairs, Deirdre? You look miraculously unscathed.”
Deirdre took the other Coke out of Avery’s hand, despite the fact that it was already halfway up to Avery’s mouth. “It was the most serendipitous thing,” Deirdre said. “A nice young man who was out fishing on the back seawall helped me.”
“You invited a stranger into the house?” Avery asked.
“Darling, there’ve been a million strangers in and out of this house already. And he was very well mannered. And exceptionally good-looking.”
“Oh, well, as long as he was attractive.” Avery took her Coke back and wiped the rim with her T-shirt. The lack of air-conditioning had her pressing it against her neck.
“He was broad shouldered and had dark hair and eyes. He could definitely be in movies.”
An odd look passed over Nikki’s face.
“Besides, he wasn’t a complete stranger,” Deirdre said. “He told me he’d met Nicole a number of times.” She winked conspiratorially. “I think he must be interested. He asked me all kinds of questions about her.”
Nikki made a strange sound; Avery couldn’t have identified it, but it matched the look on her face.
“Girardi? Jenari?” Deirdre cocked her head and squinted, trying to remember. “Giraldi, that’s it. Joe Giraldi,” she said, pleased at having successfully plumbed her memory banks. “He said he’d be in touch.”
Twenty-two
Maddie sat next to Kyra in the ob-gyn’s office they’d been referred to by their GP in Atlanta, waiting for Kyra’s name to be called. Kyra had come reluctantly. “I feel fine, Mom. The morning sickness is over, and I don’t feel all that tired anymore.”
She didn’t seem to understand the importance of prenatal care or preparing for the baby’s future, but then Kyra had always been more of a dreamer than a planner. As demonstrated by her apparent faith that despite all evidence to the contrary, everything would simply work itself out.
“Did you hear what Deirdre said about Tonja Kay?”
“Hmmm?” Maddie was pulling out the order forms for
American Baby
and
Parenting
magazines. She planned to stop at the bookstore and buy Kyra a copy of
What to Expect When You’re Expecting
on the way home. She could still remember how eagerly she’d read each chapter and marked off each developmental milestone when she’d been pregnant with Ky and then Andrew all those years ago. “I’m sorry?”
“I said, I think it’s a really positive sign that Tonja has moved out. Daniel told me he loved me and that they were only still together because their publicists insisted on it.”
Maddie slipped the forms in her purse and pushed the magazines aside. “I hate for you to pin your future happiness on someone else’s marriage falling apart, Kyra,” Madeline said. “I don’t care who they are or why they’re together. Marriage is meant to be a sacred vow.”
The phrase “for better or for worse” flitted through her mind. She and Steve had had a lot of “better” and only now were dealing with the “worse.” Kyra was starting out backward; what sort of mother would she be if she allowed her daughter to hold on to such hollow hope? “Have you even heard from him?” She still couldn’t bring herself to refer to the movie star by his first name. Her daughter had no such problem.
“No, but I’m sure that’s because Daniel doesn’t even know where I am. His people won’t take a message.” Kyra said this with absolute certainty as if it were just a matter of logistics that needed to be circumvented.
“And you don’t think that means something?” Maddie asked, trying and failing to keep the incredulity out of her voice.
“It means he’s not getting my messages.”
“Kyra, honey. If he loved you, wouldn’t he be asking if there were messages? Better yet, wouldn’t he be calling you?”
Her chin quivered the tiniest bit.
“You have the same phone number, Kyra. You are completely reachable. And it’s not like you’re not checking your voice mail constantly.” Kyra flinched at that, but Maddie was determined to make her see reason. She needed to be facing reality and preparing for the future.
“He’s busy with the film. You don’t know how it is for him,” Kyra said. “Always surrounded by people, everything handled and intercepted. His life isn’t his own and neither is his schedule.”
She could feel Kyra clinging to her fantasy and rationalizations. She actually believed, or wanted to believe, that she and Daniel could be out of touch for months and somehow, suddenly and miraculously, he would appear and proclaim his love for her and their child—a child he didn’t even know existed.
“Well, he seemed to find enough alone time to get you pregnant. Or did his people schedule that for him?”
Kyra gasped in shock and outrage, but Madeline did not, could not, let that stop her.
“Kyra, this is not a movie you’re in. And Daniel Deranian is not going to ride in on a white horse and carry you and your child off into the sunset.”
“Not my child,” she said. “Our child. And that’s only because he doesn’t know about it.”
Maddie closed her eyes against Kyra’s foolish certainty; somehow she had to get through to her. “This is real life, Ky. And it can turn hard and gritty practically overnight. If he loved you as you seem to think he does, he’d be here with you. Or at the very least in touch with you and making plans.”
“Like Dad is for you?” It was a taunt, cruel and intentional.
Madeline flinched at the truth of it as she was intended to. “I hope to God your father is going to come through. We have twenty-five years of being there for each other, which gives me real reason to believe that this will still happen.” She held Kyra’s gaze with her own, refusing to let her look away. “What do you have?” she asked quietly. “A couple of weeks of sex with a celebrity on a movie set for which you lost your job and now face a completely altered life as a single mother.” She paused to let her words sink in. “How many months are you going to spend hoping the sex was good enough to motivate him to figure out where you are? And whatever makes you think he’s going to care about or help support your child when he didn’t have enough conscience or honor to keep his marriage vows?”
There was a dead silence as the bomb she’d dropped detonated. Maddie could read the direct hit in her daughter’s stunned eyes.
“Kyra Singer?” The nurse walked into the waiting room and looked around expectantly.
Maddie gathered her purse and began to stand, but Kyra hissed at her to stop. “No,” she said as she rose. “I don’t want you in there thinking your poison about Daniel and me. You can just leave if you want to. I’ll find my way back to the house.”
Maddie began to protest. “I only wanted to make sure you understood your situation. You can’t . . .”
“Oh, I understand all right. And I’m not interested in hearing another word of it. If you are here when I come out, this conversation is over. I’ll help you with the house and we’ll be civil to each other. But I won’t listen to any more of your opinions about Daniel.” She drew a breath and squared her shoulders. “Do you understand?”
Maddie nodded. But she could barely swallow the tears that rose up to clog her throat as her daughter turned her back and followed the nurse through the doorway and down the hall. She looked at the empty seat on the other side of her and knew Kyra’s words wouldn’t have been half as painful if Steve had heard them, too.
Deirdre had apparently given the good-looking fisherman free access to the house; not that he would have needed her permission, given his training and the fact that the only upstairs room with a door was the lone working bathroom. The package Nikki found on her bed contained a list of charitable organizations and the amount of money each had lost to Malcolm Dyer. There were pictures, too, many of them of Malcolm entering or leaving banks in tropical-looking countries or lounging in elegant settings. He looked well dressed and well rested—not at all like someone grappling with his conscience or suffering from remorse.
Nicole looked down at her hands, already rough and chapped from working on the house. She was doing manual labor while her brother seemed to be island and bank hopping. The list Agent Giraldi had provided made it clear that Grace Lindell’s foster children’s charity was just one of many that Malcolm had bankrupted. Her anger had not diminished, but it was hardened by shame. Didn’t he feel remorse? How could he go on about his merry way while his victims grappled with the fallout of his thievery?
Nicole pulled out her laptop and booted it up. She’d been the one who raised him after their father had died and their mother had expended all of her energies on survival. Had she somehow led him to believe that the end—triumphing over poverty, becoming financially secure—justified any means?
She typed in the address of a chat room he had once met her in years ago and when she was in she stared at the blinking cursor, thinking what she might say.
If she could just find him and talk to him face-to-face, she might have a chance at getting him to turn himself in. Or at least convince him to return the money he’d stolen.
Tentatively she typed,
Gloria not singing. Suggests flight back from outer space. Will meet craft in person.
It was a little vague, but then she had no idea what she was really proposing. Or whether Malcolm would ever see her message or act on it.
With her fingers still poised over the keyboard, she stared out the window and out over the bay, wondering where Giraldi was right now and when she might see or hear from him again. She’d been unable to discern any pattern to the agent’s drop-bys and had no way of guessing how often he might be watching her without her knowledge. The sheer unpredictability of his actions was unnerving, which might—or might not—be his intent.
Nikki closed down her laptop and put the incriminating pages and photos back in the envelope. She wasn’t sure how to get in touch with Malcolm or whether he might try to reach her. But maybe if the FBI thought she was willing to work with them, they’d give her some clue that would help her get to Malcolm first. What she did or said to her brother then would depend on a lot of factors. And would be no one’s business but her own.
It was just before sunset and Avery could already taste the strawberry daiquiris Nicole had volunteered to make. Maddie was in charge of the hors d’oeuvres, which meant something between Deirdre’s caviar and Avery’s Cheez Doodles. Instead of a swim or a shower or even a walk during the transition hour, Avery had decided the time had come to talk to Chase about the detached garage and her plans for it. Her “don’t ask, don’t yell” strategy had yielded results and cut down on the combat, but she was tired of the subterfuge. The whole approach reeked of cowardice.
Before she could change her mind or chicken out, she crossed the loggia, which had been turned into the door-refinishing area, and strode across the pool deck to the freestanding garage where she found not only Chase but Deirdre. Great.