Cheating at Solitaire (21 page)

Lance was formulating a plan when he heard the faint hum of walkie-talkie static and knew immediately that the situation was even worse than he'd thought—Julia and Nina were still in the house.

"My Johnny didn't pay you to stand," Myrtle bellowed, shaking her curler-covered head. Then she began chanting,
"Strip. Strip. Strip. Strip."

"I think maybe we should go in here," Lance said loudly, and began to steer her out of the kitchen, away from the sounds of static and spilling cereal. "I think it would be best if you sat here, with your back to the patio doors," he practically yelled. "There. That's perfect. You just sit there and keep your
eyes on me."

"That's our cue!" Julia said to Nina.

She eased the pantry door open just in time to hear Lance yell, "Wait! Why are you going
to the
kitchen "

Okay, already,
Julia thought.
We're not deaf.
She eased the door closed.

"I can't believe that old bat gets to see him naked," Nina complained as she and Julia stood, cramped and motionless. "If anyone should get to see him naked, it's us. We're the ones who—

"

"Got him into this mess," Julia said, shutting Nina up.

They heard heavy footsteps outside, then the clank of ice in a glass and a bottle opening. Julia smelled liquor and hoped tint Myrtle would continue in her alcoholic stupor and wake tomorrow morning thinking the whole thing had been a dream. She also hoped the old bat wouldn't look in the pantry. She didn't want to think about what else Myrtle might be looking at by the end of the night.

"Don't you boys usually bring music?" Myrtle yelled.

"Oh, but I'm a robber stripper," Lance said. "I'm supposed to
steal
music from you."

Myrtle seemed pleased by the sound of that. "Sure," she said. "Just let me put on an album."

Julia heard the shuffling of feet going to the far end of the kitchen, and then nothing. A long moment passed before the door flew open.

"Ah!" she and Nina gasped. Julia held up a hand to shield herself against the glare of Lance's flashlight.

"Get out!" Lance hissed, dragging Julia by the arm toward the door. "Now! Go! Get!" And with one solid push, they were locked on the other side of Crazy Myrtle's patio doors. Julia turned and bolted away from the glass, but Nina stayed behind. "Do you think she'd notice if we stood here and watched?" she asked.

"Why isn't he back yet?" Julia asked while pacing a hole in the playroom carpet.

"Maybe he takes it off real slow," Nina said from her post by the telescope.

"Nina!" Julia cried, then realized her best friend had a point.
Let's see . . . i f it takes a minute
per shoe, two minutes for a shirt? Pants? How long for the pants?
She gave herself a mental slap.

"I can't see any of the good stuff through this thing," Nina said, but she still didn't offer to let anyone else take a turn at the telescope. Caroline had nearly passed out when Myrtle's lights came on, and when Julia and Nina came back to the house, she was more than happy to hand over central control duties to Nina while she rested on the couch and let her heart slow down to a normal pace.

Julia, however, was getting more nervous by the second. 'I've got this terrible feeling in my gut."

Nina cut her eyes toward Julia and said, "You've got a weird feeling all right, but I'm betting it's not in your gut. I'm betting you're nice and tingly all over."

"This is serious, Nina! Like jail time serious. What if Myrtle figures out what's really going on?

What if the dog is allergic to hot dogs?"

"What dog?" a bewildered Caroline wanted to know.

Julia plowed by her sister's question. "What if she thinks he's supposed to do more than dance?"

"Well, we're gonna find out." Nina turned from the telescope. "He's leaving."

Three different looks on three different faces told Lance all he needed to know as soon as he walked into Caroline's huge house. Nina was standing at attention, a human paper towel, ready to absorb all the juicy details. Caroline was resting in an overstuffed chair, her feet propped on an ottoman and her eyelids fluttering as exhaustion slowly won the battle with intrigue. But Julia's face was priceless.

"What took you so long?" she said before he'd even closed the patio door. "Don't tell me you were stripping all that time, because you're not wearing that many clothes!"

As much as Lance was enjoying the look on her face, he thought it was time to ease her mind a little. "I looked for the manuscript," he said. "I couldn't find it. I'm sorry."

"What?" she asked, confused.

"The manuscript," he reminded her. "I couldn't find it." "So you're okay?" she demanded. "Yes,"

he told her, slightly taken aback. "You scared me half to death," she said, and Lance thought he sensed something like affection in her tone. She tried to

smack his shoulder as a punishment, but he caught her wrists in his hands and pulled her toward him.

"Myrtle," he spoke softly, calmly, "is a sentimental drunk."

"She cried afterwards, didn't she?" Nina jumped in.

But Lance's gaze never left Julia. "You know that stuff in her house, all those mountains of junk we had to dodge all night?" he asked.

'Yes," Julia said.

"Well, there's a story behind it. Every piece of it. There are stories about the stories. I got to hear them all."

"But was this naked listening? Semi-naked? Can you give us a visual?" Nina asked.

"Nina," Lance said, turning to face her, "a gentleman never tells."

After dozing most of the night on the sofa in the playroom, Julia woke once again to the sight of Nina and Caroline staring out a window.

"Aunt Julia!" Cassie cried as she plowed through the playroom and jumped into Julia's arms.

The little girl was still in her pajamas, her wild hair frizzing all around and tickling Julia's nose as she gave her a huge hug. "Come on," Cassie said, sliding down Julia's hip to the floor. "Let's go play in my room."

"No, honey," Caroline said. "Aunt Julia can't play right now."

"Caroline, I'll . . ." Julia started, but stopped cold when she read her sister's expression. Then she turned her attention to her niece. "You go on, sweetie. I'll be in after I talk to your momma."

Cassie darted down the hall, and Julia crept toward the window.

"He's back," Caroline whispered, urgency rising in her voice. "He's in the house . . . Richard Stone!"

Julia rushed to the window just in time to see Lance's agent appear on Myrtle's porch and shake the woman's hand. Then he turned and began walking down the sidewalk toward a car. an accordion-style folder tucked under one arm.

Without thinking, Julia flew down the stairs in bare feet and her burglary outfit from the night before. Sleep and fatigue clung to her, and a disgusting taste filled her mouth, but she knew that she had to stop that man before he drove away. She was at the base of the stairs and through the entryway in a matter of seconds. She saw him step toward his car that was parked across the street, so she hurled herself off the porch. In the middle of the street, Richard Stone stopped and stared at her, dumbfounded.

"Stone!"
she yelled.

She stumbled into the street and clung to the front bumper of his car. But the agent merely eased closer to the car door and broke into a laugh. "Well, if it isn't the blushing bride," he said.

"Now, you need to be careful. All this physical exertion might not be good for someone in your delicate condition." He opened the car door and stood so that he was shielded by the big piece of metal and glass.

"I believe you have something
that belongs to m e "
Julia said.

"This?" he asked, chuckling. He held up the folder that contained the manuscript, then tossed it casually onto the passenger seat of the car. "My friend Myrtle found that and thought I might like to read it. I'm looking forward to it. I just can't help but wonder why a big, bestselling author like you would want to publish under any other name. But, babe, I'm really looking forward to finding out."
I
Julia clawed her way onto the hood of the car.
"You're not leaving
here, Stone!"
she yelled.
"You're not getting away with ..."

The car must have been newly waxed, because Julia, in her black cotton burglary gear, was sliding farther and farther down the hood. She tried to crawl up, but every time she moved forward six inches, she'd slide back a foot. Julia had to press her cheek to the warm hood of the vehicle and brace her feet against the hood ornament to maintain any kind of traction at all.

"You're not getting away. . . . "

She heard the engine start and felt the hood begin to vibrate as she lost her grip and slid to the street, and a split second later, both Richard Stone and Veronica White were gone.

# WAY #77: Watch what you eat.

The purpose of food is to provide nutrients for life—not to help us through the bad times.

Confront your emotions honestly, and don't hide behind the vice of chips and chocolate. Both
your life and your waistline wil be better for it.

—from 707 Way to
Cheat at Solitaire

" Julia, honey, I've got biscuits and gravy. You love biscuits and gravy," Caroline was saying as Lance followed a wonderful aroma into the kitchen.

"Here, honey, have some juice. You like juice," Caroline reminded her sister.

"Jules," Nina chimed, "no one could have stopped him."

"Stop who? Not. . . " Lance asked, but one look at the three faces around the island told him that his agent had indeed come calling. He tried to focus on the humor of the situation, because if he thought about anything else, he was afraid he'd be tempted to lose himself in the pan of homemade biscuits that Nina was pulling out of the oven. "Why didn't someone get me?"

"It happened too fast for that," Nina said. "It just happened too fast." She went to the refrigerator, but Lance didn't know what could possibly be left in there—the kitchen counter was already overflowing.

"And Myrtle gave him the manuscript?" he asked.

"Yes. He's got it," Caroline said. She turned to her sister. "That which does not kill us makes us stronger. Right?"

Julia didn't respond. She just looked blankly ahead.

Lance studied her. It wasn't just her puffy eyes that weighed on him—it was the overall feel of her that made him worry. Gone was the steadfast woman who'd seemed at ease with the world while sitting alone at Stella's; missing was the gracious celebrity who'd signed autographs, the caring aunt who'd bought half the inventory of FAO Schwarz. The protective layer that had kept Julia calm and serene had been stripped away, and what was left was something far too fragile to exist in the world.

For Julia, a career wasn't a livelihood; it was an identity. Lance looked at her and realized that if Julia James and Veronica White ever tried to exist on the same plane, one of them would have to die, and he couldn't let that happen.

"Nina, can I borrow your car?" he asked.

Nina reemerged from the freezer, looking as though she'd developed a mild case of frostbite.

"Why?"

"I just. . ." he started. "There's just something I need to do."

***

Evidently, Tammy with the great eyes and love for Thai food hadn't skipped the country entirely, because she was the person who answered the phone when Lance called the offices of Poindexter-Stone in New York. It had taken a little persuading, but eventually she told him what he needed to know, and that was how he found himself poised outside room number two-fifteen at a motel outside of Tulsa. He raised his hand to knock, but his fist hung involuntarily in midair.
Maybe I could sweet-talk a maid into letting me into the room? I might get lucky and
find the manuscript just lying there, unattended and ready to be taken.
But then Lance shook his head. Nina was starting to rub off on him. This was a serious problem. It required a serious solution.

After Lance had talked to Tammy, he'd called his mother and laid out all the details of the bargain he was prepared to make with Richard Stone. She had actually cried, not because she was upset but because she was very proud. And very theatrical. His mother had proclaimed that he was prepared to fall on his sword to save the woman he cared about, but standing on the motel balcony, Lance didn't feel noble. Instead, he felt like a failure, like someone who doesn't keep his promises, even the ones he has made to himself.

I did this,
Lance admitted. I
conned my way into Stella's,
he remembered, taking responsibility for the first in a series of lies that had changed Julia's life and exposed her secret, and now he was willing to break one promise to keep another—the promise that he'd never take advantage of her again. He raised his hand to the door. He knocked.

"I've been doing some very interesting reading," Richard, Stone said after he'd opened the door and gotten over his surprise at seeing Lance. "What I can't figure out is whether the two of you have known each other for years, and she wrote this about you then, or if you're just a dream come true." He snickered.

The room fit the man, dated and dingy. Lance stepped inside onto the shag carpet as Richard went on.

"So, what is it? Long-lost love? College fling?"

"You know that's not the way it is," Lance shot back.

And with that, Richard Stone's snicker evolved into a full laugh. "Oh, you are so serious. Only dramas for you. No comedies." Richard slipped his glasses on and looked back down at the manuscript pages. Then, glancing up, he asked Lance, "Do you think she still has the film rights to this, because with you starring—"

"I want you to give that to me," Lance said and held out his hand.