Speak Now Page 7

  “Is there a problem, Mrs. Fairfax?” When would it stop startling me when someone called me that?

  “Just put me through, please.”

  “I’ll give you Mr. Shepherd,” she answered, after a slight hesitation, and I heard music for a minute or two. I scrunched my forehead, trying to remember if Mr. Shepherd was the name of the security man I’d met the night we’d found the body. I drew a blank.

  “Mrs. Fairfax,” a robust voice assaulted my ear. “Bill Shepherd here. How may I help you?”

  “Mr. Shepherd.” The voice clicked with a face, but not the right one. “Aren’t you the hotel manager?”

  “Yes ma’am. How may I be of service?”

  Well, for one thing you could let me talk to the person I wanted to talk to.

  “I’m afraid there’s been some mistake,” I told him. “I asked for the head of security. Mr….”

  “Oh.”

  Now it was my turn to ask if there was a problem.

  “I’m afraid the man you’re thinking of is no longer with us.” The regret in his voice was completely manufactured. The tension wasn’t.

  “What? Why?”

  “Mrs. Fairfax, I’d be happy to help you in any way I can.”

  “Did you fire him?”

  A pause. “I’m sure you’ll understand I can’t comment on the matter.”

  Right. But I didn’t like it. I’d had the crazy idea of questioning the security chief to see if he had any theories about the body in the bathtub. And maybe to get a little information out of him. Like whether the police suspected me or Jack. But I doubted I’d get anything from the corporate Mr. Shepherd. I thought quickly. “Well, maybe you can help me. I was wondering if now would be a good time to look at the tapes.”

  “Tapes?”

  “Inspector Yahata mentioned there were tapes from the lobby security cameras…”

  “Yes, of course. But I’m afraid the police still have them.”

  So much for that.

  “Mrs. Fairfax?” I suppose my silence was unnerving the man.

  “Can’t you just tell me whether you fired Mr….the security chief, or if he…left?” As in left, shrouded in mystery and casting suspicion on himself and what his role in the murder of an unidentified woman might have been?

  “I’m sorry, but—”

  “Never mind then.”

  “Is there anything else?” His voice held the hope that there wasn’t.

  “Nothing. Thank you.” I hung up and stared vacantly at the phone. Apparently I was no good at this sort of thing. Instead of learning anything useful, now I just had more questions. Was the missing security chief sitting in a bar somewhere nursing a whiskey and a grudge over having been fired because a murder was committed on his watch? Or was he relaxing on a South American beach, congratulating himself on having pulled off the perfect crime?

  Damned if I knew. And damned if I knew how to find out. I said “oh, hell” out loud, downed some coffee, and picked up the play. I was better off sticking to what I knew.

  ***

  “It’s brilliant!” I met Simon in the hotel lobby Friday afternoon practically gushing with enthusiasm.

  “This?” He looked down at his shirt. “It’s just a Kenneth Cole I’ve had for ages, but—” he saw the look on my face and realized I hadn’t complimented his wardrobe. “Oh, the play,” he recovered smoothly. “Of course it is. I chose it.”

  “When do I get to meet the writer? Have you heard back from her?” I peppered him with questions as he dragged me outside to where Eileen was waiting behind the wheel of her gray Volvo.

  “Hello to you, too,” she said, interrupting me as I continued to harangue Simon for details.

  “Have you read it?” I demanded.

  “I don’t read them, I just budget them.” She turned out of the parking lot. “I’m not allowed to fall in love with the material, remember?”

  “That’s our clear-eyed Eileen,” Simon said from the back seat. “Guiding us to financial security.”

  Eileen gave Simon a squinty look in the rearview mirror.

  “Eileen,” I told her, “you just have to read it. It’s so good. Really, it’s funny, and true, and there are wonderful characters, and you’ll just—”

  “I’ll just wait for opening night,” she assured me. “If I don’t fall in love with it, I’ll have an easier time turning you two down when you come asking for enough money to build a medieval fortress or a replica of the Mayflower or something equally extravagant.”

  “Not this time, darling,” Simon said with satisfaction. “A simple, one-set design. Nothing extravagant about it. I took your admonishment to heart, you know.”

  “What admonishment?” I asked. “What have I missed in the last year? And when have we ever had to worry about budget?”

  “Later, darling,” Simon answered. “First I want you to tell me more about what a fabulous play I picked. Don’t you just love the title? All About Me.” He sighed with content.

  “If Neil Simon had grown up a girl in suburbia in the late fifties instead of a guy in Brighton Beach in the forties, this is the play he would have written,” I announced. “And I intend to make sure at least one reviewer says exactly that.”

  Simon beamed. “You do like it.”

  ***

  Eileen took us to the Richmond district. There are hundreds of good restaurants serving every conceivable variation of Asian cuisine along Geary and Clement streets in the Richmond, and we usually relied on parking karma to determine which one we’d choose. I must have done something good in a previous life, because Eileen found a space across the street from Ton Kiang.

  It wasn’t until she stepped out of the car that I realized Eileen was wearing a killer outfit—a snug black skirt that hit just above the knees topped with a form-fitting black jacket that left a dramatic V opening at the neck. “Look at you!” I said. “Where’s the fashion shoot?”

  “Oh, this?” Eileen looked down at herself. “It’s just a simple suit.” She put quarters in the meter while I exchanged a look with Simon.

  “Elegantly simple, tastefully simple, stunningly simple,” I said.

  “Sexily simple.” Simon nodded his approval.

  “Don’t be ridiculous. I’ve always worn suits to work.” Eileen looked rather desperately for a break in the traffic so we could cross the street.

  “Sweetie,” I told her, “I’ve known you since you were sixteen years old and I’ve never seen you in a suit like that, especially not with knee-high boots.” I took a closer look. “Those are Prada!”

  Eileen looked down at herself again, and this time when she looked up she was grinning. “The whole thing’s Prada,” she confessed. “Do you like it?”

  “Woof,” Simon said.

  “Really, Eileen, you look fabulous,” I told her. “It’s such a change!” Then, realizing how that might sound, I tried to come up with something else to say. “I mean—”

  Simon cut to the chase. “Who is he?”

  “Let’s cross at the corner.” She abruptly walked away.

  Simon gave me raised eyebrows as we followed.

  At the restaurant Eileen refused to tell us anything more about her new look or the new man responsible for it. “This is a working lunch,” she said. “I’m billing you for it, Charley, so we’d better cover everything we need to before degenerating into a fashion discussion.”

  “Uh huh,” I agreed absently, my attention diverted by the passing trolleys, piled high with buns, dumplings, and other steaming treats. “Do you see any shrimp balls?”

  After the waiters had deposited barbeque pork buns, crab claws stuffed with shrimp, foil-wrapped chicken, scallop shu mai, stuffed mushrooms, steamed Chinese broccoli, and the coveted deep-fried shrimp balls, we got down to the serious business of eating and planning the future of the Rep.

  “I won’t sugarcoat it, Charley,” Eileen began. “We had some serious cost overruns last season.”

  Simon suddenly looked miserable. “It’s
my fault,” he confessed. “Remember how well your last season went when we put on Five Gay Men and Three Straight Women?”

  I nodded. It had been a runaway success. Before that we’d staged mainly classics. We’d built up the Rep on Shakespeare, Ibsen, and the occasional Restoration comedy that we’d sometimes dared to update with modern dress. Five Gay Men had been our first contemporary, and we’d loved every minute of its extended run.

  “Well, because that was such a hit, last year I decided to do another contemporary—along with a dreary Hedda Gabler, a boring old Faustus, and a creaking Twelfth Night. So I picked this fabulous futuristic science fiction parable —”

  “Simon…” Eileen interrupted.

  “Right.” He came back down to earth. “It was called Up There and it was…” He seemed at a loss for the perfect description.

  “It was a disaster,” Eileen said flatly. “Nobody came.”

  I looked at Simon.

  “I simply got carried away,” he admitted. “That bloody space thing practically ruined—”

  “Ticket sales were abysmal,” Eileen stated. “The reviews were terrible and we don’t have enough of a season ticket-holder base to carry us through something like that.” Simon looked truly wretched, but Eileen continued relentlessly. “The repertory company is a business, and at the end of last season we were over budget.”

  I looked up in alarm.

  “It’s all right,” Eileen reassured me. “We just had to dip into this year’s budget to make up the difference. When we set up the funding for the Rep we knew this kind of thing might happen.”

  “Right.” I also knew that when I’d bought the theater building outright I had taken care of a major expense for the company. The rest of the budget went to salaries for the few year-round employees like Simon and Chip, payroll for the actors and staff who were employed just for the season, sets, costumes, electricity bills, publicity, and a thousand other things.

  “It’s all my fault,” Simon repeated. “If it hadn’t been for that bloody space disaster we’d have done all right.” He stabbed viciously at a pork bun with his chopstick.

  “Water under the bridge,” Eileen reassured him briefly. “Except…”

  This was going to be bad. “What?”

  Eileen cleared her throat and reached for her tea. Simon smiled weakly. “Darling,” he began.

  “What?” I was starting to panic.

  “I felt like an idiot for having wasted the Rep’s money,” he told me. “I thought the right thing to do, the proper thing to do, the only decent thing to do—”

  “Simon!” Eileen set her cup down with a bang. “Tell her.”

  “We found someone to give us a little dosh to get us through the rough patch.” He held up his hands. “That’s all. We thought that way we wouldn’t have to bother you in London, and you would never even have to know about it.”

  Someone else had put money into my Rep? I looked at Eileen. “Who?”

  “It’s a private, one-time donation that will cover last year’s shortfall and enable us to get through this season without cutbacks.”

  “Who?”

  “Well,” Simon said smoothly, “does it really matter who? The important thing is that he was there at the right time with the right amount.”

  “Why didn’t you just tell me?” I asked Eileen. “You know I would have made up the difference.”

  “Charley,” she explained, “if I were just the managing director of the Rep I would have asked you in a heartbeat. But as your personal financial manager I couldn’t advise you to invest any more than you already have.”

  “Besides,” Simon volunteered. “I wouldn’t let her. It wasn’t Eileen’s fault. And it wasn’t yours either. You didn’t pick that bloody space—”

  “Simon!” Eileen gave him a warning look, then turned back to me. “We’re really very lucky this donor came along,” she con tinued. “It isn’t as though people are lining up to support a non-profit enterprise these days.”

  “I know,” I said, still not thrilled at the thought of someone else getting involved in my company.

  “Right. Is there any more tea?” Simon asked.

  “Who is it?” I looked at each of them in turn. “I don’t believe you’re not going to tell me.” Simon focused on the teapot. I focused on Eileen.

  “Charley, there were certain conditions associated with the donation,” she said.

  That was so not what I wanted to hear. “Such as anonymity?”

  She pursed her lips, then gave a brief nod.

  “Why?”

  “Darling,” Simon said gently, “we were looking for a white knight. We really couldn’t afford to be choosy.”

  “And along with anonymity comes silence,” Eileen said. “The donor will have nothing whatsoever to do with any decisions about the company. He’s just a money man.” She stressed this last point, but it didn’t make me feel much better. One thing Uncle Harry had taught me is that, in most things in life, money equals control.

  “Just tell me one thing,” I addressed Eileen. “Look me in the eye and tell me it’s not Harry.”

  Eileen looked at me with perfect clarity and said, “Never. Not in a million years. Not if I had to put up the money myself. I would never do that to you.”

  “Good Lord, darling,” Simon sputtered, “Harry? Surely you wouldn’t think? I mean, it’s bad enough—” Eileen must have kicked him under the table because he winced and recovered himself. “And of course I blame myself entirely and that bloody space fiasco for putting us in the situation—”

  “Oh, shut up,” I said, “and tell me how you found the new play.”

  ***

  Simon had gushed on uninterrupted for a solid ten minutes about how brilliant the play was and how brilliantly he had secured it for us before Eileen was finally able to get a word in.

  “Hang on,” she said. “Before you two start designing the costumes, I need to go over one or two more things with Charley.” She looked at her watch.

  “You don’t have to leave?” I asked.

  “I have a three o’clock,” she apologized. “I couldn’t move it.”

  “Ah ha!” Simon exclaimed. “I’ll just bet this mysterious three o’clock is the reason for the fantastic new suit.”

  She ignored him. “So before I have to go, I wanted to go over the housing situation.”

  I looked at her blankly. “What housing situation?”

  She sighed. “Yours, Charley. Where do you plan to live? Have you lined up a realtor or would you like me to send you one? Do you know what neighborhood you want? Are you thinking house or condo?”

  All perfectly reasonable questions, and I probably should have had an answer to at least a few of them. “I don’t know.”

  Eileen sighed again and looked at Simon. “Excuse yourself,” she said.

  Simon looked at me with pity, placed his napkin on the table, stood up, and wandered away.

  As soon as he was gone Eileen looked at me intently. “Charley, are you serious about this marriage?”

  “Of course I am!”

  “You didn’t fax me that disclaimer,” she reminded me.

  “I have it right here.” I pulled a thin envelope out of my purse and passed it to her. She pushed the teapot towards me and took it, and read while I sipped.

  When she’d finished she looked at me over the edge of the paper. “Have you read this?”

  I’d thought about reading it when Jack had given it to me, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. “No.”

  She nodded. “It’s good. Simple and straightforward.” She folded the paper and replaced it in the envelope. “He gets nothing, ever, under any circumstances, regardless of when or why you two might break up.”

  I sipped again. “He did tell me it was only a commitment on his part. That’s why he didn’t mention it earlier.”

  “That’s true. It’s not so much a prenup as a unilateral declaration.” She paused to consider something. “Of course…”


  Oh, hell. “What?”

  “It could be very clever. I mean, it’s so unfair towards Jack that it’s possible a judge would simply set it aside.”

  “Eileen—”

  “I’m not saying that’s the case.” Her eyebrows contracted as she slipped the envelope into her purse. “Charley, if this guy is on the level you’re the luckiest woman on the planet.”

  I nodded. “I think I might be.” Now was definitely not the time to bring up my recent musings about Jack’s previous career. Or the possibility that we were about to become involved in a murder investigation.

  She reached over to squeeze my hand. “I hope so, sweetie.” Then she cleared her throat and was all business again. “So if you are going to set up house with Mr. Wonderful, you should start thinking about where you’re going to live.”

  Simon cruised back to the table and looked at Eileen with wide eyes. She waved him into his chair. “Charley,” he said. “You should let Eileen take care of finding you a house. We need you too much at the theatre. You simply can’t be off playing wife when we’ve got a new production starting up.”

  “I’m not playing wife.” At least not yet. “I just need to concentrate on my personal life right now.” I turned to Eileen. “I think Jack is getting a little tired of the hotel.”

  “What’s he going to do?” she asked, seemingly casually.

  “Work,” I replied helplessly. “He’s already got an offer from an old Navy buddy in Palo Alto.”

  “Charley!” Simon yelped. “You’re not thinking of moving to the provinces! Tell me you’re not!”

  “I’m not,” I assured him. Good God, was Jack? That decided me. “No, I need to find a house and find it quickly, so we can get on with…things.”

  “Good,” Eileen approved. “I’ll have a realtor call you tomorrow.”

  “Excellent,” Simon said. “But don’t get too wrapped up in floor plans. We start casting next week.”

  “Haven’t you got a director for that sort of thing?” Chip had said something about a new guy, from LA, who had signed on to direct the first two plays this season.

  “Brian,” Simon grimaced, “is turning out to be a complete prick.” In response to my startled look he rushed on. “Furiously talented, I’m assured, but an absolute shit of a human being, as far as I can tell.”