Falling Angel (4 page)

“I’ve been up since 5, myself,” Louise said. “Terrible insomnia. I’ve been so worried about Jemma’s leg. She won’t stop gnawing it, so I’m taking her to the vet today to get one of those awful collars put on.”

Jemma was her dog, a miniature salt and pepper Schnauzer she had bought as a puppy six years earlier, when Cara left home to attend Michigan State. Jemma now occupied the same place in her life that Cara once had. Louise kept Jemma on a tight leash. Alternately spoiled and bullied, the object of all her strongest emotions and attentions, Jemma was expected to repay this vigilant care with total obedience and undying affection. Cara thought the dog probably did a better job of this than she ever had.

Cara made an effort to pay attention as Louise recited the litany of drugs and treatment methods that had been administered to Jemma. Finally, her mother came to the real reason for her call. “So anyway, of course I haven’t forgotten your birthday next week, and I’m wiring money to your account. I want you to use it to go out and buy something nice for yourself. Nothing practical, for once. Just enjoy.”

Cara felt ashamed of her bitter thoughts in the face of this unexpected generosity. “That’s great, mom. Thanks.”

“So funny to think, when I was twenty four you were already in preschool. Can you believe it?” Louise laughed in a fluttery way. “And now you’ve left the nest. You’re all grown up. Have you been seeing anyone?”

The question made Cara think of Ben.

“No one special,” she said.

“Well, that’s good, dear. It’s wise to wait for the right man to come along. You know what a mistake I made, marrying your father. I was young and stupid. Thank God you finally broke up with that Barry boy. I was terrified history was going to repeat itself.”

“He broke up with me, mother.”

“I was out of my mind with worry. What if you’d gotten pregnant? Your life would have been over.”

Cara had to literally bite down on her lower lip to prevent herself from making a sharp retort. She was so tired of her mother hectoring and admonishing her. In truth, it was a large part of the reason she had moved thousands of miles away.

“Do you know what my father said after your father left me?”

“You’ve told me a million times.”

Louise went on as though Cara hadn’t spoken. “‘Serves you right,’ he said. ‘You always were a headstrong girl. Now you’ve made your bed, you lie in it.’ He would have sent you and me out into the street if my mother hadn’t managed to talk him out of it. Every day we lived with them I had to put up with his disapproval. Besides giving us a room to sleep in, he never lifted a finger to help. I had to raise you on my own until I met Andrew. I married him because he was able to offer us a decent life. No one could wish for a better man.”

Privately, Cara thought that Andrew was a less than stellar catch. He’d always been pleasant to her, going so far as to formally adopt her when she was ten, although it was clear he didn’t think of her as his own child. He was unfailingly punctual, staid, conventional, and dull. There were certainly no surprises with Andrew.

“You know I only want what’s best for you, dear,” Louise said. “You’re my daughter, my only child. I couldn’t stand to see you make the same mistakes I did. Anyway, I must go and get breakfast for Andrew. Love you.”

Perversely, her mother’s dire warnings convinced Cara that she had overreacted the night before. She had to call Ben and apologize for running away, without a thank you or a goodbye. I will be polite and reserved, she told herself. I’ll tell him that I felt sick.

The thought of hearing his warm voice over the line gave her a thrill of anticipation.

She retrieved her coat from the hallway closet and searched the left pocket, and then the right, turning out a collection of old receipts, twisted pony-tail holders, candy wrappers and loose change.

The business card Ben had given her was gone.

Chapter Three

Cara felt through her coat pockets again to make sure there was no hole in the lining.

Thinking back, she clearly remembered taking the card, reading it, and stuffing it into her pocket as she made her untimely departure from Ben’s apartment. Could it have flown out during her mad dash down Occidental Avenue? No. She remembered nervously sliding her fingers over its embossed surface as the taxi cab sped north to Madison Park, thinking about the fact that Ben had held that same card in his hand only moments before. Oh, well, it didn’t matter. She knew his name and it would be relatively easy to look him up. She’d call him after work.

The bus dropped Cara off at the top of the hill that led down to the Vennemeyer’s sprawling compound on the shores of Mercer Island. Michael, Ingrid Vennemeyer’s personal assistant, was waiting in the Land Rover to take her down to the house. On the short drive Cara reflected on how much she enjoyed her new job, a welcome change from the tedious administrative positions she’d held since graduating from the University of Michigan.

Cara’s mother Louise was the first friend Ingrid had made upon arriving in the United States from Sweden almost forty years earlier.

She and Louise had quite a history together, sharing some of the most important milestones of each other’s lives. Ingrid was there when Louise first met Daniel, Cara’s father, and was maid of honor at their wedding. Louise was Ingrid’s matron of honor when she married her American sweetheart, Paul Vennemeyer, an engineer in the fledgling industry of home computing. Now, 34 years later, Paul was a vice-president at Emerald Systems, one of the top personal computer and software companies in the world, and Ingrid Gustavson-Vennemeyer had become one of the wealthiest women on the West Coast.

Although Louise and Ingrid had lost touch over the years, when Cara announced her move to Seattle, Louise immediately thought to call her old friend. Ingrid, always generous to a fault, had hired Cara sight unseen.

At first, Cara was wary of the situation, afraid that the job was primarily a means for her mother to keep tabs on her from a distance. But Ingrid’s unassuming manner soon put her at ease.

“I don’t care what you do in your own time,” Ingrid told Cara on her first day at work. “My only suggestion to you is to have as much fun as you possibly can.” She winked at her and smiled, and Cara was astounded at how different she was from her own mother.

With no children of her own, Ingrid, though a caring and compassionate person, showed no signs of maternal protectiveness. She rarely asked personal questions, and Cara was glad of it.

She admired Ingrid, who despite her elevated circumstances had remained a level-headed, civic-minded Swede at heart. In addition to running Great Expectations, she was active on various fundraising committees and sat on the boards of the Seattle Art Museum, the Kruger-Kingston Infants’ Hospital and the Scandinavian Cultural Center.

Thanks to her connections, innate sense of style, and complete willingness to go in and get her hands dirty when needed, she had pulled together some of the biggest weddings, auctions, and gala events in the greater Seattle area. Great Expectations was booked solid for up to a year in advance.

At the house, Cara took the elevator to the third floor, where she found Ingrid in the large and airy loft she used as her company headquarters.

As usual, Ingrid was impeccably attired in a trim navy blue jacket and matching skirt, with a cream silk blouse and a single strand of pearls hugging her throat. On her ring finger she wore a giant emerald, surrounded by rubies. It was a 20
^th
anniversary gift from her husband.

Ingrid’s face and figure had softened and rounded with the years, but it was still easy to see in her the beautiful young woman she had once been. Her hair, still blonde, but now elegantly streaked with grey, was tied back in a loose chignon and skewered by a polished ebony chopstick. Although she could have had any number of procedures done to lift her brow, remove frown and laugh lines and the like, to date Ingrid had chosen to age naturally. Her face, with large, bee-stung lips and startlingly blue eyes, was only lightly made up, and the fine laugh lines that radiated from her eyes revealed a woman of good humor and generous spirit.

“Oh, darling, there you are. You must come and help me decide between these colors for the ballroom.”

Cara moved to the work table and the two women bent their heads over several swatches of richly embroidered fabric in magenta, gold, and peacock blue.

The event they were preparing for was a surprise 60
^th
birthday party for taking place at a downtown movie theater, followed by dinner in the Spanish Ballroom of the Olympic Fairmont Hotel. Dick Fineman, who was throwing the birthday bash for his wife, Ruth, had made his fortune in commercial real estate, buying up much of Seattle’s blighted downtown before the influx of dot-com ventures and startup technology businesses drove Seattle’s real estate prices sky high in the late ‘80s and ‘90s. Friends and family were flying in from across the nation and abroad to attend.

Cara fingered the rich fabric, trying to envision it as part of the party décor.

“We are looking for elegance, a touch of flamboyance, but I don’t want to go completely over the top. Do you think the blue is the most understated?” After some discussion, they decided to go with the blue, with accents of gold.

Cara retreated to her own desk to review her to-do list for the day. She had to deposit client payments at the bank, confirm numbers and quantities for the Fineman event with the caterer, discuss the floral arrangements with the florist, and check on the status of the audio visual portion of the evening with the videographer.

Together, Ingrid and Cara had come up with a unique event. First, Mr. Fineman would escort his wife to the Cineplex Theatre in Seattle’s artsy Bell Harbor neighborhood, ostensibly to see a new movie release. Actors had been hired to stand in line and act like regular moviegoers. In reality, once they entered the theater, Mrs. Fineman would discover it was filled with all her closest family and friends.

As the lights went down, a 20-minute video chronicling highlights of Ruth’s life would play on the big screen. Following the show, all 200 guests would be bussed to the hotel for a sumptuous dinner, followed by dancing into the night to the swinging music of the Seattle-based quintet Big Band and the Merry Makers.

Cara had never organized, let alone attended an event so grand, and she enjoyed ironing out the details to ensure a successful evening. Ingrid gave her staff full freedom to execute their delegated responsibilities as they pleased, a prospect that Cara initially found daunting. But over the past six months she had grown in confidence and her skills at negotiating, time-management, and general organization had improved dramatically.

Another perk of the job, Cara reflected as she took the elevator to the underground garage of the Vennemeyer mansion, was that she got to drive the company car on all her errands, a brand-new, cherry-red Toyota Highlander Hybrid, fully loaded, with a sunroof. Not that Seattle’s fickle weather had given her much opportunity to use it, she thought, climbing into the cushy leather driver’s seat.

At the bank, Cara was pleased to see her favorite teller, David. Although his official title was financial manager, David often helped out when the line for regular transactions got busy. He was immaculately groomed, dressed in a white shirt, blue tie and sports coat, his curly brown hair tamed and slicked back with heavy pomade. He had a smooth, boyish face and wide-set brown eyes that lit up when she came in. She walked up to him, placing her deposit slip on the counter between them.

“Hi David. I’d like to deposit this check in the Great Expectations account, please, and then withdraw money from my personal checking.” David picked up the deposit slip. He had the long, slender fingers of a piano player. She watched as they danced across his computer keyboard.

“How are you today, Cara?”