Linda Miller - Deadly Gamble

Nick nodded. “The difference is, when he goes back, he’ll be able to get onto a train and go on to whatever his idea of heaven happens to be. I’ll still be stuck at the station.”

I was grudgingly intrigued, if not necessarily sympathetic. I’d loved Nick completely, and he might as well have torn my heart out of my body and backed over it with a UPS truck. “Why?”

“Unresolved issues,” he said, with yet another sigh.

I studied him, still holding Chester as close as I could without squashing him. “What kind of unresolved issues?” I asked suspiciously.

“You trusted me. You loved me. And I betrayed you. I have to earn your forgiveness.”

“Is that all?” I sniffed, reluctantly set Chester down on the floor, straightened again. “Okay. That’s easy. You’re forgiven. Now, kindly hop on the Starlight Express and stop showing up in my apartment.”

If I hadn’t known better, I would have sworn Nick was being sincere. He actually looked remorseful. “Sorry,” he said. “It isn’t that easy. You can’t just toss off a platitude. You have to really mean it.”

“Shit,” I said.

He looked like a kicked puppy. “Was it that bad? I remember some really good times together.”

“Do you?” I grabbed a mug down off the shelf. No sense getting two; if Nick couldn’t eat Oreos, he probably couldn’t drink coffee, either. “Maybe you’re confusing me with your secretary—excuse me, executive assistant. I caught you boinking her in a construction trailer once, remember? Or maybe it’s that sweet young thing in the condo down the hall from ours. The one who always wanted you to fix something. Or—”

Nick put up a hand, rose wearily to his feet. “I’m sorry, Mojo. What else can I say? I can’t change the past.”

Tears stung my eyes. “Get out, Nick.”

He was gone in a blink.

And Chester went with him.

“YOU’VE BEEN CRYING,” Greer accused, when I showed up at her mansion outside of Scottsdale at five to six that night, bringing along a bottle of Chardonnay donated by Bert. A glorious Arizona sunset blazed crimson and pink and apricot on the western horizon.

“No, I haven’t,” I said. It was a partial truth, anyway. I’d spent the afternoon at my computer, coding and billing, and the May rent was a sure thing. I’d also gone through a whole box of tissues.

Greer looked rich—and skeptical—in her floaty flowered skirt and pink matching top. Her blond hair was in a French braid, and I wondered how she stood so straight, with Dr. Pennington’s diamond weighing down her left hand. I figure the jewelry alone keeps Scottsdale chiropractors operating in the black.

“Your eyes are red,” she said.

Once, I would have spilled it all. Told Greer about Nick and Chester. But Greer was different now that she was married. The change was subtle, but I wasn’t imagining it.

I had to tell her something, so I went with Lillian, the three Tarot cards, and my chat with Uncle Clive. Maybe, I thought, after a glass of wine I might even get as far as Crazy Heather and the supermarket caper.

Listening intently, Greer led the way across the brick-paved portico and through the open doors at the top of the steps. The house alone covered more than ten thousand square feet of prime desert, and the art inside was museum quality stuff. The furniture was tastefully expensive, and I could see the back patio in the distance, through a set of glass doors. Nothing but the best for Greer Pennington, world-class trophy wife.

Okay, so maybe I sound a little mean-spirited. I loved Greer, but she could have been a lot more than some old fart’s pampered wife, and that bugged the hell out of me. Before Alex, she’d put herself through art school, worked for other people for a while to learn the ropes, then gone on to start and run her own design firm. She’d been successful, too, after a rocky start.

When Alex snapped his fingers, though, she’d sold the company without even a mild protest. In fact, she’d seemed relieved. And that was what bothered me. Not that Greer was set for life, at least financially. I was happy for her. No, it was the way she’d given up on her own dreams. Put on a costume, learned the lines and played the second wife as if she’d never done all that hard work to make something of herself.

We settled ourselves in cushioned patio chairs, under a sloping tiled roof, near the sparkling pool. Greer checked out the wine label, smiled charitably and carried the bottle into the kitchen by way of yet another door.

When she returned with two crystal glasses, I figured she’d pulled a switcheroo, probably dumping Bert’s Chardonnay down the sink and filling the goblets with something French or Napa and ridiculously expensive.

“Should you be drinking if there’s a chance you might be pregnant?” I inquired.

Greer looked away for a moment, then looked back. “Not to worry,” she said, reaching for her glass. “I am definitely not pregnant.”

I knew she wanted a baby, to make her happy home with Dr. Pennington complete, and I felt a pinching sorrow behind my heart. “I’m sorry,” I said, and I meant it.

Greer downed a couple of sips—more like gulps—of her wine, and gave a gurgling, disjointed little laugh. Nothing was funny, and we both knew it, but Greer liked to pretend. Maybe it was a survival mechanism.

“You told me on the phone this morning that you didn’t feel well,” I said. “Have you been to a doctor?”

“I’m married to a doctor.”

Didn’t I know it? “You have shadows under your eyes, and I think you’ve lost weight. What’s going on, Greer?”

She sucked up some more wine before answering, and when she did, she ignored my question entirely and presented one of her own. “Do you think it’s because of—well—things I did when I was young?”

I scrambled to catch up. “You mean your not being pregnant?”

Greer looked around nervously, as though the editor of the country club newsletter might be crouching behind the cabana, taking notes, or lurking on the other side of the towering stucco wall enclosing at least an acre of backyard. The windows of the guesthouse, opposite the pool, caught the colors of the sunset and turned opaque. “Yes,” she said, and it seemed to me that she’d gone to a lot of trouble, scoping out the landscape, just to say one word.

“Lillian had you checked out at a free clinic in Vegas, remember? You were fine. No STD’s, no residual effects whatsoever. It wasn’t the hooking, Greer.”

She tensed, and what little color she’d had drained from her cheeks. “Keep your voice down!”

“Sorry,” I said, chagrined. I always felt out of place at Greer’s, and I tended to put my foot in my mouth. “You’re alone here, aren’t you? Carmen is gone for the day?”

Carmen was her housekeeper—a very nice woman, but not much for overtime.

Greer nodded miserably. “I didn’t mean to snap,” she said.

I patted her hand. “It’s okay.”

She fortified herself with more wine. I decided it was probably cramps that made her look so woebegone and beaten. “Nothing in my life,” she said, “is ‘okay.’”

I’d love to report that Greer and I got right to the heart of things, over our dinner of thinly sliced smoked salmon, gourmet bagels and cream cheese with capers, and settled all our collective and individual problems, but we didn’t. Greer drank wine—first hers, then mine. She shook her head when I told her about Heather and the supermarket incident, and said I ought to move to a civilized neighborhood.

What one had to do with the other was beyond me then, and I still don’t exactly get it.

I tried to communicate. I really did. I told her about Lillian and the Tarot cards, and running into Uncle Clive at the nursing home.