Skeleton Key(15)

“Your Kayla called,” Deirdre said. “It’s on tape.”

“What did she say?”

“I didn’t pay much attention. And it was hours ago. It was before seven o’clock.”

“She was supposed to go into Waterbury and do some shopping. Whatever she said didn’t get your nose out of joint, for once.”

“I was hoping she’d show up. I was hoping she’d find me in the hot tub.”

“And?”

Deirdre’s eyes narrowed. They were small eyes to begin with. They turned into slits. It reminded Peter of how dangerous she was. He needed to be reminded. He found it far too easy to think of Deirdre as a kind of classic bimbo, all oversized breasts and no brain, instead of as the mercenary little whore she really was. Mercenary little whores could be something worse than dangerous. They could be fatal.

Peter backed out of the sunroom and took the stairs up to the loft where he slept. He saw the light blinking on his message machine and pushed the buttons he needed to play the message back.

“Hello, Peter, this is Kayla,” Kayla’s voice said. “I’d ask you where you’ve gone, but I wouldn’t get an answer. It’s six-fifteen. I’m on my way back any minute now. Maybe I’ll stop by and see if you’ve wandered in. One way or the other, I’ll talk to you later.”

Peter turned the machine off. Kayla must have decided not to wander in. Either that, or she had come to the door and knocked, and Deirdre hadn’t let her in. Peter thought Deirdre would have said something about that, if it had happened. Kayla Anson drove Deirdre crazy.

Peter dropped his shirt and trousers on the floor. He stepped out of his boxer shorts and admired himself in the mirror. He was very careful about working out, and it had paid off. His stomach was flatter than it had been when he was a jock at Brown. Even women like Deirdre were attracted to him, and women like Deirdre weren’t attracted to anything, except money.

Peter went downstairs again. One wall of his living room was nothing but windows, but it didn’t matter, because the windows looked out on a thickly treed wood that went on for miles. He went back into the sunroom and found that Deirdre had managed to get herself a brand-new bottle of champagne. It was the kind she liked best, that he bought only for her: cheap, pink, and very sweet. He got a glass from the bar and poured himself two full shots of unblended scotch. It looked as clear as water, but it tasted better.

“So,” he said, getting into the water next to Deirdre’s impossible blondeness. Everything about Deirdre was impossible. It was what he liked best about her. In spite of the fact that her accent was a nasal mid-Connecticut whine, she reminded him of the low-rent town he had grown up in, where women tried as hard as they could to “beautify” themselves, even when they were only running out to the corner store.

Peter anchored himself to the bench—he hated floating in the hot tub—and took a long sip of scotch. “You’re in a remarkably good mood for a night when Kayla called. What did you do, catch her trying to get in the front door and throw her out?’

“No,” Deirdre said. “I couldn’t throw her out if I wanted to. She has a key.”

“You have a key,” Peter said.

“Maybe half of Litchfield County has a key. The female half.”

Peter didn’t answer. Deirdre slugged back pink champagne.

“I was just thinking,” she said. “About you. And about me. And about Kayla-rich-as-shit-Anson.”

“And?”

“And I was thinking I wouldn’t complain about her so much if I was going to do something about her. Only I couldn’t think of what to do about her. You don’t see her because you like the way she is in bed.”

“Maybe I do.”

Deirdre made a face. “She’s got money, that’s what it is, lots and lots of money and there isn’t anybody on earth who can compete with that. All those old movies about how men don’t want to marry an heiress because she’ll end up taking their balls away is just so much crap. Men don’t care what happens to their balls at all.”

“I don’t think that’s entirely accurate. Besides, I don’t see what it is you think you’re—”

Deirdre’s champagne glass was empty. The bottle was on the tub collar next to her elbow. She got it and filled up again, squinting at the glass as the liquid went into it, as if she were measuring something and the measurement had to be precise. Her blonde hair was so close to white, it looked like light. Her eyelashes were at least half an inch thick, plumped out by mink strips.

“Somebody else called while you were out,” she said. “Except this time I picked up.”