The restaurant was small and intimate, delightfully French, and from what Jane could gather, frightfully expensive. Bob arrived only seconds after she did, a bit winded and slightly red in the face. They let themselves be led to a small table, and Bob immediately began chatting about gifts that his friend would enjoy. He suggested a powerful telescope that could be set up on the roof. “My God, is he a voyeur?” she teased, and then learned that Andrews had a great interest in astronomy. He also suggested opera recordings, indicating that her fiancé loved fine music, or perhaps an antique chess set. “I didn’t know he played chess,” she said, realizing that she knew almost nothing about the man she was going to marry.
But when the entrées were served, Jane got to the information about William Andrews that she really wanted. “Bob, there’s another reason I had to see you. I asked you about a woman named Selina Royce. I have to know what you found out.”
He used a sudden cough and a raised napkin to cover his moment of confusion. Then, much too casually, he told her that he had asked his secretary to check into it. The personnel records didn’t go back that far.
“But you must remember her,” Jane insisted. “She was one of your rising stars.”
He had regained his composure. “There are lots of rising stars on television,” he said. “Most of them fizzle when they get fat or pregnant.”
“Did Selina Royce get pregnant?” Jane suddenly saw a new possibility for why Andrews might be sending her an annual retainer.
“I don’t know. I don’t remember her at all.”
Jane tried for a kill. “Bob, for God’s sake, you sat right next to her at an industry awards affair. I think you might have been her escort.”
He smiled to cover his mounting anger, which made him seem even angrier. “There are a dozen industry dinners a month. I don’t remember who I was sitting with a month ago, much less back— what was it?—eight years ago.”
He resumed eating in a way that said the conversation was over. Gradually he worked his way back to the wedding gift. Had she thought of a western saddle for his trips to the horse farm?
She couldn’t push any harder. She knew that he was lying, and she guessed that he suspected she knew he was lying. Even when confronted with irrefutable evidence, he would stonewall. There was nothing Leavitt wouldn’t do to protect his longtime friend.
What were her choices? The only obvious recourse was to confront Bill directly. Who is Selina Royce, and why are you sending her a hundred thousand dollars every month ? Some answers would be acceptable, even if hard to swallow. If he was raising a love child, fine. That would be honorable and responsible, even though his failure to have mentioned a child would be cowardly. Or if he had ruined her career or did great damage to her personal life, he might feel forever responsible. But if she was his mistress, Jane would walk away. Maybe after many years a wife could tolerate her husband’s infidelities, but no woman would enter a marriage knowing that she was sharing her husband with another woman. And if it was blackmail, then Jane would have to believe that the woman knew Andrews’s darkest secret. And that could only be that he had killed Kay Parker.
But how to confront him? Wouldn’t she be challenging his character? And suppose—like Robert Leavitt—he simply denied any knowledge. Should she call him a liar and tell him that she had been snooping through his checkbook? That probably wouldn’t bring out the truth. To be honest with herself, she really didn’t want to lose William Andrews, a man who seemed to love her and was a romantic catch beyond her most unlikely dreams. But should she make a lifelong commitment to him while an important part of his life remained a dark secret?
She remained suspended between her choices, like an object caught between two magnetic poles. Whenever she tried to move toward one choice, she was pushed back toward the other. It was easier to busy herself with the mindless details of the wedding, ordering flowers while telling herself she hadn’t yet made up her mind and sending out invitations to a wedding she wasn’t convinced would really take place. The evenings when Bill was home were tense and uncomfortable for her. She kept looking for an opportunity to raise an issue that she didn’t have the courage to address, and then regretting when she let a chance slip away. At the newspaper she was continually distracted. Nothing in the local business community was as important as the decision she was afraid to make.
A week after her luncheon with Robert Leavitt, Roscoe Taylor waved her into his office. “News from Paris,” he said in a soft voice that wouldn’t carry past his open door. “Miss Royce had a visitor a few days ago. It took my friend a couple of days to find out who he was. He had to follow him to his hotel and then wait until someone he knew was on duty at the desk. That’s how he got a look at the hotel records.”
“Who?” Jane asked, hardly able to breathe. She was terrified that Roscoe was going to name William Andrews.
“Robert Leavitt,” he answered.
“Robert Leavitt!” She was stunned for an instant. And then it made sense. Bill’s closest friend and dedicated protector. The man who tried to smooth out the rough edges of the Andrews corporate empire. He would certainly be the one to do her fiancé’s dirty work. Like paying off blackmailers and lying to his future wife.