The Secret Keeping (28 page)

Lydia rolled her eyes. “Who?”

Helaine grinned, threw up her hands. “Your mommy?”

Lydia laughed and took the phone. Hah,” she whispered, sitting beside her on the bed. “Good morning?”

“Whoa, Liddy. Is she as good as she sounds?”

“Del…uhh…” she cast Helaine a sheepish look and lowered her voice, “can you believe even better?”

Helaine smiled and put on a terry robe. “Thank you, darling,” she said, heading for the bathroom.

“Con-fuckin-gratu-relations, Lydia Beaumont! Call me first chance you get.”

_____

Phone again.

“You better get that,” Helaine said. “I’m making waves, I think.”

“Sure are–good morning?”

“Helaine?”

“Uh…just a moment, please.”

“Is it Robert?”

“No. A woman.”

Helaine hesitated. Lydia brought the phone to her ear again, “Who’s calling, please?”

“Oh, I’m sorry. Tell her it’s Kay.”

“It’s Kay. Of course it is.”

“You’re quite a good sport, Ms. Beaumont. Good morning, Kay.”

“Good morning! Well, is she as good as she looks?”

“Hah! Even better. Good photo?”

“That’s the woman in Frank’s Place, isn’t it?”

“That’s her.”

“I want the both of you for lunch.”

“Kay, that’s greedy.”

“Did I say that? Well now, that’s a Freudian slip. Lunch then?”

“What does Robert think?”

“Robert the worrier. I sent him out to pick up lunch. He tried to call you back but the phone was busy. Suggests you both leave separately.”

Lydia was getting dressed. Helaine motioned for her to stop. She did.

“What time is lunch, Kay?”

“One?”

Helaine reached for her watch. Eleven thirty already. “We’ll see you then.”

“Come separately, Helaine.”

Lydia stood by the bed, half dressed and waiting.

“Don’t worry. We will.”

_____

“First things first. Tech stocks?”

“Robert, let her in!”

Lydia stood bewildered outside the Keagans’ apartment door. Helaine was right about the trek. It only took a few minutes to get there. They were practically neighbors. Five minutes away at the most, it was hardly enough time for her body to get used to standing and walking, let alone the idea of delivering something clever at her host’s doorstep. She floundered there, prodding her brain cells for a response and caught sight of Helaine in the background with a woman who she presumed was Kay Keagan. She smiled anxiously at the two of them and waved.

“Buy or sell?” Robert pressed, pretending she could not gain admittance without an answer.

“Excuse him. I’m Kay.”

“Pleased to meet you, Kay.” Lydia said. “Do you own any?” she asked Robert.

“Yeah, some.”

“Lydia Beaumont,” she said offering him her hand. “Sell.”

“Robert Keagan, a pleasure to meet you Ms. Beaumont,” he grinned. “May I take your clothes?”

“Clothes?” (Oh, okay.) “What do you plan to do with them?”

“Robert, really. You make us seem like opportunists,” Kay said.

“Seem? Hello, Ms. Beaumont,” Helaine whispered as she kissed Lydia’s cheek. “Did I tell you yet how beautiful you look today?”

“I believe so,” Lydia whispered back, her face suddenly warm.

“Ah, look at that, a crimson still diviner. Don’t let us frighten you,” Helaine said. “We don’t get out much.”

“Hungry or thirsty?” Kay asked, leading Lydia by the arm to the kitchen.

Lydia glanced back at Helaine.

“Both,” Helaine answered. “Lydia Beaumont has a very robust appetite.”

“Oh no,” Lydia responded. “You’re trying to embarrass me.”

“Now you’re boasting, Helaine,” Kay chided. “You’ll make us jealous.”

“Kay, where are you going with that gorgeous woman?” Robert asked.

“I’m undertaking to satisfy her robust appetite. Red or white, Lydia?”

“Don’t even dream of it. Red?” Helaine asked.

Lydia nodded, coming to a standstill at the photograph of the two of them pinned with a magnet to the refrigerator. Who took this, she wondered. Why hadn’t she noticed them?

“Nice looking couple. Here you go, dear.”

Lydia took the wineglass from Kay with a tentative smile. “Thank you.”

“Do you have a sister, we hope?” Robert asked with an impudent smile.

“We’re overwhelming, we know,” Kay said.

“Sister?” Lydia repeated. “Oh, I see. No. A brother, though.”

“Sit, everybody,” Robert ordered. “You ladies across from each other.”

“You’re scaring me,” Kay chimed. “That’s where I was going to put them.” Lids off their platters. “Eat what you want,” she urged, “it’s a smorgasbord.”

“Does your brother look like you?” Robert asked picking up where he left off.

Lydia took a deep sip of wine. She guessed she would be needing it. “I suppose he must,” she replied with a chuckle.

“A brother.” He winked at Kay. “What do you think, willing to compromise?”

Helaine laughed. Her friends were in great form considering, enchanted by bashful Lydia Beaumont. She stretched her legs under the table and gripped Lydia’s between them, mouthing I love you. She felt her relax then.

“Well, I don’t know,” said Kay. “Do you think we’re his type, Lydia?”

Helaine scoffed. “Better drink the wine, Lydia. It’ll dull the pain.”

Lydia toyed with a grape before popping it her mouth. “No, I don’t think he’s your type,” she teased.

“He’s more like my father, if you know what I mean.”

“I know your father. A fine rogue,” Robert added. “Your brother’s name?”

“Eddie.” A boy’s name. He was a man now. “Edward, I mean.”

“Oh, that would make sense,” Robert replied. “Edward the second?”

“Actually the third,” Lydia replied. “Nobody’s counting, though.”

“The third,” he repeated. “Your father retire?”

“He did. Last year.”

“How’d that little glitch resolve itself, you know?” He couldn’t resist asking.

“That glitch.” Lydia squirmed. “Like all the others. In his defense, he really did think that was a woman.

The dress. Poor excuse in the big picture, I realize.”

“Ooh,” Helaine uttered in interest.

“You know all this stuff, right?” Robert asked her. “Or are you only on a first name basis with Edward Beaumont’s progeny?”

No, Helaine did not know this stuff. “I love Mr. Beaumont’s progeny. A toast to Edward the second. For his beautiful daughter.”

“I’ll drink to that,” Robert said.

They all did.

“I’m dying to know what your father had to say about that matter,” Kay persisted. “A fabulous romp like that and not a word about it?”

The wine made its way fast. Lydia was actually tempted to repeat what Daddy had said. It was the kind of colorful commentary he was famous for, although this one he had imparted on Eddie’s ears alone. Eddie the third.

“She wants to tell us,” Robert said. “You can see it in her eyes.”

“No,” Lydia protested. “I don’t usually even discuss those things.”

“Those things? Uh-oh, Dr. Kristenson. Better get your notebook out.”

Dr. Kristenson smiled. “I find Ms. Beaumont’s modesty hopelessly sexy. It makes me weak. What did your father privately say about his glitch, Lydia?”

Lydia laughed uncomfortably. “He didn’t say anything to me personally.”

Robert adjusted himself in his chair. “But he told your brother…what?”

“Oh my gosh,” she answered. “Peer pressure?”

“Tell,” Kay urged, smiling agreeably.

Tell them. “He told my brother it was the best blow job he ever had.”

All but Lydia burst into laughter. She waited for them to regain themselves and stifled a smirk of her own.

The subject was not generally amusing to her although in the present company she was willing to allow that there was something darkly funny about it all.

“He’s qualified to say that,” Robert finally said.

“Oh, I know,” Lydia replied. She felt Helaine’s eyes on her and avoided them. “It doesn’t typically inspire mirth,” she explained. “It’s funnier if you’re not related to him, I suppose. Or married,” she added with a quick laugh.

Kay elbowed Robert.

“Have you forgiven your father?” Dr. Kristenson inquired. No notebook.

Lydia swirled the contents of her glass and held it to the light. “Oh yes, doctor. At least once a week.” She set the glass down. “Or as needed.”

Dr. Kristenson liked that answer. “Good. And your mother?”

Her mother? “Forgiven him?” She had to answer her lover. “My father?”

Dr. Kristenson nodded.

“No, never. But she stills wears his ring. That’s what he wants from her.”

“That’s not so unusual,” Helaine said.

“What’s your mother’s name?” Kay asked.

“Oh, my goodness–Marilyn. Marilyn Sanders-Beaumont. Age sixty-four. Past menopause. Past hoping for grandchildren. Past golfing, hates it. Walks five miles a day. Formally, an over-educated housewife, now part-time gardener, Sunday painter, full time philanthropist. Active but prone to melancholy.” Lydia dropped two fingers in the air signifying quotations. “As opposed to depression. A dying breed. Last of the stay-at-home moms. Last of the bleeding heart, dyed-in-the-wool, yellow dog liberals. Last of the money can’t buy you love. Last of the do unto others as you would have done unto you. Last of the one-man-women roaming the wilderness for thirty-eight years, starving and parched.” She pushed four grapes to the center of her plate, pulled them apart, pushed them back together again and glanced warily at Helaine. “I am not like Edward Beaumont. I just happen to be his daughter.”

Helaine sat up in her chair. “Mr. and Mrs. Beaumont have a very lovely daughter and that’s a fine reflection on them.”

Kay agreed.

“Indeed,” Robert added. “So tell me, what about pharmaceuticals? Buy, sell, or hold?”

“Oh, Robert,” Kay whined. “That isn’t a proper segue.”

Lydia smiled gratefully. “Hold, until further notice. Don’t you have a broker, Robert?”

“I do, but I don’t trust him.”

“Oh, I see. Well, thank you.”

“What are some of the warning signs to look for?”

“Buzzwords.” Lydia stretched her legs under the table and grabbed Helaine’s in them.

“Like?”

“Like price fixing, medical ethics, humanitarian crises–those kinds of things.”

“Yikes. Which ones do you own?”

Kay sighed impatiently. “Please be certain to leave a bill, Lydia.”

Lydia smiled. “None anymore.”

“Why not?”

“Oh…price fixing, medical ethics…you know.”

“Yuck,” Kay said. “Sell.”

“Now wait a minute. You can’t get rich on those concerns, Ms. Beaumont.”

“But you can get what you need,” she replied. “And sleep at night, too.”

“Sleep,” Helaine said. “To sleep. Perchance to dream. Ay, that is the rub. What do you think, Robert?

Sleeping all right?”

“I was. Until I met Marilyn Beaumont’s little girl.”

“Hah,” Helaine replied, “I know exactly how you feel!”

“I understand you’ve met Sharon Chambers,” Robert declared, switching subjects again.

Lydia was confused by the assertion. Oh, in the ladies lounge, she suddenly remembered. Indeed, she had.

“I didn’t know it was Sharon Chambers, per se.”

“It?” Robert smirked at the mistake.

“Naturally, I meant she.” She glanced apologetically at Helaine who appeared indifferent to the remark.

“More wine, everyone?”

“Thanks, Kay.”

“Yes, please.”

“What if Sharon finds out Jane Doe’s true identity?” Robert inquired.

“She’s bound to someday,” Lydia replied. “Isn’t she?”

“As pertains to this suit today. Would you care to read this?” He slid the papers across the table at her.

“As and for the first cause of action…” she broke off and scanned the document before looking up at Helaine. “No,” she said, “I don’t care to read it. You’re going to resolve this, I understand. Before she finds out my name.”

“I’ll do my best, but it’ll require your assistance. As well as Helaine’s, if you catch my drift. By the way, you’re very photogenic.”

Helaine held up her glass with both hands and rested her elbows on the table.

“You’ll have to postpone the honeymoon until this storm blows over.” He glanced from one to the other.

It was going to be tricky to impress them with this tiny detail. “Don’t underestimate Sharon Chambers. She never saw a scandal she didn’t like and there’s no such thing as bad press unless her name’s not in it.”

_____

There was, at last, a face to the shadowy image that had been haunting Sharon Chambers night and day for the past two years. And although she had acted on her hunch the minute she felt it, and had done everything she knew to do in order to block her, Dr. Kristenson had finally taken a lover.

For months Sharon had suspected Helaine’s love interest was a woman. She couldn’t say why she thought that. Just female intuition. She was stunned senseless by Lawrence Taft’s photo exposé of her favorite blond with a swank brunette, not merely because the private eye had captured the couple’s apparent bliss, but because she instantly recognized the woman in the photos as the haughty virgin queen she had unsuccessfully cornered in Frank’s Place.

Up until she held those photos in her hand, she had believed the phantom relationship one-sided, that Helaine was stretched too thin to act on infatuation, or that if she did she would fail to consummate it and that would be the end of the matter. After all, the blond was not the same woman she had met seven years ago and ever since turning forty she had been in a slump. Now she couldn’t even achieve an orgasm, a mid-life crisis had consumed her sexual appetite.

Because of that, the threat the dark specter presented at first had seemed far off of late. Held at a safe distance, it only lurked impotently in the background of their relationship, posing nothing more than a nuisance to Sharon, or a mirage on the horizon that would disappear if she satisfied Helaine’s thirst. Nothing more than that. Helaine was a reasonable woman; she would never leave her for a mirage.

Glaring at the photographs of the two women getting into a cab, Sharon was forced to accept otherwise.

The private eye had done his work and it had taken months, but a real lover, not a mirage, had finally materialized. Just when they both had begun to doubt the mission.