The Charmers: A Novel(28)
“You must mean Aunt Jolly.”
Verity stared at him, astonished. “You knew Aunt Jolly?”
“Everyone knew her. She was here, on and off, for many years, quite old when she passed, I believe. And left it all to a niece she barely knew.”
It had not occurred to Verity to question how well Mirabella had known her aunt; all she’d heard was the Harrods story with the throat-choking velvet-collared princess coat and the dropped cream bun. She took a gulp of her Perrier. “Very generous of her, I’d say.”
“Or foolish. It depends on how you look at it.”
She sat up straighter in her faux-wicker chair. His tone was cold, dismissive. “Well, Mirabella looks upon it as a stroke of good fortune. And my good fortune was to meet her on the train coming down here.”
“Running from the cheating husband?”
She nodded, sighing. “You’d be surprised how many more cheaters there are than charmers.”
“Then we must hope that next time you find a charmer,” he said with a sudden smile of such warmth that Verity was indeed charmed.
“Hopefully,” she said. Then, getting quickly to her feet and unwinding the dog lead from the table leg, she said, “I must be on my way. So nice to have met you Mr.… er…”
“Boss,” he said.
She glanced suspiciously at him, as though he might be laughing at her. No, he was nice. She liked him. “Y’know what, Boss?” she said. “You are one of the charmers.”
“I hope that means you’ll come to the party I’m giving tomorrow night. My villa, the one you can see from here, the Villa Mara. You make a right off the up-road, can’t miss it. Eight. Black tie.”
“How very James Bond,” Verity said. She had not enjoyed herself with a man so much in years. “I’ll be there.”
“Oh, and bring your friend, Mirabella. After all, we are close neighbors.”
“Yeah, sort of like Chad Prescott.” She tugged the dog’s lead, edging from the table.
“Sort of,” the Boss agreed. He knew Chad Prescott.
20
The night of the party, the Villa Mara, on top of its own hill overlooking the Mediterranean, could surely have been seen from outer space, illuminated so extravagantly, so spectacularly, that every rosebush was defined in soft pink, every tree under-lit so its branches spiked into the dark blueness of a sky that seemed also to have been lit by the monied hand of the host.
The Boss had inspected everything an hour before his party was to start; checked the all-so-important lighting, the premier necessity for atmosphere, he’d always found. He’d seen that the tables were properly draped in simple white linen in classic style; that the white-cushioned chairs had golden chiffon bows tied around their backs; that the seventy-foot turquoise pool glittered like a jewel in the twilight; that crystal gleamed and silver shone and the bar was big enough to accommodate every guest, and stocked everything any guest could possibly want. Including, of course, Roederer Cristal Rouge. He believed it was every woman’s favorite champagne. Nothing like a slender flute of pink to elevate her sense of well-being, while at the same time possibly loosening her morals.
He was alone now, before the guests arrived, in the anonymous square concrete bunker directly on the seafront he called his own place, and where no one else was permitted access—without, that is, a direct personal invitation from the Boss himself. Which meant those invited were there on spurious business of an illegal and possibly lethal kind.
He was sitting in his big leather chair in front of the screen that showed the entirety of his villa: every room, every part of the grounds, almost every blade of grass and grain of sand, even the waves hitting the beach. He knew he could never become careless, take his life for granted. Enemies and danger always lurked, always would for a man in his position who had earned his wealth by eliminating anyone that stood in his way. Somehow they seemed to end up losing their businesses, their homes, their wives, their reason for living, and even occasionally, their lives. He had never tried to count how many enemies he’d had but it no longer mattered. He had come out the winner; whomever had opposed him remained at the bottom of the heap. A few he had permitted to continue running their lives just for appearance’s sake, building here and there, usually on the Costa del Sol where things were easier.
Outside, the waiters waited, and a quartet played softly, the pianist plucking jazzy chords that suited the quiet moment before the guests arrived.
The Boss adjusted his black silk bow tie in the mirror, thinking that as he had grown financially and therefore was more powerful, last-resort measures against rivals or enemies were rarely used. Those days were over; he was a sterling member of the community, a philanthropist who gave lavishly to causes that would get him publicity, make him known as a “good” man to those who counted in that world he craved and yet to which, despite his lavish charity, he still did not belong. It was, he thought—still looking in the mirror at his reflected self that gave no clue as to his true self—as though he was permanently locked out of the world he considered paradise. He and Orpheus. Good company, he supposed.
But it was the women he was really thinking about, those elegant creatures who would soon enter his door in their couture gowns, jewels gleaming at slender throats, with coiffures that had taken hours to construct, simple as they looked; in tall heels that lengthened their legs even though the shoes were killing them; silks gleaming, tulle fluttering, chiffon flowing soft over their bodies, hiding their secret selves. Some of them he knew could be bought for the price of a jeweled necklace, or a few weeks’ pampered vacation on a yacht in the Aegean; for a dinner on his arm at Paris’s best restaurant where she would be treated like the goddess she might suddenly have imagined she had become. Until reality was forced upon her and she found she was lucky to leave with her life intact, if not her body.