Czytaj książkę: «The Playboy Assignment»

CHAPTER ONE

THE scent of freshly made coffee filled the small café. and Susannah paused in the doorway for a second to breathe her fill of the rich aroma. But one of her partners was already waiting in the back booth they reserved for their staff meeting every Monday morning, so Susannah strolled down the length of the long, narrow room and sat across from Alison.

She winced at the hardness of the green vinyl bench. “I’m either going to have to start carrying along a cushion or convince the management to redecorate.”

Alison folded her newspaper and laid it aside. “The cushion would be easier. This place has looked the same as long as I can remember. So unless you’re looking for a challenge—”

“Any reason I shouldn’t be?” Susannah poured herself a cup of coffee from the carafe on the table.

“Only that redecorating isn’t really a matter of public relations.”

Susannah squirmed on the bench. “I don’t know about that. My particular segment of the public would have a lot better relations with the management if—”

“And we’ve already got plenty of regular business to tend to. Which forces me to point out that you’re late.” Alison’s tone was matter-of-fact, without a hint of reproach or irritation.

Susannah reached automatically for the pendant watch which dangled from a heavy gold chain around-her neck. “Five minutes,” she said. “And I’d have been smack on time if there hadn’t been a bake sale going on outside the high school as I walked past.”

Alison showed faint interest. “At this hour on a Monday morning?”

“Incredible, isn’t it? I thought any teenager who was enterprising enough to be selling brownies this early deserved my support.” She pulled a paper bag from her briefcase and waved it under Alison’s nose. “So I bought both fudge and chocolate-chip cookies—but you can’t have any till after breakfast.”

The waitress set an omelette in front of Alison and grinned at Susannah. “What’ll it be this morning, Sue?”

“Just a raspberry Danish. No hurry.”

Alison picked up her fork. “Better make it bacon and eggs instead of more sugar, or you’ll be bouncing off the walls by noon. Not that you don’t most of the time, anyway.”

“I didn’t buy that much fudge.” There was no defensiveness in Susannah’s tone; Alison’s comment was too near truth to allow room for resentment. Of the three partners in Tryad Public Relations, Alison was the practical manager, Kit was the steady get-it-done-whatever-it-takes sort, and Susannah was the visionary, never short of an idea.

The fact that nine out of ten of those ideas went nowhere had ceased to bother her—because the tenth was always a winner.

Of course, that had been true all her life. For every good plan she’d ever come up with, Susannah Miller had managed to find nine bad ones. Or sometimes, she thought dryly, an idea so far beyond bad that it was worth nine all by itself. That whole thing with Marc—

And that, Susannah told herself, was enough of that; Marc and the last of her disasters were eight long years in the past, and there was no point in rehashing the circumstances. The important thing was with two down-toearth partners to keep her anchored to reality, her wilder ideas were squashed before they could get her into trouble.

Thinking of the partnership reminded her of the empty place where the third member of the triangle usually sat. “Tell me again when Kit’s going to be back?”

“She said she was only taking two weeks off.”

Susannah raised her eyebrows. “You sound a little doubtful. Have you ever known Kit not to keep her word?”

“She’s never been on a honeymoon before.”

“That’s true.” Susannah admired the smooth glazed surface of her raspberry Danish. She was just about to take her first bite when a photograph in the newspaper Alison had tossed aside caught her eye and made her forget everything else. “What’s jolly old Cyrus doing in the press?” She put the Danish down and reached for the paper. “Pierce will be furious if he called in the media himself instead of letting the museum squeeze all the mileage we can out of the announcement...” Her voice trailed off as she saw the headline.

Cyrus Albrecht, industrialist, dies suddenly. The announcement was cool and dispassionate. Even the headline was in discreet black type, not the sort which blared from the page. If it hadn’t been for the photograph—outdated by at least twenty years but still unmistakably Cyrus, with the beaklike nose and enormous ears which hadn’t changed an iota with age—she’d have missed the story altogether.

“He can’t die,” Susannah said flatly.

Alison glanced at the page. “Well, I doubt the Tribune published his obituary as a practical joke. Why can’t he die, anyway? At seventy-eight, I’d say the man has a right.”

“Because he hasn’t rewritten his damned will yet, that’s why. At least, he hadn’t the last time I talked to Pierce.”

Alison nodded wisely. “I’d already gathered this is the millionaire art collector you’ve been dangling after for months.”

“I wouldn’t call it dangling, exactly,” Susannah objected.

“The one who was so sensitive about causing speculation over his intentions that you couldn’t even tell Kit and me exactly who he was.”

“It’s not that I didn’t trust you,” Susannah pointed out. “Pierce was afraid if there was talk—”

“—That the mysterious collector wouldn’t donate his pretty pictures to Pierce’s museum after all.”

“They’re not pretty pictures.” Susannah saw the gleam of humor spring to life in Alison’s dark eyes, and she wanted to bite off her tongue. “Wait a second. Let me rephrase that.”

Alison was hooting with delight.

“Oh, all right,” Susannah admitted. “Some of them—most of the modern art pieces, in fact—are about as far from pretty as it’s possible to get. What I meant was they’re more than just random paintings. It’s a major collection, and it would mean the earth to the Dearborn Museum.”

“Plus putting a finger in the eye of all the other places who’d like to have it?”

“Chicago’s a big city,” Susannah said stubbornly : “Why shouldn’t it have another big art museum?” Her Danish had cooled, and the raspberry filling had congealed. She pushed the plate aside. “Of course, it’s a moot point now, unless Cyrus signed a new will since I talked to Pierce. He might have had time, I suppose, but ”

Alison sighed. “All right, I know better than to think your mind will settle on the week’s work schedule till after you’ve found out what’s going on at your precious museum.”

Susannah jumped up and gathered her purse and brief case. “Ali, thanks a million. You really are the anchor that keeps Tryad from drifting off, you know.”

“Cut out the poetic language and just go,” Alison said tartly. “Before I change my mind.”

Susannah grinned and flung an arm around Alison’s shoulders for a quick hug.

Alison shrugged her off, but she was smiling. “Keep me posted, all right?”

Susannah feigned a look of shock. “But of course. After all, the Dearborn is Tryad’s client—not just mine.” She hurried out to the street before Alison could return an acid answer.

Morning rush hour in Chicago was no time to be hailing a cab, but today she was lucky. The taxi was going the wrong direction, but that was only a minor problem; the cabbie screeched to a halt in the traffic lane and Susannah darted across the street and flung herself into the back seat. “The Dearborn Museum,” she gasped, “and hurry.”

Horns honked behind them, and the cab screeched off, flinging Susannah against the seat.

“You want me to make an illegal U-turn, or can I take a minute to go around the block?” the cabbie asked dryly. “What’s the rush, anyway? That place don’t open till ten.”

“I know.”

The cabbie muttered, “People watch way too many movies these days, that’s the trouble. Somebody’s always shouting ‘Follow that car’—and thinking he’s a comedian.”

Susannah smothered a smile and refused to let herself be drawn into a discussion. Instead she stared out the window at Lake Michigan as the cab sped down Lakeshore Drive.

Despite the hour, several sailboats were already on the lake, their bright sails billowing in the early morning breeze. Far out on the horizon she saw a freighter, its progress so slow and stately that it was hard to tell if it was moving at all.

The cab turned toward downtown, and soon they were in the worst of the morning rush, fighting their way block by block between the skyscrapers, through the dark cold caverns where sunshine never fell. It was several weeks yet till summer would officially arrive, but some of these streets would still feel chilly in the middle of August.

Finally the cab swerved almost onto the sidewalk in front of the converted warehouse where the Dearborn Museum had found a home. At street level were retail shops; on the upper floors were small apartments, and the Dearborn was sandwiched in between. This year’s goal would be to raise enough funds to improve access for the handicapped; Susannah’s proposal for organizing the appeal was lying on her desk.

The Dearborn Museum, named for the frontier fort which occupied what later became the city of Chicago, had been one of Tryad’s first clients. In fact, the tiny public relations firm and the struggling art museum had come to life at about the same time, both bravely taking on the challenge of competing with far larger and more established organizations.

Perhaps that similarity was the reason Susannah had so quickly taken the Dearborn to her heart. At any rate, Kit and Alison had been as delighted to leave the museum to her as Susannah was to take it on.

For three years now, she’d worked with the staff—which actually meant, of course, that she worked with Pierce Reynolds, the director. And she’d been as thrilled as anyone when Pierce had first made contact with Cyrus Albrecht and learned that the old man was considering the future of the collection he’d so painstakingly built.

Susannah paid the cabbie and walked around the warehouse to the unmarked back entrance. She pressed the intercom button and gave her name, and a moment later a buzzer sounded and the lock released. She frowned a little as she climbed the narrow steps to the museum floor, wondering if Pierce had considered the need for additional security. Though the Dearborn’s present collection wasn’t shabby, it also wasn’t the sort to draw the attention of thieves. But the Albrecht pieces would be different...if, of course, the Dearborn ever got them.

Pierce was in his office, a small, shabby, industrial-green room to one side of the stairwell, and the moment Susannah saw him she knew she didn’t have to be the one to break the news. His blond hair, normally so neat it almost looked as if it had been painted on, was wildly disarranged. Even more unusual, his tie was at an angle, and the collar of his shirt curled up at the back.

“You look almost like one of your artist friends.” She dropped into the rickety chair beside his desk. “The Bohemian kind who think that even owning a mirror is narcissistic.”

Pierce’s hand went automatically to his hair, even as he said, “That’s not funny, Susannah.”

“I know. I saw the newspaper.” She hesitated. “It was a shock to you, too, obviously.”

“Shock is hardly the word. Nuclear attack is more like it.” Pierce sank into his chair and rubbed his temples.

Susannah’s heart had dropped to her toes. “He hadn’t finished the will?”

Pierce shook his head. “If I’d only pushed a little harder! He was talking about the details last week when I saw him, and if I’d urged him to stop talking and get on with it—”

“If you’d pressed, he might have backed out altogether.”

“I suppose so. But if I could have just made him see that the fine points could be adjusted anytime—”

Susannah had stopped listening. The fact that they had lost the collection was settling cold and hard in the pit of her stomach. Only now that the prize had been snatched away did she realize how much she had come to count on it. For months she’d been tentatively making her plans around the Albrecht collection. The announcement would be a boost to public recognition of the museum. The visitor list would increase dramatically, and fund-raising would be a snap.

Of course, she admitted, not all of her motives were so entirely selfless as those. The renown would make her job instantly easier. And part of the glory of the museum’s success would reflect on Tryad, and therefore on Susannah...

She sighed. Back to the drawing board, she thought.

“It was odd,” Pierce said. “The way Cyrus was behaving last week, I mean. I didn’t realize it at the time, but—”

“Maybe he was already feeling ill?”

“No, that’s not it at all. It was like he was teasing me, holding something back.”

Possible, Susannah thought. And it was equally possible that Pierce’s perceptions were being colored by twenty-twenty hindsight. “Cyrus was a world-class wheeler and dealer. Perhaps he wanted you to offer him something else, something extra, in return for the collection.”

“Then why didn’t he just ask? Anyway, what else could he have wanted?”

Susannah shrugged. “More power to influence the museum’s future, perhaps.”

“We’d already offered him a seat on the board.”

“I know. Or maybe he was just playing out the game, for the fun of it and the attention it got him. He certainly liked having everybody dancing attendance on him.”

“And he waited just a little too long to get down to business?” Suddenly Pierce’s face brightened. “You don’t suppose Cyrus made that will anyway, do you? Maybe he didn’t tell me because he didn’t want the attention to stop.”

Susannah had her doubts, but this was the first positive note Pierce had expressed, and she thought it was hardly the time to discourage him. At any rate, before she’d gathered her thoughts, he’d picked up the telephone and was fumbling through his wallet. “Cyrus’s attorney—what was his name? I’ve got his card in here somewhere...”

The business card he eventually produced had once been crisp and elegant, Susannah was certain. Now it was dog-eared, the edges frayed and the type rubbed and blurred—but not so damaged that Pierce couldn’t read the phone number.

“I don’t think he can tell you anything,” she said as he dialed. “What a client puts in his will is a confidential matter.”

“I’m not going to ask what’s in the will, just whether Cyrus made any changes recently.” He spoke into the phone. “Pierce Reynolds calling for Mr. Joseph Brewster, please.”

The way Pierce’s voice deepened whenever he wanted to impress someone had never failed to amuse Susannah, and even now a smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. She wondered if Pierce knew what he was doing. Probably not, she decided; the habit could well be so ingrained he was no longer aware of it.

As Pierce asked his question, he began to tap a pencil on his desk blotter at even intervals, and by the time he put the telephone down the steady rhythm had almost driven Susannah mad. She took one look at his glum face and forgot the tapping. “I told you he wouldn’t answer the question.”

“Oh, he answered.” Pierce tossed the pencil aside. “Cyrus hasn’t changed his will in years.”

Susannah sighed. “I guess that’s that.”

“Unless he went to some other attorney, of course.”

“Come on, Pierce—how likely is that? Maybe we should look on the positive side of this whole thing.” Susannah tried to laugh, with little success. “With all those valuable paintings, and the publicity we expected to get, security would have become a massive problem. We’d have been begging for handouts in the street just to pay guards.”

Pierce didn’t hesitate. “We wouldn’t have any trouble fund-raising for security.”

Didn’t the man have any sense of humor? “Okay, so it was a bad joke. But you may as well accept the facts.”

“And if things had gone right we wouldn’t have had to worry about securing this place at all.”

Susannah frowned. “What does that mean?”

“I shouldn’t have said anything.” Pierce looked a bit shamefaced. “But—oh, what difference does it make now? I’d hoped that Cyrus would give his house to the museum, too.”

Susannah had never seen Cyrus’s home, but Pierce had told her about the huge old Queen Anne house, featuring all the grandeur of the high Victorian style, furnished with solid old walnut and located on a half-block square lot in one of Chicago’s oldest and finest suburbs.

“And move the present collection there?” She shook her head. “It certainly makes our current troubles with access for the handicapped look like peanuts.”

Pierce dismissed the problem with a wave of the hand. “Cyrus installed an elevator just last year.”

Susannah rolled her eyes. At least, she thought, that harebrained scheme would never come to pass. Surely the board of directors would never have gone along with it...

On second thought, however, she realized that there was method in Pierce’s madness. In fact, the idea made an odd sort of sense. In its downtown location, the Dearborn would always be just one among Chicago’s several prominent art museums. But in the suburbs, it would stand alone, surrounded not by competition but by middle class families with time and money for cultural activities—not only visits but art classes, lectures, tours... Possibilities poured through her mind.

“Well, why not?” Pierce said defensively. “It’s not as if Cyrus had a family to leave it to. Besides, his pictures were the most important thing in his life. Why not leave them in the setting he created for them?”

Reluctantly, she pushed the stream of ideas aside. It was too late for them. And too late, Susannah thought, for sympathy to do Pierce any good, either. She said, finally, “What about the funeral? Shall we go together?”

For a moment, she wasn’t certain whether Pierce hadn’t heard her or if he intended to refuse. Then he gave a harsh bark of laughter. “Oh, why not?” he said. “Doesn’t every fisherman like to get a last glimpse of the one that got away?”

Susannah was on the telephone when Alison tapped gently at her office door and put her head in.

Susannah beckoned her in and said, “Yes, Mrs. Adams, I know exactly how disappointed you are. I’ve found, however-”

Alison sat down on the edge of a chintz-covered chair, looking half afraid that the deep, soft cushions would drag her down like an undertow. Funny, Susannah thought, with half her mind still on Mrs. Adams, how different the partners were. Alison could sit like that, hands folded like a studious schoolgirl, for hours. Kit, if forced to wait, would probably have reorganized the bookshelves. Susannah would have flung herself on the overstuffed plaid couch and at least pretended to take a nap.

Finally she soothed Mrs. Adams into hanging up, and rubbed her ear as she put the telephone down. “Someday,” she said, “I’m going to try to hang up the phone and discover that I can’t because it’s melted into my ear and become part of me.” She looked longingly at the couch, but she knew better than to chance wrinkling her skirt. Linen—even black linen—showed every crease.

Alison smiled in sympathy. “Rita told me she’d put through calls from every single member of the Dearborn’s board of directors today.”

“Oh, she has. I can’t decide whether to thank her for being such an efficient secretary, or yell at her—for exactly the same reason.” Susannah’s voice was dry. “Thank heaven that was the last of them—at least for this round.”

“What’s on their minds? Or did they all know about Cyrus?”

“No. Not by name, at least. But the news seems to have leaked just this morning that all hope of getting the collection has gone up in smoke, and every person who isn’t running for cover is making threats instead.”

Alison’s eyebrows rose a fraction. “What kind of threats?”

“Oh, the usual noises about hiring a new director.” Susannah waved a hand. “I think I got most of the feathers soothed. Eventually they’ll realize it wasn’t Pierce’s fault—and also that they can’t hire anyone else for what they’re paying him—and everybody will be back on good terms. What’s up, Ali?”

“Pierce, actually. Rita sent me up to tell you that he’s waiting downstairs.”

Susannah stood up, smoothed her skirt, and slipped her black jacket on over her snowy white blouse. “Good. I mean, I’m not looking forward to Cyrus’s funeral, but it’s better than dealing with the phone.” She picked up her wide-brimmed black hat and glanced in the mirror mounted on the back of her office door.

“I know. That’s why Rita asked me to come up and tell you—because she didn’t want to break into your call.” Alison paused in the doorway. “You and Pierce look like a matched set, by the way, except you don’t have a black tie and he wouldn’t look nearly as good as you do in that hat.”

Susannah paused as she adjusted the tilt of her hat. “You’re sure it isn’t just a little over the top? I don’t want to look like a professional mourner. But I did like the old man, and as a mark of respect...”

“Looks great,” Alison said. “If I could wear a hat with that kind of dash, I’d never take it off.”

Susannah smiled in spite of herself. “They really get in the way when it comes to being kissed, you know.”

“Just as I said—I’d never take it off.” Alison grinned and started up the stairs toward the top floor production room.

“If you’d stop being quite so practical, Ali, you’d have lines of men wanting to kiss you.”

Alison didn’t even pause. “Really? Well, since I don’t have time for that sort of nonsense, I’ll definitely have to look for a hat.”

Susannah made a face behind her partner’s back and turned toward the staircase to the main floor.

Pierce was standing in the receptionist’s office, hands clasped behind his back, shifting his weight from toes to heels and back again. He was staring at a framed poster which hung near Rita’s desk, but Susannah doubted he’d even seen it, or heard her come in. She was wrong on both counts.

Pierce stepped back from the poster and said, “I could get you something really nice to hang there.”

“On Tryad’s decorating budget? I doubt it.” She let her gaze run over him. In his dark suit he looked taller, but in fact his eyes were exactly on a level with Susannah’s when, as now, she was wearing heels. His tie wasn’t black, it was charcoal; Alison had been wrong: But she’d been correct about the rest. They couldn’t have patched more perfectly if they’d been dressed by a single designer. Rita, she noticed, looked impressed.

Pierce had left his tiny sports car in front of Tryad’s converted brownstone. He helped Susannah into the passenger seat, and she tried to keep her skirt from sliding impossibly high.

“At least it’s a pretty day,” she said as he got behind the wheel. “I wondered why the services were delayed so long, but it worked out beautifully, didn’t it? After the rain yesterday and the day before—” Why was she babbling? The urge to talk simply to fill the silence was a sensation she’d never felt with Pierce before, and it took Susannah by surprise. Theirs had always been an easy and professional relationship.

“The funeral was put off for the heir’s convenience.”

Susannah frowned. “What heir?”

“Didn’t I tell you what I’ve found out? The will currently in force was made more than ten years ago, and—”

Susannah interrupted with a long, low whistle. “You’ve put the delay to good use, haven’t you?”

Pierce shrugged. “I don’t know what use it is to know that Cyrus left everything he possessed to the son of an old flame.”

“Well, well,” Susannah drawled. “Who’d have thought it of Cyrus?”

“I know,” Pierce said bitterly. “It’s hard to believe that somebody as savvy as Cyrus was didn’t bother to update his will now and then, even if his financial circumstances hadn’t changed. A ten-year-old will is ridiculous... to say nothing of his leaving everything to somebody who wouldn’t even bother to cut his Hawaiian vacation short so the funeral could be held on time.”

“That wasn’t quite what I meant,” Susannah said. “It just occurred to me that perhaps the son of the old flame might be Cyrus’s son, as well.”

Pierce looked startled. “Oh, I don’t think—”

“Even Cyrus was young once. And now that I think about it, there was a certain twinkle in his eyes sometimes.”

Pierce snorted.

There were to be no church services, only a gathering in the cemetery. A surprising number of cars were already parked along the narrow, winding roads which cut the grand old cemetery into segments, and Pierce had to park at a distance. Susannah glanced from the gravel lane to her shoes, and sighed.

But before they’d gone far, the inconvenience of walking across grass and gravel in heels had given way to Susannah’s love of old cemeteries. She’d almost forgotten how much she loved graveyards, full of elaborate monuments and family histories carved in stone in a kind of shorthand only the initiated could read. She’d been good at that, once, deducing from names and dates what had happened to the people who lay below the quiet sod. But she hadn’t gone exploring for years now. Eight years, to be exact....

“But how do you know?”

The question echoed in her head, in an almost-plaintive baritone that she hadn’t heard in the better part of a decade. Funny, she thought, that she could still hear it so clearly...

“How can you tell from a tombstone that life was rough for women?” Marc had asked on a crisp November day, as he stood beside her in an old cemetery in a far north suburb of Chicago. “It’s a man’s tombstone, at that.”

“That’s right,” Susannah had said. “The monument is for the patriarch, but look on the back at the list of names. His three wives didn’t even get a stone to themselves. He married them one at a time, of course, but now they’re all lying here bedside him, together for eternity.”

“But how?” Marc had asked, very practically. “He’s only got two sides.”

Susannah had found the comment hysterically funny, and she’d finally wobbled over to a low flat stone nearby and sat down to recover from her fit of laughter..But in fact she’d never managed to get her breath back, for Marc had joined her there, and kissed her...

And she hadn’t walked in a cemetery since.

“What a nuisance this is,” Pierce said. “Trust Cyrus to make things inconvenient.”

“Shush.” They were getting close to the small tent where the crowd had gathered. A soft breeze tugged at Susannah’s hat and ruffled the corners of the American flag covering the casket.