Authors: Diana Diamond

Good Sister, The (12 page)

BOOK: Good Sister, The

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“Sure. In the summer months it beats an air-conditioned apartment. Open a hatch and let the wind rush through. The rocking motion. And then the tinkling of the rigging. It’s a great night’s sleep.”

Was he going to invite her to stay aboard? She had actually thought she could see him framing the invitation. But he had decided that he needed to get work done for a morning meeting and had picked up the radio to call for the yacht-club launch.

On another occasion he had driven her home after a regatta on the New Jersey shore. “Come up. I’ll make you a cup of coffee,” Jennifer had offered. He had gone as far as her doorway but then had turned back. Reluctantly, she had finally admitted that he didn’t share her interest. Or, if he did, his concern for the company was much stronger than his passion for her. She had given up trying, although she still wondered if he ever thought about her.

But she had been enraged when he had tried to implicate Padraig in her accident. And now she was equally enraged by the thought that her husband had threatened to destroy Peter.

She challenged Padraig when he came east for a weekend. They were having breakfast at her loft, each involved with a cup of black coffee at the butcher-block kitchen table. “Padraig, did you threaten Peter with things from his past?”

He looked up uncertainly. “Did I what?”

“Did you threaten to tell Catherine and me about the death of his partner in a fire?”

“Certainly not!” He seemed hurt by the suggestion.

“Well, did you know about his partner? And about the fire?”

He paused uneasily. Then, “Yes, I knew about it. It’s no great secret.”

Jennifer answered, “It’s been a secret as far as I’m concerned.
I’ve known Peter for ten years and I never heard about it.”

“His partner had a lot of friends in the entertainment business,” Padraig explained. “I suppose that’s why the story made the rounds out on the Coast.”

“When did you first hear it?” Jennifer persisted.

“Oh, I don’t know. I think I remember it from way back. And then someone brought it up when I first began mentioning your name and praising your virtues.” He had recovered from his initial shock. The brogue was creeping back into his voice.

“But you never told Peter that you knew?”

“Not in so many words. But I must admit that I was dearly pissed off when I found that he had put his detectives on me. And I may have said something about people in glass houses. Intemperate, perhaps, but certainly not threatening. I’m really not one to dredge up someone’s past, what with all the skeletons trying to kick their way out of my closets.”

He seemed not to give the issue another thought during the day. They went down to the seaport and joined lines of tourists, lunched on clam chowder and crackers, and then took a cab to a showing of an artist Jennifer liked. They dined in the backyard garden of a small Italian restaurant while the owner’s wife paraded the neighbors by so they could sigh over the movie star. And finally, they went back to her apartment, where they sipped wine in the bathtub and made love while their bodies were still wet.

But on Sunday, while he was packing for his trip back to California, he returned to the charges of blackmail. “Now remember, darlin’, don’t believe everything that your dear friend Peter says about me. And I’ll give no mind to the rumors about you luring Boy Scouts into your bedroom.”

“What would Peter say about you?”

“Well, so far only that I’m a murderer and a blackmailer. There are any number of felonies left that he can choose from.”

“Peter didn’t say that you tried to kill me. That’s what the company’s security people implied. And he didn’t call you a blackmailer. He said someone was blackmailing him about his
past, and I wanted to be sure that it wasn’t you.”

He closed the suitcase and snapped the latches ceremoniously. “I suppose he doesn’t hate me. After all, he’s given me a very generous business deal, even though I’m a bargain at any price. But he sees me as unworthy of your affections. And that, I think, is because he’d like to have you for himself.”

“Peter?” She hadn’t entertained the notion of Peter wanting her for quite some time. “He’s never even shown an interest in Catherine, much less me. He’s never been interested in any woman for more than a few months.”

She put him in a cab at her front door, then walked to the subway for her trip to the Upper East Side, where she was joining Catherine for dinner. Catherine had set the café table on her balcony with a view of the East River.

“The good silver,” Jennifer teased, “and on the maid’s night out.”

“I see you dressed for sandwiches in the kitchen,” Catherine countered. They both laughed at the contrast, Jennifer in jeans and a sweater while Catherine was in her basic black with a knotted string of pearls. They worked together in the kitchen, Jennifer tossing the salad while Catherine sautéed the fish, then they carried their plates to the balcony.

“Padraig was the one who threatened Peter,” Jennifer said as soon as they had begun eating. Catherine looked up abruptly but said nothing.

“He didn’t make a big deal out of it. Just tit for tat because Peter was making insinuations about him. But I think Padraig was lying when he said he just happened to come across the information. I think he’s been digging.”

Catherine’s fork dangled in midair. Jennifer gave up all pretense of eating. “I suppose I knew that he was a braggart and a philanderer. In a crazy way, that’s part of his appeal. But I never guessed how much it would hurt. I know he’s lying about the blackmail. And I’m tired of his explaining everything away with
his damn phony blarney. I’m not casting a movie. I’m trying to put together a life.”

Now Catherine set down her fork. “There was something I was going to get into later. But we’re talking about it now, and I don’t think either of us is very hungry.”

“Oh God, is it bad?”

“It’s about your husband, and it isn’t good. I’m afraid you’re going to hate me.”

“You? You’re involved?”

“We’ve both been taken in,” Catherine said, “by the same damn phony blarney.”

They left the balcony and went inside to the den that was a cross between an art gallery and a library.

“I’ll fix a drink,” Catherine offered as they passed the bar.

Jennifer shook her head. “No thanks.”

“You’re going to need it.”

“Scotch, then,” Jennifer decided.

Catherine laughed. “We’ve both picked up your husband’s lousy habits.”

She began by explaining her plan. She had become convinced that O’Connell was a schemer, desperate for money, and that he had married Jennifer with money in mind. Jennifer bristled but continued to listen while her sister once again linked Padraig to the auto accident. “It was inescapable to Peter and obvious to me. We both felt you were in real danger. That’s why we stopped pressing for the marital agreement, and why we decided to give Padraig another source of revenue. We put up the money he needed so he wouldn’t have to get it from you.”

“Did it ever cross your mind that I might want to share my money with my husband?” Jennifer interrupted.

“It crossed my mind every day. And I kept telling myself that it wasn’t my business. But we weren’t going to let him break the company, and we didn’t want him to end up breaking your heart. It seemed like something we had to do.”

“You and Peter?”

“No. It was my plan. Peter didn’t agree with it. He didn’t want
you hurt, but he thought our butting in might hurt you even more.”

Catherine went on, explaining how she had gone out to Hollywood to help launch the new partnership. She spent the best part of an hour detailing how they had worked together to pick the half-dozen projects they would work on, and to sign up the support they would need. “It’s an exciting business, and Padraig’s name is prime capital. It could be a great success.”

Jennifer was nodding. Padraig had told her all that. She was thrilled that he could be a help to Pegasus and still do his own thing. She didn’t see any bad news.

Catherine gathered up their glasses for a refill. “There’s more. A lot more, I’m afraid.”

She told her sister how eagerly Padraig had agreed to a reorganization that put more money in his hands. “Leprechaun, he wants to call it. Leprechaun Productions.” And how happy he had been to parade his wife’s sister before potential backers and associates. It was obvious that his only interest in the Pegan sisters was as an almost boundless source of funding. He had even implied that two bed partners might bring in more money than one.

“So, I decided to have him followed,” Catherine said. “Was he the loving husband you deserve or the self-centered bastard I was seeing?”

“I don’t think I like where this is going,” Jennifer interrupted.

Catherine agreed. “I could stop right here with just a word of advice.”

“No, you can’t. Not when you’ve gone this far.”

“He went straight to some movie-star wannabe. I have full reports on the whole lurid scene.”

Jennifer caught her breath. “You bitch!” she finally managed. “You have no right.”

“I have a right to find out whether the person I’m funding can be trusted, or whether he’s a lying cheat. And I have a duty to make someone I care for see what she doesn’t want to see.”

Jennifer was breaking into tears.

“There were pictures. They turned my stomach. All I could do was burn them.”

Jennifer rushed at Catherine and began swinging and clawing wildly. “You took my husband from me. You ruined my marriage … .”

Catherine fended off the attack and then grabbed Jennifer’s hands. “I didn’t take your husband. I showed you that you have no husband. Padraig O’Connell doesn’t love anyone except Padraig O’Connell.”

Jennifer stopped flailing, letting her hands and arms be captured. Then she fell against Catherine’s shoulder, sobbing uncontrollably. The two sisters hugged and rocked in each other’s arms, Catherine’s makeup running in dark streaks down her cheeks. “I’m so sorry,” she kept repeating, an apology that Jennifer finally acknowledged with a nod.

“I’d like to leave now,” she said when she was able to pull out of the embrace.

“Stay for the night. You’re too upset to be home alone.”

“I’ll get more upset if I stay here and keep looking at you.”

“I know … I did something terrible. But I had to find some way to make you see him for what he was. Please don’t hate me so.”

“Not you, him! I want to tell him I know and see what kind of funny Irish explanation he’ll come up with. See if he has the balls to call me ‘darlin’ ’ with his mischievous little smile.”

“Just get a lawyer and be rid of him,” Catherine advised. “I’ll get even for you. I’ll put that bastard through so much hell—”

“No! He’s my problem, and I’ll take care of him,” Jennifer said in a tone that invited no discussion. “What I’m wondering is how I’m going to take care of you.”

“Jennifer, if there had been any other way, I never would have done this to you.”

Jennifer sneered. “Oh, I’m sure of that. But why is it, Catherine, that every time I find happiness, you’re the one who takes it away? Why are you always the cloud that appears just in time to rain on my parades?”

ELEVEN

THE ENVELOPE was postmarked from the New York City main post office on Thirty-third Street. Plain brown, nine by twelve, fastened with a metal clasp, glued, and then taped over with cellophane tape. The address had been hand-printed with a felt-tip marker.

Jennifer fingered it before tearing it open. Inside, there were two cardboard stiffeners protecting half a dozen black-and-white prints. She pulled back in shock. Padraig, buff naked, was stretched on top of a dark-haired woman with a voluptuous figure. Jennifer couldn’t believe her eyes, but then again, there was nothing here that Catherine hadn’t told her about. It was just that the graphic evidence was much more jarring.

Cautiously, she pushed the picture away and saw the second photo. This time it was the back of the woman, who was now sitting atop a man. Jennifer couldn’t see either face, but there was no mistaking Padraig’s elaborate headboard.

Then a repeat of the second photo, only this time with Padraig’s face visible. His eyes were open and he was smiling broadly. She could almost hear him making one of his outrageous jokes. He liked to talk during sex.

The next two photos had the lovers in various poses that might have been cut from a porno magazine. Padraig’s face appeared in one, and the other showed the telltale headboard. The woman’s face couldn’t be seen, but Jennifer didn’t really care who she was. In fact, she didn’t want to know.

But then came the final picture, the one she knew she was
really meant to see. The woman had turned in the bed as if about to get up and had been caught naked, staring full-face into the hidden lens.

It was Catherine.

Jennifer let the photos fall onto her desk and sat staring into space, the final image still burned into her eyes. She glanced down and scanned the evidence. Now she could recognize her sister in each of the pictures: her hair, the taper of her shoulders, the wasp-thin waist. Her sister romping with her husband, to the obvious delight of both. Her husband bathed in pleasure beyond what he had shared with her. They went well together, two celebrities in love with their status and sharing it in the public eye. Two stars high above the world, making love in a way that normal earthbound people could only imagine. Jennifer felt like an outsider gawking into a magazine that embraced the lives of the rich and famous. She felt rage but with an aftertaste of envy. She felt betrayed but also cut out, as if she had been dismissed and sent back to her less glamorous surroundings.

Carefully, she reordered the prints, slipped them between the cardboards, then closed the clasp. She walked as steadily as her shaking legs allowed down the hallway to Catherine’s office.

Catherine was at her desk, editing a document, while a secretary bent over her shoulder. She glanced up at the interruption, caught her sister’s cold glance, and dismissed the secretary. Neither of them moved until the girl had closed the door behind her.

Catherine started to get up, but Jennifer bounded toward her and tossed the envelope on her desk. ��This morning’s mail,” she said, then stood and waited while her sister glanced up from the envelope to Jennifer, then back to the envelope. She opened it carefully and slid the photos out.

She recognized herself even in the first photo where her face was hidden. “Oh my God” was the best she could manage. She looked up at her sister with fear in her eyes. Then she started, “Jennifer—”

“Look at the others,” Jennifer ordered. “They all do you justice.”

Catherine fingered her way through the prints. When she got to the final picture, she let her face fall into her palm.

“No wonder you burned the pictures. You certainly didn’t want me to know just which Hollywood wannabe Padraig was with. Or were you just shy about posing in the raw?”

“Jennifer, there were no pictures. I just made that up. I had no idea someone was actually taking pictures. But it proves what I said last night. He wanted the money and then he wanted me.” She gestured to the prints in front of her. “I don’t know, but maybe he hired the photographer so he’d be able to keep me paying. Blackmail, in case I ever wanted to cut off his funds and get out of his business.”

“What are you saying, that he drugged you and dragged you into bed for a photo session?”

“Of course not.”

“Good, because I wouldn’t believe you. You seemed to be having too much fun.”

Catherine nodded. “No, I wasn’t drugged. I wasn’t even dragged. I just wanted to know whether he would betray you for money, and I learned that he would. Maybe it’s good that you’ve seen these, because now you know the truth. He’s a bastard, Jennifer. What he saw in you are the same things he saw in me. Dollar signs!”

“I don’t believe that!” Jennifer screamed in a voice loud enough to earn glances from the secretaries outside the glass door.

Catherine simply gestured to the pictures. “Isn’t this enough proof?”

“It’s more than enough proof of how much you hate me. How in God’s name could one sister climb into bed with the other sister’s husband? Were you jealous that the movie star picked me instead of you? Or is it that you just can’t stand to see me happy?”

“What are you going to do?” Catherine asked.

Jennifer couldn’t wait to answer. “Send these to Padraig. I want to hear whatever ancient Celtic spell he uses to get out of this.”

Catherine’s eyes lowered. She wasn’t sure there was anything more to say. But Jennifer kept talking, her voice becoming more ominous with each word. “And then I’m going to get back at you, sister dear. I’m not sure exactly how, but it will be your worst nightmare. This time you’ve gone much too far.”

“Sweet Jesus, you’re merciless,” Padraig said as soon as Catherine came on the line. “Private detectives and lurid photographs? Did you have to grind the poor girl down into the dirt?”

He had just received the photograph in the mail, along with a terse note from Jennifer.

If this is really you, could you autograph it for my photo album.
Your fan, Jennifer.

He had cringed at the image, which made him look heavier and older, and then tried to figure out how it had been taken. The view was through the sliding glass door at the side of his bedroom. He was on his back in perfect profile. She had been caught looking into the camera.

The photographer, he reasoned, had somehow climbed up onto the deck from the beach side, then gone around to the bedroom window. It was embarrassing to think of what else might have been photographed, and to see how ordinary he looked making love. The movie scenes of him slipping under the sheets with a naked nymph implied an ecstasy that he found lacking in the photo.

“I didn’t bring the photographer. I thought that was your idea,” Catherine said.

“Mine? Now, why in hell would I want pictures of one of my more shameful moments?” he countered.

“Maybe to blackmail me. You could threaten to show them to Jennifer.”

He groaned in exasperation. “Then why would I send the pictures to her? Wouldn’t showing them to Jennifer make them rather useless?”

Catherine was suddenly speechless. Then she asked, “Well, who then?”

“I don’t know,” he answered. “I’ll have to figure that one out. But in the meantime, exactly what am I supposed to say to my wife?”

“As little as possible. Just agree to a quiet divorce and don’t quibble about the property settlement. I’ll be bringing more than enough to the partnership.”

“But I have to explain to her,” he protested.

“The picture explains everything,” Catherine answered. “And if you get into one of your witty Celtic moods, she may take a pistol to you. Be particularly careful not to call her ‘darlin’.‘She told me that would really enrage her.”

Catherine set up a schedule of weekly trips out to California, where she spent long days touring the industry. She sat through the casting meeting for a movie about a boy and his dog, a wholesome family picture that would get maximum satellite distribution. “How in hell do you interview a dog?” she demanded during the lunch break. She looked at the camera work of cinematographers who might shoot a moody story about an older man obsessed with a much younger girl. She was introduced to new faces who might be ready to make the jump to stardom. She dined with agents until she could almost predict their pitches. On each trip, she stuffed her bag with scripts that Padraig thought were worth considering.

On most trips she slept with Padraig, who seemed fully recovered from his disastrous breakup with Jennifer. “Am I on
Candid Camera?
” he asked one night as he was slipping out of his briefs. He made a great show of pulling the shades and drawing
the blinds. “Is this thing bugged?” he wondered on another occasion before using his bedside telephone.

“This is really a wonderful arrangement,” he admitted one morning while Catherine and he were sharing coffee on the deck. “Money, power, and sex, neatly served in a spectacular chafing dish. Brought from New York to my bedside every week.”

“Just don’t do anything to spoil it,” Catherine warned him.

Padraig knew that the warning was to be taken seriously. That was the bitter herb that came with the chafing dish. Catherine had taken control of the venture, reserving the more important decisions for herself. At times it seemed that she was purposely humiliating him. She had forced him to back away from a commitment to an industry mogul known for his vast ego. The man could make stars fade very quickly for less brazen insults to his power. She frequently overruled him at meetings with his associates, leaving little doubt as to who was in charge. At first she had been the surprisingly knowledgeable ornament on his arm. Now he was becoming a decorative scalp hanging from her belt. He had protested several times, but she had dismissed his complaints as silly pouting. And she had reminded him of the facts. They were further along than he ever would have been on his own. The profits would soon be pouring into Leprechaun Productions.

Jennifer’s recovery wasn’t nearly as quick or as painless. She decided to leave Padraig and began divorce proceedings. She plunged back into her work with an energy that bordered on insanity, arriving early, leaving late, and eating a packaged lunch at her desk. She cut off social contacts with her staff, appearing at meetings through a private door and disappearing the moment that the business was completed. Her secretary generally returned calls from Catherine and Peter, acknowledging that Jennifer had seen the memo, studied the proposal or whatever was involved, and that her comments would be forthcoming.

Peter, who had only suspicions about the relationship between Catherine and O’Connell and no knowledge of the damning
photographs, was clearly worried. He had tried several approaches to forcing meetings with Jennifer and had always been put off. He had tried to talk to her during the legal exchanges of her divorce when her stock ownership was at issue. Again there were only notes, and most of these from her lawyers.

“How much of this was my fault?” he asked Catherine while they were having lunch together.

“How could it be your fault?” she responded.

“I’m the one who had the security people investigate the accident. I guess you could say that I was the one who tried to implicate O’Connell. And then I told her that her husband had tried to blackmail me.”

“You never accused him.”

“No, but I didn’t deny that it had been him. So it was pretty obvious whom I was talking about.”

He suggested that it might be best for Jennifer if they pulled out of their corporate partnership with O’Connell. Catherine reminded him they had a great deal invested.

“I’d just as soon write it off as a loss and get Padraig O’Connell out of our lives. It can’t be easy on your sister to have us arm in arm with a man who treated her badly.”

“A loss?” Catherine seemed shocked. “Do you have any idea how much effort I’ve put into this? We’re going to be very successful as producers. And we’re going to bring the whole damn industry onto our satellites. I’m not writing it all off as a loss.”

When he finally succeeded in cornering Jennifer in her office, he faced the issues head-on, first with an apology for his part in the strain on her marriage.

“As it turns out, you were probably right,” she answered with little fanfare. He was surprised to see that she seemed to have accepted that Padraig was behind her accident.

Next he had attorneys study the deal between Pegasus and Leprechaun. He wanted to find a way for Jennifer to participate without having to deal with her soon-to-be ex-husband.

“Just get us out of it, Peter,” she said. “I can’t work on a project where his name is going to keep coming up.”

That, he agreed, was his thought as well. But, as he explained, the organization put Padraig and Catherine in control. Peter could take back his interest, but they could go on and hold Pegasus to all its financial commitments. “We need the business, or something like it, so I’d rather get Padraig out than take ourselves out.”

“But Catherine won’t go along with you?” she asked, suggesting that the cause of his dilemma was her sister.

“Not yet. He’s the only industry insider in the company. She feels that we still need him.”

BOOK: Good Sister, The

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