A Match Made on Madison (The Matchmaker Chronicles) (16 page)

“I’d love to . . . ,” I began.

“Oh good,” Mother said, efficiently cutting in before I got to the “but.” “We’re meeting at two.”

I closed my eyes, counted to three, and then miracle of miracles, the doorbell rang. “Mother, there’s someone at the door,” I said, my voice sounding a lot like I’d run a marathon and won. “I’ve got to go. Sorry. And I’m afraid I’ll have to take a rain check on lunch.” I hung up before she could even say good-bye. It seems rude, I know, but desperate times and all that.

The doorbell buzzed again, and I wondered who it could be. The concierge announced visitors, so it had to be someone in the building. Anderson usually knocked, and Richard would have left for work ages ago.

I pulled the little knob that opened the peephole, and felt a lot like I’d exchanged one problem for another. This was not turning into a great day.

Mrs. M.

And from the looks of her tapping foot, she wasn’t happy.

I shot a look at Waldo stretched out on the windowsill. He opened one eye and then closed it again. No help from that corner. “You should have been a dog,” I whispered, and then dared another peek.

She was still there, this time moving closer, her eye on the peephole. I dropped the little shutter in place and stood frozen, praying she hadn’t noticed the movement. There was something unsettling about the thought of Edna Melderson trying to look in through the peephole, even though I knew she couldn’t see anything.

“Vanessa?” She really did sound like the Wicked Witch, I swear. I held my breath, motioning Waldo to silence. No way was she carting my cat away in a bicycle basket. My heart was pounding and I pondered the fact that I’d let an old lady cow me into hiding in my own apartment.

“Vanessa?” This time she knocked. I stared at the door like it was going to open itself. One minute passed, and then another, and then just when I thought I’d managed escape, a white envelope slid under the door.

I started to reach for it, and then realized part of it was still on the other side. Mrs. M. was good. I hate to admit it but I actually stood there waiting, counting one Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi—well you get the idea. I was up to eighty-five Mississippi when I figured I was safe. But to be sure I checked the peephole first.

Unless she was ducked down on the floor, the coast was clear. And while I didn’t put it past Mrs. M. to think of that, I didn’t actually think she could manage the maneuver. She wasn’t exactly a spring chicken, you know.

Besides, I still had the advantage of a closed, locked door.

I bent down and slowly pulled the envelope out from under the door, imagining Chanel red talons following behind. What can I say—too many horror movies as a teenager.

Anyway, needless to say, nothing happened.

The envelope looked harmless enough. I slit it open and pulled the piece of paper out with trepidation. Swallowing, as if it was a summons from the devil himself, I opened it and immediately exhaled.

Not a summons to appear before the board.

There was a God.

Unfortunately that’s as far as the good news went. It was a bill—for Arabella. Five hundred dollars for a kitty prenatal visit. What a world.

Still, considering the alternative, it was a small price to pay. I walked over to Waldo and, much to his dismay, pulled him into my arms. Waldo might be a lothario, but he preferred initiating contact, thank you very much. But he was my cat, and I had single-handedly—all right, Richard helped a little—saved his gonads. The least he could do was offer a cuddle and a purr.

Of course, all you really had to do was stroke his belly and all bets were off. He was a cat, after all. He curled against me, warm and furry, and just for a moment I forgot all my worries. Okay, so I was glad Waldo wasn’t a dog.

We stood for a moment, me bonding with my cat, Waldo suffering my ridiculous human sentimentality. And then the phone rang. I dumped Waldo faster than a guy on a blind date dumps an ugly woman.

He yowled and I ran.

“Hello?” I sounded like I’d surfaced from a silk-sheet love fest.

“Vanessa? Is that you?”

Not Mark—Maris Vanderbeek.

I cleared my throat and sucked in a calming breath. “It’s me. Sorry. I was in the back room.” Considering my apartment is only about nine hundred square feet and that each of the four rooms in it has a phone, the excuse was lame, but Maris had never seen the apartment and I wasn’t about to explain that I’d been communing with my cat. “What’s up?”

No matter how much I wanted Mark Grayson to call, I couldn’t in all good conscience hang up on Maris. After all, Grayson was only a prospective client. Maris was marrying Douglas Larson—a bona fide paying client.

“I need your help,” she said, and for the first time I noticed the tremor in her voice. “Douglas called off the wedding.”

I swear to God, my life flashed before my eyes.

Chapter 12

Gramercy Park.
Irving Place (between Twentieth and Twenty-First streets).

One hundred and sixty years ago, Samuel Ruggles developed a tranquil residential area surrounding a private park in New York. . . . Today, almost two centuries later, New York’s Gramercy Park remains as private, secure, and serene as it was in the days of Samuel Ruggles. Enjoyment of the park is still limited to those with keys to the park’s gate: the homeowners and tenants of Gramercy Park.

—www.coopcommunities.com

∞∞∞

An apartment with a key to Gramercy Park is as close to a sure investment as it gets. And Maris Vanderbeek had one.

Maris is a card-carrying member of New York’s blue blood society. Not that they have meetings or anything, but their pedigree allows them access to certain privileges above and beyond common celebrity and bourgeois billionaires.

According to the DAR, the original Vanderbeek had come to New York with Henry Hudson. And, according to legend, had been present when Hudson famously bought Manhattan. Hey, you got to love a guy with an eye for a bargain. Anyway, apparently unlike a lot of those early adventurous types, Vanderbeek had held on to his share, which in today’s market is worth something in the neighborhood of $17 billion.

And Maris, as an only child, had inherited the lot.

You’d think all that money would make finding a husband a snap, but there were a few flies in the Baccarat-encased ointment. Primarily the fact that Horace Vanderbeek suffered a stroke sometime during his fifties, and with the death of his wife (some say he drove her to it), his daughter was left with the onerous job of caring for her father.

By all accounts—not Maris’s, bless her—Horace was a difficult man, and despite having enough ailments to fill a season in one of Stanley’s television shows, he held on to life with the tenacity of a broke fashionista at a Prada sale. Finally, at ninety-two, he had succumbed to pneumonia, which doesn’t give a whit how much you’re worth, and Maris, at fifty-three, was left on her own for the first time in her adult life.

I met her at an after-party for the Broadway opening of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. (The show was amazingly funny—but what would you expect with John Lithgow and Norbert Leo Butz?) She was standing all alone in the corner nursing a lemon-drop martini, the dichotomy of drink and social skills intriguing, to say the least.

Everyone at the party was someone, but Maris’s clothes screamed old money while her eyes flashed lost and lonely, an irresistible combination for a woman in my particular line of work. And in just a few minutes I, too, was sipping a sweet and sour libation and chatting up what indeed turned out to be a valuable addition to my list.

Maris had managed to snare Douglas Larson.

Yes.
The
Douglas Larson. Reclusive author of
Essence of Henry
. Douglas was something of an urban legend in Manhattan. An English lit professor at NYU, his family can be traced back to the
Mayflower
. And unfortunately, like the Vanderbeeks’, inbreeding hadn’t really done them all that much good. As a result, Douglas was extremely shy and very awkward around women, the latter due, at least in part, to the fact that his first and only love had left him standing at the altar.

His scars were deep, and his novels echoed a haunting sadness that had to be experienced before it could be expressed. While not a commercial hit in the way of John Grisham or Stephen King, there was a lyrical resonance to his prose that had resulted in a devoted following.

We’d known each other socially for years, but never really talked. He was the kind who hid in the corner, while I was more the tabletop-dancing type. But one night we’d actually struck up a conversation, and from there a sort of friendship had developed. Despite that fact, however, I’d been shocked when he’d called me to request a match.

I mean, some people are better off single, you know? Still, I have never turned down a challenge, and when Maris presented herself front and center, I knew the game was on. Not only on, but amazingly successful.

Maris and Douglas were engaged to be married.

Or they had been.

Which brings us right back to Gramercy Park and Maris’s frantic call. We settled on a green metal bench, the traffic noise washed away by the singing birds and the wind in the trees. A Disney moment if ever there was one. “So tell me what happened,” I urged. Maris hadn’t said much of anything since I’d met her at the park’s gate.

“Everything was going fine. We talked to the caterer last week, and then this week we finalized the registry. We went to dinner at Bette.” Only someone with Maris’s kind of connections could throw that out without name-dropping. It was nearly impossible to get into Bette. Unless you were independently wealthy and engaged to one of Manhattan’s literati. Is that a word? Anyway, you get the point.

“All sounds good to me,” I said, waiting for the other shoe to drop. To date, the Larson-Vanderbeek merger was my greatest accomplishment. If it fell apart now, the repercussions would be monumental.

“Exactly, it was. I mean, everything was better than good; it was great. And then this morning I get a phone call from Douglas. And he tells me that he can’t do it.”

“Do what?” I asked, even though I knew the answer. It was like watching a train wreck; you don’t want to, but you can’t help yourself.

“Get married.” She said, her blue eyes welling with tears.

Most people would consider Maris attractive, although her figure is a bit too full for conventional beauty. And the lines around her eyes and forehead are clear indications that she’s probably never even considered Botox. Salt was winning over pepper in her hair, and left to its own, her natural curl frizzed in a way that made one think immediately of electric sockets.

Fortunately, Natasha Magleeva at Limpopo was wonderful with frizz. Which meant that thanks to me, Maris’s hair was revitalized in a way that only a good blowout can accomplish.

“Did he say why?” I sucked in oxygen, trying to keep my pounding heart in line. It would never do for the matchmaker to show fear.

“No. He just said it was no use talking about it, he wasn’t going to change his mind.” She reached over for my hand, squeezing it until I thought my bones might break. “You’ll do something, won’t you? I ... I love him.”

Love. That nasty four-letter word. It has more power than all curse words combined. If only I could wave the magic wand and take Maris back to the pre-Douglas state. But I couldn’t, and even though I usually side with the client—they’re paying the bills after all—it was in my best interest to knock Douglas into shape. For his own good.

“I’ll talk to him.” I nodded sagely as if I knew exactly what needed to be done, all the while searching like a crazy woman for the key to Douglas’s defection.

“He’s not answering any of his phones. And the university won’t tell me anything.”

“Don’t worry,” I said, trying for reassurance. Maybe I’d been wrong about the two of them. But I was never wrong. It had to be something else. “I’ll find him. Are you sure he didn’t say anything else? Something to give you an idea where all this is coming from?”

“No.” She shook her head. “I tried to reason with him. But—” My cell phone’s ring sounded discordant in the quiet of the park. “Vanessa Carlson,” I barked into the receiver, my mind still on Douglas.

“Vanessa. Sorry it’s taken so long to get back to you.”

Some part of my brain recognized that it was Grayson on the other end of the line, but the rest was simply too panicked about Maris’s problem to react appropriately.

“I’m sorry. I can’t talk right now. I’m in the middle of an emergency.”

“And here I was hoping you’d have time for a late lunch.”

“I’m sorry, I can’t,” I said, waving good-bye to all hope of winning the bet. But I didn’t have any choice, Maris and Douglas had to come first.

“Anything I can help with?”

Talk about coming out of left field. I mean I didn’t really even know the guy. And, to be honest, our previous interactions hadn’t been all that positive. “Thanks. But no. I can handle it.”

“All right. So how about dinner then?”

My brain screamed yes, but my heart held sway. “I don’t know how long this is going to take.”

“If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were trying to blow me off.”

Well, there was a full reversal of situations. “I’m not. I’m just knee-deep in alligators here.”

His laugh was surprisingly rich. “Why don’t you call me when you’re finished. I eat late.”

Hope blossomed. “You’re on. Should I call the office?”

“No, my cell.” He gave me the number and I fumbled around in my purse for a pen. Maris, thankfully, produced a piece of paper. I scribbled down the number and rang off.

“Am I keeping you from something important?” Maris asked.

“No. That was just a potential client.”

“Not Mark Grayson?” she asked.

“Of course not.” I lied. No need airing my laundry. Besides, Maris would only be more upset. “The whole Grayson thing is on hold. He’s not all that interested in matchmaking.”

Maris nodded. “I can understand that. I mean, it is sort of difficult to admit to someone that you aren’t capable of attracting a mate on your own.”