He was right.
"Take me to this Holt Renfrew place."
"At once," he said, his pale-blue eyes in the rear view mirror crinkling with a smile. "Actually, it is very close by. Just a few blocks. We could walk, but it will be nice to have the car for all the clothes that you will buy."
"We'll see about that."
He pulled the car out into traffic, still chuckling.
Holt Renfrew.
Oh, yes. Yes, please.
The art-deco, gray stone building rose up on its corner in the heart of downtown Montreal. Dressy, busy-looking people, each woman skinnier than the last, rushed back and forth past the department store's colorful window displays.
The air inside the store was clean and smelled of luxury-leather, brand-new wool, and hints of perfume as fresh as ozone crackling at the edge of the ocean.
I'd left Claude with his crossword puzzles in the car and braved the store on my own. I wasn't alone for long, because a pair of stylish women approached me as I wandered through the front area, afraid to touch anything.
Conscious of my knees shaking, I said, "Bonjour. Comment-allez vous?"
Without batting an eyelash, the taller, older one warmly said, "Bonjour. How may we ass-eest you?"
I told them I needed some things to wear for dinners and parties, and the younger woman, a dark-haired beauty with rouged cheeks, clasped her hands together in excitement. "Oh, fun!" she exclaimed. "With your exquisite coloring, such creamy skin and lovely red hair, I have many ideas."
"Lapis blue," the older woman said. "Her eyes, yes?"
They both nodded knowingly, and from that moment on, they stayed at my side, like the best combination of personal assistants and good friends.
I tried on several things, and while they were quick to offer alterations for a custom fit, I found that most everything the ladies picked for me fit perfectly.
I didn't look at price tags, and I averted my eyes from the total when I made my purchase. If the dresses and shoes cost more than a year of college tuition, I didn't want to know. The women asked me about jewelry, but I politely demurred.
Clothes and shoes were one thing, but jewelry was different. Jewelry was like cash, because it could be purchased today and easily hawked at a future date. A more opportunistic (and probably smarter) girl would have loaded up on diamonds, shopping until the credit card combusted in a puff of smoke. I was neither a prostitute nor an embezzler, so that idea didn't sit well with me.
If I was going to get jewelry, it would have to come from Smith.
After the Chanel boutique and the rest of Holt Renfrew, Claude loaded my haul into the trunk of a car.
"On to the next stop?" he asked. "We have not yet been to Ogilvy. There you will find more unique items. Perhaps a funny hat with feathers?"
"I think I've done enough damage to Smith's credit card," I said, laughing.
"Mmm," he said, his voice ringing with doubt as he rearranged the items in the trunk. "I see no jewelry boxes in those bags. Only shoes and dresses. Tsk tsk."
"I have a lot to learn, don't I, Claude?"
"You will learn. Back to the hotel?"
"Not yet. I wonder if you might take me somewhere … silly."
He closed the trunk and gave me a cool, appraising look with his pale-blue eyes. I shivered and wondered how pretty his wife was.
"Silly?" He gave me a twisted smile and opened the car door for me.
"Yes, silly. The kind of place I'm too embarrassed to name. That kind of silly. Something you would keep confidential."
A smile curved his lips and his icy eyes sparkled with mischief.
"I know just the place," he said.
We didn't drive far from downtown before we entered a less dense area with low-rise, old stone buildings and visible graffiti. Teens in black T-shirts rolled by on skateboards. We turned down a pretty, tree-lined street with colorful flower boxes.
Claude slowed the car down as we rolled past shop windows with red neon lights and mannequins in strappy bondage gear. I felt my pulse quicken with excitement, albeit a different excitement than I'd experienced at Holt Renfrew.
"Silly like this?" he asked.
"Exactly."
The car stopped in front of the shop, which literally screamed SEX from signs in the window.
Claude rushed around to open my door, but he didn't presume to offer his company for this excursion.
I said ominously, "If I'm not out in half an hour, send in a search party."
Claude found this very amusing, and his chuckle super-sized itself to a wheezing laugh that was more cute than sexy.
As I approached the shop, I wondered how he knew of the place. Did his wife shop there when he was in the city? Or … had Mrs. Wittingham, Smith's ex-wife, shopped there? I still knew nothing about her, and thoughts nagged at the back of my mind, like mice chewing their way into sacks of grain and scattering everything.