Jeremy shook his head. "Francis ... Francis was unhappy, yes. He wanted so badly to be a success."
"Discouraged, was he?"
"You could say that. He wasn"t a lot of laughs, you know?"
Saint Just returned to his inspection of the heavy oak table. "Was he a physically imposing gentleman? This is a heavy table."
"Francis? No. He was ... well, maybe this will help. Two years ago some airhead coed from CUNY came up to him on the street, asking for his autograph. Francis was so excited, figuring she"d read his books, you know? But when he handed back the paper she"d asked him to sign, she threw it on the ground, saying he was n.o.body. You see, she"d thought he was Woody Allen."
"Yes, I do see, thank you. You"ve given me a good picture of both the man and his circ.u.mstances," Saint Just said, conjuring a mental picture of the slightly-built director. Moving this large table would have presented a challenge for a man built like Francis Oakes, but not to a determined man. "That had to have been discouraging."
"You could say it was the straw that broke the poor guy"s back. He never left this apartment after that. Two years. And then I ... well, it"s no secret, I told the cops. I ... broke up with him three weeks ago. I still brought him food, did his errands when he needed me to, but I told him, I couldn"t go on the way he wanted anymore-never going out anywhere, never doing anything ..."
"Giving the man motive to end his existence, yes," Saint Just said, noting a clearer area of the table, where the crime investigation team must have dusted for prints around something the approximate shape of a shoe box. "The delivery of the dead rat and the threatening poem? That must have been the topper for him, yes? Or at least what the police would have concluded?"
Jeremy nodded, wiping at a tear on his cheek. "I killed him. Well, I didn"t kill him, but you know what I mean. I"m sick about it. I"m just here to pack up his stuff, you know, maybe sell it to help pay expenses? Not that there"s much."
Saint Just wasn"t giving Jeremy his full attention, as something the young man had said earlier was insistently nudging at his brain. "You said Francis had not left the apartment in two years?"
"About that long, yeah. Agoraphobia. He had it bad."
"And you did all of his shopping for him, is that correct?"
"Yeah. Why?"
Saint Just aimed his cane at the high ceiling. "That rope is new. Am I to conclude that you purchased it for him?"
Jeremy looked up at the rope, blinking rapidly. "No. Why would I buy him a rope? What would Francis do with a-oh, G.o.d." He looked at Saint Just, his thin face going pale. "He didn"t go out. Not Francis. I knew him, and he wouldn"t go out on the street. And he"d never go into a store. No, not Francis. It ... it was like he was paralyzed, you know, somewhere inside his mind? He got as far as the landing once or twice, but then he"d start to shake, feel sick, and I"d have to bring him back in here and have him breathe in a paper bag, poor guy. No, sir, he didn"t go out, he didn"t buy that rope. He didn"t have a credit card, he didn"t order anything online-nothing. I did it all. I didn"t buy him a rope. And I never saw a rope here before. Never."
It was time for Saint Just to deflect the young man away from what, to him, was the most logical conclusion. "Perhaps he had someone else purchase it for him?"
But, alas, young Jeremy didn"t bite, as he was already much too busy chewing on quite another theory. "Who? He didn"t know anybody. Well, he knew people, students he wrote papers for-but that"s it. They said he killed himself, sir. Because of the rat, you know, and the threat. I broke it off with him, the rat showed up, and Francis just couldn"t take it anymore, you know? He lost it, you know? That"s what they told me. But he didn"t kill himself, did he?"
"Now, now, Jeremy, we mustn"t leap to conclusions."
"The h.e.l.l we can"t! And don"t tell me he had another boyfriend, because that"s not true. Somebody killed Francis. He didn"t kill himself because of me, or that package somebody sent him. It was murder. We could ... we could have a serial killer, right here at CUNY. Christ! I gotta go."
"Jeremy, wait-" Saint Just shook his head, then picked up the paperbacks and headed for the door. "The good left-tenant is not going to be best pleased with me, I believe," he said to the room at large. He had not introduced himself to young Jeremy by name, but even a cursory description of a tall, well-dressed Englishman carrying a cane would not overtax Steve Wendell"s powers of deduction.
Saint Just reached into his pocket and pulled out his gold watch. Five o"clock. It takes time for rumors to find their way about town, more time for them to come to the attention of the constabulary or, as is inevitable, the media. Still, at best, he had less than twenty-four hours before Maggie would know everything.
Not a man afraid of females, Saint Just had to admit to himself that he only began to feel slightly better once he"d decided to stop and pick up some New York strip steaks for his Foreman grill (the new, improved, Next Grilleration G-5, in candy apple red). He"d treat her to steaks, salad, crusty Italian bread, one of his most choice wines from his growing collection-and then a small confession.
It seemed a workable plan ...
Chapter Nine.
"And so I took him there and he volunteered, they signed him up on the spot, and they"ve already put him to work," Maggie told Alex as she followed him out of the kitchen, carrying both their winegla.s.ses. "So, you think that"s fine? I think that"s fine. I think it"s terrific." I think I should shut up, stop babbling. I"ve been babbling since I figured out we"re alone here. Completely alone here. "Alex?"
"I concur. I believe Sterling has found within him the true meaning of Christmas. Indeed, I find myself feeling quite humbled by his pure heart," he told her, holding out her chair for her. "And what is the name of this organization again, please?"
"Santas for Silver," she told him, looking down at her plate, at the perfectly prepared steak on her plate. "I never heard of it, to tell you the truth, but Socks had said he"d seen a storefront a couple of blocks away, so that"s where we went. They don"t ask for paper money, you understand. Just silver. Although, of course, there hasn"t been any silver in our coins in a long time. It"s just catchy-you know, Santas for Silver?"
Alex merely blinked at her, then offered her the basket containing thick slices of warm Italian bread.
Look at him, sitting there so calmly, looking so absolutely fabulous in the candlelight. d.a.m.n him, he had her needing to babble again. Did she look that good? Candlelight was flattering; she"d read that somewhere. Still, a little mascara and lipstick probably would have helped. "I"ve told you he"s been issued a Santa suit, Alex? Well, he was. Red suit, white beard, big black patent leather belt, the whole nine yards. That"s what he really wanted, although he calls himself Father Christmas instead of Santa Claus, which is really sweet, and everything he collects goes to charity. He"s got the corner of Sixty-sixth and Central Park West-prime territory, I"d say, right across from Tavern on the Green." She shut her mouth with a snap and then opened it again to say, "I should eat, huh?"
Alex smiled. Looked so confident. So self-a.s.sured. So relaxed in his own skin. So we both know what"s really happening here, don"t we? He definitely was beginning to get on her nerves.
He"d shown up a while ago with the steaks, a prepared salad from Mario"s, a long loaf of fresh Italian bread and two bottles of wine, deposited all of that in her kitchen, then went back to grab his ridiculous George Foreman grill. How does a woman turn down an invitation like that? d.a.m.n him.
He was fresh from his shower, his black hair still damp against the snow-white collar of the fine lawn shirt he wore open at the neck, the French cuffs of the full sleeves sans cuff links and unfolded so that they fell gracefully onto the backs of his tanned hands. The Regency Gentleman At His Leisure. It wasn"t lace at collar and cuffs, of course, the way he"d relax at home in Regency England, but it was close, and he looked yummy. Edible. His black slacks had no pleats and rode slightly low on his narrow hips while they concealed most of the short black calfskin Eno Bruno dress boots he favored. He smelled faintly of Brut, which he insisted upon wearing even though Pierre of Fragrances By Pierre had given him a bushel basket full of sinfully expensive scents. She"d always liked the smell of Brut, even if you could buy it at Wal-Mart.
Maggie was also fresh from her shower, but she was wearing her faded blue Road Runner ("beep-beep!") nightshirt over a pair of shorts. She smelled of Johnson and Johnson baby oil, also available everywhere. She always coated her wet body with it before toweling off because it was an easy and quick moisturizer and it smelled good. Okay, and it was cheap; a leftover from her penny-pinching days. Her feet were bare.
d.a.m.n him.
As the grill heated, Alex had generously complimented her on her completed decorations, and then gone about the living room turning on the tree lights, the fairy lights. He"d lit several candles and turned off all the other lights, leaving the room glowing rather romantically. d.a.m.n him.
He"d opened one of the wine bottles, let the wine breathe, and then poured them each a gla.s.s, asking her about her afternoon as he inserted the steaks into the grill and turned to lean back against the counter and sip his wine as he looked at her over the rim.
Which had pretty much marked the moment when she"d begun to babble like a nervous virgin. d.a.m.n him.
"Ummm, perfect," she said now, around her first bite of medium-rare steak. "You really get some good ideas, Alex. So, what did you do this afternoon? Sterling told me you had something important to do."
Alex set down his winegla.s.s. "Not really important. A bit of holiday shopping, my dear."
"Oh, goodie. What did you get me?"
"You"d have much better luck trying to pry that sort of information out of Sterling, which is why I plan to accomplish my shopping unaccompanied. Tell me more about this Santas for Silver, if you please. You did, of course, complete a Web search before allowing Sterling to join them?"
Maggie"s fork clinked against the plate as she put it down with some force. So much for the romantic ambiance. "No, I didn"t do a Web search. For crying out loud, Alex. They"re Santas. They"re collecting money on street corners. There are Santas all over Manhattan this time of year. You can"t walk ten feet in any direction without b.u.mping into a guy with a red suit and a bell. What"s to search?"
"One of my Street Corner Orators and Players is stationed across from Tavern on the Green, if you"ll recall. We have cultivated an extremely commendable reputation, and I wouldn"t want it sullied by a supposed a.s.sociation with anything that is not entirely aboveboard."
"Oh. Right. Aboveboard. Like sweet little Mary Louise and her merry band of supposedly reformed felons. No, we certainly couldn"t have that, could we?" She put her napkin on the table and got up, stomped over to her computer. "By all means, let"s run a check on Santa."
Alex got to her before she could sit down at the desk. He took hold of her shoulders and turned her around so that they were just inches apart. "I"m sorry, sweetings. I was struggling for conversation, wasn"t I, and succeeded only in putting my foot in it? We"ve been together for so long. It seems ridiculous to be nervous around each other, and yet I am feeling far from my usually confident self this evening."
"Yeah, join the club," Maggie mumbled, her hands having somehow found their way onto his chest, her palms flat against the soft material of his shirt, the firm muscle beneath. He was standing with his back to the Christmas tree, and the white lights seemed to make a halo around him. He was real, yet almost unreal. And warm to the touch. "That is, me, too." Wow, that was articulate. I are a writer, obviously.
"Something changed for us, between us, while we were in England, didn"t it?"
"I don"t know ... maybe." She looked up into his remarkable blue eyes beneath his fantastically sculpted brows, expecting to see his usual confidence and finding just a hint of uncertainty in their depths. Wow. He wasn"t supposed to be uncertain, that was her job. He was supposed to be her hero, the man who knew everything, could be counted on for everything; brave, even fearless. "Alex ..."
"Yes, sweetings?"
"Don"t do that," Maggie said, shutting her eyes. "Don"t call me sweetings in that voice of yours-you know what voice I mean. That s.e.xy drawl. And don"t look at me like that. Don"t try to seduce me." Her eyes shot open as a sudden thought hit her. "You are trying to seduce me, aren"t you?"
His smile had her stomach doing a small flip.
"To descend somewhat into the vernacular, I believe I like the way you think, my dear."
Swallowing was becoming a problem. "Well, um, I"d rather you didn"t. I think. But you do agree with me? Oh, G.o.d, did I just ask that? What a lousy love scene. Bernie would be blue-marking it all over the place."
Alex moved closer, gently insinuated his right thigh between her legs as he rested his hands on her hips. "Perhaps if we borrowed from an expert? "For G.o.d"s sake hold your tongue, and let me love." "
"That"s ... that"s John Donne, isn"t it? I had you quote him in The Case of the-okay, never mind," Maggie said.
"Shhh, sweetings ... and let me love ..."
Maggie watched, mesmerized, as Alex lowered his head to hers, her eyes closing when he captured her mouth with his own. I"m your huckleberry ...
She tried to protest. Really, she did. Even as she opened her mouth and Alex took sweet advantage of her new vulnerability to deepen their kiss. Even as her hands somehow found their way up and over his shoulders, to hold his head still as she broke the kiss, took a quick, deep breath as she looked deeply into his eyes, and then raised herself up on tiptoe to kiss him back.
Maggie felt his arms go around her, lifting her. "The door. Sterling," she managed to say as he rained kisses down the side of her throat.
"Taken care of," he whispered into her ear before nipping at her earlobe, lightly licking the sensitive skin behind her ear.
She buried her face against his shoulder as he carried her down the hall, toward her bedroom. "You did plan this, didn"t you? I wasn"t wrong. You planned to seduce me tonight, didn"t you?"
They were inside her bedroom now, and Alex set her down on her feet, his arms loosely looped around her waist. "Among other things, yes. I will admit I had hopes."
"Other things? What other things?" Why couldn"t she shut up?
He"d moved his hands now, hadn"t he? Not a sudden move, but a very smooth and practiced one that ended with his palms lightly brushing the outsides of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Nothing too overt. Just a gentlemanly hint of what could be, if she were willing. "Do you really want to know, sweetings? Now?"
"Oh, h.e.l.l, no," Maggie admitted truthfully, unable, as she would say of one of her Regency heroines in this situation, to summon a lie. And that was pretty much the last even remotely coherent thought she had for quite some time ...
Chapter Ten.
Maggie awoke slowly, wondering why she was smiling in the darkness.
Oh. Right. Now she remembered.
Still smiling, she turned onto her side and stretched her hand out and over the sheets, expecting to encounter Alex"s sleep-warm body. Maybe kind of sort of walk her fingers over his bare hip and ...
... nothing.
She scooted more to the middle of the king-size bed, stretched out her hand again, ran it up and down the surface of the mattress.
Still nothing.
Panic, the kind that freezes the blood in your veins and p.r.i.c.kles the hairs on your arms, sliced through her.
He was gone? How could he be gone? Sure, she"d wondered about it, wondered if ... if doing what they"d done would change something somehow. Maybe make him poof back out of her life just as unexpectedly as he"d poofed into it.
But that was ridiculous. He"d been here for months. He wouldn"t leave now.
He couldn"t leave now.
Oh, G.o.d, what had she done?
She"d made love with a figment of her imagination, that"s what she"d done!
And now that she had, maybe that would be the end of it; fantasy fulfilled. He"d leave, go away, go back into her head or wherever he"d come from, and she"d never see him again.
Because there had to be rules to this sort of stuff, right? Look, don"t touch? Some sort of line they shouldn"t have crossed? Like, hey, people can fall in love with imaginary heroes, sure. But they don"t actually make love with imaginary heroes.
It was like that old joke about talking to G.o.d. When you talk to G.o.d, that"s called praying. But when you start to think you hear G.o.d talking back to you, it"s time for a psychiatrist.
Was it time for a psychiatrist?
h.e.l.l, she had one of those.
Sure. Like she could tell Dr. Bob any of this. Yeah, that would happen ...
"Oh, jeez, calm down, will you?" she ordered herself, turning onto her back, blinking as her eyes became accustomed to the near darkness. Then she saw the time as it was digitally projected onto her ceiling thanks to the nifty new clock she"d treated herself to last month. After all, if the hero could have a Foreman grill, the heroine-that would be her-could have a nifty gadget of her own.
Seven o"clock.
Well, that wasn"t so bad, was it? It was morning, or at least it was on the other side of her room-darkening shades. Alex wouldn"t have wanted to upset Sterling, so he was probably just back in his own condo across the hall. He hadn"t poofed. He wouldn"t dare poof. Would he? He could control that stuff. He"d poofed in, right?
"Right, that"s settled then," Maggie told herself sternly as she stumbled toward the shower, dragging fresh clothing with her as she went. "Shower, dress, wait for him to show up again. No panic, no reason for panic, no-ah, h.e.l.l. How do I even look at him again after last night?"
She got her answer sooner than she"d expected, once she was showered and dressed more carefully than was her custom-which meant she"d actually put on mascara and lipstick. When she walked out into her large living room, it was to see that the dishes and gla.s.ses on the table were gone, so that she retreated down the hallway, past her bedroom door and into the kitchen, to see Alex at the sink with his back to her, rinsing a winegla.s.s.
Okay. This was good. This was great. He hadn"t poofed. He was still there, and looking good in the clothing she"d come fairly close to ripping off him last night.
Very good. Except for one thing.
What was she going to say to him? What happens now? Where do you go after you"ve been to bed with each other? Because there"s no going back.
"Good morning, Maggie," Alex said without turning around. "I attempted to be quiet until I heard your shower running, but the mess is fairly well cleaned up now. Are you hungry?" he asked, finally turning around to face her, the hint of morning beard on his face kicking off a series of b.u.t.terfly flutters in her stomach.
"Ah. Yeah. Famished."