Tommy Lyon missed Michael De Vere dreadfully. But it was nice occasionally to be the guy that got the girl. The brunette caught Tommy’s eye and smiled. He smiled back, and was about to send a glass of champagne over to her table, when a showstopping girl walked into the bar. She was wearing jeans, sneakers, and a pale green T-shirt from the Gap, and had no makeup covering her lightly freckled face. In a bar full of overdone, stiletto-wearing cougars, she stood out like a fresh orchid amid a sea of cheap plastic flowers. Miraculously, the goddess seemed to be walking toward him.
“Tommy?”
“Summer?”
Tommy had never met Michael’s girlfriend. She’d been away in America for most of their relationship, and when she was around, Michael had kept her under wraps. Now Tommy understood why. Michael always managed to land gorgeous girls, but this one was exceptionally attractive. Every man in the room was gazing at her, and glaring at Tommy. Suddenly he felt a rush of pride that it was he she’d come to meet.
“Thanks for seeing me.” Summer kissed him on both cheeks, European-style. “I know you must be crazy busy.”
“Not at all. It’s a pleasure.” Tommy patted the bar stool next to him. “What can I get you? Wine? Champagne?”
“Thanks, but I’m fine. It’s a bit early for me.”
“Nonsense. If Michael were here you’d be drinking. Come on. How about a nice glass of Cristal?”
Summer wrinkled her nose. Cristal? Really. Michael would never have trotted out a cheesy line like that. Not wanting to be rude, she said, “I’ll take a beer. Budweiser, if they have it, in a bottle.”
Tommy bought the beer, and they decamped to a quieter table, passing the disappointed brunette on their way. Watching Summer put the beer bottle to her lips, Tommy registered a familiar stirring of desire. He tried to remind himself that this was Michael’s girlfriend. On the other hand, Michael was never going to wake up, a fact that Tommy Lyon had long ago come to terms with, even if Summer Meyer had not.
He made polite conversation. “So, you’re at Vanity Fair now?”
“Not exactly. I’m freelance, but I’m working on a piece for them.”
“What’s it about?”
“Wealthy young Russians in London. The excesses of their lifestyle, that sort of thing.”
Tommy warned, “Mind where you tread. Russian oligarchs don’t tend to take kindly to exposés, of any sort. I’m sure you’ve read the stories of Western journalists in Moscow being found with a bullet to the back of the head.”
“My piece is hardly Woodward and Bernstein stuff,” said Summer. “It’s more which shoes is Dasha Zhukova wearing this week? Boring and vacuous. Not that I’m complaining. It’s a job and it means I can stay in London, close to Michael.”
Tommy tried not to be distracted by the rise and fall of her breasts beneath the fitted cotton T-shirt. “You still go to the hospice every day?”
“Of course. And it’s not a hospice,” Summer said defensively. “It’s a long-term care facility. He hasn’t gone there to die.”
Oh, yes he has, thought Tommy. But he didn’t say anything.
“I’ve been meaning to talk to you for months,” said Summer, “but what with Michael getting moved down to London, and me having to find a flat and a job and everything, it’s been crazy. You know I’ve been researching his accident.”
“I didn’t know that.” Tommy rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Is there much to research? Wasn’t it . . . well, an accident?”
“You’d be surprised.”
Summer told him about her trip to the Ducati mechanic in East London, and her suspicions that Michael’s bike might have been deliberately sabotaged.
Tommy asked the obvious question. “Why would anybody do that?”
“That’s what I was hoping you might be able to tell me,” said Summer. “You know about Teddy, of course?”
“The body in the garden, you mean? Sure,” said Tommy. “He’ll go down for life, I reckon. Still find it hard to believe, though. Teddy always seemed so . . . soft.”
“I know,” Summer agreed. “Anyway, it looks likely that Michael found the body when he was excavating the pagoda and reburied it.”
“Christ.” Tommy blew out air through his teeth. “Really?”
“Yeah. And I’m wondering, if Michael knew about Andrew Beesley’s murder, perhaps there was some connection between that and what happened to him.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. I was hoping you might.”
Tommy looked blank.
“Was there anything unusual, anything at all that happened in the days leading up to the party that struck you as strange? Did Michael meet anyone new?”
“No one sinister,” said Tommy. “Suppliers, caterers, bar staff. It was a crazy time . . . we were run off our feet.”
Ignoring Summer’s protests, Tommy bought another round of drinks and ordered some bar snacks. Privately he thought her theories about foul play were nonsense, a fantasy she’d created to prevent her having to deal with the loss of Michael. But she was a stunning girl, so sexy and sensual with that silken mane of hair and those long, long legs. He didn’t want her to leave.
She resumed her questioning while Tommy shelled pistachios.
“Did Michael ever talk to you about being threatened?”
“No. Never.”
“And he never confided in you about the body?”
“No.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’m not likely to forget something like that.”
“Did he have any enemies that you knew of?”
“You know Michael. Everybody loved him.”
“Not everybody, it appears. Someone wanted him dead. Or at the very least silenced. And they got what they wanted.”
“Look,” said Tommy. “I think you’re barking up the wrong tree, I really do. But if it’s enemies you’re looking for, you should focus on Michael’s mother. Alexia had plenty of nutters out to get her. Like those Patel people. That was the nature of her job.”
“Yes!” Summer brightened. “Michael kept a file on all of them in the flat. I want you to take a look at it, when you get a chance.” After her second drink the room was spinning slightly. Summer realized she must have forgotten to eat lunch. “But you’re right, Tommy,” she went on excitedly. “Alexia could well be the key to this. Cutting her brake cables would be almost impossible. As home secretary, she’d have had a security detail, a driver, people watching her vehicles twenty-four/seven. Michael’s bike would have been a far easier target. And what better way to hurt a parent than to injure her child, right?”
She was so adorably earnest, Tommy could stand it no longer. Leaning over, he slipped a hand around the back of Summer’s neck and pressed his lips to hers.
For a second she was too surprised to do anything. But then she pulled away angrily. “What the hell are you doing? Have you lost your mind?”
A combination of embarrassment and sexual frustration, fueled by one too many drinks, made Tommy react angrily. “What’s your problem? It was a kiss. Why shouldn’t I kiss you?”
“Why shouldn’t you kiss me?” Summer repeated incredulously.
“I didn’t realize you’d taken a vow of celibacy.”
“I’m with Michael, you asshole. Your so-called friend.” Summer stood up shakily.
“Hey . . .” Tommy put a hand on her arm. “Michael was my friend, okay? My best friend. There was no ‘so-called’ about it. But Michael is dead, Summer.”
“He is not!”
“Yes, he is. Clinically and in every way that matters.” Every customer in the bar turned to stare at the drama playing out at the corner table. Tommy’s volume levels were rising. “Michael’s in a coma and he is never going to wake up. Never.”
“Fuck you!” Summer shouted.
“Is this what you think he would want?” Tommy shot back, tightening his grip on her arm. “For you to sacrifice your whole life for him, like some Hindu bride throwing her body onto her husband’s funeral pyre? Because if you think that, you didn’t know him at all.”
With a wrench, Summer pulled herself free from Tommy’s grip. Grabbing her purse, she ran out of the bar, tears of anger and humiliation clouding her vision as she stumbled toward the exit.
“He wasn’t a saint, you know,” Tommy called after her. “He wasn’t even faithful to you.”
Summer turned and glared at him. “Liar!”
“It’s true. The week before you came to Oxford, Michael told me about an older woman he’d been seeing. He called her his ‘sugar mummy.’ She was the one who bought him that damn bike, if you really want to know.”
Summer’s stomach lurched.
She turned and ran.
The London traffic was so bad, it took her an hour to reach the facility where Michael was being cared for, a redbrick Victorian building close to Battersea Park.
“You look terrible,” one of the nurses observed, not unkindly, when Summer walked in. Her hair was disheveled from having run her hands through it so many times and her cheeks were puffy and swollen from crying. “Are you okay?”