Where the hell was her shoe? Dressed in a sleek, black (all her sleek outfits were black) Donna Karan short skirt and jacket, Robin searched the wreckage of her bedroom for the left of a pair of Stuart Weitzman black leather pumps. This chaotic state of living, while not entirely foreign to her, was still highly undesirable, and she was, she realized, desperate to finalize the deal with Jacob Manning to do the renovations she had started and abandoned.
Okay, so her friends were right—the purchase of this house had been something of a lark. She had stumbled on it one Sunday afternoon as she drove, lost, through the Village, looking for the barbecue her friends Linda and Kirk were hosting. The house was nestled on a wide boulevard with giant live oaks and huge mansions. It was perfect, of course—not too big, not too small. So she had phoned her attorney, told her to buy it. When she’d moved in, she’d stored her belongings, shoved her clothes into one room, set up the dining room table with the leather chairs, and let the rest of it sit empty in anticipation of the renovations she would do herself.
At least she had every intention of doing them herself. But she had succeeded only in knocking a couple of huge gaping holes in the walls before she was off to Madrid, and then London, and New York, and then . . . whatever. How could she have known so many things would come up? Needless to say, she was hiring out the work before she went stark raving mad, and it was, come hell or high water, the one thing she would accomplish today.
When the wayward shoe was at last located, Robin emerged from her house looking completely cool and sophisticated. The only accessory that did not reek of chic was the black leather headband she had stuck on her head as a last resort for keeping her short, wildly curly hair in some sense of order.
Robin marched out onto the drive, passing Raymond, her yardman, with a jaunty wave, and proceeded to her Mercedes 500 E-Class. She fired up that sweet ride and sped out onto North Boulevard.
As she turned off the boulevard, a man on a Harley pulled into her drive. He parked the bike, waved at Raymond. “You doing okay?” he asked as the yardman walked up to the door to unlock it for him.
“Can’t complain, can’t complain,” Raymond said. “You gonna be long, Mr. Manning?”
“Nah. Just need to look at a couple of things. I’ll put the key out.”
“That’ll do,” Raymond said.
Jake Manning walked inside the empty mansion, pausing in the foyer to peer into the dining room, where Ms. Lear had obviously set up shop. His nose wrinkled as he surveyed the wreckage—empty yogurt containers, papers strewn about, a bra curiously draped over one chair, the obligatory computer, one running shoe, an empty wine bottle.
Jake moved on, up the great curving staircase to the upper floors.
Now here was the odd part, he thought as he reached the second-floor landing and surveyed the gaping hole in the wall directly ahead. That hole made no sense. She had freely admitted to it, had told him on the phone that she “had started the renovations.” It made no sense because first, that hole served no conceivable purpose, and second, while he’d never actually met Robin Lear (she preferred to have Raymond let him in), her house had all the markings of a society bitch. He should know—he did enough of their houses, could spot them a mile off. But this hole thing had given him pause. No dainty, cosmetically enhanced woman was going to make a hole that big.
With a shrug, he continued on to the master bath to double-check the dimensions.
In the meantime, Robin was cursing traffic, which was, as usual, moving at a snail’s pace. She punched a number into her cell phone, and used the morning crawl to reschedule a dinner date, return two business calls, and track down Darren Fogerty’s assistant—Darren being her contact at Atlantic—to set up a meeting for the next morning. When she clicked off that call, she was at the elevator, headed for the tenth floor suite of offices that housed the LTI Southwest corporate offices. All four of them. Oh, and a conference room.
She marched through the glass doors emblazoned with Lear Transport Industries, Inc., her briefcase swinging carelessly from her shoulder, and said hello to the receptionist as she stopped to pick up her phone messages. There were several new ones—from Bill (Flying in. Drinks tonight?), Darren from Atlantic, a sales manager of a cable manufacturer, and three that really caught her attention. Mr. Herrera (she needed a cup of coffee for that one), Dad (an elephant tranquilizer), and Jacob Manning, who would, if she was lucky, commence the renovation of her house today.