While My Pretty One Sleeps (14 page)

Neeve heard a click in her ear.

She was about to dial the next designer on the list when her phone rang. It was Jack Campbell. He sounded concerned. “My secretary said your call was urgent. Is there any problem, Neeve?”

She suddenly felt ridiculous trying to explain to him on the phone that she was worried about Ethel Lambston because Ethel hadn't picked up her new clothes.

Instead she said, “You've got to be awfully busy, but is there any chance I could talk to you for about half an hour very soon?”

“I have a lunch date with one of my authors,” he said. “How
about three o'clock in my office?”

•   •   •

Givvons and Marks occupied the top six floors of the building on the southwest corner of Park Avenue and Forty-first Street. Jack Campbell's personal office was a huge corner room of the forty-seventh floor with dazzling views of downtown Manhattan. His oversized desk was finished in black lacquer. The bookshelves on the wall behind the desk were filled with manuscripts. A black leather couch and matching chairs were grouped around a glass cocktail table. Neeve was surprised to see that the room was devoid of personal touches.

It was as though Jack Campbell could read her mind. “My apartment isn't ready yet, so I'm staying at the Hampshire House. Everything I own is still in storage, which is why this place looks like a dentist's waiting room.”

His suit jacket was on the back of his desk chair. He was wearing an argyle sweater in tones of green and brown. It suited him, Neeve decided. Autumn colors. His face was too thin and his features were too irregular to be deemed handsome, but were infinitely attractive in their quiet strength. There was good-humored warmth in his eyes when he smiled, and Neeve found herself glad she had changed to one of her new spring ensembles, a turquoise wool dress and matching stroller-length jacket.

“How about coffee?” Jack offered. “I drink too much of it, but I'm still going to have some.”

Neeve realized she had skipped lunch and her head was
vaguely aching. “I'd love it. Black, please.”

While they waited, she commented on the view. “Don't you feel like the king of New York at least?”

“In the month I've been here, I've had to fight to keep my mind on work,” he told her. “I became a would-be native New Yorker when I was ten. That was twenty-six years ago and it took all this time to make the Big Apple.”

When the coffee came, they sat around the glass table. Jack Campbell lounged on the couch. Neeve perched on the edge of one of the chairs. She knew he had to have pushed off other appointments to see her so quickly. She took a deep breath and told him about Ethel. “My father thinks I'm crazy,” she said. “But I've got a weird feeling that something happened to her. The thing is, did she give you any indication that she might be going off by herself? I understand that the book she's writing for you is scheduled for fall release.”

Jack Campbell had listened to her with the same attentive posture she had observed at the cocktail party. “No, it isn't,” he said.

Neeve felt her eyes widen. “Then how . . . ?”

Campbell sipped the last drops in his coffee cup. “I met Ethel a couple of years ago at the ABA when she was promoting her first book for Givvons and Marks, the one about women in politics. It was darn good. Funny. Gossipy. Sold well. That's why when she wanted to see me, I was interested. She gave me a rundown on the article she was doing and said she might have stumbled across a story that would rock the fashion world and if she wrote a book about it, would I buy it and what kind of advance
could she expect?

“I told her I obviously had to know more about it, but, based on the success of the last book, if this one was as explosive as she claimed, we'd buy it and we'd probably be talking a midsix-figure advance. Last week I read on Page Six in the
Post
that she had a contract with me for a half-million dollars and the book would be on the fall list. The phone's been ringing off the hook. All the soft-cover houses want to have a chance to bid on it. I called Ethel's agent. She never even talked to him about it. I've tried phoning her without success. I've neither confirmed nor denied the terms. She's a real publicity hound, but if she writes the book and if it's good, all the advance interest is just fine with me.”

“And you don't have any idea what she considered a story that would rock the industry?”

“Not a clue.”

Neeve sighed and stood up. “I've taken enough of your time. I suppose that I should be reassured. It would be just like Ethel to get hot on a project like this and go hole up in a cabin somewhere. I'd better start minding my own business.” She held out her hand to him. “Thank you.”

He did not release her hand immediately. His smile was quick and warm. “Do you always make such fast getaways?” he asked. “Six years ago you darted out of the plane like an arrow. The other night when I turned around you'd disappeared.”

Neeve withdrew her hand. “Occasionally, I slow down to a jog,” she said, “but now I'd better run and pay attention to my own business.”

He walked with her to the door. “I hear Neeve's Place is one of the most fashionable shops in New York. Can I get to see it?”

“Sure. You don't even have to buy anything.”

“My mother lives in Nebraska and wears sensible clothes.”

On her way down in the elevator Neeve wondered whether that was Jack Campbell's way of telling her that there was no special lady in his life. She found that she was humming softly as she stepped out into the now warm April afternoon and hailed a cab.

When she reached the shop, she found a message to call Tse-Tse at Ethel's apartment immediately. Tse-Tse answered on the first ring. “Neeve, thank God you called. I want to get out of here before that jerky nephew comes home. Neeve, something is really queer. Ethel has a habit of stashing hundred-dollar bills around the apartment. That's how she happened to pay me in advance last time. When I was here Tuesday, I saw one bill under the carpet. This morning I found one in the dish closet and three others hidden in the furniture.
Neeve, they absolutely weren't here on Tuesday
.”

Seamus left the bar at four-thirty. Oblivious of the jostling pedestrians, he darted along the crowded sidewalk up Columbus Avenue. He had to go to Ethel's apartment, and he didn't want Ruth to know he'd been there. Since his discovery last evening that he'd put the check and the note into the same envelope, he'd felt like a trapped animal, leaping wildly, trying to find a
way to escape.

There was just one hope. He hadn't stuffed the envelope deep into the mailbox. He could visualize the way the edge of it had been sticking out of the slot. He might be able to retrieve it. It was a one-in-a-million chance. Common sense told him that if the postman had brought more mail, he probably shoved that envelope down. But the possibility still allured him, offering the only course of action.

He turned up Ethel's block, his eyes skimming the passersby, hoping he would not encounter the familiar faces of any of Ethel's neighbors. As he reached her building, his sense of hopeless misery swelled to the point of despair. He couldn't even try to steal a letter without bungling it. You needed a key to get into the vestibule where the mailboxes were located. Last night that obnoxious kid had opened the door for him. Now he'd have to ring for the superintendent, and the super certainly wouldn't let him fool with Ethel's mailbox.

He was in front of the brownstone. Ethel's apartment was the walk-in entrance on the left. There were a dozen steps up to the main entrance. As he stood, uncertain what to do, the fourth-floor window opened. A woman leaned out. Over her shoulder, he could see the face of the kid he'd talked to yesterday.

“She hasn't been around all week,” a strident voice told him. “And listen, I almost called the cops last Thursday when I heard you shouting at her.”

Seamus turned and fled. His breath came in harsh gasps as he ran unseeingly down West End Avenue. He did not stop until he was safely inside his own apartment and had bolted the door.
Only then was he aware of the pounding of his heart, the shuddering sound of his struggle for oxygen. To his dismay, he heard footsteps in the hallway coming from the bedroom. Ruth was home already. Urgently he wiped his face with his hand, tried to pull himself together.

Ruth did not seem to notice his agitation. She was holding his brown suit over her arm. “I was going to drop this at the cleaners,” she told him. “Will you kindly tell me why in the name of God you have a one-hundred-dollar bill in the pocket?”

•   •   •

Jack Campbell stayed in his office for nearly two hours after Neeve left him. But the manuscript which had been messengered to him with an enthusiastic note from an agent he trusted simply could not hold his attention. After valiant efforts to become involved in the story line, he finally shoved it aside with rare irritability. The anger was directed at himself. It wasn't fair to judge someone's hard work when your mind was ninety-nine percent preoccupied.

Neeve Kearny. Funny how six years ago he'd had that moment of regret that he hadn't managed to get her phone number. He'd even looked it up in the Manhattan directory when he was in New York some months later. There were pages of Kearnys in the book. None of them Neeve. She'd said something about a dress shop. He'd looked under Kearny. Nothing.

And then he'd shrugged and put it in the back of his mind. For all he knew she had a live-in boyfriend. But for some reason he'd never quite forgotten her. At the cocktail party, when
she approached him, he'd recognized her immediately. She wasn't a twenty-one-year-old kid in a ski sweater anymore. She was a sophisticated, fashionably dressed young woman. But that coal-black hair, the milk-white skin, the enormous brown eyes, the dotting of freckles across the bridge of her nose—all these were the same.

Now Jack found himself wondering whether she had a serious involvement. If not . . .

At six o'clock his assistant poked her head in. “I've had it,” she announced. “Is it okay if I warn you that you'll wreck it for everyone else if you keep late hours?”

Jack shoved aside the unread manuscript and got up. “I'm on my way,” he said. “Just one question, Ginny? What do you know about Neeve Kearny?”

He mulled over the answer on the walk uptown to his rental apartment on Central Park South. Neeve Kearny had a sensationally successful boutique. Ginny bought her special outfits there. Neeve was well liked, well respected. Neeve had caused an uproar a few months ago when she pulled the plug on a designer who had kids sewing in sweatshops. Neeve could be a fighter.

He'd also asked about Ethel Lambston. Ginny had rolled her eyes. “Don't get me started.”

Jack stopped in his apartment long enough to be sure that he didn't feel like fixing his own dinner. Instead he decided that pasta at Nicola's was the right way to go. Nicola's was on Eighty-fourth Street between Lexington and Third.

It was a good decision. As always, there was a line for tables,
but after one drink at the bar his favorite waiter, Lou, tapped his shoulder. “All set, Mr. Campbell.” Jack found himself relaxing at last over a half bottle of Valpolicella, a watercress-and-endive salad and linguine with frutti di mare. When he ordered a double espresso he also asked for his check.

As he left the restaurant, he shrugged. He had known all evening that he was going to walk over to Madison Avenue and see Neeve's Place. A few minutes later, as a now cooling breeze made him aware that it was still April and that early-spring weather could be capricious, he studied the elegantly dressed windows. He liked what he saw. The delicately feminine soft print dresses and matching umbrellas. The assured poses of the mannequins, the almost arrogant tilt of their heads. Somehow he was sure that Neeve was making a statement with this combination of strength and softness.

But carefully studying the window display made him aware of the elusive thought that had evaded him when he was trying to tell Neeve exactly what Ethel had pitched to him. “There's gossip; there's excitement; there's universality in fashion,” Ethel had told him in that hurried, breathless way of hers. “That's what my article is about. But just suppose I can give you a lot more than that. A bombshell. TNT.”

He'd been late for an appointment. He'd cut her off. “Send me an outline.”

Ethel's insistent, persistent refusal to be dismissed. “How much is a blockbuster scandal worth?”

His almost joking “If it's sensational enough, mid–six figure.”

Jack stared at the mannequins holding their parasollike umbrellas. His eyes shifted to the ivory-and-blue canopy with the scrolled letters, “Neeve's Place.” Tomorrow he could call Neeve and tell her exactly what Ethel had said.

As he turned down Madison Avenue, once again finding it necessary to walk off the vague, undefined restlessness, he thought, I'm really reaching for an excuse. Why not just ask her out?

At that moment, he was able to define the cause of the restlessness. He absolutely did not want to hear that Neeve was involved with someone else.

•   •   •

Thursday was a busy day for Kitty Conway. From nine in the morning till noon she drove elderly people to doctors' appointments. In the afternoon she worked as a volunteer in the small sales shop of the Garden State Museum. Both activities gave her a sense of doing something useful.

Long ago in college she had studied anthropology with some vague idea of becoming a second Margaret Mead. Then she'd met Mike. Now as she helped a sixteen-year-old select a replica of an Egyptian necklace, she thought that maybe in the summer she'd sign up for an anthropology tour.

The prospect was intriguing. As she drove home in the April evening, Kitty realized that she was getting impatient with herself. It was time to get on with the business of living. She turned off Lincoln Avenue and smiled as she saw her house perched high at the bend of Grand View Circle, an impressive white colonial
with black shutters.