The Jinx

Sixteen

T he party was due to start at six, so I dashed up to my room to change and get organized. The event called for business casual, rather than straight-out business attire, and with relief I exchanged my pantsuit for a less formal pair of trousers and a cashmere sweater, and my high heels for a pair of suede flats. I was in front of the mirror, making the usual vain attempt to tame my unruly hair, when I heard the hotel phone ringing.

I was hoping it was Peter, but it was Emma, which was just as well. “I tried you on your cell phone but it wouldn’t go through,” she said. “Luisa’s been filling us in on everything that’s been going on with your client and with Peter and with Love Story guy. It sounds like you have a lot to tell us.”

“Yes,” I admitted. “I think I’m becoming a skank.”

“I doubt that.”

“Don’t be so sure.”

“Well, we’re all looking forward to talking it over. Everyone’s here at Jane’s, and we’re already cooking. Will you be here soon?”

“I need to put in an hour at this Winslow, Brown event, but I hope to get there a little after seven.”

“With Peter?”

“Peter who?” I asked, striving for a lighthearted tone.

“Peter ‘Too Good to Be True’ Forrest.”

“No,” I said, and sighed. “I’m beginning to think he is too good to be true. He’s with Abigail, wooing a potential client. Or,” I added dejectedly, “just wooing her.”

“That seems unlikely.”

“Who knows? He’s been completely missing in action.”

“I’m sure everything’s fine. He’s Peter, after all. Of course, you could always bring Love Story guy instead.” Her voice had a teasing edge to it.

“Listen, no jokes about this. At least not yet. I actually thought about inviting him, but it just seemed like I’d be tangling the web even more. But I do have some good news. For Hilary, at least.”

“Oh?”

“Remember our friend Detective O’Donnell?”

“Sure. The one Hilary tried to make a play for last summer.”

“Well, his identical twin is alive and well and investigating the attack on Sara Grenthaler.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Nope. And guess what his name is.”

“What?”

“O’Connell.”

Emma giggled. “I’ll tell Hil. We’ll have to figure out a reason to get her hauled down to the police station this weekend.”

“Knowing Hilary, that shouldn’t be too hard to pull off.”

I was nearly out the door, some semblance of order restored to my hair, which hadn’t been responding well to the various gusts of wind and snowflakes it had endured that day, when I noticed a pile of papers sitting on the fax machine’s output tray. I grabbed them up and switched on the desk lamp.

Jessica had forwarded me the list of buyers and sellers in Grenthaler’s stock. I scanned the list to see if I recognized any names. As far as I could tell, they seemed to be the usual collection of financial institutions and money management firms, but a few unfamiliar companies had popped up on the buy side several times over the past few weeks.

I checked the time. I still had a couple of minutes before I became officially late. I used my Blackberry to submit a request to Winslow, Brown’s Research Services office, asking for profiles of the companies that seemed to be steadily buying. It would be good to know who was behind them.

The party was taking place at Noir, the lounge bar in the lobby of the Charles. The décor was strangely incongruous with the rest of the hotel: dark and minimalist, with odd red phallic-shaped lamps hanging over the bar. The decidedly un-hip garb of the aspiring Wall Streeters we’d invited was similarly incongruous. By a few minutes after six, the room was packed. Clearly, the various students who’d been invited hoped that their punctuality would be interpreted as a sign of their commitment to a career in investment banking.

I accepted a glass of white wine from a passing waiter, and dutifully began chatting to our guests. My objective was simple: to give everyone I spoke to the impression that Winslow, Brown was a wonderful place. At this stage of the recruiting process, we started shifting into “sell” mode, recognizing that a significant proportion of the students who were here tonight would receive offers not only from Winslow, Brown but from other firms with equally impressive reputations. I fielded questions about the work, the culture and the lifestyle one could expect at the firm as honestly but positively as I could. Of course, most of the students were still in interview mode, and many of their questions were thinly veiled attempts at schmoozing, something I’ve never had much of a stomach for. And none of them asked about the real reason they were interested in banking-the money. For some reason, talking about money as a motivation was a no-no, at least until after you had a job offer.

Scott Epson was in his element. Being schmoozed gave him the sense that he was everything he wanted to be: important, powerful, interesting. He seemed to be holding forth at length about something, so I headed in his direction to see if any of the students trapped by his monologue were in need of rescue.

He was waxing euphoric about his job and his own significance. “For instance,” he was saying, “I’m working on this incredibly important deal right now, really complex. I’ve been in meetings or on the phone practically nonstop with some seriously high profile players. I can’t tell you what’s going on-it’s all too confidential. But it’s an incredible rush, knowing that what you’re doing is going to be on the front page of the Wall Street Journal.” I tried not to snort. I doubted that anything Scott was working on would end up commanding more than an inch of column buried deep within the Journal. If he were, Stan Winslow or another senior partner would be all over it.

I inserted myself into the conversation, which gave two of the students the break they needed to quickly drain their drinks and excuse themselves for refills. The remaining one, a guy who looked like a younger version of Scott, seemed happy to listen on. I decided to leave them to it and turned away, nearly crashing into Grant Crocker.

I’d always had to acknowledge that Grant was good-looking, but tonight he definitely wasn’t at his best. He had a real shiner around one eye, the skin tinged blackish-purple and clearly swollen, and both eyes were bloodshot. “What happened to you?” I blurted out, before I could think of a more polite way to begin a conversation.

“I walked into a door.” Ah. The standard excuse of battered women everywhere.

“That must have hurt. It looks like you really did a number on yourself.”

He shrugged. “Yeah, well, I got thirsty in the middle of the night, got up for a glass of water, and bang.” He changed the subject. “It’s a good turnout, isn’t it? Winslow, Brown’s a really hot ticket on campus this year.”

“I hope so,” I said. This was my first encounter with Grant since I’d heard about the letters, and I now had an excellent opportunity to try and figure out if he was behind them. If the police were wrong, and the attack wasn’t linked to the serial killings, Grant remained my number-one candidate for Creepy Violent Stalker.

“So, you heard about what happened to Sara, right?” I asked.

“It’s awful. I stopped by to see her just before the party but she was asleep.”

I wondered if he’d run into Jonathan at UHS, but it seemed like too much work to explain to Grant how I knew Jonathan and why I was so aware of his movements. “The doctors think she’s going to be all right.”

He scowled and took a big swig from the beer bottle he was holding. No glasses for someone like Too Much Testosterone Guy. “I just hope they find the guy who attacked her. I wouldn’t mind giving him a taste of his own medicine.” He practically growled when he said this, and I noticed that he was holding his beer bottle with such a tight grip that his knuckles were white. While I could appreciate the sentiment, I found the sight of so much barely controlled machismo a bit unnerving.

“The police seem like they’re being very thorough.”

“They’d better be,” he said. “I know they’ve been talking to everyone on campus. But it’s been a day and a half, already. They really need to cut to the chase. They can’t just let things like that happen to people like Sara. She’s too special.”

I couldn’t disagree with that.

But he took another deep swig of beer and went on, in an emotional way that seemed out of character with the Grant I remembered from when we’d worked together, and made me wonder how many drinks he’d had already. “She’s so beautiful, and delicate, and she’s all alone in the world. There’s nobody to protect her. What kind of scumbag would take advantage of that?”

I didn’t know what to say in response, but fortunately we were joined by another student. “Hey, man,” he said to Grant.

“Dude, what’s up?” responded Grant. They engaged in a complicated handshake that ended with a clinking of beer bottles.

“Where did you disappear to on Wednesday? We missed you at Pub Night.”

“Had some things to take care of,” Grant answered gruffly. He introduced me to his friend, telling me that they were workout partners, but I promptly forgot the friend’s name. The party was swinging into full gear, with most of the students having done their best to make an impression on the various Winslow, Brown representatives and now chatting amongst themselves. I noticed that nearly all my colleagues had discreetly taken their leave, no doubt hoping to get to the airport in time for the eight o’clock shuttle back to New York.

I left Grant and his friend discussing the merits of different muscle-building supplements and found Cecelia giving instructions to the lounge manager to keep the bar open and the hors d’oeuvres circulating for another hour. “I’m going to take off,” she told me. “I think we’re all set here.”

“Thanks so much for handling everything this week. It went great,” I told her.

“Yes, it did go well, didn’t it? But right now I’m just looking forward to getting home and taking a hot bath.”

“I don’t blame you. Have a good trip back.” She slipped out the door with a smile and a wave, and I looked around the room. The noise level was rising, and the students were clearly slipping from professional to party mode. My duty had been done, and I could head for Jane’s with a clear conscience. Well, except for the part of it that was worrying about being a two-timing sleaze in the process of being dumped by her alleged boyfriend.

I waited impatiently at the front door of the hotel for a taxi. There was a long line ahead of me. The doorman shrugged apologetically. “It’s prime time on Friday night,” he said. “I’ve called the dispatcher, but you might be better off catching a cab in the Square.”

I took his advice and headed for the cab stand on Mass. Ave., in front of Holyoke Center and UHS. There was a line there as well, but it was far shorter, and it was moving quickly. I finally secured a taxi, and as it navigated the slow-moving traffic, I amused myself by counting Harvard scarves. I was up to six before we even turned onto Garden Street, next to the Cambridge Common, where I spotted the seventh, its wearer’s hood pulled up against the cold.

There were fewer people on the street as we merged onto Concord Avenue, and no visible scarves to count. I took out my Blackberry to see if I’d missed any messages during the party, but there was nothing. I leaned back in my seat, feeling suddenly adrift. On a day like today, I’d usually be glad for a momentary respite to get my thoughts in order. Tonight, however, the last thing I wanted was to be alone with my thoughts. Nowhere my mind landed was a good place to be.

When the taxi slowed to a stop in front of Jane and Sean’s house on Appleton Street, I stepped onto the sidewalk with no small measure of relief. A nice quiet night with my best friends, talking through everything that was going on in my life and hearing about what was going on in their lives, was just what I needed.

We’d eat and drink and talk, and I’d be back in my hotel room well before midnight, with all of my various messes sorted out. And maybe the Jinxing Gods would smile on me for once, and Peter would be there, too, banishing Jonathan Beasley from my mind and letting me know, in word and deed, that everything was all right.

So much for the best-laid plans.