Honeymoon

Chapter 76

NORA RETURNED, all bright smiles and full of pep. Hard to resist. She jumped up on the bed and kissed my chest, my cheek, my lips. She rolled her eyes and made a funny face that could have won my heart under normal circumstances, which these certainly weren’t.

“Did you miss me?”

“Terribly,” I said. “How’d things go with Harriet?”

“Wonderfully. I told you it wouldn’t take long. I’m good. You wouldn’t believe how good I am.”

“Yes, only you weren’t the one stuck in this room.”

“Oh, you poor thing,” she said, teasing me. “You need some fresh air. All the more reason why you can’t go to work today.”

“You’re not going to take no for an answer, are you?”

“As a matter of fact… no.”

I nodded at my coat and trousers draped on the chair. “Okay, but are you sure you want to spend two days in a row with me in those clothes?”

She shrugged. “I’ve taken them off you once. I won’t mind doing it again.”

We showered, dressed, and took her car out for a spin. The Benz.

“So, where are we going?” I asked.

Nora slid on her sunglasses. “I’ve got it under control.”

She drove first to a gourmet market in town called Villarina’s. I, naturally, acted as if I’d been there before. As we walked in she asked me whether there was anything I didn’t eat. “Besides my omelets.”

“I’m not a big fan of sardines,” I said. “Other than that, go for it.”

She ordered a small feast. Various cheeses, roasted peppers, a pasta salad, olives, dried meats, some French bread. I offered to pay. Reaching for her purse, she said she’d hear nothing of it.

Next stop was a liquor store.

“How about we go with white today? I prefer pinot grigio, myself,” she said.

She checked to see what was already chilled and pulled out a bottle of Tieffenbrunner. We were all set for our picnic.

More so when Nora showed me the blanket in the trunk. Cashmere, with a Polo logo. She’d packed it while I was in the shower.

We drove to nearby Pocantico Lake and found a patch of grass that offered some privacy, not to mention gorgeous views of the Rockefeller estate with all its expensive hills and dales and whatnot.

“See, doesn’t this beat going to work?” she said after we plopped down on the blanket.

But I was at work. As we talked over the food and wine, I was doing my subtle best to get something from Nora that would point to her involvement in Connor Brown’s death—and the transfer of his money that had started this whole investigation.

Trying to gauge her computer literacy, I casually referred to the firewalls built into a new web program I was using at the office. When she nodded I tacked on, “To think, only a year ago I thought a firewall had to do with asbestos.”

“You and me both. I only know what it is from one of my former clients. He was some big Internet guy.”

“One of those dot-com millionaires, huh? Jesus, what do they do with that kind of money?”

Nora made another funny face.

“Lucky for me, a lot of redecorating. You can’t imagine.”

“Very true. Though I can imagine the taxes these guys must pay.”

“I know. Of course, I guess they have their ways of minimizing them,” she said.

“You mean like loopholes? What?”

She looked at me for a moment. “Yeah, like loopholes.” There was a slight squint in her eyes. Hesitation bordering on suspicion. Enough to make me back off.

So for the rest of the afternoon, I played it cool… like a guy enjoying an unexpected day off from work, with a beautiful woman he couldn’t get enough of.