ROSALYN SAW THE CAR as she pulled into the snow-covered parking lot of the Lindly. But she said nothing of it to Eva, who was sitting beside her. “Honestly. This place is so far out of the way.”
Eva studied Rosalyn’s expression. There was a hint of annoyance, perhaps. Irritation. And yet it was unmistakable, the Creamsicle Corvette whose tires were nearly covered by the snow that had begun to fall an hour before. The car had been here for a while.
“Sorry. I ate at Casa Michelle last night, and honestly it was terrible. Plus I know the new chef here—”
“So you said. Let’s just get inside before we’re buried alive.” As Rosalyn focused on turning the car in the snow, Eva could see her eyes taking in the other cars in the lot. Jacks’s gold Lexus was parked just beyond Barlow’s, but the tire tracks were fresh. And beside the Lexus was the unmistakable red minivan. Hard to tell how long it had been here. It was under a tree, which at the moment seemed to be holding the majority of the snowfall. The information swam in both their heads as they circled the lot.
They pulled in as close to the entrance as possible and went inside. An older gentleman met them in the foyer.
“Yes, mesdames. Are you guests of the inn or just dining with us this afternoon?”
Rosalyn was too busy shaking the snow from her brand-new Jimmy Choos to answer.
“Just lunch. I called earlier. We have a party of seven,” Eva said. Then she paused and turned to Rosalyn. “It’s seven, right? You asked three more?”
“Yes, seven—if everyone can make it. What a day it is out there!” She lifted her head and smiled politely, handing her coat to the man.
“Indeed. Right this way. We have you in the back dining room. It’s very warm by the fire.”
Rosalyn turned to Eva, looking absolutely delighted. “A fire! How nice.”
“Yes, it’s lovely. One of your guests has already arrived.”
They walked in silence past the small reception desk, the women marching behind with cautious steps as though any move they made might disrupt the evidence that could be hiding around them.
On the second floor, Sara was making her way back toward the stairs. She’d walked down two narrow hallways, each lined with a worn antique runner and floorboards beneath that creaked like her grandmother’s house. The inn had actually been a home, someone’s mansion nearly two hundred years ago, though it was now modest compared with the estates in Wilshire.
The small meeting room at the end of the first hallway had been empty, and it hardly seemed appropriate for a lunch. With nothing but plush chairs and reading tables, it was clearly intended for just that—late-night reading. The second hallway had proved equally futile, lined solely with the closed doors of the guest rooms, and Sara now found herself perplexed and frustrated. She checked her watch. She was ten minutes late to the meeting, if there even was a meeting, somewhere in this maze of rooms and hallways. Finding an exit door, she pushed through it and started down the stairs. Then she heard the same door open again from just above her, and she stopped.
“Sara?”
Ernest Barlow was shocked, though with his unfailing charm always on standby, he managed to appear only mildly surprised when he came upon her. He’d done as Jacks asked. Waited until she could get to the table, then thought of an excuse for his presence at the inn. Finding Sara Livingston in the back hallway where he was making his escape had not been part of the plan.
“Barlow,” Sara said, though it felt strange to call a grown man by his last name. That practice usually didn’t make it past freshman year of college. Still, she had felt from the moment of their first introduction that it was his stubborn desire to hold on to the amusements of youth that made him so enjoyable, and she found herself smiling now.
“I see you got the same bad information I did.”
Barlow’s face lit up as he bounded down the few stairs to where she stood. From the sky had just fallen his escape. Whatever excuse Sara had for being in this hallway would now become his as well.
“Unbelievable, these women. Can’t get a damned thing straight!”
“Yeah, yeah . . . ,” Sara said, pleasantly unnerved once again by his delightful sarcasm.
“I think they must be in the dining room.”
“That would make sense, wouldn’t it?”
They walked down the staircase side by side, quiet at first but soon engaged in easy conversation.
“I think it’s great you came today. Teenage girls need their dads.”
“Unfortunately for us old-timers, you are in a far better position to remember such things. I’ll have to take your word for it.”
Sara laughed, mostly to herself. She hadn’t felt like a teenager in more years than he could possibly know, knowing her so little.
“What is it the old-timers like to say? You’re as young as you feel?”
“In Wilshire, my dear, what the old-timers say is you’re as young as you look.”
Of course, Sara thought. And the thought amused her. “I like mine better.”
Barlow stopped as they reached the last stair. He smiled then, warmly, as he turned to face her. “Well, then, how about joining me in the sand-box?”
Sara laughed out loud this time, and as she did, Barlow pushed through the fire door that led to the back of the inn, and also to his wife, who had just passed it by.
Hearing the laughter, Rosalyn Barlow turned instantly. She had been waiting these few minutes for a sign of him, a sign of something that would explain his car, which was now fully embedded in the snow. The look on his face when he saw her—fleeting as it was—told her all she needed to know.
Recovering quickly, Barlow paraded without hesitation up to Eva Ridley, the tall gentleman who had paused beside her, and, of course, his wife, giving her a peck on the cheek. “Hi, honey. Hell of a day out there.”
Rosalyn smiled curtly. “You could say that.”
She didn’t ask. It was time for the explanation, and they both knew it.
“I hope you don’t mind that I joined you. I want to be more involved . . . really get involved. Hands on all the way.”
Rosalyn nodded smugly. “Great, honey. That’s really great. I’m so glad you got the message about the change of location.”
Barlow had nothing. They both knew there had been no such message.
Rosalyn turned then to Sara. “Did you get lost? I’m so sorry . . . this place can be a real maze.”
Sara, being the only innocent party among them save the concierge, blushed with honest embarrassment. “I just got a wrong direction. I’ve never been here before. It’s really a nice little hideaway.”
Barlow was smiling on the inside. If his wife had come to the wrong conclusion about things, she would certainly be wondering if Sara’s comments had been cleverly woven to rub their farcical affair in her face. Either way, his mind quickly tuned in for a way to rebuke this conclusion and save Sara from the wrath of his wife.
But it was Eva who came first to the rescue. “I called Barlow, Ros. When you didn’t pick up this morning, I thought I could get the message to you through him, and he pleasantly decided to join us as well. Then I found you on your cell and I forgot to tell you. . . .” Blah, blah, blah. She lied easily, only because the cause was worthy, and because it was her plan that was now getting turned on its head.
She’d had her feelers out—discreetly of course—since watching Barlow and Jacks emerge from the wine cellar that night. After three weeks of no information that had elevated her hopes that the moment between Jacks and Barlow had been just that, one moment, the call she’d been dreading had finally arrived. It had come midmorning, from her chef friend at the Lindly, who’d spotted the Corvette. Moving the meeting here, then giving Jacks just enough time to evade detection, was her way of sending a message: Stop this thing before someone gets hurt. Whether they would see it for what it was, or as a message instead from some greater power, didn’t concern her. She knew in the brief seconds the plan was formulated that it would send their hearts racing and make them face the gravity of their actions.
Only now her plan had gone all wrong. Not only was Rosalyn misguided, but Jacks and Barlow would have even more cover under which to hide their affair. And poor Sara!
She turned to the waiter, who was growing impatient beside them. “I’m so sorry—I forgot we’d had a late addition. Can you reset for eight?”
The man tried to smile. “Not a problem. Shall we go to the table now?”
With an awkward silence surrounding them, Eva, Rosalyn, Sara, and Barlow followed the man to the back room, where they found Jacks sipping a glass of wine at the table by the fire.
She looked first at Eva, then to Rosalyn. “Hello, friends,” she said. “Crazy weather, isn’t it? Came out of nowhere.”
“It certainly did,” Eva agreed, taking a seat across from Jacks. She looked damned put together for a woman who’d been upstairs with her friend’s husband not ten minutes before.
“Jacks, my dear. Lovely as always. I see you’ve recovered from our night of debauchery.” Barlow said it with his usual flirtatious tone. And, as always, it went unnoticed by everyone except, on this occasion, Eva.
“Barely, but yes. I survived one more year. And you have decided to come and help in the search for a speaker on female sexuality?” The words were not easy to get out, but they were the words she would have said had she not been sleeping with the man, and so she forced them out with a wry smile.
“I have indeed. When Eva called this morning to tell Rosalyn where to meet, I just decided it was the perfect way to spend the afternoon. Of course, I had to come early for a drink or two.” Barlow was feeling at ease now. Eva, for whatever reason, had given him his alibi. Sara had been legitimately confused. Jacks had been at the table ahead of them. It didn’t occur to him to wonder about Eva Ridley’s motives, and, not knowing about the wineglasses, he made the wrong assumption about how easily his wife’s suspicions could be assuaged.
Jacks smiled and raised her glass to toast his brilliant plan. What was brilliant was the coded message he’d just sent. Of course Eva had not called him. So why would she have covered for him? And why had she changed the location in the first place?
As they got settled in their seats, Jacks caught Sara’s eye then mouthed the word sorry. Sara, not wanting to make a fuss, smiled and waved off Jacks’s apology for sending her to the wrong room, the wrong floor. Having found Barlow there, she had no reason to suspect the mistake had not been genuine.
Is it done? Jacks wondered. She could see nothing on Rosalyn’s face but the usual relief at being with friends, and a tense back as she sat next to Sara Livingston. The seed was planted there, but what about Eva? She must have suspected Barlow of some indiscretion; she must have known he would be here. The chef, maybe. Would she believe that Sara was his new dance partner? Jacks had managed to move the car just after leaving the ladies’ room. The tracks were fresh, while Barlow’s were covered. And Sara had parked under that tree.
Regardless of what Eva suspected, what mattered most was that Rosalyn was off course, and anything Barlow did or said that raised her guard would be like drops of water on the little seed that now lay in the ground.
Of course, it was more than a seed. Rosalyn’s mind was stirring over the stained wineglasses she’d found that night, and retracing her memory of when and where she’d seen Sara during the party. Had she been gone that long? How long would it have taken? And what would provoke this young woman to want Ernest Barlow when she had the far more handsome, younger version in Nick Livingston? And, finally, why would they be so cruelly indiscreet as to meet right here, where they would surely be at risk of discovery? She could not sort it out now, with two more women just joining the table, smiling, making their introductions. Not now, while she had to find the right words to shape the debate about teenage blow jobs, of all blessed things, to save her daughter from the social vultures that shared the sky with her. But she would later, when she had time to think and piece it all together. The party. The glasses. Barlow’s car. Eva’s cover story. And, of course, the mysterious Sara Livingston, who was now dead center on her radar screen.