“Good.” Jill smeared peanut butter on her bagel. “So what’s going on around here?”
“Eat first, then we’ll talk.”
“Let’s talk now,” Jill said.
As I told her about the police garbage-seining operation, she slumped. “Why is it that lately all the news has been bad news?”
As if on cue, the phone rang. Jill and I exchanged glances. “Don’t answer it,” she said.
“It could be deliverance,” I said.
“Fat chance,” Jill bit into her bagel morosely.
When I heard the voice on the other end, I mouthed the name “Claudia,” and Jill rolled her eyes.
Claudia got straight to the point. “We had a visit from the police last night. Tracy needs a lawyer,” she said. “Can you suggest someone? A woman would be best. Tracy tends to be manipulative with men.”
“Let me think,” I said. “There’s a lawyer named Lauren Ayala in my yoga class. She has a sound reputation, and when she says namaste at the end of class, her face is incandescent.”
“Perfect,” Claudia said. “Competent and centred enough to deal with Tracy. Have you got her number?”
“I’ll look it up.” I cradled the phone between my ear and my shoulder and flipped through the book till I found an ad for Lauren Ayala’s office. Her area of special expertise was criminal law. I gave Claudia the information, hung up, and turned back to Jill. “You heard everything?”
“I did,” Jill said. She touched her napkin to her lips. “Do you think the kids would be all right if we went out for a while?”
“Sure,” I said. “I have to drop Taylor off at a friend’s, and Bryn and Angus are driving around doing what Angus calls his kamikaze Christmas shopping. What did you have in mind?”
Jill stood up and stretched. “Might be useful to hear Tracy’s story before your lawyer friend helps her get her chakras realigned.”
I grinned at her. “You’re not nearly as dumb as you look,” I said.
After Taylor waved us off from her friend Jess’s house, Jill and I drove downtown. Claudia struck me as someone who didn’t like surprises, but when she opened her door to us, she was cordial. “You should have told me you were coming,” she said. “I would have ordered fresh coffee.” She stood aside to let us pass. “As you can see, I’ve finished, but Tracy hasn’t even poured her tea.”
A room service breakfast was laid out on the table. Only a yolk smear remained on Claudia’s plate, but Tracy’s fruit and yoghurt were untouched. Tracy herself was crumpled in an oversized armchair by the window. She was wearing a peony-strewn kimono, and in one of those sudden eruptions of memory that are all the more devastating because they’re unexpected, I remembered Gabe’s characterization of Tracy as a dewy bloom in the hero’s lapel. That morning as the unforgiving winter light revealed every blemish and sag, it was clear that the once-dewy bloom had become a slightly past-it posy.
At first, she didn’t seem to realize we were in the room, but when she did, the effect was galvanizing. Suddenly, she was an actress with an audience. She drew herself up and ran a hand tenderly down the side of the long and graceful neck that was her best feature. In a breathless theatrical voice, she told her story. “The police came last night. They found my prescription in the alley outside your house, Joanne, but the bottle was empty.”
Jill eased into the chair opposite Tracy’s. “I was asleep,” she said, “but Jo saw the lights and went out and watched the police dig through the garbage.”
Tracy showed no interest in the fact that there was an eyewitness in the room. Unpleasant as this drama was, she was its star and she wasn’t about to share centre stage.
“Those pills were stolen from my bag,” she said. “Someone is trying to set me up.”
Claudia was standing behind Tracy; she dropped her hand to Tracy’s shoulder and began to rub it. “Eat your yoghurt and button your lip,” she said. “This is no time to be a loose cannon. Someone could get hurt.”
Tracy jerked her shoulder away from Claudia. “I’m being hurt right now,” she said. “I’m the one the police harassed.”
“No one harassed you,” Claudia said. “Given the circumstances, the questions Inspector Kequahtooway asked were perfectly logical.”
Tracy drew her peony kimono tight. “The questions may have been logical,” she said, “but that doesn’t change the fact that someone is trying to implicate me.”
“You’re right,” Jill said. “Maybe it’s time you started thinking about the evil twins: motive and opportunity. Tracy, who had access to your bag the night of the rehearsal?”
“Everybody,” Tracy said. “We were all in and out of each other’s rooms that night. Even Gabe came down to talk to me.”
“What did Gabe want to talk about?” Jill asked.
Claudia clamped a hand on Tracy’s thin shoulder. “Personal matters,” she said. “Tracy is going to have to go through all this with the lawyer. I think once will be enough for her.”
For a beat there was silence. I could feel Jill deliberating about where to go next. She decided on conciliation. “You’re probably right,” she said. “This isn’t an easy time for anybody. We should be kind to one another. Speaking of… I take it you two will be in town for Christmas.”
“Inspector Kequahtooway was pretty clear about the fact that we shouldn’t expect to leave,” Claudia said.
“Jo and I thought it might be fun to have dinner here at the hotel,” Jill said. “All of us.”
Claudia and Tracy exchanged the briefest of glances. “It would be nice to have another Christmas with Bryn,” Claudia said.
“It’s settled then,” Jill said, pushing back her chair and standing.
Claudia walked us to the door. “I’ll give you a call about the time,” Jill said.
“We mustn’t forget Felix,” I said.
“Of course,” Jill said. “We can’t leave out the go-to guy.”
I looked hard at Claudia. “Will it be a problem for you having Felix there?”
Claudia met my gaze. “Beggars can’t be choosers,” she said. “I’ll behave myself if he will.”
When the elevator doors closed, Jill turned to me. “Some weird dynamics during that little encounter. Was Claudia trying to protect Tracy against herself or just shut her up?”
“Beats me,” I said. “But Christmas dinner should be interesting.”
“Speaking of,” Jill said. “What was behind that exchange about Felix?”
Jill seemed genuinely baffled when I told her about the ugliness between Felix and Claudia. “I don’t get that at all,” she said. “Felix and Evan’s family go way back.”
“Could Claudia be jealous of Felix’s relationship with you?”
“No,” she said. “There is someone in Felix’s life, but it isn’t me.”
“Who is it?”
“Your guess is as good as mine.” Jill wrapped her scarf around her neck. “Felix and I are just business partners and friends – or at least we used to be friends.”
We were silent as we walked across the crowded lobby, but when we hit the street, I turned to Jill. “So what happened to your friendship?”
The light turned green and we started across. “You know that Felix and I have always worked well together,” Jill said. “But after the wunderkind incident, we really got tight. When Felix was pitching the show in New York, we were like kids. We’d parse every sentence the network and cable guys came up with – trying to read the signs. We went nuts when we finally got a buyer.”
“What went wrong?”
Jill shrugged. “At first, it seemed as if the Bluebird of Happiness was flying low, showering us with lucky breaks. The day after we sold the show, we had a call from one of the networks. They said that ‘Comforts’ wasn’t for them, but they liked our approach and they had a counter-proposal. They’d noticed their audiences were intrigued with seeing ordinary people confronting situations that could easily destroy them and they wanted us to develop a program around that concept.”
“Sounds like a natural for you,” I said. “The dark side of ‘Comforts of the Sun.’ ”
“Exactly,” Jill said. “The problem was we had to move quickly, and Felix and I were both crazy busy trying to put an American face on ‘Comforts.’ So Felix brought Evan MacLeish into the project. That was two months ago.
