“No.”
Eric smiled. “My sentiments exactly. I mean, think of all the stories you’d have to retell, the personal revelations, the boring family history. Then you’d have to weather all the hurt feelings and the fear and the stupid misunderstandings while you get to know the other person and they get to know you. Even if you take the risk and pour yourself heart and soul into someone new, the odds are your new love’s a clone of the one you just dumped.”
I said, “This is making me ill.”
“It’s really no big deal. You put up with things. You look the other way, and sometimes you have no choice but to bite your tongue. If both parties are committed, whatever their reasons, it can work.”
“And what if both aren’t committed?”
“Then you have a problem and you have to deal with it.”
NINETEEN.
I’m going to skip a bunch of stuff here because, really, who cares? We ate. We drank, and then we ate some more. I didn’t spill, fart, fall down, or otherwise disgrace myself. I talked to the couple from Palm Springs, who turned out to be nice, as were most of the other folk. I listened with feigned interest to a lengthy discussion about vintage jaguars and antique Rolls-Royces and another in which the participants told where they were when the last big local earthquake struck. Some of the answers were: the south of France, Barbados, the Galapagos Islands. I confessed I was in town, scrubbing out my toilet bowl, when a bunch of water slopped up and splashed my face. That got a big laugh. What a kidder, that girl. I felt I was just getting the hang of how to talk to the rich when the following occurred.
Stewart crossed the atrium with a bottle of Chardonnay and offered to fill my glass. I declined, I’d had plenty, but Dixie leaned toward him so he could refill hers. The collar of her silk shirt gaped briefly in the process, and I caught a glimpse of the necklace she wore in the hollow of her throat.
Threaded on a gold chain was a tiny gold heart with a pink rose enameled in the center. I felt my smile falter. Fortunately, Dixie was looking elsewhere and didn’t notice the change in my expression. I could feel my cheeks heat. The necklace was a duplicate of the one I’d seen in Mickey’s bed-table drawer.
Now it was possible, remotely possible, he’d given her the necklace fourteen years before, in honor of the affair they were having back then. I set my glass on the table next to me and got to my feet. No one seemed to pay attention as I walked across the room. I passed through the doors into the dining room, where I spotted the same maid who’d answered the door.
I said, “Excuse me. Where’s the nearest bathroom?” I couldn’t, for the life of me, refer to it as the “loo.”
“Turn right at the foyer. It’s the second door on the right.”
“I think someone’s in there. Dixie said to use hers.”
“Master bedroom’s at the end of the hallway to the left of the foyer.”
“Thanks,” I said. As I passed the chair where I’d secured my handbag, I leaned down and picked it up. I moved through the living room and out into the foyer, where I turned left. I walked quickly, keeping my weight on my toes so the tap of my heels wouldn’t advertise my passage. The double doors to the master bedroom stood open to reveal a room twice the size of my apartment. The pale limestone floors were the same throughout. All the colors here were muted: linens like gossamer, wall coverings of pale silk. There were two bathrooms, his ‘n’ hers, one on either side of the room. Eric’s was nearer, fitted with an enormous roll-in shower and a wall-mounted bar to one side of the toilet. I turned on my heel and headed into the second.
Dixie’s dressing table was a fifteen-foot slab of marble that stretched along one wall. There was a second wall of closets, a glass shower enclosure, a massive tub with jacuzzi, and a separate dressing room with an additional U of hanging space. I closed the bathroom door behind me and started going through her belongings. This impulse to snoop was getting out of control. I just couldn’t seem to keep my nose out of other people’s business. The more obstacles the merrier. I found the cologne bottle in a cluster of ten others on a silver tray. On the bottom was the same partially torn label I’d seen at Mickey’s. I sniffed at the spray. The scent was unmistakably the same.
I returned to the bedroom, where I crossed to the bed. I opened the top drawer in the first of the two matching bed tables. There sat the diaphragm case. I could hardly believe she was screwing him again, or was it still? No wonder she’d been nervous, prowling my backyard, angling for information about his current state. She must have wondered at his silence, wondered where he’d been the night she retrieved her personal items. Did she know he’d been shot? Hell, she might have done it herself if she’d found out about Thea. Maybe she was only quizzing me to determine what, if anything, I knew. I thought back to my conversation with Thea at the Honky-Tonk. Now I wondered if she’d seen the diaphragm et al., assuming it was mine while I’d assumed it belonged to her.
I closed the drawer and retraced my steps, emerging from the master suite just as Eric appeared, wheeling himself in my direction. I said, “Great bathroom. The maid sent me down here because the other was in use.”
“I wondered where you went. I thought you left.”
“I was just powdering my nose,” I said, and then glanced at my watch. “Actually, I do have to go, now you mention it. I agreed to meet someone at eight, and it’s almost that now.”
“You have a date?”
“You don’t have to sound so surprised.”
He smiled. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to pry.”
“Could you give Dixie my thanks? I know it’s rude not to do it personally, but I thought I’d slip out without making a fuss. Sometimes one person leaves and it starts an exodus.”
“Sure thing.”
“I appreciate the invitation. This was fun.”
“We’ll have to try it again. What’s your schedule like next week?”
“My schedule?”
“I thought we’d have lunch, just the two of us,” he said.
“Ah. I don’t remember offhand. I’ll check when I hit the office and call you on Monday.
“I’ll be waiting.”
Inwardly, I found myself backing away. Ordinarily, I don’t imagine men are coming on to me, but his tone was flirtatious, which didn’t sit well with me. I became especially chirpy as I made my retreat. Eric seemed amused by my discomfiture.
I was letting myself into my apartment some fifteen minutes later when I heard the last of a message being left on my machine. Jonah. I dropped my bag on the floor and snatched at the phone, but by then he’d hung up. I pressed the PLAY button and heard the rerun of his brief communication.
“Kinsey. Jonah here. It looks like we found your boy. Give me a call, and I’ll fill you in on the nitty-gritty details. Not a very nice guy, but you probably know that already. I’m at home.”
I looked up his home number and dialed with impatience, listening to ring after ring. “Come on, come on.”
“Hello?”
Oh, shit. Camilla.
I said, “Could I speak to Lieutenant Robb? I’m returning his call.”
“And who’s this?”
“Kinsey Millhone.”
Dead silence.
Then she said, “He’s busy at the moment. Is this something I can help you with?”
“Not really. He has some information for me. Could I speak to him, please?”
“Just a minute,” she said, not entirely happy about the situation. I heard a clunk as she placed the handset on the tabletop, then the tapping of her heels as she walked away. After that, I was treated to all the quaint, domestic sounds of the Robbs’ Saturday night as they hung around the house. I could hear the television set in a distant room. Closer to the phone, one of his girls, probably Courtney, the older one, played chopsticks on an out-of-tune piano, never quite finishing her portion of the musical duet. I listened to countless repetitions of the first fifteen to twenty notes. The other daughter, whose name I forget, would chime in at the wrong spot, which caused the first girl to protest and start over again. The second child kept saying, “Stop it!” which the first girl declined to do. In the meantime, I could hear Camilla’s comments to Jonah, who apparently hadn’t been told there was a call for him. I could hear the sound of water running, the clattering of plates. I knew she was doing it deliberately, forcing me to eavesdrop on the small homely drama being played out for my benefit.