Pretty Girl Gone Page 5
I didn’t become a man because of Lindsey, I reminded myself. But she did make it a lot easier.
Barrett exchanged greetings easily with the people who gathered around him, shaking hands with his right while his left circled his wife’s waist and held her in a protective embrace. Occasionally, she would slip free and drift away from him as the hurricane surged forward. When that happened, Barrett would reach back for her, refusing to acknowledge anyone until she was once more safely at his side.
That’s what love looks like, my inner voice told me.
Miraculously, the Barretts found an empty table and the crowd began to disperse. The hurricane was soon downgraded to a squall and Lindsey was able to sit, which brought an expression of relief to her face.
Only relief soon gave way to something else that I couldn’t name. Lindsey’s face was still as lovely, yet suddenly it seemed hard. I watched her eyes. They were locked on an object far away. I tried to locate it, failed, and then realized that Lindsey wasn’t looking at something, but purposely looking away from something. I had no idea what it could be. I searched the faces of the people around Lindsey until I found one I recognized.
Troy Donovan.
He stood above and behind Lindsey with one hand on the railing of the second-floor balcony while the other gripped the stem of a wineglass. He was watching her, yet his face revealed nothing—neither pleasure nor pain, neither joy nor reproach. It was the million-mile stare that Nina had explained to me, the one that unnerved her so.
I finally bought our drinks and returned to Nina.
“Sorry it took so long,” I told her. “Apparently, the Sixteenth Annual Charity Ball for a Drug-Free Minnesota doesn’t consider alcohol a drug, because there sure are a lot of people lapping it up.” I offered one of the drinks to Nina. “Not that we’re hypocrites or anything.”
“Of course not.” Nina took the drink. “What is this?”
“Vodka martini, shaken not stirred.”
“You didn’t actually order that.”
“Sure, I did. I’m wearing a tuxedo. What else would I drink?”
“What did the bartender say when you ordered it?”
“Oh, he thought it was hilarious.”
“I bet. I hope you tipped him.”
“Does James Bond leave tips?”
“Now that you mention it, in all his movies I don’t think I’ve ever seen him pay for anything.”
“Well, then.”
Nina sipped the drink and shuddered.
“Wow,” she said.
“It might be a tad strong.”
“You’re not trying to get me drunk and take advantage of me, are you, McKenzie?”
“Moi?”
“That’s what I thought.”
I took a sip of my martini and gazed back toward Lindsey Barrett. Barrett had disappeared, leaving his wife in the company of a woman who had joined the table and was waving her arms with great animation. She was wearing what resembled a ballerina’s costume, a fitted slip dress on top and layers and layers of black tulle on the bottom. The dress and waving arms reminded me of a spider. Whatever tale she wove must have been quite enthralling, because Lindsey never looked away from her.
I did lift my eyes, however, scanning the second-floor balcony. Troy Donovan had gone. But he hadn’t gone far.
“What are you doing here?” he wanted to know. Donovan was standing directly behind Nina, speaking to me over her shoulder as if she wasn’t there.
“Good evening,” I replied.
“What are you doing here?”
“Supporting a worthy cause. How ’bout you?”
“You’re being flip.”
“It’s one of my hobbies. Why are you here?”
Donovan chuckled.
“Supporting a worthy cause,” he said.
“And so . . .”
“I apologize,” Donovan said. “To you and your date.” He moved next to Nina and held out his hand. “Good evening, I’m Troy Donovan.”
“Nina Truhler,” she replied, taking his hand.
“Ms. Truhler, if I seemed rude earlier it is because the matter we discussed this afternoon with Mr. McKenzie is quite important to me, to us, and when I found him here I panicked a little.”
“Who is we and what matter did you discuss?” Nina asked.
“You don’t . . . He didn’t . . . Of course not.” Donovan pivoted toward me. I was beginning to think he wasn’t very bright—one of those guys who couldn’t make scrambled eggs without an instruction manual.
I said, “I haven’t discussed our business with Ms. Truhler, but, please, feel free.”
He nodded. His smile reminded me of the blade of a knife gleaming in sunlight and I realized it had been a test. The sonuvabitch had been testing me. Again.
Donovan bowed his head toward Nina and said, “A pleasure to have met you. Have a good evening.”
“You’re not doing a favor for him?” Nina asked when he was out of earshot.
“Not even at gunpoint.”
“Who, then?”
I turned my attention back toward Lindsey. She was sitting at the same table, still listening to the same woman.
“Mac?”
“I can’t say,” I answered absently.
Nina followed my gaze to Lindsey.
“Can I guess?”
“Forgive me, Nina, but there’s something I need to do.” I handed my drink to her. “I’ll be right back.”
“Don’t forget. You promised to dance with me.”
“I know.”
I walked in a straight line to where Lindsey sat. The woman in the spider outfit said, “That’s not even the half of it—”
“Excuse me,” I said and offered Lindsey my hand. “Mrs. Barrett. Would you care to dance?”
“Mr. McKenzie,” she said. “I would be delighted. Please excuse me, Evelyn.”
Evelyn didn’t seem even remotely happy to have been interrupted, but said, “Of course,” just the same.
I led Lindsey to the dance floor. Nina watched us. She was frowning.
“Thank you, thank you,” Lindsey chanted just above a whisper. “Thank you for getting me away from that dreadful woman.”
“My pleasure,” I said.
I took her lightly in my arms. It was the first time I had held her in nearly twenty years, yet the thrill of electricity that flowed through me was the same as it had been that evening in her living room. I tried to ignore it. She was a married woman after all.
Lindsey was wearing perfume or cologne—I never understood the difference—which made her smell vaguely like a pine tree. People smiled at her and nodded their heads. If they noticed me at all it was to wonder, “Who’s that guy?”
The orchestra segued into a full arrangement of Edwin McCain’s rock ballad, “I’ll Be.” I led Lindsey into a waltz step as best I could. She followed without effort.
“You dance very well,” she said.
“Stop it.”
“I’m surprised to see you here. I thought you weren’t a ‘gala kind of guy.’ ”
“It was the only way I could think of to speak to you. Your aides wouldn’t put me through.”
Lindsey’s body stiffened beneath my hands.
“Do you know who sent the e-mail?” she asked.
“Not yet. I did learn where it was sent from.”
“Where?”
“An address in Victoria.”
“Victoria, Minnesota? Jack’s hometown?”
“Yes. I’ll run down there tomorrow and check it out. There is something else you should know.”
“We can’t talk here on the dance floor,” she insisted.
“I’m open to suggestions.”
“There’s a restroom at the end of the far corridor. Meet me there five minutes after the dance is over.”
We continued to twirl on the floor in time to the music, floating between other couples that mostly danced in tiny, graceless circles. I looked over Lindsey’s shoulder for Nina. I couldn’t
find her. Instead my eyes rested on Troy Donovan. He was glaring at me. Lindsey and I spun a few times and I lost sight of him. When I saw him again, his eyes appeared serene and were directed elsewhere. I watched cautiously. A moment later, Donovan looked at us again. The expression that flamed across his face—if only for an instant—was curiously familiar, one that I had seen on a man’s face before, and it didn’t take long for me to recognize it. Jealous anger.
Why?
The answer became painfully clear when Lindsey said softly, “I miss my old friends,” and rested her head against my shoulder. Donovan witnessed the move, grimaced, and turned away.
You’re kidding, my private voice said. You are absolutely kidding.
The song ended. I stopped dancing and released Lindsey from my embrace. We applauded politely along with the other dancers.
Lindsey whispered, “Five minutes.”
She left the dance floor while I stood there watching, a post in the ground.
I searched for Nina, but couldn’t find her. After a few minutes, I headed for the restrooms farthest from the atrium. Along the way I snatched a long-stemmed glass filled with white wine off a silver tray carried by a waiter. I didn’t know if the glass was meant for someone else and I didn’t care.
The noise from the ball that followed me down the corridor became blessedly hushed by the time I reached the restroom.
Lindsey’s driver—the man I had seen at the Groveland Tap—stood watch at the door. He could’ve been one of the guards at Buckingham Palace for all the acknowledgment he gave me when I paused next to him. I sipped from the wineglass. Chardonnay. I didn’t like chardonnay. Too dry. I drank it anyway and stepped inside.
I had never been in a woman’s restroom before. It seemed larger than most men’s restrooms and there was a long sofa with black cushions hard against the wall opposite the sinks and mirrors. Lindsey had slumped down into it.
“You’ll wrinkle your dress,” I told her.
“Oh, God,” she said and stood up, smoothing the silk with her hands. “It’s been a long day.”
“It’s not over yet,” I reminded her.
Lindsey went to the mirror, examined her face carefully, and slipped her hand into her clutch bag for lipstick even though she didn’t need it. She dabbed her upper lip while her eyes, as clear and sharp as a sunny day in July, examined my reflection with polite curiosity.
“What do you want to talk about, McKenzie?” she asked.
I told her about the Brotherhood, the fact they had me kidnapped five minutes after she left the Groveland Tap, that lacking any other suspects, I blamed her driver for ratting her out. She didn’t seem a bit surprised.
“Tell me the truth, Zee. What exactly is going on?”
Lindsey pretended to tend to her makeup and I pretended to watch. After a few moments, she slipped her lipstick back into her clutch bag.
“You know everything I know,” she said.
“Do I?”
“I don’t know what you’re asking.”
I told her about my assailant on the skyway.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
“Five minutes, Zee. Five minutes after I left the Brotherhood he came at me, which means he was waiting. Just like the guy outside the Groveland Tap had been waiting. Now, why do I have a feeling that everything that’s happened today was staged for my benefit? Like I’m a minor piece being maneuvered around a chessboard.”
Lindsey paused for a moment before saying, “If you’re being maneuvered, then so am I.”
“I don’t know what to do about it.”
From the expression on her face, Lindsey didn’t have a clue, either.
“This is bigger than it seems,” I told her.
“You will help me, though, won’t you, Mac? You’ll help me despite everything?”
“Everything?”
“The Brotherhood and all that.”
It was back—the feeling I had had at the Groveland Tap that Lindsey wasn’t telling me the truth, at least not the whole truth—but I said yes just the same, for old time’s sake.
“Good.”
“Zee,” I asked innocently.
“Yes?”
“Tell me about Troy Donovan.”
“What do you mean?”
“How well do you know him?”
“Not well at all,” she answered easily. “We’re acquainted through events like this, but I don’t think I’ve spoken more than a dozen words to him. Why?”
“The way he looked at you when you first arrived . . .”
“You’d be amazed at the way some men look at me.”
“The way he looked at us when we danced together.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“Okay.”
“Is it?”
“Sure.”
“What happens next?”
“Good question.”
I gave Lindsey a head start before leaving the restroom and making my way back to the atrium. I searched unsuccessfully for Nina, wondering if she had become so fed up with me for ignoring her that she left the ball. Couldn’t say I blamed her.
The orchestra was taking a break and there was no one on the dance floor. It was getting late for a weeknight. Wives were looking at husbands the way they do when they want to go home, and husbands, at least for the time being, were pretending not to notice. Yet the exodus would soon begin. The couples with younger children would depart first, followed shortly by those with older children, followed by the single and the childless. Most of the partygoers would be gone by the time the orchestra finished its final set.
I thought the set might be about to begin when Bobby DeNucci walked to the microphone at center stage.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” DeNucci announced. “We have a treat for you while the orchestra takes a few moments to catch its breath. Please welcome Nina Truhler.”
Oh my God.
Sparse applause followed Nina across the stage. She briefly hugged DeNucci and sat at the piano and immediately began to play. I moved to the edge of the sunken floor while a few partygoers ventured onto the dance floor itself. They were met there by a piece of classical music, one of the variations on Bach’s Goldberg Variations; I didn’t know which one. The would-be dancers glanced at each other as if to say, who is this woman? Wait for it, wait for it, I urged them silently.
After a full minute of playing the slow, melodic music, Nina’s left hand began to beat out a hard rhythm. The dancers looked up at her in anticipation. People who weren’t listening suddenly were. DeNucci and a few of the other musicians gathered next to the stage. I was sure I heard Abby Hunter exclaim, “Bring it, girl.” Nina brought it. After establishing the baseline with her left hand, her right abandoned Bach’s sweet sound for something much grittier—Jay McShann’s bluesy “My Chile.” When she squeezed as much out of the song as she wanted, Nina segued without pause into “Cow Cow Blues” by Meade Lux Lewis. Soon a few of the musicians joined her on stage—she had percussion, a bass keeping time for her, and Abby Hunter’s violin lending unexpected shadings to the melody she riffed. The floor began to fill, yet the people didn’t dance so much as they swayed and hopped to the sound Nina was laying down. At the edge of the sunken floor, I clapped my hands in delight.
Nina dropped out and let Abby take four choruses. When she came back she was playing Otis Spann’s hard-driving “Spann’s Stomp.” I wasn’t all that surprised that the other musicians were able to follow her so well. Unlike most rockers, jazz musicians know how to listen to each other. Still, how was she going to get out of this? I wondered. Nina must have had a plan because she said something to Abby, who relayed her message to the bass and drummer. After three more choruses, Abby dropped out with a flourish, followed by the drummer. That left Nina and the bass talking to each other, one taking the lead, then the other, and when Nina nodded, the bass dropped out and she retreated to the Goldberg, ending it with her right hand playing Bach and her left hand pounding out a blues rhythm.
“Miss Nina Truhler,” he said, and the audience applauded louder.
“We’ll be right back,” DeNucci added.
Nina shook some more hands while I watched from my spot at the edge of the floor. There was a lump in my stomach that floated up through my chest and lodged in my throat, making speech impossible. It wasn’t a hard lump, but soft and squishy, and it seemed to vibrate, causing my body to hum like a tuning fork. I recognized it for what it was. Pride. I was proud of Nina Truhler.
I continued to watch her. She gave me a half wave and a smile and I grinned in return. After a few moments, she detached herself from her admirers and attempted to make her way along the perimeter of the sunken floor to where I stood. However, before she could reach me, she was stopped by still another fan.
John Allen Barrett offered his hand and Nina shook it casually. Barrett said something and Nina laughed. Nina said something in reply and Barrett laughed. A moment of panic seized me, I don’t know why. The e-mail accused him of being a murderer but it couldn’t possibly be true, so why should I worry that he was chatting with my girl? Nina waved me over and I joined them, hoping none of the trepidation I felt had touched my face.
“Mac,” said Nina, as she slid a hand behind my neck. “Allow me to introduce Governor Barrett. Governor, this is Rushmore McKenzie.”
“I’ve heard that name,” Barrett said. “You’re an old friend of Lindsey’s.”
“I am.”
“There’s a story she told me about your name.” He turned toward Nina as if for confirmation. “He was conceived at a motel in the shadow of the Rushmore Monument when his parents took a vacation through the Badlands.”