“So, how long have you worked for Fitz?” I asked.
“Years.”
“You like working for him?”
A brief shrug of the shoulders. A few moments later he turned up the music, loud enough to prevent further conversation. I looked out the window and watched the world gliding past.
About half an hour later we pulled into a driveway and tall wooden gates swung open automatically. The driveway continued ahead of them, and we drove for several more moments before the car stopped in front of a large house, mock Tudor. If I didn’t know we’d headed west, I thought, I’d have sworn we were in Essex.
Fitz was home. His guests hadn’t arrived yet, he told me. He showed me the downstairs, the wide living room with the huge leather sofas and abstract artwork on the walls, the white carpet, glass everywhere, crystal. Through a heavy door to the left was the room I’d be dancing in. There were several comfortable chairs and sofas grouped around the center, and the pole. I went across to test it, trying a few gentle swings to see if it felt solid. It did. I kicked off my shoes and climbed it, one hand over the other, and flipped over at the top, spinning back down to the bottom. Not easy, wearing jeans. It would be a piece of cake with bare legs.
Fitz watched all this with an expression that was hard to read. He shook his head gently. “Does me in,” he said, “when you do that.”
He took me into the kitchen to wait. Dylan was leaning against the counter, arms folded across his immense chest.
“Have you eaten?” Fitz asked. “Want something to drink?”
I didn’t want to eat or drink—neither was particularly good just before cavorting around a pole—so I sat on a stool at the marble-topped breakfast bar, talking to Dylan until the guests started arriving.
“So am I the only one here?” I said in a hushed tone.
“You’re the only one dancing, put it that way,” he said.
“What does that mean?”
“There’s other girls here. You’re the only one dancing.” Dylan was eating from a bowl of olives, removing them delicately between finger and thumb and placing the pits into a little dish on the marble surface.
“Why don’t the girls in the club like him?”
“No idea.”
“Do you like him?”
He stopped chewing and looked at me. “You’re full of questions today,” he said. “What am I supposed to say to that?”
“The truth?” I suggested.
At least that made him laugh. “He’s all right,” he said. “Don’t fuck with him and he’s fine.”
Almost the same thing Caddy had said to me. I wondered what happened to people who didn’t follow that advice.
I watched Dylan eating for a moment. He had a glass in front of him, like mine, except mine contained water, his vodka.
“So,” I said, trying to lighten the mood a little, “who’s coming to this party? Anyone I know?”
I’d been at the club long enough by this time to recognize some of the regulars, many of them friends of Fitz’s.
“Doubt it.”
“Who are they?”
“Seriously, Genevieve, you ask too many questions.”
I laughed. His tone wasn’t as hostile as the words implied. “Well, you’re not exactly a natural conversationalist, Dylan. I’d rather not sit here waiting in silence.”
“Nor would I.”
“So you ask me some questions. Balance it out a bit.”
He gave me a smile and again I was struck by how much less threatening he looked when he smiled.
“All right. I’ve got a question for you. What are you doing with all this money?”
“What?” He’d taken me completely by surprise.
“You’re raking it in,” he said. “You take twice as much in tips as Lara, and she’s always been the best dancer we’ve had. She’s got a whole fan club of guys who’ve come to see her every weekend for the last four years, and since you started at the Barclay you’ve made her income look like a pittance. So what are you doing with it?”
I flushed. I didn’t really have an answer for him. Telling him about my dream, to renovate a boat, sounded ridiculous in this context.
“You’re not a druggie,” he said.
“How do you know?”
“Oh, give me a break. I know everything there is to know about drug addicts, believe me.”
“Well, you’re right. I don’t do drugs.”
“So what are you spending it on?”
“I’m not spending it. I’m saving.”
“You’re saving?” As though he’d never heard the word before.
From the hallway came the sounds of guests arriving. The caterers started moving platters of food into the dining room and all of a sudden the kitchen was a hive of activity.
I nodded. “I can’t stand my job much longer. I hate it, in fact. I’m just waiting until I’ve got enough, then I’m going to hand in my resignation and take a year off.”
His face lit up. “Traveling?”
I stood up. “Maybe. I’m not sure. Just as long as I don’t have to do that job forever, that’s all. I need something to look forward to.”
Afterward, of course, I had a different perspective on that cozy little chat with Dylan in the kitchen of Fitz’s enormous house. He’d stuck with me because he’d been told to keep an eye on me. He wasn’t eating olives with me at the breakfast bar out of choice. He was my minder, just in case I decided to go snooping into other rooms.
And he’d asked the question he needed to ask. Not for Fitz, but for himself. I didn’t know it then, but Dylan had an agenda of his own.
Chapter Sixteen
When the phone rang, I jumped out of my skin. I didn’t recognize the number, and for a moment I hesitated before answering.
“Hello?”
“Genevieve? It’s Jim Carling. I’m in the parking lot, I’ll be two minutes. Okay?”
I went to unlock the door to the wheelhouse. It was still pitch-black out there, so I turned on the light. I could just make out the tangled pile of black fur lying on the dock. I would have to do something with the body: wrap it up in a cloth or a towel, or put it in a bag.
I saw a figure making its way down the dock toward the boat. I couldn’t see it was definitely him until he was right at the gangplank.
“Evening,” he said with a smile.
“It’s there,” I said. “Look.”
He turned back to where I was pointing. “All right. Go inside, I’ll be in in a minute. Put the kettle on, okay?”
I did as I was told. I presumed he was having a look at the body, trying to determine how Oswald had met his end, or doing whatever it was that detectives did. He was such a lovely cat, so friendly, I couldn’t see why anyone would want to hurt him. But they had. I thought of the man Pat had seen last night, the man I’d stupidly been convinced was Dylan. It couldn’t have been him, after all.
The kettle was boiling when the wheelhouse door finally opened and Carling came in. He was dressed in jeans and sneakers, with a dark waterproof jacket on top. He looked very different out of the suit, younger. He went to the sink and washed his hands.
“I’m sorry to call you. I didn’t know what else to do,” I said, putting two mugs of coffee down on the table in the dinette.
“That’s all right. I wasn’t doing anything particularly exciting.”
“It must be hard on the home life, this job,” I said. Unsubtle. I felt my cheeks coloring.
“It can be,” was all he said in reply.
We drank our coffee.
“What do you think happened? To Oswald, I mean?”
“Difficult to say,” he said. “Not easy to see any injuries in the dark. Have you told the owners?”
I shook my head. “I had a feeling that someone was on the dock. I didn’t want to go out, in case they were still there.”
“Who’s ‘they’?”
I stared at him. “Whoever it was that killed Oswald.”
He sighed, and
ran a hand through his hair. “See, I get the distinct impression that there’s stuff going on that you’re not telling me about, Genevieve. And it’s very difficult for me to help you when I don’t know the full story. Do you understand?”
I nodded. “Really,” I said. “There’s nothing going on. I’m just scared. I’ve just been shaken up since I found—you know—the body.”
“Candace Smith,” he said.
“What?”
“That’s her name, Candace Smith. We’ve identified the body.”
“Was she—local?”
Carling shook his head. “From London. We still don’t know what she was doing down here.”
“So she drowned?”
“The cause of death was drowning, but the postmortem showed a head wound. If she’d been outside the water she would have died of the fractured skull soon enough.”
I turned away, thinking about Caddy and her face, her lovely face, shattered and swollen, the muddy water washing over it. I felt sick at the thought of what had happened to her, and my eyes filled with tears. I wiped them away with the back of my hand, took a deep breath in.
“You think she hit her head on the dock? Like, she fell over, or something?”
His look said it all.
There was a silence. I fought back the tears. She had been so lovely—and so kind to me. And I was never going to see her again.
“I’m scared. I’m afraid to be on my own.”
“You know I can’t stay,” he said.
“Oh, of course. I hope you didn’t think . . .”
“Didn’t think what?”
“That it was some sort of . . . I don’t know . . . come-on.”
He smiled, warmly. “That’s a shame. I was rather hoping it was. Never mind—in either case, I can’t stay. It just wouldn’t be right.”
“Are you married? Or seeing someone?” I asked, his flirting making me bold.
“No. Are you?”
“No. It’s just me and the boat.”
“Right.” He finished his coffee. “I’ve wrapped up the cat in an old towel I had in the back of the car,” he said. “Have you thought about what you’re going to do?”
“I’ll have to go and see Malcolm and Josie in the morning. They’ll be beside themselves.”
“I’m not sure if it might not be kinder to tell them the cat was run over, to be honest.”
“Would I get away with that? I mean, does it look like he’s been run over?”
“Maybe they won’t look too closely.”
I felt sick. “Who would do something like this? Seriously, what sort of sick fucker?”
“The same sort of sick fucker who fractured Candace Smith’s skull, I expect.”
I looked at my hands. They were trembling. I crossed my arms and tucked my hands tightly under my armpits.
“Look,” he said, “I can’t force you to tell me. But whoever killed that girl seemed to deliberately put her next to your boat. And now it looks as if someone’s left another very unpleasant message for you to find. And you seriously have no idea who’s behind it?”
He was looking at me, studying my face. I wondered how it was that I was giving away secrets without telling him anything. My cheeks flushed and I stood up, uncomfortable, took my mug to the sink, and poured the last of my coffee down the drain. Behind me he made a sound, like a sigh that turned into a low growl of frustration.
Carling stood up and brought his mug over to me. Without saying anything, I took it and washed it in the sink.
“Candace Smith was a stripper. She worked in a nightclub in London, a place called the Barclay. Have you ever heard of it?”
I tried to stay as relaxed as I could. This was not something I wanted to talk about, not with Carling.
“I’m scared, Jim,” I said.
“I know you are.” He put a hand on my shoulder.
I turned away from the sink to face him. He’d been about to say something else and he stopped himself. He was very close. I could have moved away but there was something about him, something about his nearness. I could feel warmth from him.
“You don’t have to be scared,” he said, so quietly I barely heard him.
He took a step toward me and kissed me. Despite his nearness, it took me by surprise. For a second it was gentle, and then he pushed me back against the sink and the kiss was forceful, demanding. I should have resisted, I thought vaguely, at the same time realizing that it felt good and there was no way on earth I was going to do anything other than kiss him back, just as hard, and maybe even a bit harder.
When we parted, I whispered, “I’m sorry,” as though I’d assaulted him. As though it had been my idea.
“I can’t help you,” he said softly, “unless you tell me.”
“I can’t,” I said. “I just can’t.”
“Right.” He took a step back from me. “It’s late,” he said.
“I know, I’m sorry.”
And then, as though there was some kind of magnetic field pulling him back, he kissed me again, his arm around me, his hand in my hair. I could feel how hard he was. For a moment I thought, Is he going to want to stay? Is that what I’m hoping for? And then he pulled away from me again, right away this time. He backed off and leaned against the dinette.
“Shit,” he said. “Sorry about that.”
“Don’t apologize, Jim,” I said. The expression on his face made me laugh. How the hell had we ended up going at it like a couple of teenagers?
“I should go,” he said.
“Sure,” I said.
“Do you want me to stay?”
I thought about this. I thought about Dylan and my heart gave a lurch. I’d waited five months, and now it was clear he wasn’t interested.
“Look,” he said, “I don’t want to make things worse for you. Do you want me to stay until you fall asleep?”
That did sound like a very good compromise to me—and while he was here, at least, I was safe.
“Yes,” I said. “That would be very kind.”
He took me into my bedroom. I took my jeans off and got into bed. He pulled the duvet up around me and sat on the edge of the bed. After a moment I said to him, “You can lie down if you like.”
“I don’t want to fall asleep,” he said, but he lay down anyway. We lay together on the bed, side by side, looking up at the skylight. He was holding my hand. I could feel the tension in him through his skin.
“When you’re asleep, I’ll go. You’ll be all right. I’ll call you tomorrow, is that okay?”
“Yes,” I whispered.
The clouds had cleared and above us was the night sky, black like a blanket, a few tiny stars like pinpricks of light. I closed my eyes, afraid that I’d see a face or a shape in the dark rectangle. Despite myself I felt sleepy. I felt his bulk beside me, his warmth. I wanted to snuggle up to him, to throw my arm over his middle so that he would not be able to slip away without me noticing.
“I’m glad you called me,” he said.
“I thought you’d be angry. Or, actually, no—I didn’t think. I just knew I wanted to see you. I knew you’d make me feel better.”
“I can’t believe I kissed you.”
“I can’t believe it, either.”
“I’ve been thinking about kissing you since I first saw you.”
“Really?”
“You know . . .”
“What?”
“You know this can’t happen, don’t you? Not now. Not with the investigation and everything.”
“Do police officers never find themselves being tempted into immoral situations by witnesses, then? Does this never happen?”
He laughed. “Not to me, no,” he said. His fingers were stroking the skin on the back of my hand. It was soothing, so gentle.
“I like you,” I murmured.
“I like you, too.”
We were silent for a while and I wondered if I kept quiet long enough maybe he would fall asleep, too; maybe I’d wake up and he would still be here a
nd daylight would be showing through the skylight instead of darkness.
But what happened was quite the opposite: I fell asleep, and when I woke up he was gone.
Chapter Seventeen
In total, I estimated that there were no more than five actual guests at Fitz’s party. They were vastly outnumbered by caterers, a waitress, heavies they’d brought with them who weren’t officially participating, and by Fitz’s entourage, including various other men, Gray, Nicks, Dylan, and me.
I got changed in a downstairs bathroom before my first dance. Dylan had taken a CD with all my favorite music, plus some extras, and uploaded it to Fitz’s sound system.
I’d gone to town on the outfit, although it never consisted of much more than underwear with something stretchy over the top that I could remove in the course of the dance.
In fact, I’d spent most on the shoes—two hundred pounds on a pair of sandals that buckled with thin straps all the way up to just below the knee. The heels on them were five inches. I’d had to practice dancing with them on, as much of my grip came from the skin on my calves down to the ankles, but when I tested them out it was fine. The only danger would be if one of the buckles snagged on the other when my legs were crossed at the ankle.
Dylan came to fetch me. Despite my attire he didn’t so much as look at me twice. “You’re on,” he said.
The first dance went well. I opened to my favorite dancing track, the one I’d had at my audition with Fitz—Elbow’s “Grounds for Divorce.”
I swung around the pole at full force to start off with, and it was my first chance to have a look at the men grouped on the chairs and sofas. They were well dressed, and they’d all had a drink or two—including Fitz—but they weren’t drunk yet and I needed a spectacular start to get their attention. They were still talking and laughing among themselves when I started, but they stopped within the first ten seconds of my routine and then I had their undivided attention—vertical, upside-down splits with a spin, my hair flying around in an arc so fast that they should have been able to feel a breeze from it.
Fitz watched me, and looked at his guests, glancing from them back to me with an expression that was hard to read. Approval, definitely. Arousal? I could never tell, not with him.