Chill Factor (23 page)

“Save me a dance later,” he urged, handing her a business card from his jacket pocket. “I’m Crawford Garston. Club treasurer.”

Dixie read the card. “Esquire” appeared beneath his name. “I’d be happy to save a dance for you,
Judge
Garston.”

His eyes crinkled at the corners. “Do I know you?”

“You threw out one of my cases, eleven years, two months, and twenty-six days ago.”
Approximately.
“Told me to march right back to law school.”

Garston chuckled, studying her as if trying to recall the case. “Hope your dancing’s as good as your memory.”

“I hope retirement has mellowed your disposition.” It certainly hadn’t improved his color sense.

Inside the meeting room, a five-piece band played a popular tune in a style reminiscent of the forties. Three couples
swayed on the dance floor. Dixie spied Parker, rakishly handsome, as always, chatting with a blue-haired woman in a green polka-dot party dress. The woman waved Dixie over.

“My, how nice to see new people here.” Nora, according to her name tag, looked to be a good age match for Judge Garston. Apparently, forty-nine lasted a very long time with this group.

“Terrence Jackson invited me,” Dixie said.

Parker’s gaze had lodged in her cleavage. Dixie felt a rush of heat in precisely the same spot.

“That devil Terrence hasn’t arrived yet!” Nora’s smile suggested Jackson was the best tonic since Geritol. “He’ll show up later. Always does. I’m Nora Raye, tonight’s hostess. You see, Parker, we do have a few young folks who attend. Now, let me show you both to the free buffet.”

Nora seemed the type to know everybody who’d ever attended, but the word “buffet” turned Dixie’s stomach into a growling beast. Her skimpy fruit salad had disappeared hours ago. While she fed the beast she could catch up on what Parker had learned, then question Nora later.

Past mounds of cheese, crackers, and raw vegetables, she spotted a platter of finger-roll sandwiches. Parker beat her to the tongs and placed three on her plate. His blue blazer and the lighter streaks in his dark hair gave him the appearance of having stepped right off a yacht—which he probably had. He carried the clean, fresh scent of sun and sea.

“How long have you been here?” Dixie licked a drop of red sauce off her finger.

“Long enough to figure out why you asked about sales techniques this morning.”

Actually, she’d inquired about singles clubs, and their conversation had taken a turn. “What gave it away?”

“At least a third of this bunch use the club as a sales network.”

Dixie scanned the crowd milling around the buffet and seated at tables. “Are they wearing signs? Or is this a case of ‘it takes one to know one’?”

“Fortyniners is an evolved networking club,” Parker insisted as they made their way to a tall table with two stools.

Dixie sat across from him—not as close as she’d like to be. A waitress took their drink orders.

“I know about networks—with six phone calls you can reach anyone in the world.” Dixie’d developed her own eccentric but highly effective network for locating skips in most of the fifty states and Mexico. “But why bother with regular meetings?”

“Sales, Dixie. Walk up to anybody here. Say ‘hello,’ and if you get a business card shoved at you, you’ve just met a seller.”

“Like Judge Garston?”

“The colorful old guy at the door? Didn’t make him for a judge, but it figures. Read the back of his business card.”

Dixie slipped it from her new bronze handbag and read the reverse side. “Aromatherapy Products.”

“Network marketing. An entire industry developed from groups like this. Retired professionals selling products to avoid turning into couch potatoes.”

Terrence Jackson was not retired.

“Okay, so …?” She was too hungry to ask intelligent questions, but she wanted Parker to keep talking.

“Back in the eighties—country deep in recession, people out of work—groups like this cropped up all over. Buffet breakfasts. Luncheon meetings. Cocktail happy hours. All for cramming salespeople together with marks.”

“You’re telling me these salespeople are con artists?” Dixie shot another glance around the room.

“Only difference between a scam and a sale is the value of the product.”

“Good point.” She’d prosecuted a few cons in her day, but the best managed to bilk the public and skate free.

“The eighties economy destroyed marriages. Networking groups became singles social clubs—until AIDS. The clubs that hung in developed stringent rules.”

Dixie’d been in her twenties, dating cautiously. She hadn’t attended any singles clubs, but she remembered them. “A test slip verifying your ‘AIDS free’ status was your ticket to join. Dorks with documents finally got laid.”

Parker chuckled. “Guess that’s why those clubs didn’t last long.”

Appetite appeased, Dixie pushed her plate away and caught him stealing a glance at her.

“What?” she demanded.

“You look different.”

“Different good or different bad?” Dixie resisted tugging the bronze silk higher over her breasts.

“Before the night’s over, you’ll have every male in the room drooling like a lovesick hound.”

Dixie looked away from him. She knew he meant the remark as a compliment, but as a child, watching her birth mother spend forever “doing her face,” then seeing the lecherous men her face brought home, Dixie’d decided her own mug could do without. She didn’t want men
drooling
over her—not even the one sitting on the opposite stool.

“What’d I say wrong?” Parker asked.

“Nothing. Only, let’s not talk about me. Tell me what Edna would’ve found interesting about a networking club.”

“
Evolved
networking club. Serves a variety of needs. Singles meet, match up. Others enjoy the social events with no personal entanglement. A couple of ace salespeople here are making real money. Others would like to be—”

“Terrence Jackson appeared to be plenty successful already. Why would he need to shop for clients?”

Parker shrugged. “A smart salesman never stops selling.”

Dixie considered the number of senior women in the room, probably widowed or divorced, which could mean healthy bank accounts after insurance or property settlements.

“The flock of prospects changes continuously,” Parker explained. “Let a new mark arrive and the swarm strikes, each drawing a little blood. But not too much—parasites never kill their host. Best prospects are passed around. ‘Need a widget? Good ol’ Charlie can get it for you.’”

“Kickbacks?”

“For some. One or two percent of the sale. More important, when good ol’ Charlie runs across a hot prospect, he returns the favor. In a good business network, everybody wins. Including the customer.”

Which could be said of any such system, Dixie figured.
She’d built her own by doing favors, exchanging information, chalking up credits.

“Recently widowed and comfortably fixed, I suppose Edna would’ve been the center of attention until all the salespeople had a chance to bite,” Dixie mused.

Parker’s gaze drifted back to Dixie’s cleavage. “Like you’ll be when you circulate in that dress.”

“What about you?” she snapped. “Or do they only hit on females?”

“Oh, no.” He drew a handful of business cards from his pocket. “I’ve already committed to buying …” He sorted through the cards. “Magnetic shoe inserts. A full-body massage. An electronic pocket calendar—”

“What happened to your own sales resistance trick?”

He shrugged. “Buying a few things breaks the ice, makes people easier about talking.”

“Okay. What did you learn?”

“Besides the fact that our friend Nora”—he dropped one of the business cards on the table—“has been in the club since it was founded sixteen years ago? And that Edna bought therapeutic magnets for a pain in her shoulder?” He dropped another card. “And my Taurus-Cancer nature causes me to be overly nurturing—”

“What?” Dixie snatched the card from his hand.

Another name from Edna’s appointment calendar.

“Vernice”—Parker nodded at a woman standing alone near the buffet table and gazing intently toward the entrance—“is a psychotherapist.”

Dixie recognized the woman, the well-dressed prune at Lucy Ames’ funeral, standing at the edge of the crowd. Tonight, a peach-colored tube dress enhanced her willowy shape. In the nightclub’s soft lighting, she looked years younger than the man in an orange jacket and melon-pink tie approaching behind her.

Judge Garston and Vernice Urich. Interesting match.

The judge slipped both hands over her shoulders and seemed to be massaging them, but the woman’s attention remained riveted in the distance.

Dixie followed her gaze to a group of females greeting the silver-haired “devil” who’d just arrived.

“Parker, is that the man you saw at Edna’s?”

“Bingo!”

“Great. Then we should split up. Ask more questions. We didn’t come here to hang out together.”

“Is he your super-salesman?”

She nodded. “Terrence Jackson.”

“Just keep picturing him in a purple tutu.” Parker dutifully zeroed in on a woman who looked eager to dance.

Watching Jackson, Dixie’s thoughts flashed on an old Disney film: A friendly animated bear enters a forest and instantly attracts a following of butterflies and big-eyed singing squirrels. With one unfriendly swipe, the bear could knock them all senseless, but danger never enters their adoring minds.

Like the bear, Jackson smiled and chatted his way to a corner table, shaking hands, pressing an arm, a shoulder. By the time he sat down, he’d touched each of his admirers—not all of them women. A waitress removed a
RESERVED
sign from the table and set a drink in its place. A plate, already filled from the buffet, landed in front of him. In this pocket of the city, Jackson was Prince.

Dixie sidled close enough to hear snatches of conversations.

“… you look stunning in green, Nora.”

“… Judge, that investment is already on the up-curve …”

“… come to my office tomorrow …”

One by one, the Fortyniners warmed themselves by Jackson’s flame, then moved on.

“Thank you for inviting me,” Dixie said when she finally occupied a chair at his table.

Unlike every other man in the room, Jackson kept his eyes above her neckline. That gained him points.

“I’m glad you came tonight, Ms. Flannigan. The club also visits art galleries, theater, sports events, ballet—yet these weekly mixers are where we get acquainted.”

“Wouldn’t you have more fun in a younger crowd?”

“Depends on what you consider fun.”

“What do
you
consider fun?”

“Dancing with a beautiful woman in an absolutely striking ensemble.” Standing, he reached for her hand.

“I haven’t danced much since high school.”

He smiled, and his handsome face arranged itself into those phenomenal planes that could’ve been chiseled by an Italian sculptor.

“Then relax and follow my lead.”

Not easy. She hated relinquishing control to anyone. But she allowed herself to be guided and dipped and twirled.

“Was Edna a good dancer?” she asked him.

“Not bad. She was a fast learner.”

“How about Lucy Ames?”

“Why would you ask that? I told you I didn’t know the woman.”

“You said she wasn’t a client. But she might’ve attended a happy-hour function. You might even have danced with her.”

“I looked you up, Ms. D. A. Flannigan, attorney at law. You no longer practice law. In fact, you don’t do much of anything, except get your name in headlines occasionally. Now you’re trying to outguess the authorities on these Granny Bandit robberies. What are you really seeking?”

“I need to find out what
Edna
was seeking. What drove her into that bank with a gun?”

“Maybe you should talk with Vernice. All these women tell her their secrets.”

Dixie absolutely intended to question Vernice Urich. Although the psychotherapist hadn’t rushed to greet Terrence Jackson, she’d never taken her eyes off him. Even now she watched as he and Dixie danced.

The music stopped, and Jackson led Dixie back to the table.

“You could be a fine dancer, with a few lessons,” he said.

A prince of flattery.
“I’ll bet you could teach me.”

“I paid my way through college giving dance lessons,” he admitted. “Now I dance for fun, but you’d be an engaging pupil. Once a week, right here. What do you say?”

“Sounds like you’re soliciting members for Fortyniners.”

His smile dimmed a watt or two. “With the country’s population gracefully aging, Ms. Flannigan, we never have a shortage of members. People who spent their youth hammering out a career or nurturing a family find they crave the social pleasures missed when they were younger.”

The average age on the dance floor, Dixie calculated, was closer to sixty-five than forty-nine.

“Either you’re older than you look, Terrence, or you love dancing even more than you let on. Aren’t there any clubs with members more your own age?”

He raised his glass to her. “You never let up, do you?”

“Curiosity. My curse.”

“Fortyniners is an opportunity to combine business with pleasure. Many of the members are my clients. People will trust their investments to someone they know socially.”

Parker had once said the same about selling yachts. It made sense.

“Do you ever make house calls?”

“When business demands. Speaking of business—” Jackson stood, his gaze sliding past Dixie. “Thank you for providing the most pleasurable part of my evening.”

Perhaps his visit to Edna
was
sales-related, as Parker had suggested. Dixie turned to see what had grabbed his attention.

Jessica Love, wearing the beaded black suit from Unique Boutique, flashed Jackson a dazzling smile. The crowd actually parted as he crossed the room to join her. They made an attractive couple.

“Isn’t that Terrence a fine dancer?” Nora said, sitting down at Dixie’s table. “Not a lady here doesn’t perk up when Terrence arrives.”

“The woman he’s with now, is she a Fortyniner?”