The weeks following the Hard Facts story had been miserable for Jill. While many within the Chicago advertising community had known about her former marriage to Evelyn Tappley's son, it was rarely mentioned. Her talent and her general good nature had made her a lot of friends and nobody wanted to see her suffer for something over which she had had no control.
Peter had killed those women, not Jill.
But for the three months following the Hard Facts story, Jill had experienced her first taste of notorietyand had hated it. The cynical and knowing gaze, the quick smirk, the whispersshe'd been treated to them all and had felt a curious shame, as if this was just the kind of treatment she deserved.
So this time she was going to stop it before it started.
This time she was going to find out which trashy TV show or newspaper the man in the blue Volvo worked for, and she was going to get an injunction.
Surely a judge would be sympathetic once she told him what had happened following the Hard Facts story.
Peter was now six years dead, and Jill wanted him to stay dead.
'You remember when you hired that private detective?' she said to Kate.
'Marcy?'
'That's right,' Jill said. 'Marcy. What's her last name?'
'Marcy Browne. With an 'e' on the end. Why?'
'I'm going to have her check out this guy in the blue Volvo.'
'What about the police?'
'First of all, what am I going to tell them? That there's a man who sits in a blue Volvo on a very busy street and he irritates me? And second of all, I don't want anything official to happen. Official means the press will get involved because they'll hear about it somehow. I just want Marcy to find out who the guy works for and then I'll hire a lawyer and threaten some kind of legal action. If an injunction doesn't work, then I'll threaten a lawsuit. I don't want to go through it again, Kate. I really don't.'
'God, I don't blame you. I just hope Marcy can do something.'
'Well, she can find out who he is if nothing else.'
'You sure you don't want to have Chinese tonight?'
'Maybe tomorrow night. Anyway, what happened to The Hunk?'
Kate laughed. 'He's doing just fine, thank you.' Kate had been the most famous runway model to ever come from Chicago, glamorous, beautiful and a resolute heartbreaker. She changed men frequently.
Jill's phone signaled a call waiting. Convenient as it was, call waiting could also be a royal pain in the butt. Jill and Kate always joked that one day one of them would be shouting frantically, 'And the killer is' But then call waiting would interrupt them and the identity of the killer would remain forever unknown.
'I'll be right back,' Jill promised, and she depressed the phone button.
A male voice said, 'Jill? It's me, Eric.'
'Hi.'
'You sound as enthused as always.'
'Eric, we just don't have anything to say to each other anymore. I wish you could try to understand that.'
She hated the whiny note in her voice but she was getting exasperated with the man. When she'd come back to Chicago following the execution, she'd had little luck in establishing a freelance business. Eric Brooks had just left one of the big ad agencies to start his own, and he needed money. She gave him her modest inheritance and together they formed a partnership. Within a year, Brooks-Coffey was one of the hottest shops in the Midwest. Eric was creative, bold and relentless. He was also egocentric, dishonest and so driven to sexual conquest that Jill sometimes wondered if he weren't insecure about his masculinity. After three years, they'd parted company. She'd made enough money on the partnership to set up her own photography studio. But Eric still called every few months, always trying to sound as if they were old friends who just couldn't wait to be together again. That might be Eric's feeling on the matter but it certainly wasn't Jill's. He had never managed to sleep with her and so she became this overwhelming object of importance to him. Somehow, someday, he was going to slip her into his bed. He was obviously certain of that.
'I need you to come to my office.'
'For what?'
'Strictly business. We're doing a new corporate brochure about ourselves and it probably won't surprise you that I want to be the center of attention.'
As she listened to him, she played with a pair of long scissors with orange rubber-tipped handles. She couldn't remember buying these but maybe they were an old pair she'd forgotten about. Such were the mysterious ways of households.
'Eric, I'm on the other phone. Let me call you back.'
'Ten thousand dollarsthat's the figure to keep in your head. Ten thousand, just for a few hours' work of shooting me in various setups at the office.'
The convent. The aged nuns. Of course! It was as if Eric had read her mind, the bastard.
She certainly couldn't just turn him down.
She'd at least have to think about it…
'How about my office in two hours?' Eric said.
She felt rushed, confused, resentful.
Damn call waiting, anyway.
Then she smiled at herself: that was certainly a mature response to her little dilemma. Blaming call waiting.
'I can't make it at five. Will you be there at seven?'
'Hey, babe, remember me? I'm the original workaholic. Of course I'll be here at seven.'
'All right, I'll see you then.'
She punched back to Kate. 'God, I'm sorry.'
'That's all right. I wanted to read that novel anyway. It was only six hundred pages and I had plenty of time while I was waiting for you.'
'Eric.'
'Eric Brooks?'
'One and the same.'
'That jerk. What'd he want?'
'Ostensibly he wants me to take his photo.'
'He's still trying to get you into bed, isn't he?'
'Maybe he's changed,' Jill said.
'Why can't guys like him be impotent?'
'But he's making it very difficult for me. He's offering me ten thousand dollars to shoot him for his corporate brochure.'
'I'd shoot him for a lot less than that.'
'You know that convent idea I told you about?'
'Uh-huh.'
'Well, for ten thousand dollars I could close the shop down an entire week and really do the convent photos right.'
'Then I guess it'd be worth it.'
'I mean, I've held him off for a long time now. I guess I could hold him off for a few more hours.'
'Just remember to wear that nuclear-powered chastity belt I got you for your last birthday.'
Jill smiled. 'God, Kate, thanks for being my friend. I'd go insane without you, I really would.'
'So you going to call Marcy?'
'Soon as we hang up.'
'That's Browne with an'
'Browne with an 'e'.'
'Smart-ass.'
