Lady in Red
BET Books, June 2004
ISBN: 1-58314-533-8
(click on the ISBN order)
$6.99/$9.99
Excerpt:
Jackson Trent leaned back in his chair, folded his arms behind his head and propped his feet on the credenza behind his desk. For the first time in a long time he was looking forward to doing nothing.
He’d joined the NYPD as soon as he’d finished putting himself through college, going from patrol to narcotics in just two years. Most cops didn’t last long as narcs and he hadn’t been the exception. After three years he’d called it quits, leaving not only to the division but to the force, as well.
He’d worked his ass off for the last four years, building his P.I. business into something worthwhile. He’d started this agency by buying the skip tracing business of another. He’d given up most of that, too, as many folks who skipped town rather than deal with the law usually did so for a reason, and weren’t usually too amenable to being brought back. He’d eventually sold that aspect of the company for more than he’d paid for it. Now he concentrated on what he did best, finding missing people, lost children, deadbeat dads who wouldn’t pay their child support. For the first time his agency netted him a six figure income and he had six other investigators working under him.
Life was sweet, except for one thing. The one man he’d spent half his life trying to find still eluded him. Or he had until two days ago. Surprise of surprises, Duke Anderson called him, wanting to arrange a meeting. For almost twenty years the man had seemed to fall of the earth. While Jackson wondered what had caused the man to resurface, he refused to question his good fortune.
Maybe finally he could make sense of a long ago murder that cost his father his job, his reputation and almost cost him his freedom. Maybe finally he could find out who was responsible for Sharon Glenn’s death, though if he found out, he’d be the only one looking.
But for today, he planned on getting out of the office, smelling some rosebuds while they were still in bloom. Maybe he’d go to Central Park and watch some people go by who he didn’t have under surveillance. Something, anything that didn’t involve clients or zoom lenses or computer databases of missing children.
He dropped his feet to the floor, just as his intercom sounded. His secretary’s voice blared at him. “Jack, there’s someone here to see you.”
“Damn!” He’d been minutes away from a clean getaway, ruined by his own procrastination. “Who is it?”
“She says her name is Charlotte Hicks.”
The name didn’t ring a bell, but there was no reason why it should. “Have Danny take it. I’m on my way out.”
“She says she’ll only talk to y-“ Peggy’s voice died out on the phone, but he could hear her say plainly. “You can’t go in there.”
A second later, a woman-tall, voluptuous and dressed completely in red-burst through his office door. She clutched some little rat dog so tightly to her ample bosom that he wondered if the poor thing could breathe. “I’m so sorry to intrude,” the woman began. “But I really must speak to you.”
He looked past the woman to where Peggy stood, hands on hips glaring furiously at the woman. Peggy was no match for this freight train of a woman. He waved Peggy off, and gestured toward one of the visitors chairs. “What can I do for you Ms Hicks?”
With a sigh, she complied, adjusting the little dog on her lap, giving him a chance to return to his own seat.
She leaned toward him, nearly smushing the little dog again. “I’m in trouble, Mr. Trent. I don’t know where else to turn. A friend of mine recommended your services.” She rattled off a name unfamiliar to him, which wasn’t necessarily odd. He didn’t know every client that had walked through the door in the past six years. “Go on.”
She sighed so dramatically that he wondered if Peggy or one of the guys hadn’t arranged this meeting as some form of practical joke. “I’m being blackmailed, Mr. Trent. And I’m not even sure by whom.”
She sat back as if she were relieved to have told him that. She crossed her legs, long, shapely legs that at her age must come from either great genes or a first-class personal trainer. Although her face was unlined, he suspected a surgeon’s scalpel had more to do with that than a lack of gravity. Still, she was one of the most beautiful women he’d ever met.
And she was trouble. He’d been in enough trouble to know it when he saw it. Exactly what kind of trouble, he wasn’t sure, but today he wasn’t in the mood for any of them.
“Why do you think someone is blackmailing you?”
“The notes.” Se reached into the minuscule purse she carried and pulled out a wad of folded paper. She extended them toward him by holding one corner between her thumb and index finger.
He took the papers and unfolded them-three notes printed in black ink on standard copy paper. The first note read simply, “I know what you did.” The second read, “You’re a liar and a cheat. I’m going to make you pay. The third said, “If you don’t come clean, I’ll take away every Scarlet thing you own.” Given her attire, the last sounded like a warning from the fashion police.
She looked at him expectantly with liquid brown eyes. “Can you tell anything from the notes?”
Sure, her mystery blackmailer preferred a Helvetica font. “What happened to the envelopes?”
“What envelopes.”
“I’m assuming they came in envelopes, perhaps mailed to you?”
“Yes, oh, yes.” She brushed at a lock of black hair that barely reached her shoulder. “I threw the envelopes away. Are they important?”
Only if she planned to figure out who sent them. Jackson ground his teeth together. Where did this woman live, under a rock? Probably a red one. Even if the last cop show she’d watched on TV was Starsky and Hutch she should have known better. “The post mark might have given us some clue as to where they were sent from. Then there’s always the possibility of finding a usable print.”
“Oh, then I probably shouldn’t have thrown them out, should I?”
He inhaled and the scent of her perfume reached him, the cloying smell of roses. “Can you tell me anything else Mrs. Hicks? Who do you think is behind this?”
“I assure you, I really wouldn’t know.”
“The letter claims you’re a liar and a thief. You can’t think of anyone who would want to accuse you of those things?”
“Mr. Trent, I own a cosmetics company. I suspect one of my competitors is trying to ruin me by claiming I stole the formula for one of their products.” She lunged forward in her seat so suddenly that even the dog looked around searching for danger. “My life is in jeopardy, Mr. Trent. I know it is.”
“Why do you say that? Has anyone been following you?”
“No.”
“Have you been receiving threatening phone calls?”
“Only from my daughter.”
He could imagine why. “Has anyone tried to harm you physically?”
She shook her head. “No, no, no. I can’t explain it to you the way I mean. I’m not crazy, Mr. Trent. I know what I know.”
“Have you told any of this to the police?”
“Of course not. I was counting on you to help me.”
And he knew that he had no intention of getting involved in this woman’s melodrama. He was about to do something he hadn’t done in a long while. He was going to turn down a client.
“I’m sorry, Ms. Hicks, but I’m not sure what I can do for you. I’m about to go on vacation.” It wasn’t a total lie. One day off counted as a vacation, didn’t it. He stood and walked around his desk. Thankfully, she made his job easier by rising too. He took her by the elbow and started toward the door. “If you feel your life is in danger, maybe you ought to go to the police. They have more manpower and better resources to handle a case like this.” And better access to the mental ward at Bellevue Hospital.
“I couldn’t possibly.”
He didn’t bother to ask why not. He was afraid she might tell him. “I’m sorry, Ms. Hicks.” He’d managed to get her over the threshold of his office. He stepped back inside and quickly shut the door.
Only one thing marred his glee at having gotten rid of her so easily-the stark look of fear that had suffused her face when he closed the door on her. She might genuinely be in some kind of trouble, but it wasn’t his job to deal with every nut case in New York.
He retook his seat, no longer feeling much like doing nothing. While he was here, he might as well get some work done.
Peggy poked her head in his office before his computer booted properly. “Hey, Jack.”
Her prompt entry after the woman’s departure refueled an earlier suspicion. “Okay, which one of you people put that poor woman up to coming here?”
“Don’t you know who that was?”
Jackson shrugged. “The lady in red?”
“Duh. More like the Scarlet Woman. You know, Scarlet Woman Cosmetics.”
“I’ve heard of them.” His friend Adam’s wife Samantha modeled for them. In fact, she had sent him some samples a while back that were still burning a hole in the bottom drawer of his desk. He rooted around until he found them and tossed them on top of his desk. ”Does mascara go bad?”
“Only after you open it.” Peggy picked up a jar of bath salts and examined it. “Why have you been hoarding these things in here?”
He shrugged. Lacking a girlfriend or wife to give them to, he’d left them where he’d put them. “Do you want them?”
“Do mink wear fur?” She gathered up the items piling them on one arm with the other hand. “Who should I write the thank you note to? Ms. Thompson?”
“Who?”
Peggy shook her head in a way that she knew he was thinking, “Men!” “Ms. Thompson, the woman you just showed the door to.”
“You told me her name was Charlotte Hicks.”
“That’s her stage name. Her maiden name, I guess. Her married name is Charlotte Thompson.”
Luckily, Peggy had already turned to leave, so she didn’t notice how the mention of that name and its implications momentarily poleaxed him. It didn’t just rain, it poured, and he was s.o.l. for an umbrella. Was it coincidence that she had come to him, or had she sought him out on purpose? And if she had, why hadn’t she made it plain who she was?
Oh damn. He was going to have to help her after all.
Two
Carly Thompson looked around the crowded conference room with dissatisfaction. The meeting to finalize plans for the upcoming press junket to Martha’s Vineyard to celebrate the tenth anniversary of Scarlet Woman cosmetics had gone well. In those few short years, Scarlet Woman had gone from a tiny mom and pop operation to a multimillion dollar corporation. Yet as everyone packed up preparing to get back to their own desks and their own work, it reminded Carly that one chair had remained unfilled during the entire meeting-the one belonging to her mother.
Usually Charlotte opted for the late and dramatic entrance with the emphasis on dramatic, but rarely did she skip meetings altogether. She’d wanted her mother here so that she couldn’t later claim that no one had given her the details of the trip or that she didn’t know what was expected of her. As the “front woman” for the company it was imperative that she knew exactly what to say when the press came calling. Carly preferred to run things from behind the scenes, out of the limelight.
Realizing she’d been drumming her fingers on the surface of the glass conference table, Carly folded her hands in her lap. Where the hell could her mother be? Unlike some people, Carly actually did more for the company than shmooze celebrities and take interviews. Carly didn’t have time to sit around contemplating her fingernails.
Just as she stood to return to her own office, the double doors to the conference room burst open. Johnny, her mother’s chauffeur stood to one side, allowing Charlotte to breeze into the room. The scent of roses reached Carly clear at the other end of the long table. As usual, Charlotte dressed head to toe in red, this time a Valentino with high-heeled stiletto pumps. She clutched Mr. Jingles, her bison frize tightly against her boson as she paused at the foot of the conference table.
“Darling, I’m so sorry to be late.” She fanned herself with her free hand. “Bruce and I are off our schedule.”
Before Carly could ask who the devil Bruce was, a man strode into the room. He was tall, maybe a foot over her own height of five foot four, dark, and definitely handsome with high cheekbones, a square jaw and deep brown eyes.
Charlotte continued, “Meet my new personal assistant.”
Personal assistant, her eye. Every one of her mother’s personal assistants, and there had been many, were in reality the men who shared her bed. For once she couldn’t fault her mother’s taste, even if the selection surprised her. Usually, her mother stuck with the sort of fey and sycophantic man that danced at her beck and call. This man was so far from being a “Bruce” that whoever named him ought to be hauled in for child abuse.
Focusing her gaze on her mother, Carly gritted her teeth. Charlotte beamed at her as if she’d just executed the coup of the century. Why her mother felt she had to buy the affection of men with some made-up position she didn’t know. Nor could she understand why Charlotte thought Carly would put this man on her payroll. After the last one, six months ago, Carly had balked and told her mother that she could pay her men out of her own pocket. There hadn’t been any “personal assistants” since then. Her mother must really want this man to open that can of worms again.
Carly’s gaze slid to “Bruce.” She wondered how quickly he’d make it out the door when he discovered she had no intention of paying him one red cent. His gaze met hers, strong and steady. She’d admit there was something commanding about him, something magnetic. She could understand her mother’s attraction to him, but she couldn’t let her mother’s desire rule what was in Carly’s mind best for the company. She raised her own eyebrows and crossed her arms in silent challenge “Bruce, is it? Well, Bruce, would you mind waiting outside while I speak with my mother?” She’d formed it as a question, but she meant for him to leave.
Charlotte patted his arm in a possessive way. “Yes, dear. Why don’t you wait for me in my office. You know which one that is.”
Thankfully he nodded and left without any fuss. As he did so, Charlotte slid into a seat with a dramatic sigh. “What did you want to talk about, dear?”
Carly folded her arms. “How about you missing the meeting, for starters.”
Charlotte adjusted the red bow around Mr. Jingles neck. “Oh that. I’m sure you can fill me in.”
“That’s just the point. I don’t want to have to fill you in. I wanted you to hear it all first hand, perhaps offer a little input.”
“Oh, please, you treat every suggestion from me as if it were the bastard child in the attic-to be hidden and avoided at all costs. You didn’t need me here.”
Carly pursed her lips, realized what she was doing and stopped. “That is not true. I have followed through on many of your ideas.”
“Only after someone else made you see the wisdom of them.” Charlotte crossed her legs and sat back as if she hadn’t a care in the world. “Go on.”
Annoyed by her mother’s nonchalance, Carly gritted her teeth. Charlotte knew she hated it when she took a cavalier attitude toward the business and was deliberately baiting her. But why? Did it really matter? Carly could give as good as she got.
Canting her hip to one side, she said, “I don’t care how good that man is in bed, I am not putting him on the payroll of this company.”
“You don’t have to, dear. I already did. I spoke to Carrie in human resources this morning.”
Blast! Leave it to her mother to put the staff in the middle of this. Carrie wouldn’t have questioned her mother’s request or brought it to Carly’s attention before completing the paperwork. Charlotte had hired employees for legitimate purposes before, and the true purpose of her former personal assistants had been kept between mother and daughter.
“So you went behind my back.”
“I did nothing of the kind. I do need a personal assistant for this trip. Johnny refuses to come. He hates the ocean. Besides, he’s on vacation next week. I’ll need a driver at least. Who knows, with all the press, I might need a body guard as well.”
Carly gave her mother a droll look. “Are you trying to tell me you are not sleeping with that man?”
Charlotte petted Mr. Jingles head. “I didn’t say that. But he does perform legitimate services. I didn’t think you’d mind.”
Right. More likely Charlotte had expected to talk her into letting him stay, which in fact she’d done, more because Carly lacked the will to fight with her mother with the trip coming up than anything else. Carly sank back into her seat. “What exactly do you plan to do with this man while he’s here.”
“You don’t really want me to answer that question do you?”
Carly cast her mother a narrow-eyed glare. “I didn’t mean sexually, mother, which you know. I meant what are his duties? Do you need somewhere for him to work?” Like she’d actually make him work in the first place.
“Oh, that. I gave him my old office.”
For months she’d been trying to persuade her mother to move her things from that office considering she rarely set foot in the building. That office provided great views of Manhattan in both southern and easterly directions, views Carly coveted. “That office is bigger than mine.”
Charlotte shrugged. “The man has to sit somewhere.”
Carly resisted the urge to tell her mother exactly where and on what the man could rest his behind. But “Bruce” wasn’t really the problem; Charlotte was. “Absolutely not. That man is not using that office.”
To Carly’s surprise, her mother stood, letting Mr. Jingles scamper onto the floor and a look of steel came into her eyes. “Yes, he is.”
“No he’s not,” she said, equally determined. “I am president and Chief Executive Officer of this company. I make the decisions here. How would it look to have some glorified errand boy occupying the largest office in the company?”
“And maybe you are forgetting who owns this company. Fifty-one percent of it is mine. I have allowed you to run it however you saw fit for the last eight years, but it is still my company. And he will be staying in my office.”
Carly bit her lip, a habit left over from childhood. Maybe she had been running this company so long that she forgot who held the purse strings, but her mother had never pulled rank on her before. That she did so now over some man smarted. It more than smarted. Carly had always wondered where her mother’s greater allegiance layette her men or to her daughter. She supposed she had her answer.
Momentarily nonplused by her mother’s betrayal, she stood. “Fine, mother. Do whatever you want. You always have. Just keep him out of my way.” She stalked out of the conference room as Mr. Jingles scampered to get out of the way. She went to her own office and slammed the door. She flung herself into the leather swivel chair behind her desk, but stopped, seeing her father’s picture on her desk.
She touched her fingers to the glass covering the image of his face. Although she had only been seven years old when he’d suffered a heart attack while driving, she remembered him as a kind, gentle man. He had been twenty years older than her mother and, in some people’s minds, the wrong race, but the three of them had been happy.
Carly swallowed in a throat suddenly clogged with emotion. The last words he’d spoken to her had been “take care of your mother.” Then he’d slipped off into nothing or whatever awaited after the grave. After he was gone, her mother closed in on herself in a way that Carly hadn’t thought she would ever come out of it. In a way, she’d lost both parents that day, because even when her mother did snap out of it, she’d never come back to being herself. She’d always been a little flaky, but never the woman she was now-spoiled, demanding, vain. At eight years old, Carly had morphed into the adult in the family and Charlotte had regressed to be the child. Even this company had been Carly’s idea, a means of supporting themselves while capitalizing on her mother’s former fame as an actress. It had even resulted in a few cameo parts for her mother, which had served to promote the company as well.
She had always tried to keep her promise to her father, but sometimes it was hard, it was damn hard. “I miss you, daddy,” she whispered, wiped the dampness from her cheeks and got to work.
###
Jackson Trent stared out the window at the view of Midtown Manhattan, but he paid little attention to the scenery. Instead he wished his father Donovan had never laid eyes on Alexander Thompson. The two men met when the elder Trent had been accused of murder in a case that made headlines and Thompson had agreed to defend him for free. Thompson had gotten the case dismissed when it was revealed that the only witness, and therefore the only evidence against his father, was a drunk who recanted his testimony under Thomas’s examination.
Donovan had considered Thompson a miracle worker. Jackson remembered that long-ago day when his father had looked him in the eye and said, “If you ever find a way to repay that man, you do it.” Jackson promised he would, but the next day Alex Thompson was dead. Everyone had speculated that the stress of the trial had contributed to the heart attack that took his life.
Jackson assumed the debt had been voided at that moment. But when his widow Charlotte came to him, asking for his help, he figured the debt had simply been transferred.
But Charlotte Thompson was nothing like his fourteen-year-old recollection of her. Nor was she the screen persona he’d come to know from the few films she’d made. The Charlotte that had come to see him was more of a caricature of her screen self, a cross between Diahnne Carroll and Eva Gabor.
And the story she’d told him. Too bizarre to be believed. In the ten years he’d been a P.I., he’d heard some whoppers, but hers took the cake. He figured there had to be some truth in it, but which part and how much was anybody’s guess.
Oddly, there was something maternal about her, as well. Or maybe that was merely that boy still in him, the one who had lost his mother before he was old enough to retain her memory, seeking what wasn’t there.
And the girl. He’d met her once while her father was defending his: a tiny thing with dark, inquisitive eyes and a cloud of orange hair. He’d called her carrot-top and she’d kicked him in the leg for his troubles. Then she’d dragged him up to her tree house and showed him all the treasures she secreted up there.
He held that memory fondly, though he saw nothing of that little girl in the woman he’d seen today. He hadn’t intended to start that mini staring contest in the conference room, but her appearance had surprised him. He hadn’t expected to find the same little girl, nor had he expected the severe woman who’d stood before him with a pinched expression on her face, her hair, dark not the flaming red he remembered, pulled back into some awful bun, dressed in a shapeless suit that was as revealing as a burlap sack. He smiled to himself. At least she was still short.
Yet, he didn’t understand her mother’s need for subterfuge. If Charlotte were receiving threatening notes as she claimed, wouldn’t she want her daughter to know about it, to be on her guard if nothing else? Why she insisted on insinuating him into the company in such a manner, he had no idea, and it didn’t sit well with him.
No, he’d probably be better off if Donovan Trent had never heard of Alex Thompson.
Hearing a dramatic female sigh, he turned to see Charlotte striding into the room. She took a seat in one of the visitor’s chairs and arranged the dog on her lap. “Everything’s settled,” she said, as if she’d just secured a dinner reservation.
“Your daughter didn’t seem pleased to have me here.”
“She isn’t, but she’ll get over it.” She hadn’t really been looking at him before, but she focused on him now with a wide-eyed, innocent expression that didn’t fool him. “What?”
“When exactly did my name become Bruce?”
She gave a short tittering laugh. “On my way in to the conference room it occurred to me that if I told my daughter your real name, she’d ferret out who you were in two seconds. My daughter is no slouch in the brains department.”
“But Bruce?”
She shrugged. “It was all I could come up with on short notice.”
She shouldn’t have had to come up with anything. She should have leveled with her daughter. But since his pleas to do so had so far gone unheeded, he didn’t bother. “I heard back from the lab. The only fingerprints on the letters belonged to us. They
were printed on paper you can buy at any office supply store using ink you can purchase anywhere.”
“So they weren’t helpful.”
“Not in narrowing down any suspects, no.”
She lifted her shoulders and let them fall in a defeated way, dramatic even for her. “You see why I need your help. Who knows who could be sending those letters?”
Indeed. She could be mailing herself poisoned pen letters for all he knew, but he suspected the fear he sensed in her was real. “Why do you want me to hang around the office then, if you are in danger?”
“You read the notes. ‘I’ll take away every Scarlet thing you own.’ It’s not my business I’m worried about, it’s my daughter. She calls herself Carly, she always has, but her real name is Scarlet. She needs your protection, not me.”
“I’m a P.I. Mrs. Thompson, not a body guard.”
She looked at him with a hint of challenge in her eyes. “Would you let anything happen to my daughter?”
“No.”
“Then that’s close enough.” She sat forward, clearing her throat. “There’s one more thing. I don’t think you’re going to like it.”
Why was he not surprised? “What’s that?”
“I have, in the tiniest way, led my daughter to believe that we are sleeping together.”
Not for the first time since he’d met Charlotte Thompson, his temper threatened to overflow. “How does one, in the tiniest way, lead someone to believe that you are sleeping with someone else?”
“She assumed and I didn’t exactly deny it. It wouldn’t have done me any good to deny it. She never would have believed me.”
“Why is that?”
She shot him a droll look. “Have you looked at yourself in the mirror lately? And, unfortunately, my daughter thinks of me as some nymphomaniac dowager gobbling up young men like a Hoover snaps up dust bunnies.”
She pressed her lips together and looked away from him. For the first time, he sensed real pain in her. “It’s a harmless ruse,” she said in a quiet voice.
He wanted to protest. He wanted to get the hell out of there, for as sure as he stood there he knew she lied to him. He didn’t need to stick his neck out for a woman that couldn’t even be straight with her own daughter. But he’d made two promises to his father. One would have to wait while he took care of the other.
“What do you want me to do?”
“Stay with her. Tell her you want to go over my itinerary. Whatever.” She stood, grasping Mr. Jingles in one arm and smoothing her skirt with the other.
“Where are you going?”
“Friday is facial day. I’ll see you at home later.” With a swish of her hips she was gone.
###
Once outside in the car, Charlotte relaxed against the Mercedes’ leather upholstery and let some of the tension she’d felt all day seep out of her. It was all arranged. She’d seen to it. Alex should be proud of her. She looked heavenward as she always did when she thought of her husband. “Finally, Alex, I’ve done something right.”
She hadn’t been a good parent to Carly. She knew that. While Carly’s friends had thought she had the coolest mother imaginable because she didn’t nag Carly about her grades or impose curfews like their mothers, Carly herself had needed something different. She’d needed stability and structure and order. Since she, Charlotte, had been incapable of providing it, Carly had created it for herself.
Charlotte had always admired that about her daughter, but lately, she had come to realize that Carly had gone too far. She’d structured her life to include nothing but work: no friends, no men, no dates, no fun. Charlotte had tried to get her daughter to lighten up, but Carly saw every attempt as another example of her mother’s frivolity. Now they were like the two opposing poles of a magnet, but rather than attracting, they repelled. Frankly, Charlotte didn’t know what to do about it any more.
Even so, Charlotte had bigger worries than Carly’s opinion of her. What she did now could make the difference between life and death for all of them. If only Jackson hadn’t gone snooping around, digging in the past. He’d left it alone for all this time. Why now, when the risk was so much greater?
Her sweet Alex had already paid with his life for the answers Jackson sought. One of the last things Alex had said to her was to watch out for that boy. Alex had known what Jackson didn’t: that his father had been diagnosed with cancer and wasn’t expected to survive. Donovan Trent had lasted only a few months longer than Alex had. Newly orphaned, the boy had gone to live with an aunt in upstate New York.
Charlotte had lost track of him, until the phone calls started, the ones warning her what would happen if he persisted. She knew the voice and the man it belonged to, though she doubted he knew she knew. This time, rather than threatening her husband, it was her daughter he targeted. And Jackson. She’d had to divert Jackson, make him stop looking somehow. All she’d come up with was a crazy plot about someone trying to sabotage her business, some competitor threatening to expose her for stealing their ideas.
She was certain he didn’t believe her. What sane person would? But he’d agreed to help her, which was all that mattered. He would keep Carly safe until she could figure out what to do-even if that meant telling him the truth. If he would even believe her when she told him. She’d gone to the police twenty years ago and they had practically laughed in her face. She was on her own now, and that thought terrified her most of all.