Over His Dead Body Page 32

  He followed her in, the suddenly unmarried man. "Was it a rough night?"

  "Yes, Charlie, it was a rough night. Everybody loved him. I'm really tired."

  "Me too." Charlie sat down at the table in the kitchen.

  Cassie pressed her lips together. "Really tired, Charlie. I can't do this tonight."

  "Me too," he repeated. He got up for a moment and she thought he was going to leave after all. Her first real prospect in thirty years was taking a powder. Suddenly she felt terrified, let down, as if she'd messed up an important date. But he just took off his jacket, hung it on the back of his chair. Loosened his tie, unbuttoned the button-down collar of his shirt, pulled the tie over his head, and stuffed it into his jacket pocket. Charlie was pretty obsessional. Almost as an afterthought, he unbuttoned the first two buttons of his shirt, too, then sat down again.

  What was going on? Cassie was barefoot now. She was wearing black silk pants, a little black sleeveless knit top. Nothing too dressy. Her old Sublime perfume. Her plain gold wedding ring. She felt a little sick, wanted that wine, the food Marsha had put in the refrigerator. She didn't want to think about cash or stock or company woes, or anything else. She wanted to go to bed with her spy. The thought struck her suddenly: Sex was her very first choice.

  Charlie had something else in mind, though. From his briefcase he pulled out the stack of credit cards he'd taken from Mona's jewelry box. He removed the rubber band and examined the receipts folded around them. Barneys, Bergdorf's, Armani, Sulka. He smiled, then picked up the phone.

  "What are you doing now, Charlie?" Cassie's heart was beating in her cheeks again. She had these ideas. They made her stomach ache and her head spin.

  "What's Mitch's date of birth?" he asked, producing his PalmPilot.

  "Eight, eighteen, forty-five." She was nothing if not obedient. Touch me, she thought.

  "Social Security number?"

  "034-98-8441."

  "Mother's maiden name?"

  "Charles." She blushed.

  "No kidding?" Charlie laughed. He responded to a few prompts and finally spoke to a human. "Oh yes, hello, Rita, this is Mitchell Sales, account 3458-93-67-0112. Uh-huh. Charles. 8441. Zip code…" He turned to Cassie. "Darling, what's our zip?"

  Cassie gave him the zip code of the warehouse. Her heart was beating, beating. The spy had called her "darling." She liked it. Him. Really liked him. She could smell the starch in his shirt, still there after the long day. She wanted to taste him, to kiss the blue eyes. What was she thinking?

  Charlie passed Mitch's privileged information along to Rita at American Express. "Uh-huh. Thank you. I'd like to close down the account… no, no. There's no problem, Rita, none at all. I just don't want any more charges to the account until it's paid off. Thank you. I know it's a revolving account. I still want to close it." He put the black American Express Centurion card on the table and picked up the platinum one.

  "Yes, Rita, there is something else you can do for me. I have another AmEx account. Yes, that's it. I want to close that account, too." A few minutes later he put the platinum card on the table. He went through the exercise with all the major credit cards, speaking to Ronnie, Roberta, James, Alfred, Betty, Sandra, and Tim.

  While he was working, Cassie ran downstairs to the cellar for a bottle of wine, which she promptly opened. She took out two balloon glasses. Huge ones. The wine was supposed to breathe for a while, but she couldn't help herself. She poured some into both glasses, swirled hers, stuck her whole face into it, and breathed deep. The passion of her whole long-lost life filled her with its bouquet. Gimme that wine, she thought, just like Bob Marley. She couldn't wait a second longer. She took a sip, rolled it over her tongue and around her mouth, allowing the complex flavors to fill her palate. She swallowed and savored. The plummy earthiness lingered on. Wow. This was a big wine. Next to her was a big man, too. Both were very good vintages. She nodded at his glass and he sampled, nodded.

  "Good, huh." She continued sipping and swirling and savoring while Charlie worked. She marveled at the way men could get away with anything. Anything at all. She hadn't even been able to change her own telephone number. Mitch had been the account holder of that, too.

  Charlie poured himself his second glass and made a pile of department store cards with customer service departments that were open only between nine and five. "Tomorrow," he promised her. "Feel better now?"

  "Very impressive. Thank you. Tomorrow? Really?" Cassie was inflamed, seriously aroused, by the wine, the show of power, and goodwill.

  "See, I'm not such a bad guy." He gave her one of his smiles, patted her hand, left his hand over hers, raised an eyebrow. Was it all right?

  Sure. She turned her hand over so their palms met. Sure, it was all right. He had a warm hand, strong, with long, slender fingers. He laced their fingers together, and heat flamed through her. Oh my, where did that huge feeling come from?

  "What?" he asked.

  Cassie shook her head, wondering if he knew that she hadn't kissed another man since Mick Jagger couldn't get Satisfaction, since the Beatles had left Abbey Road. Oh, God. She wanted to slide down onto the kitchen floor where she'd been with this man in his blue oxford button-down shirt only… this morning in quite a different situation. Her face was hot, her eyes wide. "Oh my."

  Was it the wine? She'd drunk only one glass. She could see his chest hairs, light brown, curling out of his shirt, the hollow at the bottom of his throat. His shoulders and arms, very… attractive. She was like a teenager, burning up. Worse. She was over fifty like a teenager, burning up. A frown appeared on her brand-new forehead.

  His blue eyes questioned. "I don't know what it is about you. I really like you."

  "I'm old, probably older than you," she wanted to say but held her tongue. Don't go there, she told herself.

  "It's always so hard to leave you. Right from the first day we met, I hated to leave. What is it about you?" He sat back and looked at her, trying to figure it out.

  Well, that day she'd had a black eye, stitches, had been covered with bruises, and was ugly beyond belief. He was kidding, right? She licked her lips, nervous.

  "I don't know what it was," he murmured. Their knees touched and the heat spread upward. Uh-oh.

  The sound escaped Cassie's lips. She clamped them inside her teeth to keep silent.

  "You're so cute. And funny! This is very good wine. I've never tasted anything like it. Have you always been so sexy? It's, I don't know, really getting to me. Maybe I'd better…"

  Cassie released her lips from their prison, licked them, leaned over, and gave him a kiss. A little one. It caught him by surprise, hit him on the chin. The next one was better centered, soft, but quick.

  "Uh-oh," he said, but took the lead on the third one. It was exploratory, went on for a while.

  Cassie was stunned. She had no idea kisses could be like that, so full, so deep, and hungry. Wow. She closed her eyes and forgot herself as his hands became soft, fingers and palms grazing her neck, her chest. The backs of his hands skimming her breasts and sides. He touched a little, here and there, just a little, not letting her grab him and hold too tight the way she wanted to. She had to say he was thorough in his exploration of her fully clothed body, sitting at the table spread with the credit cards. They kissed for a long time, tasting of Pomerol. Not saying anything. Feeling each other up. Knees encroaching between knees. Cassie would have moved faster, but Charlie was thorough. Oh, he was thorough.

  Then they did slide down, but not on the kitchen floor. Together they got up and moved toward the stairs, but didn't make it up. Cassie didn't know how it happened, where the volcano of feelings came from. They were halfway up the stairs, then sliding down on the stairs, him on top of her while she was wild to unbutton his shirt, to get to that bare chest and the bulge in his pants. This wasn't like her. Her sweater was over her head, her silk pants around her ankles. She was moving under him, fully alive and overcome by burgeoning the likes of which she'd never thought she'd
see again.

  "Wow." But he was the one to say it first.

  And the volcano kept on; they were panting and the lava was flowing. It didn't stop. They slid down to the first floor, scrambling out of their clothes, feeling each other's arms and legs, chest and backs and insides. Old, old feelings returned, but all new. That thing of making two people one.

  "Let me try it," Cassie murmured when he rolled over on his back on the carpet, still burgeoning beyond belief in front of the Federal sofa where no love had ever been made before. "You're very big. Did anybody ever tell you?"

  "It's a feature," he admitted.

  "Nice. Let's see if I can do it." She was enthusiastic, she was curious. She climbed on, panting with excitement.

  "Wow. You're so natural, Cassie!" Charlie groaned and gripped her back and bottom. "Oh my God, darling, you can do to me whatever you want."

  TWO HOURS LATER, when they were so sore, they could hardly stand, Cassie realized she was starving and went into the kitchen to put their first real meal together. She pulled a few items from the refrigerator and the pantry. She arranged a thick slab of Petrossian's best truffled foie gras on a platter with tiny cornichons and sour cherries. She took a handful of walnuts and toasted them for a few seconds in a hot skillet to bring out the oils and flavor. She brought out the cheeses.

  Marsha had bought seven. A Brillat Savarin, Mitch's favorite triple cream, best served with ripe figs and pink champagne. Cassie thought if this was what killed him, just today she, too, would ingest the poison.

  Ah, Marsha had bought her own two favorite blues, the rich blue-streaked French Saga and the highly molded English Stilton (best served with a bottle of Chateauneuf-du-Pape). For simplicity, Marsha had chosen Morbier, the semisoft mountain shepherd's cow's milk cheese with its stripe of edible ash running through the center (best served with a Mâcon-Villages). For diversity, the Mimolette, one of the few cheeses of France with color. Only a tiny piece of the orange ball with the nutty flavor was left, not enough, Cassie thought, to merit opening a bottle of Beaujolais to go with it. And last, a Coulommiers, not so easy to find outside of gourmet shops. The Brie-ish, soft-ripening cheese from the Ile-de-France region was yummy. When fully ripened, it had an even larger taste than a Camembert. Best served with ripe South of France peaches or plums. Marsha hadn't bought any of those, but there were grapes. There were slices of pumpernickel with raisins, Carr's water biscuits, and apples.

  She set the kitchen table simply, for two, then went down to the cellar for the wine. The cases were stacked on metal shelves in a room about the size of the living room. It was separated from the furnace and water heater by the laundry room. The cellar was temperature controlled and usually locked. But Charlie hadn't been about to resist. He was sitting on an upended empty crate, naked but for his shirt, checking the case names against one of the many price lists he'd collected from the Internet and other sources. It was quite a sight.

  "A few of these seem to be missing," he said, pointing to the opened case of Château Petrus Pomerol '45, clearly not familiar enough with wines to recognize the label.

  "Yes." Cassie kissed his ear.

  "Sold?"

  "No, drunk."

  "Who would drink a $6,500-a-bottle wine?" he wondered.

  She straightened up, ruffling his hair. "You would, honey. Grab a few more. Dinner's ready."

  The party was over. The party was just begun.

  EPILOGUE

  TEDDY SALES PASSED HIS ACCOUNTANCY TESTS on the second try, when he was just twent y-five. He joined the IRS office in Washington, D.C., where his mother, Cassandra Schwab, has become something of a national celebrity, teaching orchid cultivation and flower arranging on her own cable TV show and Web site, and where his stepfather is, well, the Charles Schwab of the Treasury Department.

  Edith Edison, otherwise known as Aunt Edith, was the only person able to persuade Ogden Schwab to have his esophagus shortened to end his lifelong difficulty with swallowing. The surgery was a success, and he promptly gained nearly thirty pounds. Edith lost double that amount, and the two have become a popular pair in the Orlando retirement village where they share a bungalow on a golf course.

  Marsha Sales married Dr. Thomas Wellfleet in a big wedding at the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan, but did not finish social work school as she'd planned. During the course of the many civil suits that she, her mother, and brother filed against Mona Whitman and Parker Higgins, she discovered she had an uncanny talent for law and strategic planning. Working with her brother and Ira Mandel, she piloted Sales Importers, Inc., through its difficulties with the IRS. Amity Holdings recently sold Sales Importers for an unpublicized amount to a longtime rival with an Italian name in Florida, one of the so-called top ten distributors in the country. Marsha is due to enter law school in the fall.

  Under the threat of a five-year prison sentence, Mona Whitman entered the Witness Protection Program and informed on the many restaurant owners with connections to organized crime who were her former customers. Although she made full restitution, including damages, to Cassandra Sales for the credit card fraud, Mona's tax and civil lawsuits have yet to be resolved. She is not expected to see any proceeds from the sale of Le Refuge, her shares of Sales Importers, Inc., or the contents of her safe-deposit boxes for many years to come. Under the name Margie Mitchell, she's living a quiet life in Lubbock, Texas, where she's working on a serious relationship with a widower in the oil business.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Leslie Glass was a journalist at New York magazine and a short story and feature writer for Cosmopolitan and Woman's Own in Great Britain. She is a playwright and the author of the critically acclaimed mystery series featuring NYPD Detective Sergeant April Woo. Ms. Glass lives in New York and Sarasota, Florida.

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