Keepsake (25 page)

They took an old-fashioned cage-style elevator up to the third floor. They got off in a dark hallway, and Blackthorn knocked
at the first door on the right.

A stranger opened it. He was six feet tall, handsome, and proudly clad in a crisply starched maid’s uniform—black satin with
white lace trim. He had nice legs, April noticed as they walked past him into the cavernous apartment.

“Good heavens,” she whispered to Blackthorn. “This isn’t the usual Saturday night cocktail party, is it?”

“Nope,” he drawled.

“His figure is better than mine.”

Blackthorn’s sexy blue eyes gave her a thorough once-over. “No way.”

The place was hot, dark, and crowded with people wearing fetishy costumes. April saw a policeman’s uniform complete with a
Sam Browne belt and shiny knee-high boots, a cowboy with spurs on the backs of his boots, -and a lasso in his hand, numerous
males in black leather vests and/or trousers, and several women in tight corsets, black stockings, high heels, and very little
else.

Sensuous classical music was playing from several speakers. It covered, but didn’t entirely blot out, some strange rhythmic
sounds that were coming from some other room.

April looked around in astonishment. She felt herself blush as a man clad in nothing but boots and a vampire cloak brushed
by her, leering.

“You okay?” Blackthorn said.

“Just a little wide-eyed. This is amazing.”

“It’s a D&S party,” Blackthorn told her. “Isobelle and Charlie are in the scene.”

“Uh, what scene?”

“That’s the lingo for folks whose lifestyle includes the erotic aspects of dominance and submission. You know—bondage, spanking,
that sort of thing. I mentioned black leather, you will recall.”

Mentioned it, yes, but April hadn’t entirely expected to see so
much
black leather. I’m from Boston, she was thinking. I’m not used to this sophisticated New Yorker stuff!

“So it’s a sort of sexual fantasy party?” She inched a little closer to him. Some of these folks were scary-looking.

He noticed and slipped an arm around her shoulders. “Yes. People act out their fantasies in a controlled environment. It’s
all completely consensual, and they’re dedicated to safe and sane play. It seems kinky, but you’d be surprised how ordinary
most of these people are in their ordinary everyday lives. They keep business hours on Wall Street in conservative suits and
narrow ties, then they let loose after dark.”

She turned to look at him. “How do you know so much about it?”

He shrugged. “It’s amazing what you pick up in my line of work. One of my clients was into this stuff. I had to bodyguard
him during his visits to some of the local sex clubs.” He squeezed her shoulder. “If you’re too uncomfortable, we can leave.”

In fact, she
was
uncomfortable, but she suspected it had as much to do with the general atmosphere of excited eroticism as with any feeling
of shock. It was rubbing off on her, she thought wryly. All these bodies, all this feeling
of something in the air, and Blackthorn beside her, looking considerably sexier than most of the other males in the place,
and obviously enjoying himself.

“Where’s Isobelle?” she asked.

“She’s probably busy disciplining some eager submissive,” he said with a smile.

She raised her eyebrows. “Disciplining?”

He nodded. “Isobelle is a top or a dominant. Our friend Charles is a bottom or a submissive. Most people seem to prefer one
or the other role.”

April watched a couple on the other side of the room. The man was wearing a collar to which was attached a chain-link leash.
He was being led around by a woman in a red leather miniskirt and a cone-bra that looked like something out of a Madonna concert.

“This is wild,” she murmured. “Aren’t they embarrassed? I mean, what people do in the privacy of their bedrooms is one thing,
but this…”

“I suspect it’s comforting to find that other people are into it too. If you’re a woman, for instance, who enjoys being mastered
in the bedroom—hey, that’s the sort of thing that is pretty hard to admit. It’s not politically correct, after all. You might
feel guilty about having such feelings. But if you could share them with others, you might not feel so bad.”

April knew she was blushing more than ever. She had a secret passion for sexy romance novels—the kind Maggie sold in her romance
bookshop in Somerville, Mass.—the ones with the pirates, cowboys, and Mexican bandits on the covers. Maggie indulged her passion
by providing her with the latest hot novels in exchange for the latest mysteries. It was a good exchange.

She cast a quick glance at Blackthorn. Had he guessed her interest in such fantasies? Perhaps he’d noticed the
books in her shelves when he’d been in her bedroom that night after the break-in.

And he? Was his interest in all this purely academic? She thought not. She sensed that he was as titillated by the atmosphere
as she was.

He caught her looking at him and smiled. He leaned his face toward her and for an instant she thought he was going to kiss
her—here—in public, the way so many other couples were doing. But all he did was whisper, “April? You sure you’re okay with
this?”

She nodded.

“We can leave anytime.”

She took a deep breath and squared her shoulders. “I’m fine. Let’s find Isobelle.”

Isobelle, who was chatting with Justin, a dominant friend of hers who owned a leather shop in the Village, saw Blackthorn
coming. She smiled. So he’d come after all.

Then she saw April.

Well, shit. This was an unexpected development.

April was walking close beside him, clutching his arm. But her head was high, and she was looking around with what appeared
to be more curiosity than apprehension or distaste. As for Rob Blackthorn, he moved with the same masculine authority and
grace that was natural to him, and Isobelle observed that his tall, well-made body was not going unnoticed by the other women
present. If he were to declare himself to be the erotic dominant that Isobelle sensed he could very easily be, at least a
dozen women right here in this room would be down on their knees in a second.

They made a good couple, she thought. Both were tall,
slender, and striking. Her thick auburn hair and fair skin made a lovely contrast to his swarthy good looks, her fragile beauty
to his rugged attractiveness. Were they lovers? she wondered. Not yet, perhaps. But it was obvious to her, if not to them,
that it was inevitable.

Everything is so easy for her!

She stepped toward them, tapping her riding crop lightly against the palm of her hand. “Welcome to the dungeon,” she said,
giving them both a slight bow.

“Hello, Isobelle.”

In your face, April.
“Glad you could come,” she said, addressing Blackthorn. She reached out and brushed her red fingernails along the inside
of his arm. “I didn’t realize you’d be bringing a date.”

“I’m glad he did,” April said. “Looks like quite a party.”

“And it’s hardly even begun. I hope you’ll stick around for some of the special events. The Kinky Theatre Company is going
to be putting on a performance a little later, and Lady Althea is going to be displaying her new slave Carlos, who has presented
her with a new Argentinean leather cat direct from the gauchos.”

Blackthorn grinned. “Now that sounds irresistible. Since we don’t want to miss it, we’d better find a quiet room and get on
with our less pleasant business right away.”

“A quiet room—that might prove to be a challenge.” Isobelle flicked her crop through the air just a couple of inches from
April’s face. She flinched, and Isobelle smiled. “I’ll see what I can do.”

She would have liked to see April a lot more nervous and intimidated. What would it take, she wondered? Separate her from
Blackthorn and send Burt and Randy over to harass her a bit. Either one of them was big, broad, and
sinister enough, and if she convinced them that April was into a little verbal humiliation from strangers, they were creative
enough to carry it off.

But Blackthorn’s arm was around April’s waist, and he didn’t look as if anything was going to pry it loose.

Isobelle led them first into one bedroom, then backed out when they all saw that it was being used. “Sorry,” she said. “The
fun’s starting early.”

“I didn’t know people had parties like this anymore,” April said. “I thought this sort of thing went out in the early eighties,
with the advent of AIDS.”

“It’s not casual sex,” Isobelle said sharply. “Most of my friends are committed couples. Safe sex is the rule. And D&S scenes
don’t necessarily require sexual contact in the usual sense, anyhow.”

Blackthorn and April exchanged a quick, skeptical look. Isobelle gave a short laugh and added, “We may be kinky, but we’re
not stupid.”

She found an empty room—a small guest bedroom—and ushered them inside. She shut the door and latched it behind her. There
was no place to sit except on the double bed that took up most of the room. The bedspread was rumpled, as if someone else
had been using it not long before.

Isobelle sat down on the side of the bed and crossed her legs. As Blackthorn copped a quick look at the creamy expanse of
her lower thigh, she grinned at him. “Eat your heart out, Rob.”

“What heart?” he said, grinning. He remained standing. The better to intimidate the witness, Isobelle supposed.

“Somebody broke into April’s place and trashed it a few days ago,” he said without preliminary.

Isobelle shrugged. “I heard. It happens. New York is not a very friendly city.”

” ‘You’re Next, Bitch’ was written on the wall.”

“Sounds as if someone wants you to get out of town, April. Am I going to be handcuffed and read my rights if I confess that
I, too, would be glad to see you go?”

“Whoever did it deliberately made it look as if intimidation was the motive,” Blackthorn continued, “but we believe he—or
she—actually had something else in mind. The place was searched. Subtly but thoroughly. The perp was looking for something.”

“I think that’s my cue to ask what he was looking for,” Isobelle said. She yawned elaborately. “Consider it asked.”

“We think they may have been searching for Rina’s manuscript,” April said.

“Really,” Isobelle said. She waited a moment then forced herself to say, “What manuscript?”

“Did you know she was writing an autobiography?” Blackthorn asked.

They made a nice tag team, Isobelle thought. But how did they know about the manuscript? “She may have said something about
it.”

“May have?”

“All right, I knew. She asked me for information about some things that had happened before she and my father got married.”

“What sort of things?”

“Nothing much. Details about our lives as children, stuff she didn’t know. It was all background, I think. That’s what she
said, anyhow. I thought the project was a bit silly, to tell you the truth. Who cared, really? It’s not as if she were a politician
or a movie star. What people really wanted to hear from Rina was the secret of sex, success, and happiness. How-to books are
much more profitable than reminiscences.”

“Did she show you any of the manuscript?” April asked.

Isobelle shook her head, affecting boredom.

“Was it entirely about Rina’s life or did she plan to expose secrets about some of her clients who were movie stars and politicians?”

So that was what they were wondering about. Isobelle considered. Rina had gathered information, she was sure of that. “Why
reveal her secrets? Seems to me they were worth a lot more to her if she kept her mouth shut.”

“Are you suggesting that your stepmother was blackmailing her clients?” Blackthorn asked.

“And that she was killed as a result?” Isobelle finished for him. “It’s occurred to me, yes.” She waved her hand at the room
behind them. “She knew about this. I don’t know how she knew, but she did. She confronted me about it one day. Gave me to
understand that my erotic lifestyle was bad for the image Power Perspectives was trying to project. She ran through quite
a vivid scenario of how I would be likely to feel if a story about my activities made the gossip rags and became the talk
of the town.”

“My God—did she ask you for money or something?” April asked.

“No, no, of course not, but she made it clear that she was holding it over my head. An incentive, perhaps, to keep me on my
toes at work. It backfired on her, though. I was already working my tail off and she knew it. And the idea of exposure didn’t
worry me as much as she expected it would. I told her it might even be good PR. There’s no such thing as bad publicity—that
sort of thing.

“So she backed off and never mentioned it again. But I’ve often wondered how somebody else might have responded to the same
tactics. Rina liked these little power games. Who knows to what extreme she may have carried
them?” She paused and smiled. “I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if Rina had something on everybody.”

“Who else knows about her autobiography?” Rob asked.

Isobelle swiftly considered and rejected several replies before saying, “That’s impossible for me to say. My impression was
that she did not discuss it with very many people.”

“Armand?”

Isobelle shrugged. “I suppose so, although I’ve often wondered how close they actually were during recent years. She spent
a lot of time, apparently, in that other apartment.”

“Charlie told April that Rina’s editor had called inquiring about the book, so Charlie, obviously, knows.”

“So what?” Isobelle said, still affecting a casualness she did not feel. What the hell was Charlie up to, anyway? Sometimes
he was a bloody stupid fool.

Blackthorn continued, in that patient, dogged tone, “And what about Christian, did he know about the manuscript?”

“I’ve no idea. Christian and I rarely talk. But if she asked me things about the past, it’s reasonable that she asked him
also.”

“What exactly is the problem between you and Christian?” Blackthorn asked.

“Oh, please. Problems between him and me go back far too many years. Our values are different. We don’t like each other. It
would be dishonest to pretend otherwise.”