Can't Buy Me Love (15 page)

“
I hardly ever see her. She’s still asleep when I leave in the morning, and she goes to bed right after dinner. It’s kind of strange, you know. She used to be up before me every day of the week.”

“
Maybe she’s sleeping late because she can, now that you’ve hired a new cook. By the way, how is she working out?”

“
Fine, I guess. It’s just kind of eerie having a person without a past around the house. You never know what they may be hiding.”

“
Yes, but can she cook?”

“
You expect me to eat at home?”

“
Isn’t that why you have a cook?”

Blake shrugged.

“You hired her two weeks ago.” Noah’s tone reeked with disbelief.

“
Yeah, and in those two weeks I have eaten at every restaurant in Chicago be it fast food or fine dining. I can’t be too careful.”

“
You have finally lost it,” Noah said. “Marriage has driven you over the edge.”

“
Yes, well. I’d rather be crazy than dead.”

Chapter Fourteen

The phone rang four times before Noah disengaged his lips from their current assignment and set his fluted wine glass on the coffee table.
He looked at the woman next to him, the voluptuous Delilah French. It had taken him several calculated weeks to get her into his apartment and into his arms, and now that he had her where he wanted her, the damned phone was ringing.

He let it sound once more.
Not taking his eyes off the dark-haired beauty, he answered it on the fifth ring.

“
Anderson.”

“
She must be good. I thought you’d never answer.”

The voice that came across the phone lines was thick and slurred, and Noah barely recognized it.

“Blake?”

“
Noah,” he said in return. “Listen, pal. I have to talk to you. I’m in big trouble.”

Noah looked at
Delilah. “It’s a client,” he mouthed, then he turned his attention back to Blake. “What kind of trouble?”

“
The worst kind. Are you coming or not?”

Noah
’s gaze slid over the dark-haired beauty’s tiny black dress and the hot, silky, moistness of her lips. A friend in need, he thought to himself then sighed heavily. “Are you at home?”

Blake laughed, the laugh of a man too far gone in straight whiskey.
“Lord, no. I may not have much longer, but I want to see the night through. I’m at a bar. I think on Eleventh Street. I can’t make out the name, but there’s a bird on the sign. You shouldn’t have much trouble finding it; my car’s out front. Come celebrate with me.”

“
Celebrate? I thought you were in trouble. You’re not making much sense.”

On the other end of the line Blake sighed.
“Yeah, well, none of this does. Are you coming or not?”

Noah eyed the beautiful brunette and sighed. “I’ll be there in fifteen.”

****

True to Blake
’s word, Noah didn’t have a hard time finding the bar. Joey’s Blue Flamingo Lounge and Beer Gardens sat between a used car lot and a bowling alley and could only be described as a wanna-be upper class redneck hangout. The Blake Caldwell he knew would have never set in foot in such an establishment, but Blake’s brand new white Mercedes was indeed parked out front on the rough, unlined patch of asphalt that served as a parking lot. Not surprisingly it was the only Mercedes. Noah parked his Towncar, set the alarm and said a small prayer that it would be all right in this rough-hewn environment.

The crack of billiard balls floated out of the small building on the warm night breeze already filled with the honky
-tonk nasal sounds of some country singer who proclaimed that Hank Williams wrote his life.

The smell of stale cigarette smoke and unwashed, hard
-working bodies assaulted Noah as he walked in the door. The interior was small and the crowd likewise. It took him only a few moments to spot his friend-in-need sitting at the bar nursing a fruity looking drink.

“
Blake.”

At the sound of his name, Blake turned sloshing the alcohol concoction on his sleeve, on the bar, and on the man seated next to him.

“Hi, Noah. Sit down. Sit down. Have a drink. Fred,” he called to the man behind the bar. “Get my friend Noah here a drink.”

Fred nodded.

“I’ll take a vodka martini.”

Fred stopped, glass in hand and a confused, even horrified, expression on his large face.

Blake laughed. “Give him The Special,” he said to the bartender, then turned back to Noah. “Fred’s new at this mixed drink stuff. He’s just learning, you understand. The bar used to only serve beer, but now they’re trying to up-grade their image.”

“
Yes, I can see that,” Noah dryly commented.

“
Well, Fred’s not up to difficult things like martinis. He practices though. Tonight he’s working on rum and fruit punch.”

“
And that’s the special?”

“
Yep. He calls it a Fruit Looped.”

“
Blake, maybe we should—”

“
And bring my friend Joe one, too.” Blake gestured to the man seated next to him, the one he had spilled his drink on.

“
Blake, what are you doing here?”

Blake glanced covertly around him.
“I’m getting drunk. Rotten, stinking drunk. Ain’t that right, Joe?”

“
That’s right.” The man grinned revealing a missing left canine tooth.

“
Oh, wait. I haven’t introduced you. Noah, this is my new friend Joe. Joe, this is my old friend Noah.”

“
It’s a pleasure,” Noah said.

Joe nodded as Fred brought their drinks, a funny pinkish-orange liquid with an umbrella stuck in the straw and a cherry floating on top.

“I asked Joe if he owned the place,” Blake continued. “But he said no. He said he just liked to come here and pretend that he did.”

“
We all have to have a dream.” Noah took a tentative sip of his drink and grimaced. “Have you really been drinking these?”

“
Lots of ‘em.” Blake made a sweeping gesture in front of him toward the many little paper umbrellas that lay strewn across the bar.

Noah had never known Blake to drink that much and certainly not mixed fruit drinks that came decorated with Barbie-sized umbrellas.
Something was bothering him. And if Noah had to guess, that something would be Paige. “What did you need to talk about, Blake?”

“
Oh, I just wanted company. But you took so long getting here that I made a new friend. His name is Joe.”

“
We’ve met.” Noah took hold of Blake’s arm. “Come on let’s get out of here. We can go someplace where people have bathed in the past week, then you can tell me what’s wrong.”

“
It’s Paige,” Blake said as he tried to pull his arm from Noah’s grasp. “It’s always been Paige. She’s trying to kill me. Tomorrow she’ll try again, and this time she’ll succeed for sure.”

“
I think you’ve had a little too much to drink.” Noah stopped tugging on Blake’s arm. He hadn’t moved him even one inch and no matter how hard Noah tried he would not be successful. He had learned one valuable lesson in his days at college: there was nothing heavier than a drunken man who didn’t want to move.

“
I’ve had
a lot
too much to drink, but I can still see the pattern. Tomorrow she’ll try to kill me again. Or maybe the next day. I can’t really be sure. But it’ll happen. Mark my words. She wants me dead.” When he didn’t get the apparent response he wanted from Noah, Blake turned to Joe.

“
Ain’t that right, Joe?”

“
Just like a woman.” Joe nodded, then took a drink of his Fruit Looped.

“
Ain’t?” Noah asked.

“
It’s true. You don’t believe me. Masters is gone. There’s no one to help me. So tonight I’m celebrating what will be one of my last nights on earth.”

“
Blake, getting drunk isn’t going to help you out of this problem.”

He nodded solemnly.
“But it might help cut the pain when she—” He dragged a finger across his neck.

“
Come on, buddy. Let’s go home.”

“
You’re not listening to me, Noah. I can’t go home.”

“
And I won’t listen to you either until we can go someplace where we can talk.”

Blake opened his mouth to speak.

“Alone,” Noah interrupted. “Without spectators or music.”

Blake turned to Joe.
“Sorry to do this to you my friend, but I have to go. He’s my attorney and all.”

Joe nodded as if he understood all about attorneys, and Blake slid off the barstool.
He wobbled a little, but Noah braced his arm around him and helped him out the door.

****

Blake squinted in the bright light of the Village Inn Pancake House and tried to focus on his coffee. After four cups of the strong brew, he still felt drunk, wide awake and drunk.

“
Now tell me why you think Paige will try to kill you tomorrow,” Noah instructed in his court room tone. “And make this good. I had Delilah primed and ready, and you interrupted.”

“
Delilah French?”

“
The one and only.”

Blake grinned sheepishly.
“Sorry about that.” He sighed, trying to get all the words right before he let them leave his mouth, but it was almost too much of an effort. “This afternoon at Montrachet, Paige saw me with Anna. I know what it looked like, but I was waiting on you. Then I kissed her—just a brotherly peck. I didn’t mean anything by it. I kiss a lot of women. Hell, I’ve even kissed Marguerite Davidson.” He made a face. “But I think I embarrassed Paige. I know I made her angry.”

“
Then what happened?”

Blake rubbed his eyes still trying to logically sort through the alcohol
-saturated facts. “Paige wouldn’t listen to me. She almost ran me down with her car, and then I knew.”

“
Knew what?”

Blake shook his head, then took another sip of his coffee.
“The pattern’s there, don’t you see? I took her to the Opera Benefit. It was an embarrassing experience for her. Two days later she tried to kill me by crushing me with an iron sewing machine.”

“
I told you it could have been a coincidence. That sewing machine weighs a ton. There’s no way she could have dragged it across the hall and to the railing, then pushed it over.”

“
Yes, there is. Henry the janitor confessed to leaving it too close to the banister. All Paige had to do was tip it and its own weight did the rest.”

Noah was silent
, and Blake let that little piece of information sink in before continuing. “The night after her birthday, I told everyone that she would be joining the Caldwell designing team. The next morning she tried to run me over with my own car.”

“
Yes, but the
accident
with the car happened
before
you made your little announcement.”

“
It wasn’t an accident.”

“
Blake, you have no proof that Paige wasn’t telling the truth about the steering going out.”

“
And I have no proof that she wasn’t lying either. Because of the wreck, the steering column was too damaged for the mechanics to tell. And then I insulted her cooking and almost died of poisoned food.”

“
Oh, the perils of marriage.”

“
I’d like to see you laid up with stomach cramps for two days.”

“
Blake, the doctor at the hospital said that it was food poisoning, not the other way around.”

“
No, she tried to kill me. Don’t you see? I’ve been really careful about what I’ve done and said these past couple of weeks and everything was going along just fine. Then Anna comes back and well....Paige may not get me tomorrow or the next day, but it’ll be soon.”

Noah nodded slowly.
“I think you’re being paranoid, but I’ll call Masters tomorrow. I’ll demand to speak with him personally regardless of his health. There’s no need for you to go through this mental anguish however unfounded it may be.”

“
I’m not afraid to die, Noah. I just don’t want to.”

“
I know, but Masters may by the time I get through with him. Are you okay to go home now?”

Blake nodded.
“Yes, I’m fine.” He stood and felt himself swaying as though pushed about by a great wind. “You’ll have to drive me though. I can’t remember where I left my car.”

****

The front porch light was glaring its welcome when Blake staggered up the steps and let himself in. The drive home and the cool night breeze did a lot to help him feel more like himself, though as the pounding started in his head, he wished he was somebody else.

With the caution of a man who has had too much to drink, Blake quietly closed the door behind him.
On his tip-toes, he crept toward the stairs.

“
Blake?”

He whirled around upsetting one of his aunt
’s occasional tables and the Oriental vase that sat upon it. Miraculously he caught the priceless trinket before it could shatter upon the parquet floor.

“
Paige?” He tried to make out her face in the inky darkness of the foyer.

“
Are you okay?”

“
What are you doing down here?”

“
Waiting on you.”

“
In the dark?”

“
Would you rather I turned on the light?”