Sidney Sheldon's Chasing Tomorrow (Tracy Whitney #2)(45)

“Me. Only me. Nobody knows what I come up with each day, not even Sheila. I appreciate your company’s concern, Theresa, but between this and our guards and the alarm system, I truly don’t think we could be better protected.”

Tracy nodded. “Mind if I look around a little?”

“Be my guest.”

Removing her shoes, Tracy flitted from room to room. She stepped inside closets and began climbing shelves, rifling through the Brooksteins’ suits and shirts and dresses and shoes. From her capacious Prada purse, she pulled out a variety of equipment, much of which looked like electronic monitors of some sort, which made an ominous, static-y, crackling sound when run along the edges of mirrors.

“Okay.” From her position at the top of a wooden stepladder, where she’d been examining the safety of a ceiling panel, Tracy suddenly spun around.

Standing at the foot of the ladder, Alan Brookstein, who’d been within inches of getting a clear view of her underwear, jumped a mile.

“What? Is there a problem?”

“Happily, no.” Tracy smiled. “No cameras or devices of any kind. I agree, you’re sufficiently protected. Although I would be careful which staff members you allow access to this room. We have had cases of maids installing pinhole cameras close to known safes, capturing the lock and unlock codes, and passing them on to boyfriends who then raid the houses in question.”

“Not our maids,” Alan Brookstein joked. “Trust me, those cholas don’t have a whole brain cell between them. You’d get more ingenuity out of an ape.”

Still, he thought, it was a good observation. The last schmuck from the insurance agency never gave me any practical advice like that.

“You’re a smart girl, Theresa. Thorough, too. I like that. You got any other tips for me?”

Tracy paused for a beat, then smiled slowly.

“As a matter of fact, Alan, I do.”

ELIZABETH KENNEDY HAD NO time for stupid, rich women. Unfortunately, in her line of work, she dealt with a great many of them. Although few were quite as stupid as Sheila Brookstein.

“I honestly don’t think I can stand it much longer,” Elizabeth told her partner. “The woman’s a card-carrying moron.”

“Focus on the money,” Elizabeth’s partner reminded her curtly.

“I’m trying.”

Elizabeth Kennedy usually had no problem keeping her mind on the silver lining—or in this case, ruby lining—of being forced to spend so much time with rich, stupid women like Sheila Brookstein. Elizabeth had grown up poor and had no intention of ever, ever going back there. But playing the role of British actress Liza Cunningham, Sheila’s new best friend, was really beginning to grate. It was like making small talk to a lobotomized cabbage. On a really off day.


“WHICH ONE, LIZA? THE Ala?a or the Balenciaga?”

“Liza” was in Sheila Brookstein’s dressing room, helping her friend get dressed for tonight’s ceremony at LACMA. Alan Brookstein, Sheila’s fat, self-important husband, was being given some award.

“Try the Balenciaga first,” she called into the bedroom.

While Sheila swathed her bony frame in complicated layers of black silk, Elizabeth pulled the fake necklace that her partner had commissioned out of her purse. It was the work of a moment to exchange it for the real one, which Alan had removed from the safe in his dressing room earlier and laid out helpfully on his wife’s dresser.

“Should I bring the necklace through?”

“Would you? You’re an angel, Liza,” Sheila gushed.

Elizabeth fastened the fake rubies around Sheila Brookstein’s scraggy throat. She felt a moment’s anxiety as the older woman frowned into the mirror. Surely she can’t tell the difference? But the frown soon vanished, replaced by Sheila’s usual vacuous, smug, self-satisfied smile.

“How do I look?”

Like a wrinkled old turkey with a string of worthless red rocks around its neck.

“Ravishing. Alan’s going to die of pride.”

“And all the other directors’ wives are going to choke with envy. Bitches.” Sheila cackled nastily.

IT WAS ALMOST ANOTHER hour before Sheila finally left in the back of her chauffeur-driven Bentley Continental. In that time “Liza” had styled and sprayed her thinning hair three different ways and helped the makeup artist apply the thick layers of foundation that Sheila felt made her seem younger, but that actually gave her skin the look of hardened clay. And all the while Sheila had talked and talked and talked.

“Whatever did I do before I met you, Liza?

“You’re like a sister to me.

“Isn’t it incredible how we have so much in common? Like we’re both such incredible listeners. Alan never listens to me. He thinks I’m stupid. I swear to God, that bastard . . .”

Never again, Elizabeth thought, speeding toward the Century City condo for the rendezvous with her partner, the priceless ruby necklace tucked safely in her purse. This time tomorrow I’ll be on a yacht in the Caribbean.

Good-bye, Sheila! Good-bye, Liza Cunningham!

And good riddance.

“YOU’RE AN IDIOT. YOU’VE been duped.”

Elizabeth Kennedy felt the color rise in her cheeks. Not out of embarrassment. Out of anger. How dare her partner berate her like this? After the months she’d spent getting close to the Brooksteins! The endless, mind-numbing hours in Sheila’s company. Flirting with the repellent Alan.