Night Whispers by Judith McNaught
Sloan was so distressed by the prospect of being put on display like a curiosity for a bunch of strangers to observe, judge, and conjecture about that she let Paris lead her past the staircase and around it to a closed door on the right, behind the living room. When Paris dropped her arm to open the door, Sloan remembered her shower and stepped back; then she realized what she was looking at and changed her mind. The open door revealed a large, luxuriously paneled room that could only be Carter’s office. It was from here that Gary Dishler emerged from time to time.
A carved mahogany desk was at the opposite side of the room, with a credenza and bookcases built into the wall behind it. Paris walked over to the desk, removed a key from a drawer, and unlocked a pair of doors on the wall behind it. She opened the doors, and Sloan’s gaze riveted on the computer monitor that had been concealed behind them. The screen was illuminated, the computer ready for use, a message flashing asking for the user to type in a password.
Paris slipped into a high-backed maroon leather chair at the desk and swiveled around to the computer.
Sloan’s heart began to beat with excitement as she stationed herself beside Paris. “I use FRANCE as my password,” Paris said innocently.
Sloan watched Paris pull up a file named “Palm Beach Guest List” from a computer folder called “Address Lists,” then send the file to a printer. She leaned down and opened another cabinet door to the right of her knee that revealed a high-speed laser printer and the computer’s central processing unit.
Sloan glanced at the CPU, but her primary interest was the icons displayed on the monitor that indicated what programs and possibly what kind of information Carter was accessing on the computer. Before she could do more than glance at all that, Paris retrieved a page from the printer and sat back up, blocking Sloan’s view of the computer screen. “Do you think Carter would mind if I used his computer later?” Sloan asked as casually as she could. “I’d like to check my E-mail, and I’d like to send a few messages.”
“It sounds funny to hear you call him by his name,” Paris confided with a smile. “And no, I’m sure he won’t mind if you use the computer, unless he’s using it himself.”
“Does he use it often?” Sloan asked, her excitement building.
“Yes, but not for very long. He can access the computer at the bank in San Francisco and see what’s happening. He uses it mostly for that and for other business things.”
Sloan knew the bank meant Reynolds Trust in San Francisco. “What sort of other business things is he involved in?”
“I don’t know. Father doesn’t like to discuss business. He says it’s too complicated for Great-grandmother or me to understand.” She removed the remaining pages from the printer, closed and relocked the doors, put the key back in the top right-hand drawer of the desk, and took a pencil from a leather holder on the desk.
“I’ll take this in to Noah. I’m already dressed to go out . . .” she hinted. As they left Carter’s office, she said happily, “We’ll have a wonderful time. We’ll spend the day being pampered and come home and get dressed for your ‘debut.’ ”
Sloan left her at the staircase and headed upstairs to her room. Paris took the party list into the dining room and sat down at the table. She checked off several names on the list; then she looked at her father and her great-grandmother. “How many people do you want to invite? It’s such short notice that half the people will have other plans, so we ought to figure on inviting twice as many.”
“Keep it small,” Carter bit out.
Noah ignored him and looked at Paris. “Check off the people you particularly want to invite, and I’ll pick out the others. We know the same people.”
Paris checked off several names on each of the eleven pages and handed the entire list to Noah.
“I’ll have Mrs. Snowden take care of everything else,” he promised, standing up. “Is seven o’clock all right with you?”
“That’s fine,” Edith said. “The weather has been so pleasant; I wish we could have a garden party.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” Noah said, already turning to leave.
“Keep the damned thing small,” Carter reminded him.
Edith’s thoughts shifted inexorably to money. “There’s no need to be extravagant,” she called after him. “Feed them hors d’oeuvres, not a banquet. Two of our servants can act as waiter and bartender; we don’t need to pay the caterer’s staff for that.”
“I’ll take care of it,” Noah said curtly over his shoulder.
“We’ll need champagne,” Paris reminded him.
“Domestic champagne,” Edith stipulated.
He was around the corner, starting down the hall, when Paris caught up with him. “Noah,” she said worriedly, lowering her voice, “maybe we should wait to give the party.”
His jaw tightened. “What are you worried about? The cost? The fact that your family’s skeleton is coming out of the closet? Or is it the competition from Sloan you’re worried about?”
She stepped back as if he’d slapped her. “What are you talking about?”
“What are you trying to talk about?” he shot back.
“I—I’d rather wait and have a lovely party than toss together some shabby little affair like Father and Great-grandmother are describing. Father isn’t thinking clearly. We’ve always given beautiful affairs, and if Sloan’s party isn’t like that, people will think she doesn’t matter enough for us to bother. The good caterers need plenty of notice to plan menus and hire staff, and they’ll all be booked solid right now. Then there’s flowers and music and chairs and tables and linens—there’s no way to arrange for all that in a few days, let alone a few hours.”
Noah’s anger with her vanished, and his expression softened. “I apologize for misjudging your motives,” he said gently. “I should have known better. Leave the details to me.”
• • •
Courtney and his father looked up when Noah strode into the house. “What’s up?” she asked eagerly, noticing the determined set of his jaw and his long, swift strides.
“Carter is giving a party for Sloan,” he replied without stopping. “Is Mrs. Snowden upstairs?”
Courtney gave an indelicate snort. “Where else would she be? She follows you from city to city, house to house, hotel to hotel, ever at your beck and call, twenty-four hours a day . . .”
It was an exaggeration, but Noah didn’t bother to point that out. Mrs. Snowden’s sister lived forty miles from Palm Beach, and when he went there twice a year, she accompanied him. It was an arrangement that worked well for both of them; Noah always had a limited amount of work for her to do even when he was on vacation, and in return for working a few hours each day, Mrs. Snowden got an all-expense-paid trip to see her sister.
“Good morning,” she said, turning around from the file cabinet as he strode into a library that doubled as his office when he was in Palm Beach.
“How is your sister?” he asked automatically.
“Fine.”
The social amenities over, Noah sat down behind his desk and nodded for her to sit down across from him. “We’re going to give a party,” he announced, shoving a notepad and pencil across the desk to her.
“I thought you said Carter Reynolds was giving the party,” Courtney said, plopping into the chair beside Mrs. Snowden’s and swinging her leg over the arm.
Noah ignored her, and so Mrs. Snowden picked up the pad and pencil. “When is the party to be?” she asked, pencil poised.
“Tonight.”
She drew the obvious conclusion. “A small dinner party?”
“Something a little larger.”
“How much larger?”
Instead of answering immediately, Noah scanned the pages of names and addresses of the Reynoldses’ friends in Palm Beach. He picked up a pen and drew a line through names belonging to people he personally didn’t like, and people he thought Sloan wouldn’t like; then he slid the pages across the desk to her. “About a hundred and seventy
“Since it’s such short notice and you want to serve dinner, I assume you want to have it at one of your clubs? Although, I really don’t think there’s enough time for—”
“I want to have it at Carter Reynolds’s house on the lawn.”
She blinked at him. “You want to give an outdoor dinner party tonight for one hundred and seventy-five people? That means hiring caterers—”
He brushed over that problem. “You can do it buffet style, the way we did the last one here, but have plenty of waiters available to pass food on trays for guests who don’t want to stand in line. I want everything first class.”
“Naturally,” she said, but she looked shaken.
“Have plenty of champagne on hand—Dom Pérignon. Oh, and get some of those ice things, too. They look nice on the tables—”
“Ice sculptures?” she asked weakly.
“Yes. And flowers, of course.”
“Of course,” she echoed faintly.
“We’ll need an orchestra, too. You know the routine. You’ve done it dozens of times for me in the past.”
“Yes, but not on this short notice!” she exclaimed, looking ready to cry at having to admit there was something she couldn’t do. “Mr. Maitland, I really don’t think there’s any way I can do all this.”
“I don’t expect you to do it,” he said impatiently. “We just bought two hotels here. Let them do it.”
Mrs. Snowden now saw a way to accomplish what was still going to be a Herculean task, logistically and diplomatically, and she rose to the challenge at once. “I will prevail on the managers of the hotels,” she declared, beaming.
“I’m sure you will,” he dryly replied. “You’ll have to handle invitations by phone. Tell everyone that you’re calling for Carter and that the party is being given by him to introduce them to his daughter Sloan.”
She nodded. “I’ll need some assistance. There are two women in our San Francisco office who can be relied upon to issue a telephone invitation to a last-minute party and carry it off graciously. I could fax them the list, but the phone calls will all be long distance. Is that all right?”
“That’s fine.”
“There’s one more problem: The people we invite will very likely jump to the conclusion that they’re being called at the last minute to fill in the numbers and that they weren’t on the original guest list. In that case, they will be offended and they will refuse.”
Noah reached for the mail she’d opened and laid in a leather box on his desk. “Then tell them we’ve just discovered that the original invitations were never sent out. Blame the post office, if you want. Everyone else does.”
Courtney swung her leg off the arm of the chair and stood up. “It sounds like yet another boring Palm Beach party. I’m glad as hell my name isn’t on that list. You couldn’t drag me to one of these parties.”
Noah looked up from the letter in his hand. “Sloan specifically asked that you be invited. Please don’t make me drag you to it.”
Instead of being belligerent and balky, which Noah expected, she looked stunned. “Sloan invited me? You’re kidding.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Then I suppose I really don’t have any choice,” she said in a martyred voice. “I mean, if I don’t go, she’ll be surrounded by nothing but incredibly boring people.”
She started to leave, then turned back. “Noah?”
“What?” he asked without looking up from the letter he was reading.
“Why are you doing all this for Sloan? Why isn’t Carter or Edith or Paris taking care of the party?”
“Carter is behaving like an arrogant son of a bitch, and Edith is too cheap and too old to be trusted with the decisions. Paris was willing to take it on, but she’s brand-new at defying them and they’d both end up getting their way. If they don’t throw a decent party and properly introduce Sloan, she’ll never be able to hold her head up around here.” It was several moments before Noah realized that Courtney hadn’t left. Exasperated, he looked up and found her studying him, her head tipped to the side. “Now what?” he asked impatiently.
“That explains why they aren’t doing it. It doesn’t explain why you are.”
Irrationally annoyed with her probing questions, Noah glared at her. “I don’t know why,” he said shortly. “I suppose I felt sorry for her because Carter was acting like a snob and talking about her like she’s a poor relation. It ticked me off.”
“She is a poor relation,” Courtney pointed out simply. “And you are also a snob.”
“Thank you,” he said sarcastically. “Are you finished, or do you have some obscure point to make?”
“As a matter of fact, I do have a point to make,” Courtney replied. “I saw this movie once, called The Carpetbaggers. In it, there was this rich guy who owned a big movie studio and he spent a fortune making a blond hooker into a major movie star. Do you know why he did it?”
“No, why did he do it?”
“Because he wanted to marry her, but first he had to make her important enough to be worthy of him.”
“What the hell has that got to do with anything?”
Courtney shrugged. “It was just a thought.”
“If you’re implying that I intend to marry Sloan or that I give a damn what people think of her, you’re wrong on both counts. Now, go away and let me work.”
When she left, Noah reread the first paragraph of the same letter twice; then he tossed it onto his desk and leaned back in his chair, glowering at the field of bluebonnets in the impressionist oil painting on the wall across from him.
He didn’t know why he’d forced the issue of Sloan’s party when it was counter to his own personal objectives. Tonight, other men would meet her and find her as intoxicating to look at and as entrancing to talk to as he did. They’d recognize the same tantalizing qualities of unconscious beauty and laughing candor that intrigued him, and they’d sense that there was much more to her beneath all that. Considering that he already felt ridiculously possessive about her, the party was a hindrance.
He didn’t know why he’d lost his temper with Carter or appointed himself her personal defender, except that there was something so open and unspoiled about her, a kindness and a gentle pride, that he felt absurdly protective of her even where her own father was concerned.
25
Paul was waiting in the foyer when Sloan came downstairs, ready to face what Paris happily described as a day of pampering. “I was going to drop you and Paris off and then do my errands,” Paul told her, “but Paris said this beauty routine she has in mind for the two of you is going to take a lot longer than an hour or two, so I’m going to take my car, and you’re supposed to ride with her. They’ve already brought the Jaguar around in front.”
“I’ll walk you to your car,” Sloan said with a meaningful nod toward the front door.
Paris’s car was parked in front of the porch, but Paul’s car was a little further down the drive, and Sloan waited until they were standing beside it before she spoke. “There’s a computer in Carter’s office networked to his bank. Paris said I could use it, and she gave me her password.”
“Don’t get your hopes up. He’s way too cautious to ever allow Paris to access his files or log onto the bank’s computers,” Paul said. “He’ll have his own password.”
“I know. I’m simply reporting what I learned to you.”
“I’d like to have a copy of that list of names and addresses Paris gave Maitland for the party.”
“I’ll ask her for a copy,” Sloan said. “I could honestly tell her that it would make a nice souvenir and help me remember everyone’s names.”
“Good.” He glanced toward the front door as it opened. “Paris just came out of the house. By the way, in case you haven’t figured it out yet, Maitland is the one who forced the issue of a party for you. I thought you might want to know.”
“I could tell Carter wasn’t eager to do it, but how could Noah possibly
“You would have to have been there to fully appreciate how he accomplished it. I was impressed,” he admitted.
Sloan lowered her voice as Paris approached. “Yes, but why would it matter to Noah if Carter didn’t want his friends to meet me?”
“I think,” he replied with a knowing smile, “you already have the answer to that. Noah Maitland is smitten.”
Sloan felt a rush of pleasure because Noah cared and an even bigger one because he’d been able to outmaneuver Carter Reynolds.
“We’ll be gone for hours!” Paris exclaimed happily, walking up to Paul’s car. “Sloan, we’re going to have ‘the works’—a facial, manicure, pedicure, massage, and then hairstyling. We’ll have to hurry, though, because they’re fitting us in, and we have to be there on time.”
“Better get going, then,” Paul told them; then he got into his rented car. He waited until he was several blocks from the house before he unlocked the glove compartment and took out his cellular phone. He dialed a number and the phone was answered by another FBI agent who was sitting on the pier, wearing a cap with fishing lures stuck in the visor and holding a fishing pole in his hand. “Can you talk?” Paul asked.
“Can I talk?” the other man repeated in angry disbelief. “You’re the one who’d better do some talking, Paul. You didn’t tell me you’re down there on your own time and your own initiative. I got a call last night from the man in the big office as soon as he found out, and he’s on a rampage. He thinks you’ve let a personal grudge cloud your judgment and that you’re obsessed with this case. I’m serious, buddy, your ass is on the line. You’re going to blow your career, and even if you do turn up evidence, Reynolds’s lawyers will get it tossed out of court because of the way you’re gathering it—”
“But I’m not looking for evidence, and when it turns up, I won’t be the one who gathered it,” Paul interrupted in the weary, patient tone of someone who is being forced to explain the obvious. “I am here merely as Sloan’s ‘facilitator.’ I had nothing to do with Carter Reynolds’s decision to invite his daughter here. And if his daughter happens to come across something incriminating during her visit, it’s only natural that she would turn it over to the authorities whether I was here or not. After all, she’s a cop.”