Chapter 3
That shady-ass Bill Diamond! Tricking her like that—letting on he was taking her to the bus station and then delivering her on a silver platter to the enemy.
Once Sake had made up her mind she wasn’t staying in Napa, she quit worrying about Papa judging her for the way he’d found her the day before the wedding. Back at booking and release, there’d been no time for big decisions. He’d given her a quick ass-chewing for getting arrested and her “abominable” lifestyle, waited in his big black Range Rover outside Rico’s place for her to grab her toothbrush and a clean set of underwear and Taylor, and instructed her to pick out something presentable to wear to her sister’s wedding at a shop on the way to the airport. She was surprised he hadn’t asked for his card back yet. Folks didn’t go around just handing out their credit cards. At least, no one she knew did.
But once she’d hit the ground, seen the epic snobbery up here—the clothes! the houses!—she had no intention of hanging around. She knew how to watch out for herself on the dicey Mission streets. But up here, where getting stabbed in the back was only a metaphor for crushed feelings, she was lost.
Bill Diamond drove slowly up the white gravel drive, like some tour guide trying to give her her dollars’ worth. But he was only making things worse. Sake had seen the property from the air and had a brief glimpse of the back of it following the crash, but now the magnitude of the estate as seen from its main entrance enveloped her, making her feel even smaller and more insignificant. Domaine St. Pierre wasn’t just a house; it was like some grand Russian Hill hotel. A tower of water tumbled down from a fountain that formed a broad traffic circle. On the other side of that rose the white stucco mansion with the red tile roof, three tall arches in the center, flanked on either side by three shorter ones. The lawns surrounding the house were smooth as carpet. Here and there, gardeners bent over beds of yellow and red flowers.
The closer she got to the house, the smaller Sake felt. “I ain’t about this bougie life. Like Disney Land for rich people.”
Without commenting, Bill pulled the car to a stop before a twin set of curving stairs that flanked the front doors.
Grabbing her backpack and her nerve, Sake stepped out of the car, followed by Taylor. While her head was tipped backward to gaze up at the mansion, she heard Bill’s door open and close.
“You all in this together?” she asked suspiciously as he came around to her. “They know we’re coming?”
“No.”
“Then how come—?”
“I thought I’d walk you in.” When he offered her his elbow, her instinct was to scoff, but truth was, she could use something solid to hold on to. She took it and together they climbed the stairs to a pair of carved wooden doors with polished brass knobs.
“This is it, your family seat.” Bill dropped his arm and eyed her expectantly.
She was at a loss as to what to do. Even if it was her “family seat,” she didn’t have the right to enter without knocking, did she?
At her hesitancy, he rang the bell for them both.
A uniformed housekeeper opened the door.
“May I help you?”
“Is Mr. St. Pierre at home?”
“May I tell him who is calling?”
“Bill Diamond.”
“Good morning, Mr. Diamond.” Next, her gaze travelled up and down Sake. “And . . . ?”
Sake was back in her real clothes today, her favorite Sal Val dress with the high-low hemline that showed off her decent knees, suede booties and her trademark leopard sunners with the exaggerated kitten ears covering her eyebrows.
“His thug child,” she snapped.
The woman lifted a brow, then caught sight of Taylor and twitched her nose, as if in her opinion, the dog needed a good bath. Which, granted, she did.
“I forgot, the dog,” said Bill, stepping up yet again for Sake.
“Oh la la,” said the woman doubtfully. “Madame Jeanne, she does not like the dogs. . . .”
Madame Jeanne?
“It is not my place to say,” the woman concluded with a shrug. She stepped back to let all three of them in, then disappeared to find Papa.
“Why don’t you put her in my car?” Bill suggested. “Just until we find out what’s what?”
It didn’t feel right, shutting Taylor away in the car, but Sake felt relieved that someone else was making the decision, now that her world had just blown up.
“Come on,” she called to Taylor.
When Sake returned to the foyer, Bill asked out the side of his mouth, “Why’d you call yourself his ‘thug child’?”
“That’s who I am, isn’t it? That’s what they all think.”
“You’re not doing yourself any favors, you know . . . being so contentious.”
“Sure,” she spat, “lemme take advice on getting along from someone who just kidnapped me into coming out here.”
Bill snorted. “How come a girl who looks like you, who has this lovely, lilting voice that’s clear as a bell, talks like a . . . a gangster or something?”
She gave him a righteous look. “Now you get it. Maybe that’s ’cause what you see on the outside ain’t what I look like on the inside.”
“Ah, hello, hello.” Xavier St. Pierre glided into the foyer on an air of expensive cologne and tobacco. Papa kissed Sake’s cheeks, then subjected Bill to the same ritual.
“Thank you for bringing my daughter safely home.” He turned to his daughter. “Ça va? You have the clean check of health?”
Sake drew a blank.
Bill coughed into his hand. “I think he means, ‘bill of health.’”
“I’m good,” she said. Hella better than he was, from the looks of that shiner.
“Bien.” He turned back to Bill. “I will not forget your kindness. But now, if you will excuse us, my daughter and I have important matters to discuss.”
“No problem, sir. I’m off to my mother’s for Sunday brunch, anyway . . .”
“Of course you are,” Sake muttered, covering up a stab of envy.
“. . . and then to hit some balls at the driving range.” He held up a hand in farewell. “I’ll see myself out.”
“Wait! What about Taylor?”
Bill whirled back around.
“My dog.”
Papa asked, “Where is he?”
“She’s a girl, and she’s out in Bill’s car.”
“Your housekeeper seemed a little hesitant to let Taylor in,” explained Bill.
“That is because, sadly, Madame Jeanne is afraid of the dogs. An unfortunate incident when she was a child.” He added, “Madame Jeanne is my cook. More than that, she is indispensable to the management of the house.”
Sake’s eyes flickered to Bill’s. Hoping he’d help, at the same time hating her reliance on him—on anyone. After all, if you couldn’t trust your own mother, who could you trust? But she didn’t have many options up here, where she felt like an outlander.
“Look, why don’t I take him with me? Mom won’t mind.”
“But—”
“That is a marvelous suggestion,” said Papa. “Until we think of something better.”
Like reverse origami, all the possible bad outcomes started unfolding in Sake’s head. What if she couldn’t trust Bill Diamond? What if he forgot to let Taylor out to go to the bathroom and she had an accident and he got mad, or even got rid of her . . . dumped her at the pound or something? Maybe Papa and Bill were part of the same crew. . . . Maybe this Madame Jeanne wasn’t really afraid of dogs. This could be part of a bigger a plan. Bill had already played her into thinking he was taking her to the bus station, then brought her here. Fool me once, shame on you . . .
Sake had to admit, though, Bill Diamond had had her back at the hospital. And Taylor had survived the night. She had Bill’s number, knew where he lived. If he tried to pull something, she’d track him down. Besides, her back was against the wall.
Bill said, “No problem. I like having a dog around. I’ll stop and get some more of her brand of dog chow on my way to brunch, then call you tonight and we’ll go from there.”