The Key Read online

  “How’s the living-in-sin thing going?” asked Hilary, poking through the bowl of mixed nuts with her cocktail stirrer, searching for whichever kind she liked best.

  “It’s good,” I said.

  Jane, usually the most even-tempered among us, grabbed the bowl of nuts from Hilary. “Either take a nut, or don’t take a nut,” she snapped.

  “How’s the living-in-Jane’s guest room thing going?” Luisa asked pointedly. Hilary scowled.

  Jane turned to me. “I’m sorry, Rach. What were you saying?”

  “Nothing. Just that living with Peter is good.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “Just good? Not wonderful? That’s the word you usually use when it comes to Peter.”

  “No, it is wonderful. Really. He even cooked for me last night—lasagna.”

  “With what?” asked Emma. She’d spent a lot of time in my apartment.

  “Apparently, I own a casserole dish.” I took a sip of wine. “Anyhow, it’s great to have him here. I think it’s just going to take some time to get used to actually living together. The apartment’s sort of small for two people, and there’s definitely not enough closet space for two. I could barely fit my own stuff before. And Peter has his own stuff, and it’s all over the place, and I don’t know where we’ll put everything. And I’ve been swamped at work, and I don’t think he really realized before what my hours are like, much less the pressure of it all. And he doesn’t seem to understand that sometimes I have to work late, and on weekends. And I gargled with his aftershave this morning, and it was really gross. And the whole thing is just sort of strange. To have someone there all of the time. It was never like that before.”

  As soon as all of these words spilled out of my mouth, I regretted them. I was lucky to have Peter, and I knew it, but I kept finding myself in the guilt/annoyance loop: first guilt for not loving every part of having him in my life, then annoyance about feeling guilty, and then a fresh wave of guilt at being annoyed.

  “He lived in California before,” Luisa reminded me. “And you only got to see him on weekends, after flying across a continent. I can’t believe they don’t let people smoke in bars in this fascist city.” She was fidgety without her cigarettes.

  “I know. It’s much better this way than trying to sustain a relationship long-distance. Really. It’s just that it’s so…permanent.”

  “The last time I checked, you guys were getting married,” Hilary said. “You might want to get a bit more comfortable with permanence.”

  “I am,” I said, taking another fortifying sip of wine,“comfortable with it. It’s what I’ve always wanted. Anyhow, ignore me. I’m babbling. It’s just that it’s been a really weird day.”

  “Why?” asked Emma.

  “Somebody died in front of me. This morning, at work.”

  “Talk about burying the lead,” said Hilary. “You’re like Hart to Hart.”

  I stared at her. “I’m not following.”

  “Did you spend the eighties in a land with no TV? Hart to Hart. ‘When they met, it was murder.’ Only with you it’s more like, ‘Where she goes, there’s murder.’”

  The reference clicked in my mind. “Promise me you’ll stage an intervention if Peter and I start driving matching Mercedes or get a dog named Freeway.”

  “A houseman might be sort of cool, even if he was named Max,” said Jane.

  “Besides, what makes you think it was murder?” I asked.

  “Was it?” asked Emma.

  “Well, yes. It seems to have been.” I filled them in, rehashing the same material Jake and I had gone over that afternoon.

  “What’s the story with this Jake guy?” asked Hilary.

  “Yes, his name is coming up quite a lot,” added Luisa.

  “He’s just a friend from the office, and then he ended up working on the deal, too. He transferred in from Chicago a couple of months ago.”

  “Single?” asked Jane.

  “Uh, divorced.”

  “What’s he like?” asked Hilary.

  “Standard-issue banker type.”

  “So, he’s probably an utter jerk.”

  “No, not at all. He’s a really good guy.”

  My friends exchanged not-so-subtle knowing looks with each other.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Somebody should do a case study on you,” said Luisa.

  “One of those relationship experts who writes self-help books about how to get men over their commitment issues,” said Hilary. “Only it would be about getting women over their commitment issues. You could be an entire chapter.”

  “Just a chapter?” asked Luisa. “Rachel could fill more than a chapter.”

  “Now what are you talking about?” I asked.

  “Your commitment issues,” said Jane.

  “I don’t have commitment issues,” I protested. I looked to Emma for backup.

  “Sorry, Rach,” she said. “You have commitment issues.”

  “Peter just moved in and instead of enjoying it you’re whining about closet space and aftershave,” said Hilary.

  “I wasn’t whining—”

  “And every other word out of your mouth is the name of another man,” said Luisa.

  “Jake’s just a friend—”

  “A friend you spend more time with than you do your own fiancé,” said Jane. “And who you tell things you avoid telling Peter.”

  “What are you scared of?” asked Emma.

  “What do you mean, what am I scared of?”

  “You must be scared of something,” she said. “Why else would you be looking for reasons to shut Peter out?”

  I wasn’t sure how to respond to that, but it turned out I didn’t have to because our waiter chose that moment to deliver a round of fresh drinks. His timing couldn’t have been better as far as I was concerned. “Compliments of the gentlemen across the room,” he said, depositing the glasses on the table.

  “Oh?” Hilary craned her head to give our benefactors an appraising look. “Good Lord. What is it with men and goatees? They’re so 1995. And they weren’t even cool then.”

  “Could we tell them thanks but no thanks?” Emma asked. “And keep the drinks on our tab?”

  “Why would we want to turn down free drinks?” asked Hilary.

  “There’s no such thing as a free drink. If we accept, they’ll want to sit with us,” said Luisa. The waiter left to deliver the message, but Hilary continued her inspection of the room.

  “Of all the men here, only the goateed ones send us drinks. Why is that? I mean, check out the guy at the bar. How come guys like that never offer to buy us drinks?” she said. “In fact, I think he’s checking you out, Rach. Why isn’t he checking me out?”

  I followed her gaze, catching a glimpse of a man with close-cropped dark hair across the room. He stood out in the sea of navy suits, dressed in faded jeans, an oxford-cloth shirt and suede jacket. For a fleeting instant our eyes met, but then he looked down at the beer he was nursing.

  “I guess you’re just a goatee magnet, Hil,” said Jane.

  “I know. It’s a curse.”

  “Maybe you should stop fighting destiny,” I suggested, relieved I was no longer the topic of discussion. But I was distracted, too. I’d seen the man before, and recently, but I couldn’t remember where.

  “It would probably feel nice and scratchy against your face,” said Emma.

  When I looked up again, a few minutes later, he was gone.

  We went to a nearby restaurant for dinner after drinks. I was exhausted, but it was such a rare treat to have all of my friends in town that I lingered with them over the meal. We said our goodbyes on the pavement outside, making plans to get together later in the week. Jane was staying with Emma at the loft she still owned in the city, and Hilary was staying with Luisa at her family’s apartment, so I was awarded the first cab since I was on my own.

  I gave the driver my address on East 79th Street, and as he turned up Madison Avenue, I dug my BlackBerry out of my bag
and used it to check messages, squinting at the small screen. There was only one voice mail, timestamped 7:05 p.m., and I listened to it as we sped past Barney’s.

  “Rachel. It’s Dahlia Crenshaw. Sorry to bother you, especially after the day we all had, but I was watching the news, and I saw something that—well, it got me wondering about something, and I wanted to talk to you about it. Will you phone me when you get this?”

  She left her mobile number.

  I dialed it in and pressed Send, but then I heard the beep of call waiting. I fumbled a bit with the various buttons. “Hold on,” I said to whoever was calling as I tried to flip back to the call I’d placed.

  “Dahlia?”

  “Uh, no. It’s Jake.”

  “Did I call you?” I asked, confused.

  “No—I called you.”

  “Whoops, hold on.” Jake must have been the incoming call. I pressed another few buttons but landed on Jake again. “Sorry about that,” I said. “Still trying to master call waiting.”

  “No problem. Is it too late to phone?”

  “No, of course not. You know I’m a night owl. What’s up?”

  “You seemed pretty shaken up today. I wanted to make sure you’re doing all right.”

  “I am. Thank you. That’s really kind of you to ask.”

  “Glad to hear it. And no more anonymous e-mails?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t checked that account yet. I’m actually in a cab right now, on my way home.”

  “And you thought I’d be Dahlia?”

  I explained about her message. “I was just calling her back, and then you called.”

  “I wonder what she wanted?”

  “She said it was about something she’d seen on the news. But maybe she just wanted to talk. Who knows? She must be pretty shaken up, too.”

  “Who could blame her? When did she call?”

  “A while ago. Around seven.” Then I checked my watch. It was after midnight, and she was probably long since in bed—it was a good thing my call hadn’t gone through. “I’ll catch up with her in the office tomorrow.”

  “I wouldn’t worry about it. Anyhow, I’ll let you go. Just wanted to make sure you were okay.”

  “Thanks, Jake.”

  The apartment was silent when I let myself in, and a quick peek into the bedroom showed me that Peter was fast asleep, although he’d left the lamp burning on the nightstand on my side of the bed. I returned to the study and waited impatiently as the computer booted up. My conversation with Jake had reminded me I needed to check the new e-mail account we’d set up the previous evening.

  I entered my user name and password and waited expectantly for a message to appear. But Man of the People hadn’t written back.

  I felt both relieved and disappointed. It would have been nice to have some answers about the Thunderbolt deal. Gallagher’s death had created enough intrigue for one day.

  I undressed as quietly as I could and slid into bed beside Peter, careful not to wake him.

  And all of my late nights and early mornings paid off for once, allowing me to drift quickly to sleep. Which was good, because the last thing I wanted to do was think.

  chapter eleven

  I overslept the next morning. Peter had turned off the alarm before it sounded.

  “I made an executive decision,” he told me. “You’ve been working too hard, and then you had to deal with this Gallagher guy dying at your feet. You deserved a decent night’s rest.”

  It was a good thought, and he did bring a nice cold Diet Coke with him when he eventually woke me up at eight, but already running late so early in the day put me off-balance.

  I managed to shower and get dressed without imbibing any of Peter’s toiletries, although I knocked over his deodorant while drying my hair, which set off a domino-like tumbling of all of the products lined up on the counter next to it. It would have been fun to watch if I hadn’t been in such a hurry.

  Peter was on the phone in the living room when I emerged from the bedroom and crossed over into the study. I wanted to check e-mail again, to see if maybe Man of the People had written during the night, and it wouldn’t do to log in from my work PC. I opened up the Web browser and selected “history” to get to the link for my new account. Without really looking, I selected the most recent listing, assuming that it would be the one I needed, since I thought I’d been the last one to use the computer. But instead of the page I expected, I found myself on the Winslow, Brown Web site, looking at Jake Channing’s photo and professional biography.

  That was odd.

  I scanned the index of previous Web pages along the left-hand side of the browser more carefully and selected the second listing. This took me to a Google search on Jake Channing.

  There was only one explanation for it, assuming I hadn’t been Googling Jake in my sleep. And that was that Peter had been Googling Jake while I slept in.

  “Peter?” I called out.

  His head appeared in the doorway, the phone clasped to his ear. “That sounds like it meets the specifications,” he was saying, presumably to whichever one of his company’s engineers was on the other end. He held up an index finger to indicate he’d be done in a minute, and his head disappeared again. “And when do you think it could be ready? I see…” His voice trailed off into the living room.

  I tried to think of reasons why Peter had been Googling Jake, but I wasn’t yet sufficiently caffeinated to come up with anything that made sense. Instead, I found the link to the new e-mail account and checked it. Still nothing. And Peter was still rambling on about specs and timetables.

  Then I checked my regular home e-mail account, just in case. But while I had a whole slew of new e-mails from the Viagra folks, here, too, there was radio silence from Man of the People. And Peter was still on the phone.

  I got out my BlackBerry to check messages at work, pressing Send without thinking. The number for my office voice mail was usually the last one I dialed every night, and when I pressed Send, the device automatically dialed the last number I’d used. So I was surprised when, instead of the familiar voice welcoming me to Audix, I heard Dahlia Crenshaw inviting me to leave a message.

  Peter chose that moment to reappear in the study. “What can I do for you?” he asked. Startled, I hung up on Dahlia’s recording.

  “I was just wondering why you were Googling Jake Channing.” It may have been a trick of the morning light, which was lending a rosy glow to the small room, but I could have sworn he blushed.

  At least he didn’t try to pretend he hadn’t been doing any such thing. “I—I was curious. How did you find out? I thought I’d closed down the browser.”

  “You did. But I was using the history function. Why you were curious?”

  “The history function? Why were you using that?”

  “To get to the new e-mail account you set up for me. But I got to your Google search instead.”

  “Interesting. Did you—actually, never mind.”

  “I do mind. You haven’t answered my question.” It was a good thing I was still under-caffeinated, because with more stimulation, my voice would have sounded shrewish rather than just schoolmarmish.

  “Which question?”

  “Why were you curious about Jake Channing.”

  I was increasingly confident that it wasn’t the light. Peter was blushing.

  “Well, he called last night. Which was good, because I could check to make sure you wouldn’t miss anything if I let you sleep in a bit.”

  “You Googled him because he called me?”

  He hesitated. “It’s just that then I scrolled through the caller ID and saw that he’d already called a couple of times, before I even got home.”

  “So?”

  “Rachel. This is embarrassing.”

  “What’s embarrassing?”

  “Are you going to make me say this?”

  “Say what?”

  “Say that I was jealous.”

  “You were jealous?” I asked. “Jeal
ous of what?” I probably should have been touched, or flattered. But instead I was angry.

  “You keep mentioning him. And you’re spending most of your waking hours with him.”

  “I work with him. We have a deal underway. I have to spend time with him.”

  “It’s more than that, Rachel. Gallagher’s dead and you’re getting strange e-mails. And now that you’ve told Jake about Man of the People—I just wanted to make sure that you can trust him. So I thought I’d do a little research.”

  “I can trust him,” I said.

  “Did you know that he worked at Gallagher’s old firm?” Peter asked. “Did he tell you that?”

  “Of course I knew.”

  “And you don’t think there’s a chance he could be in on any of this? You think it’s just a coincidence?”

  “You’re being absurd. Jake joined Winslow, Brown way before Gallagher came over from Ryan Brothers. And if Jake was in on anything with Gallagher—and by the way, we still don’t know if there’s anything to be in on in the first place—Gallagher sure had a strange way of showing it. He was nearly as much of a jerk to him as he was to m—to anyone.”

  “Maybe. But I’m worried that you’re not being as careful as you should be. That you’re letting your feelings get in the way.”

  “What feelings?”

  “Are you going to make me say this, too?”

  I looked at him but didn’t say anything. There was a long moment of silence.

  Then he turned away from me. “Your feelings for Jake,” he said.

  Something inside of me switched off and something else switched on. It was as if I’d been waiting for a reason—any reason—to blow up at Peter, and he’d just handed it to me. When I spoke again, I felt like I was on autopilot or having an out-of-body experience. On some level I fully recognized that I was lashing out at the wrong person, but I couldn’t help it.

  “Jake is my colleague and my friend, Peter. Nothing more.” My autopilot voice was cold. I stood up and began gathering my things. “And I can take care of myself. I’ve been doing it for a long time. Since before I met you and since before you moved in.”