Strange Bedpersons Read online

  “How’d you know?” Park said, stunned.

  “Tess talks to Gina,” Nick said. “Have you lost your mind?”

  “Yes,” Park said glumly.

  Nick rolled his eyes and leaned forward. “Park, you can’t go on like this. I don’t want to interfere, God knows I don’t, but you have to stop this.”

  Park winced. “I know I have to drop Gina. I know that. It’s just she’s so happy—”

  “Oh, for crying out loud.” Nick threw his napkin down on the table in disgust. “You can’t please the whole world. And I’m warning you, I can only keep Tess from blowing the whistle for so long. She wants you dead now.”

  Park was appalled. “She’d tell Gina?”

  “Of course she’d tell Gina,” Nick said. “Damn it, Park, let Gina down as easy as you can, but stop seeing her. What you’re doing is cruel.” He looked at his friend in puzzlement. “This isn’t like you.”

  “I know,” Park said. “I know. I’ll do it. Soon. I really will. I can’t stand this much longer, anyway. It’s driving me crazy. I sit there with Corinne drinking champagne and then I go to Gina’s and it’s like I’m in a different world. Ravioli. Throwing toast. Watching a twelve-inch TV. Not what I’d expected.”

  “What are you talking about?”. Nick said, totally confused.

  “Nothing.” Park shrugged. “Forget it. It’s over. I knew it would be. I’ve just got to tell Gina and... and...” He stopped, unhappy and disoriented, and began shredding the roll again. “Oh, hell. Forget it. Women are hell. I don’t know how you’re still sane after four weeks with Tess.”

  “Sane? I’m not.” Nick relaxed against the back of his chair, glad to be off the subject of Gina. “Did you ever live with a woman you found it impossible to say no to?”

  “Yes,” Park said gloomily. “My mother.”

  “This is different,” Nick said. “We made love on the piano at the Opera Guild open house.”

  Now Park looked confused. “Why?”

  “Because it was there,” Nick said. “I don’t know why. Tess said, ‘Let’s,’ and I said, ‘No,’ and we did it.” He shook his head. “We’re going to get arrested one of these days, but it will be worth it.”

  “So that’s what’s keeping you with this woman? Great sex on pianos?”

  “No,” Nick said. “But it’s not hurting the situation any.”

  “If she’s what you want...” Park said doubtfully.

  “She’s what I want.” Nick pushed back his chair and stood up. “Enough about me. Get rid of Gina before Tess tells her what you’re doing and then dismembers you.”

  “Right,” Park said. “Get rid of Gina.”

  AT ELEVEN-THIRTY THAT NIGHT, Tess came out of the history stacks at the university library to find Nick asleep with his head on a table.

  “Nick,” she said softly, shaking him. “Nick, honey, I’m sorry.”

  He shook his head a little to clear it. “It’s all right. Did you find anything?”

  “No,” Tess said miserably. “Not one mention of Lanny anywhere. I swear I didn’t make it up.”

  “I know you didn’t.” Nick rubbed a hand over his eyes. “You ready to call it a night?”

  “How do you know I didn’t?” Tess asked.

  “Don’t be ridiculous.” He sounded testy as he pushed his chair away from the table. “You know I trust you. Of course you didn’t make it up.”

  “Then why aren’t you going to Welch?” Tess said exasperated. “Why can’t you just talk to him about this? Why can’t you talk him out of trashing Lanny? You’re a lawyer. You can talk anybody into anything. And you know I’m never going to find that manuscript. It’s hopeless.”

  Nick focused on her, slowly waking up. “You’re giving up?”

  Tess collapsed into the chair next to him. “I’ve talked to people who remember Lanny and people who remember the stories, but nobody has a manuscript and nobody remembers it well enough to quote it. I’ve got nothing.” She waved her hand toward the stacks behind her. “This was my last shot. But nobody even mentions Lanny. Notes from fifty commune members and nobody mentions Lanny.”

  Nick frowned. “Why not?”

  “What?”

  “He spent the summer there,” Nick said. “Why didn’t anybody mention him?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What does this file look like?”

  Tess shrugged. “It’s just a big folder full of papers.”

  “It’s not bound?” Nick said. “Are the papers numbered?”

  “I don’t know. It—” Tess stopped when Nick leaned back in his chair and sighed. “What?”

  He stood up and pulled her to her feet. “Come on. I’m going to hate myself for this, but show me this damn file.”

  Ten minutes later, Tess looked at the notes she’d made. “According to the log, four sets of papers are missing,” she said. “All from the summer of ‘sixty-five. One of them was a manuscript. Somebody took them out. Why?”

  “We know why,” Nick said, shoving the file box back on the shelf. “Somebody’s trying to wipe out any evidence of Lanny. What we need to know is who.”

  The research librarian was furious when she found out that papers had been removed. She called up the computer file immediately, and then they watched as her fury turned to confusion. “This can’t be right,” she told them. “In the ten years that file has been there, only one other person has checked it out.”

  “And that would be?” Nick prompted.

  She blinked at them. “Norbert Welch. Why would he vandalize an old oral-history file?”

  “I have no idea,” Nick lied, nudging Tess to keep quiet. “Thank you very much.”

  “The rat,” Tess said as she followed him out of the library. “The lousy, cheating, plagiarizing, library-vandalizing rat.”

  “I know,” Nick said. “I’ll talk to Park and we’ll figure what to do tomorrow.” He caught her hand and pulled her along with him toward the parking lot, overriding her next question. “I don’t know what we’re going to do yet. And right now I don’t care. I just want to go home and go to bed. I have to be in court first thing in the morning.”

  Tess started to protest his dismissal of Welch and then winced as the guilt hit her. He was tired and she was nagging him. Don’t you ever pay any attention to him? Gina had asked, and here she was, totally oblivious to the fact that he had to get up early in the morning. He gave her the best of everything and she hated all of it, and now she was dragging him through libraries in the middle of the night so he could help her destroy his career.

  If you had any consideration for this man, she told herself, you’d get out of his life. As a personal goal, it had very little appeal, but it was the right thing to do.

  “Are you okay?” he asked when he’d walked her through the shadows of the parking lot and they were back in the car. He turned the key in the ignition, and the engine purred to life. “You’re awfully quiet.”

  “I think I’d better move out,” Tess said.

  “What?” Nick turned off the ignition and faced her in the gloom. “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m not good for you,” Tess said miserably. “I don’t look out for you and I’m going to ruin your career and—”

  “Who the hell have you been talking to?” Nick said. “I don’t need you to look out for me. I look out for me. And my career is fine. What are you talking about?”

  “Yes, but suppose somebody had caught us on that piano?” Tess said. “Then where would you be?”

  “Probably enshrined in the envious heart of every man in Riverbend,” Nick said. “Who started you on this?”

  “I just thought that maybe you’d be better without me dragging you down into degradation every fifteen minutes.”

  “I like degradation,” Nick said. “I’ve had more great sex since I discovered degradation with you than I’d ever dreamed of. Come here.” He leaned across the stick shift and cradled her cheek in his hand and kissed her, and Tess melte