Revenant Rising (21 page)
Two hours after the escape from the Temple of Dendur—as she will forever think of the exit from the museum—Laurel vacates a small conference room in the Trust Department of Clark, Sebastian & Associates. No one would have thought to look for her there, and had she been discovered, she could always have said she was trying this floor on for size like some Goldilocks of the legal world.
With today’s notes now expanded to the extent they can be, she returns to her own floor hoping to avoid Amanda, who should have gone home by now, and anyone else who might want to know what was accomplished during the first full session with the celebrity client.
No such luck. The door to her office is wide open and Amanda is at her desk when Laurel approaches.
“Oh, here she is now,” Amanda says into the phone as Laurel attempts to bypass her.
“Who is it?” Laurel mouths.
“Your boyfriend. He’s called three times,” Amanda responds with her hand over the mouthpiece and a twinkle in her eye.
“Ryan Walker? I don’t remember giving him this number.”
“It’s Colin Elliot.”
“I see.”
“You want to take it here or in your office?”
Laurel heads for the inner office, closes the door behind her and snatches up the phone without bothering to sit down. “Mr. Elliot?” she says and receives an immediate reprimand for not calling him by his first name. “Very well . . .
Colin
, was there something else? Some question about tomorrow?”
“No,” he says, “I just wanted to make sure you knew how to get hold of me if the need arises.” He recites the number for his hotel, his suite number, and the pseudonym he uses should she be challenged by the switchboard—all of it information he’s given her twice before.
“You can ring me anytime, day or night,” he goes on. “I’m available for spider and mouse captures, plumbing emergencies, mechanical failures, pizza delivery, middle-of-the-night gab fests, card games, board games, badminton, croquet—”
“Thank you, that’s good to know. Will that be all, then?”
He says it is without sounding in the least discouraged by her impatience.
The minute the light blinks off on the phone console, Amanda bursts in without knocking. “What did he want? What made him call so many times? Are you having dinner with him? Making a night of it?”
Laurel motions her to come in and sit, then stands over her as she would a naughty child. “I told David, and I’m telling you—I have taken on an assignment, not an assignation. I am neither Colin Elliot’s latest squeeze nor his catch of the day. Is that clear?”
“Yes, but I think you meant to say ‘chick du jour’ or else you’re talking about fish,” Amanda says. “And who came up with ‘latest squeeze’? That sounds like tabloid-speak.”
“Mr. Elliot’s bodyguard warned me I could be viewed as such.”
“There, you see? Another believer.”
“I don’t see that at all, and I don’t want to talk about it.”
Laurel does want to talk about it. She wants to have the gab fest the client just suggested to her; she wants to giggle and compare notes as she used to hear her little sister do with high school friends; she wants to drink too much and confess those things that only surface in the middle of the night. She cold-bloodedly eyes Amanda as a potential drinking buddy and confessor and rejects the idea out of hand. That would be too much like misbehaving with a colleague at an office Christmas party and expecting the working relationship to be unchanged the next morning.
“If you’re not in a hurry to leave, I’d like to hear how lunch went with Nate Isaacs.” Laurel goes for the compromise.
“That’s the other reason I’ve been waiting around. I’m dying to tell you—I think it’s critical that I tell you.”
“Why, did something go wrong?”
“Not really . . . well, almost. We met nearby, at the Sea Grill, and sat by the windows. He was very nice, he didn’t condescend even one bit and for a while I did feel like I was his date.”
“Then what happened?”
“He started talking about his background and relating little things that have happened to him along the way and I could tell right off he was trying to set up some kind of chain reaction.”
“What do you mean?”
“Okay, if I tell you about the time I went to a fraternity dance with the love of my life, was unprepared when he dipped me and fell flat on my rear end, chances are you’re gonna counter with a similar experience, either to make me feel better or to top me.”
“I see. That’s what you feel Nate Isaacs was trying to do?”
“Yes, enlist me as both fellow sufferer and amiable competitor.”
“Well said, Amanda, but how could you tell?”
“All his little anecdotes had to do with work relationships.”
“It’s been quite the day for anecdotes.” Laurel sighs. “Sorry, you were saying?”
“He told an amusing story about how trust was established with his first executive assistant and my logical response would have been to produce something about how you and I got together and what our level of trust is and I didn’t, of course, so then he tried a couple different variations on the same theme and I gave him some boilerplate about knowing which side my bread is buttered on. After that he told a story I felt was designed to draw me out on the subject of loyalty and I hit him with a standard speech about allegiance being a two-way street and he thought that was way more astute and clever than it really was and even patted my hand in a congratulatory way like I had passed a test or something. So then my guard was way up when the subject of Rayce Vaughn entered the conversation and I really began to see what was going on.”
“Rayce Vaughn—isn’t he the rock star David just signed to manage?”
“Yeah, and I think Nate Isaacs may have had an interest in managing him, too. He asked a few general questions about how David and Rayce happened to get together and if you—and me by association—were involved in the courtship period.”
“Courtship? He used the word ‘courtship’?”
“He did. In the context of wooing clients.”
“Wooing clients? What are you talking about? Who’s wooing whom?” “It took Nate Isaacs to make me see what David could be up to.” “What, for heaven’s sake?”
“David most likely wants to take over as Colin Elliot’s manager and he’s using you to lure Colin away from Nate Isaacs.”
“That is the most preposterous thing I’ve ever heard! What did you have for lunch? Peyote? Jesus Christ, Amanda. . . .”
“Wait, it makes perfect sense. David knows Colin’s contract with Nate is up for renewal—even I know that’s one of the reasons Colin is in New York—and David knows Colin is poised to become one of the greatest comebacks in contemporary music history and, on top of that, has a sensational story to tell. Plus, who didn’t notice when Colin pretty much blew off his manager in that weird meeting the other day? For someone like David, just starting out in artist management, could there be a greater asset to acquire than Colin Elliot? Could there be an easier way to grab a certified connoisseur of babe flesh than by putting you, his drop-dead gorgeous semi-unattached former protégé on the case?”
“Slow down a minute.” Laurel scowls. “You honestly believe this? More important, does Nate Isaacs believe this?”
“I’d say so if he’s pretty much convinced me to believe it.”
“Then shame on you! I’m disappointed in you and so will be David when I tell him.” Laurel reaches for the phone.
“David’s not in the building, I saw him leave.”
“How convenient. Dammit! Do you fully understand the ramifications of the accusation by this . . . this Svengali bastard that’s trying to manipulate you?”
“Nate Isaacs is not so much Svengali as he is Colonel Parker.”
“Same difference! If this obscene story is spread around, David could find himself in front of a disciplinary board, and I could even be disbarred. Except it can never be proven that I bought a client with sexual favors because that will
never, ever
happen. Okay? Is
that
clear?”
“Very . . . Sorry . . . Nate Isaacs
is
convincing, though.”
“And unquestionably paranoid. I can’t ask you to stay away from him if he wants to see you socially, but please, please do not be drawn in by his obvious insecurities. And you’ll do well to remember which side your bread is buttered on if he makes another attempt to convert you.”
“Would it be such a bad thing if Colin Elliot
was
attracted to you?”
“Give it a rest, Amanda. There’s nothing there and there isn’t going to be.”
“Okay, okay. Then here’s something positive. Look how effortlessly you just debriefed me. That means you’re on your game and probably extracted a whole lotta hot stuff from Colin today. Let me have your notes and I’ll transcribe them before I go home. That can be my penance.”
“No penance called for, and I’ve already taken care of today’s notes. That’s what I was doing while I was holed away upstairs—”
“Then you
were
hiding. I knew it the second time he called and you couldn’t be accounted for. There
is
something going on isn’t—”
“You can go home now. We should both go. We both must have something better to do than . . . than beat this dead horse.” Laurel’s indignation sputters to a finish and Amanda has sense enough to withdraw.
On the drive home, Amanda’s suspicions demand reexamination. As fostered by Nate Isaacs, they remain preposterous. Viewed in light of David’s recent actions they may not be quite so preposterous.
But to indict David Sebastian for dangling her as bait, she would need unshakeable proof that he had foreknowledge of Colin Elliot’s desire for an attractive scribe, and even Colin Elliot’s manager appeared ignorant of that desire until it was expressed. For that matter, even the client appeared ignorant of that desire until it was expressed.
On the other hand, David was quick to condemn Nate Isaacs’s current management practices. That scathing appraisal could have been the opening statement of a campaign to unseat Isaacs, couldn’t it? Asking that her participation in the project be considered a personal favor could be yet another reminder that she’ll always be in his debt, that she’ll never be able to say no, couldn’t it? And how about David’s prediction that she would find interests in common with the client? Was that borderline pimping or what? Should she therefore believe David Sebastian is willing to operate outside the laws of professional propriety? Should she behave as though that were the case? Yes, of course, or be willing to risk the sleazy consequences.
At the Holbrook Road exit she obeys an impulse and veers in the direction of Upper Montclair and Abbott’s Food Bazaar, the specialty supermarket there. A prepared meal holds more appeal than anything she’s apt to fix at home, and no one can say she hasn’t earned a night off.
Inside the store, she goes straight to the deli section, wavers between a grilled vegetable Napoleon and risotto primavera, and never does make up her mind because the neighboring seafood counter distracts her. After that, it’s the produce department and a quick reconnoiter of the packaged food aisles. Seventy-eight dollars later she leaves the store with five bags of everything except the prepared meal she came for.
The residential corridors connecting Upper Montclair and Glen Abbey are the quickest way home this time of day. Ten or so minutes later she turns onto her street, Old Quarry Court, and performs the garage-door-opening ritual perfected over the years. By precise coordination of speed, distance, and activation of the remote control, she’s able to glide into the garage without pause. Before coming to a complete stop inside the garage, she reverses the direction of the door, timing it to close just seconds prior to shutting off the engine and releasing the door locks of the vehicle.
Family and close associates who are aware of the ritual have uniformly warned that she stands a good chance of one day creasing a car roof, denting a bumper, or jamming the overhead door mechanism. For answer she can point out that just last week she had to adjust the coordinates to accommodate the higher roofline and shorter wheelbase of a brand-new Range Rover, which so far is unscathed. And so far, so good, with the overhead door mechanism. If there is a weak point in her little security precaution, it’s forgetting to maintain a supply of batteries for the handheld unit.
In the kitchen, she turns on television for background noise and happens on a weather update at the half-hour station break. This meteorologist agrees with the report heard earlier on the car radio, that tomorrow’s weather should indeed be favorable for outdoor activities.
While putting groceries away and inventorying supplies on hand, she toys with the idea of calling the client to confirm tomorrow’s plans. No. She turns her back to the phone desk. That would be too much like his calling her with contact information he’d given out twice before. No. She’s only supposed to call him if the plan to meet at the National Park in Morristown has to be changed. That is the way she left it, isn’t it?
Over a bowl of cereal eaten at the sink, she rehearses tomorrow from the standpoint of today’s failure to get anything substantial out of the client. Maybe the maneuver Nate Isaacs tried on Amanda is in order. Maybe none of this will matter if David turns out to be indictable.
