Читать книгу The Golden Girl - Erica Orloff - Страница 12

“Maddie? Maddie? You still there?”

“Yeah…I’m here,” she whispered. She walked to the kitchen and turned on the lights. Custom cherrywood cabinets reflected the halogen lamps hanging from the ceiling. She stepped over to the sink—an immense double one carved from a single piece of granite. Taking a crystal glass from the cabinet, she turned on the tap fitted with a water filter and filled the glass with water.

“Maddie…the police will likely want to interview you tomorrow.”

She sipped the water, then stuck her fingers under the faucet, wet her hand and patted her head, feeling mildly dizzy.

“Me? Why?”

“You were her best friend.”

“Not in a while, Dad. We hadn’t spoken in months.” She didn’t need to add thanks to you.

“Are you going to be okay?”

“No.” She wanted to add, I’ll never be okay again. “How was she…” Maddie couldn’t say the words.

“She was shot in a warehouse. The old abandoned one we were looking to buy for the condo project.”

“What was she doing there?”

“I have no idea.”

“Did she tell you she was going there?” Maddie snapped at her father.

“Is that an accusation?”

“No…” She softened a bit. “I just don’t understand.”

“Neither do I.”

Maddie heard his voice catch a bit, and she wanted to suggest that maybe she take a walk the five blocks to his apartment—a two-story penthouse world famous for its luxury. Then her anger got the best of her.

“I need to go.”

“You want me to come over?”

“No, Dad. In fact, right about now, you’re the last person I want to see.” She hung up the phone abruptly, her hands shaking slightly.

Maddie walked through the living room to her cavernous master bedroom. She’d furnished it with an immense four-poster antique bed, its headboard intricately carved sometime during the Victorian era. Egyptian-cotton sheets in a pristine ivory shade and modern touches in the room, including a haunting black-and-white photo by Diane Arbus and a painting by Julian Schnabel, made it seem very fresh, though. Maddie moved to an armoire in the corner of the room and opened the double doors, pulling out a drawer. There, nestled in among her silk camisoles, was a small wooden box. She took it out and sat down on her bed, opening the lid.

Her first instinct, all those months ago, had been to rip up her pictures and memories, to pretend she’d never known Claire. Now, her once–best friend murdered in cold blood, she was grateful she hadn’t. She pulled out a photo of the two of them, smiling, on a trip through Napa Valley wine country. They were on horseback—Maddie remembered Claire’s mount nearly bucked her off. Next was a photo of them in Paris, when Maddie’s mother had flown them there for a weekend of art and gourmet meals. It had been unseasonably cold, and Claire’s black hair framed her face in a classic Clara Bow bob. She looked like a 1930s movie star, with her Kewpie doll lips and big black eyes. But woe to anyone who doubted her ability in the courtroom. In the picture, Maddie stood next to Claire, her polar opposite in terms of looks. Both of them had on hats and scarves to ward off the chill. They had asked a handsome Frenchman to snap their photo, and he had captured them midlaugh.

Maddie stared at the photos. Claire had been so much a part of her life—her first friend at boarding school. After high school, they’d gone to Harvard together, roomed together, gotten an apartment together. She hadn’t imagined a time when they wouldn’t be together. But that was before the dinner nearly six months ago that changed her entire world….

“How’s your soufflé?” her father asked her.

“Excellent.”

“And yours, Claire?”

Claire nodded, but despite her friend’s famous sweet tooth, Maddie had noticed how she’d just picked at her dessert.

They were seated in the upstairs dining room of 412—an exclusive restaurant in Manhattan so pricey and discreet that it was simply known by the number on its door, and no other markings delineated it as a restaurant. Its number was unlisted. The upstairs dining room was for the clientele even an establishment like 412 distinguished as the most elite of the elite. Jack Pruitt and his daughter, Maddie, were regulars.

“Maddie,” her father began. “You know I would never hurt you for anything in the world.…” He hesitated and sipped at his Glenfiddich on the rocks. His sandy blond hair was streaked with an elegant silver, though it was still full and thick. His broad shoulders and wrinkleless skin made him appear ten or even twenty years younger. “But sometimes, just like in business, things happen. They’re not personal, but people do get hurt.”

Maddie felt the color drain from her face. Something was very wrong when Jack Pruitt, who prided himself on having the charm of a showman mixed with the coldness of a viper, began talking about feelings. It wasn’t the Pruitt style.

“So,” he continued, “there’s no way to say this gracefully. Claire and I have fallen in love.”

“What?” Maddie looked at Claire. “When? I mean…God…what? Claire, you’ve mentioned nothing to…” But Maddie’s question had stopped as the previous few months swirled around her. All Claire’s late nights with her father, ostensibly going over the latest legal filings. She’d joined Pruitt & Pruitt as in-house counsel, and Maddie had felt relieved at first that there was someone in the legal department she and her father could trust implicitly. Now she felt like a fool. Her supposed best friend had been sleeping with her father. It felt so sordid.

Maddie pulled her chair back from the table, as Claire, usually so eloquent, stammered, “Please, Maddie…we didn’t even realize it was happening at first. It started innocently, I swear to you.”

“Nothing,” Maddie whispered as she rose stiffly from the table, “is innocent. We’re all grown-ups, but don’t insult my intelligence. At some point during your affair, each of you had a time when you could have stopped and said that it wasn’t worth betraying me. Or you could have told me when it started, not hid it, lying to my face. But both of you carried on. For that, I can never forgive either of you.”

She gathered her purse and suit jacket and left the two of them in stunned silence.

Maddie shut her eyes at the memories. That Monday, at the office, Claire had desperately tried to see her. She’d dropped by Maddie’s office, her dark eyes welling slightly when she looked at Maddie’s desk and saw that all the photo frames of the two of them—and Maddie’s father—had been put away. Maddie had cut her friend from her life. Her father, she had to deal with professionally. But even that relationship had grown chillier. Of course, the ever-confident swagger of Jack Pruitt never faltered—and he never apologized or raised the issue with his daughter again. He and Claire became a visible couple, and all of the city—especially the gossip columnists—had buzzed. Had the beautiful corporate attorney, decades his junior, finally snagged the most eligible bachelor in New York? Could Maddie’s closest confidante end up her stepmother?

Maddie winced at the memories and rose from her bed and went to the bedroom window, looking out on Manhattan, the city whose skyline she was helping to shape with her real-estate ventures. The waterfront warehouse where her father said Claire was killed was in New Jersey—and it offered a spectacular view of Manhattan across the waters of the Hudson River. Maddie had been bidding against Ryan Greene, her real-estate nemesis and flirting friend, for the land. But there was no reason for Claire to have been there. In fact, aside from Madison and Jack Pruitt, few ever knew for sure of the hush-hush dealings of Pruitt & Pruitt’s real-estate division. They were secretive because as soon as word got out as to what they were bidding on, competitors rushed to vie for the same building or land. But whoever had murdered Claire knew about the warehouse—and Claire knew about it, albeit without her needing to visit it.

Maddie puzzled over this. Who would have suggested meeting Claire there? Who did Claire trust enough to meet in an abandoned warehouse? Though Maddie thought her father was capable of many things, murder wasn’t one of them. But she knew that wouldn’t stop him from being suspect number one when the police looked into the slaying of the beautiful Claire Shipley, his much-younger lover.