But if he wanted to kill me, he would. I took a deep breath, looking steadily at his eyes in the mirror, and from his pocket he pulled a little gray velvet box and set it on the counter. Gently and expertly he removed my earrings, plain gold balls, and opening the velvet box, he extracted gorgeous amethyst-and-diamond earrings and with no fumbling at all fixed them in my ears.
“Oh, Martin,” I said, stunned. I felt as if I’d put on my brakes at the edge of a precipice.
“Sweetheart, do you like them?” he said finally.
“Oh, yes,” I said, trying hard not to cry. “Yes, Martin. They’re beautiful.” My hands were shaking, and I clenched my fists so he wouldn’t notice.
“Didn’t you tell me November was your birthday?”
“Yes, it is.”
“And here it is November. I didn’t know which day, but I wanted to get you a present. I know topaz is your birthstone, but none I saw seemed warm enough to me. These look like you. If you didn’t know it, you look beautiful tonight.”
The stones glittered. The amethysts were rectangular and edged with small diamonds.
“I’m overwhelmed. Martin, I don’t know what to say.” I’d never spoken truer words.
“Tell me you love me.”
I looked into the mirror.
“I love you.”
“That’s all I wanted to hear.”
“Martin.”
His hand touched my cheek.
“Do you-?”
“Yes,” he said into my ear, kissing my neck. “Oh, yes. I love you.”
After a while he said, “Do we have to go?”
“Unless we want my mother coming here to find out what happened to me, yes.”
Actually, I needed a space to think, to calm down. If we stayed here, I certainly wouldn’t get it.
Talk about warring emotions. Someone loved me. I loved him back. He might be questioned tomorrow for murder. He’d given me the most romantic gift, the kind women wait a lifetime for. And I’d thought for a moment that he was going to strangle me.
Martin fetched my coat from the closet while I reexamined my earrings in the mirror. “Can you stop looking long enough to put on your coat?” he asked, laughing.
“I guess so,” I said reluctantly. The moment of terror was oozing out and filling up with delight. “Martin, what’s that clipped to your coat pocket?”
“Oh, a beeper. We’ve been having trouble with a particular man on the night shift. His supervisor is watching him tonight, and if he catches him stealing, he’s going to beep me so I can go have it out with the guy.”
In my now almost complete wave of euphoria, I did a Scarlett O’Hara and decided to think about the bad stuff later. Maybe I couldn’t put it off until tomorrow, but I could savor this minute, surely.
Martin and I were a little late, among the last to arrive. We picked glasses of white wine off the tray a waiter carried by. I spotted Lizanne and Bubba Sewell immediately. Lizanne did not hint in her greeting to me that she had given me a warning that afternoon. Maybe her liquid dark eyes rested on me a little sadly, but that was all. Bubba started one of those conversations with Martin designed to link them in the male network: he connected what he was working on as a representative with what Martin was trying to achieve at Pan-Am Agra, he told Martin that he could call him any time he wanted to “talk things over,” he illustrated his intelligence and grasp of Pan-Am Agra’s interests, and he implied that Martin was the best thing that had happened to the company since sliced bread.
Martin responded cautiously but with interest.
Lizanne told me how pretty my hair looked, and admired my earrings.
“Martin gave them to me,” I said proudly.
She looked worried for a minute, then properly complimented me and drew Bubba’s attention to them.
“Did you show them your ring?” he responded after a token remark.
Lizanne, with her lovely slow smile, held out her hand on which glittered a notable diamond. “My engagement ring,” she said calmly.
“Oh,” I said. “Oh, Lizanne, it’s beautiful.” I sighed, suddenly realized I was doing so, and tried to make it silent. “When’s the wedding?”
“In the spring,” Lizanne said offhandedly. “We’ve got to sit down with a calendar and pick a date. It depends on the legislature, and of course I have to give notice at my job.”
“You’re quitting work?” I didn’t mean to sound startled, but I was. What on earth would Lizanne do all day?
“Oh, yes. We’re going to be living in my house for a while, until Bubba’s career plans are finalized, but there’s a lot I need to do to it… and I’m bored with my job anyway.”
I hadn’t known boredom was a concept Lizanne understood. Also, Lizanne heard every bit of news in her job, since the power company was a place everyone had to go sooner or later, and she had the most amazing capacity to attract confidences. I would have supposed Bubba would want Lizanne right where she was.
“Congratulations, Lizanne,” I said quietly as Bubba drew Martin off to meet another Lawrenceton mover and shaker.
She bent down to kiss me on the cheek. “Thanks, honey,” she murmured. Then she whispered, “They’re going to take your friend in tomorrow for questioning. For sure. I’m not going to tell you how I know.”
That was why she was so popular. She never told how she knew. And she certainly hadn’t told her fiancй; otherwise, he wouldn’t be sucking up to Martin. He’d be avoiding him as though Martin were a leper.
“Thanks, Lizanne,” I said in almost as low a voice. Suddenly curious, I asked, “Why are you telling me?”
“You helped me the day my parents were killed.”
I nodded, and pressed her hand. I had never been sure Lizanne had been aware of my presence or my identity on that horrible day. She and I gave each other a look and drifted apart, and I strolled over to my mother, my wineglass clutched in a death grip.
“Where’d you get the earrings?” she asked instantly. “They’re gorgeous.”
“Martin gave them to me tonight,” I said numbly, turning my head from side to side so she could get the full effect, all the time wondering what I could do to prevent tomorrow from happening.
“He did?” Mother raised her perfect brows. “But you’ve only known each other such a short time!”
I shrugged.
“Oh, you have got it bad,” she said darkly. “But at least he does, too. They’re very nice, dear.”
“What are you admiring, Mrs. Queensland?” Patty Cloud, in her favorite pink, this time a rose shade, appeared at my mother’s shoulder, trailing a delicate cloud of expensive perfume and a staggeringly handsome date, some man from Atlanta she’d met at a Sierra Club meeting, she managed to let me know. I talked to them for a few minutes of stultifying conversation about white-water canoeing before Martin rescued me.
“How’d you get along with Bubba Sewell?” I murmured as we went to our places around the table.
“He’s on the rise,” Martin said thoughtfully. “I won’t be surprised if he makes U.S. Senate some day.”
“Really?” I tried not to sound skeptical.
“He’s doing everything right. A lawyer, but not a criminal lawyer. Comes from a local family with a clean record, worked himself through law school, practiced for a while before running, going to marry a beautiful wife who can’t possibly offend anyone. She’s planning to quit work and stay at home, producing the right picture, and I bet they have a baby before they’ve been married two years. It’ll look good on the campaign poster, a family picture.”
I tried to think about this, to care about Bubba’s career, all the while turning nonsensical schemes over in my mind. I should tell Martin. Then he could brace himself. Or run. (I staved that thought off.) I should
Of all the people I knew, the one best qualified to fend for himself was Martin. Why was I worrying?
I yanked myself out of this anxious silent yammering to introduce Martin to Franklin Farrell and his date, who were seated across from us. Franklin must have been calling his reserve list, the day he’d called me; maybe this
