Five
Wes had certain beliefs in life. The first was that knowing where to find information was more important than knowing the fact itself. The second was good grooming could make up for any number of perceived physical flaws. The last and most relevant to this particular moment was that the key to success in any endeavor was persistence.
Naturally not to the point of harassment, he thought as he drove to Voline’s house the next day. In the passenger seat was a huge bouquet of opulent red roses and birds of paradise for the larger-than-life woman whose photos he’d analyzed, looking for a clue to her personality that might help him snag an interview. A huge monstera leaf completed the magnificent arrangement and made the entire thing a struggle to carry. It would be worth it, though, if it got him in. Rebecca wanted her story.
He wasn’t surprised when he pulled up to see Nadine’s filthy white car already there. If anyone else shared his third tenet of life, it was Nadine, who was waving a gigantic box of chocolates as she spoke into the intercom.
Wes fixed his belt—a match to his polished chestnut oxfords, since he felt Voline would appreciate a well-dressed man—and extricated his flowers.
Nadine assessed the armful of blooms. “Was a funeral home having a sale on leftovers?” she said.
He ignored her and hit the button. “Ms. Voline? It’s Wes Chen from the Spear .”
The intercom came to life. “Chocolates and flowers? The two of you have the seduction game of a teenager asking his crush to prom.”
Nadine stared at the gate with the set expression Wes had learned to mistrust. “These are my favorite brigadeiros.” Nadine slowly untied the ribbon. “The raspberry is incredible. So is the Mexican spice if you prefer some heat.”
“Never had them,” said Voline.
“That’s too bad.” The rows of perfectly round chocolates glinted like jewels in the sun, and Nadine selected one, staring at the camera as she bit in. “Ohh,” she said as if taken by surprise. “It’s good. So good .”
Wes felt his neck get hot as he watched Nadine eat. Then she made a noise. A noise that wasn’t quite a moan but immediately had Wes on full alert. The last time he’d heard a woman sound that satisfied, he’d been in bed. Naked.
This was not what he should be thinking of in conjunction with Nadine.
Making it worse, Nadine made eye contact with Wes as she spoke into the intercom. “They’re rich,” she said, her voice husky. “The perfect amount of creamy sweetness.”
“What are you doing?” He tried to whisper, but it came out as a croak.
Nadine’s glance turned haughty. “I am eating a chocolate.”
She was eating a chocolate in the same way Lewis Hamilton was a guy who drove a car. The intensity didn’t match the action. “No, you’re not. No one eats like that.”
A snorting laugh came from the intercom. “Sounds like someone’s never had the right kind of sweet,” said Voline.
The heat on his neck blossomed over his face as Nadine turned back to the box. She swept her tongue along her lower lip before choosing a second one. His palms were so sweaty, his grip slipped on the flowers. This was verging on pornographic. She was evil.
Nadine saw him watching and snatched the box away. “Keep your hands to yourself,” she hissed. “Do you know how much these cost? They’re the best in the city.”
Right, it was the chocolates that had his attention.
“I said go,” snapped Voline. There was a pause. “I suppose you can leave the brigadeiros. No point wasting them. Although you might want to give a couple to handsome there.”
“I would do that when hell freezes over,” said Nadine in a chipper voice. She closed the box and slid it under the gate. “I hope you like them.”
Wes ground his teeth as he tucked his rejected flowers between the bars. After all, it wasn’t like he was going to keep them, and he refused to give them to Nadine, who gazed at him with the contented smile of a woman who had completely trounced her opponent.
“Have a good day, Ms. Voline,” he said evenly. “By the way, I was wondering if I could get your comment on—”
“Chocolates aren’t real food,” she grumbled. “Been ages since I had a pizza. Egg rolls. Now get out of here before I call the cops.”
Wes tried again. “Ms. Voline, it will only take—”
“The cops .”
That was clear enough, and he avoided looking at Nadine’s face as they obeyed, moving off the property in tandem since neither of them was willing to leave first.
“That couldn’t have gone worse for you,” she said happily.
“Thank you. I appreciate that.” He’d kill her with kindness, but Nadine refused to die.
“Your flowers make her gate look like a roadside shrine, by the way.”
“They do not.” He couldn’t help but glance back to see the bouquet slide down to lie at the bottom, needing only some pillar candles and a stuffed animal to complete the picture. “Shit.”
She smiled, and Wes didn’t want to explore how that made him feel. Before their antagonism had exploded, he’d liked when Nadine’s smile was aimed at him and to see the pretty dimple in her cheek.
“Better luck next time, Chen,” she called from her car, not missing a chance to rub it in.
He watched her leave. There was no point pressing the intercom, because despite being sent away, his gut told him Voline saw this as a bit of fun. He supposed it eventually got boring splashing around in swimming pools of money.
Then again, she told Nadine to leave the chocolates. It could be that Voline was simply curious about their aphrodisiac qualities, if the reaction they caused in Nadine was anything to go on, but it could be more than that. Perhaps Voline was an old and sick woman desperately seeking amusement and distraction after being confronted with death. She might not mind them coming by.
He got into his car and tapped his fingers on the wheel. He suspected Nadine wanted more than to give Voline an apology. She could have emailed that or left a voice message. She must have seen that comment too, and it piqued her interest.
He drove past Drake’s house, which was twice the size of Voline’s and about half as interesting. If talking to Voline for his story and finding out the details of the controversy—which since yesterday had been enhanced by the intense desire to frustrate and eventually best Nadine—meant being entertaining, he would do what it took.
That scandal story was going to be his.
***
“Pizza?” Nadine frowned at the greasy box as Wes walked up with the aplomb of a waiter at a Michelin-starred restaurant. She herself clutched a white plastic bag stacked with takeout containers from a place that had the menu written in chopstick font. It was the kind of Chinese restaurant her mother had always refused to set foot in despite Nadine’s childhood pleading, insisting on going to Chinatown to meet Pohpoh for what she called real dim sum.
Today, she’d also grabbed a few chicken balls for herself because the thick fried batter was like a drug. She licked her lips and tried to ignore how Wes stared at her, the same way he had when she’d baited Voline with the chocolate yesterday. Had he never seen a woman eat?
“The cheesiest pizza I could find,” he said. “Chinese?”
“Chicken balls with red sauce, egg rolls, and special fried rice.”
To her surprise, Wes laughed. She’d forgotten they’d occasionally amused each other before Wes had shown his true colors. “Looks like we’re closing in on her tastes.”
“Oh, trust me.” Nadine pulled out her pièce de résistance, a box of generic white wine. “I’ve got the winner here.”
Her triumph lasted only seconds because Wes gave her a big smile. “Good try, but I have the advantage.” From behind his back, he pulled out…Nadine squinted.
“Is that a milkshake? I love milkshakes.” Sometimes she dreamed Shamrock Shakes were on the full-time menu.
“I know. You used to bring a Hudson’s cookies and cream one to class every Wednesday. I don’t know how you drank them. Milkshakes are disgusting.”
“Yet you hold one in your hand.”
“Because Voline will love it. This is a chocolate malt milkshake from a diner that makes them the same way they did in the 1960s.” He turned it around as if admiring his own ingenuity. “I brought it in a cooler.”
Damn, and she’d been so proud of her wine box.
The food proved to be no more of a key to unlocking Dot Voline than the chocolates or flowers. She sent them away after asking if they were trying to turn her obituary into a prognostication. “Death by acid reflux is such a mundane way to give up the ghost,” said Voline’s gruff voice through the intercom. “Take it with you. All of it.”
Nadine sat in her car eating the special fried rice out of the container—no point letting it go to waste—and debated her next move as she tried not to cut her mouth on the sharp edges of the plastic spoon. Across the street, Wes sat in his own car, a triangle of pizza hanging from his hand. It looked tasty. She could trade him an egg roll for a slice or maybe that milkshake he hated. As she was about to lower the window, Wes turned and saw her. He lifted that lovely milkshake to take a long pull on the straw, looking her straight in the eyes as he grimaced at the taste.
Be that way. She’d keep the egg rolls.
***
“We haven’t digitized those materials yet,” said the librarian as he led Nadine into the elevator and down to a space with the ambiance of a wartime bunker. “I can show you the old articles we clipped from papers and the microfiche.”
“Anything will be appreciated,” she said, looking around. The low room was filled with floor-to-ceiling card catalogues and metal filing cabinets with scrawled notes taped to the front.
“Like I told the Asian fellow when he asked, there isn’t much about that old rumor.”
That old rumor. Confirmed, Wes was interested in the scandal.
The librarian paused at the end of a stack. “Oh, there he is.”
“Hello, Wes.” Nadine had no choice but to face the inevitable. The shirt you most want to wear will be in the bottom of the laundry, you’ll only forget to set your alarm on days you have an early meeting, and Wes Chen will be right there, inserting himself in the middle of your off-the-books investigation.
Judging from his expression, Wes had come to the same conclusion.
I hate you , she mouthed at him, thrilled to be able to say the words to his face.
He glared at her. Ditto , he said silently.
Get off my turf.
The frog sings at midnight.
Her lipreading might not have been as good as she thought. She turned her gaze from his mouth, with the edges that tilted up, and stared at the arm curled protectively around his work like the resource-hoarding twat he was. This wasn’t only about Voline anymore. It was about the two of them. Nadine was going to beat Wes to this story if it was the last thing she did.
“Can you tell me what you told my esteemed colleague here?” Nadine asked. “So we’re all on the same page.”
If looks could kill, she’d be smeared on the battered steel cabinet behind her, but she deflected it with a saccharine smile she’d never directed at Wes in her life and never would again. That was unless it continued to antagonize him as much as this one apparently did. Then she’d get it surgically attached to her face.
“You’re familiar with Thirty Pieces of Silver ?” the librarian asked.
Nadine was. “Her third book, and the one that first garnered Voline international fame.”
The man looked pleased. “A tour de force of a woman’s experience, baring raw her soul and the core of her feminine energy. An examination of the nature of gender and workplace power dynamics and a woman’s cry of impotent rage in a society dedicated to bending her will to that of Man.”
Nadine could hear the capital M . She didn’t dare look at Wes.
“It was about a lying politician who took advantage of a naive woman in love to save his career, although it destroyed her life,” she said, hoping she could take a shortcut through the literary criticism.
“Dot Voline never confirmed whether the book was based on personal experience,” said the librarian with relish. “Of course she was only a schoolteacher in a small Manitoba town with no access to Ottawa’s hallowed halls of power, so it was obviously the result of her rich imagination.”
“There isn’t enough known about her early years to prove that, is there?” asked Wes in a bland voice.
The librarian waved off that point with a pale bony hand. “She refused to take part in any official biographies. Profiles tend to focus on her productive years, when she was unfettered from small-town life and could spread her creative wings to fly .”
Nadine, who had been raised in a small town, bristled at this. “Was the rumor you mentioned that people thought she based it on her own life?” She kept her phrasing careful, to not give away anything to Wes.
The librarian laughed. “No, no, like I said, no one believed it could be based on Voline’s experiences. There was an idea it was about a specific politician though.”
This was new, and although he tried to hide it, she could tell from Wes’s expression it was the first time he’d heard it as well. “Do you remember anything else?” she asked.
The librarian sucked his teeth and looked at the ceiling before raising his tweedy shoulders in defeat. “As I said, it was only whispers. I assume she heard some little tidbit, perhaps from one of the men in town, and let her imagination work. The story is exaggerated for literary effect.”
Wes’s eyebrows went higher. “Exaggerated?”
The librarian stiffened. “One must believe in the morality of our country’s leaders. A married politician having a work affair and allowing his mistress to cover his financial misdeeds? He would have been shunned by those responsible for maintaining our institutions.”
“Right, right,” Nadine rushed in as Wes opened his mouth to reply. “Thank you for your help. I’ll look around, and if you remember anything else, I’d appreciate it.”
The librarian cast a suspicious look at Wes before bestowing a coffee-stained smile on Nadine. “Happy to help. It was such a shame about the mistake with her obituary in the Herald . I wrote a very strong letter to the editor about their journalistic standards and threatened to cancel my subscription.”
Nadine felt her smile grow thin. “I’m sure they appreciated your feedback.”
He nodded complacently. “It’s my duty as a citizen to ensure accuracy in the fourth estate. Who will watch the watchers?”
Finally the librarian was gone, waving through the doors of the elevator as they closed. Nadine dropped her head on the table. “So grateful to all our subscribers,” she said. “And for the purity of our political leaders.”
Wes was too busy laughing to do anything besides tap her hand in what she assumed was a momentary and misplaced sense of camaraderie. “He told me the Spear wasn’t a proper news organization and he actively opposes the library’s purchase of a subscription.”
“Good to know we both suck. He makes me grateful for the incredible librarians of my youth.” She looked up. “He also blew your cover.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“The rumor? Thirty Pieces of Silver ?”
“Again, I’m only doing background research for a story on Dot Voline. You might not understand what it means to be thorough.”
“I’m thorough.”
He pulled out his phone to read aloud. “‘Literary icon Dot Voline has died after a lengthy battle with cancer at the age of seventy-two.’ Yeah, very thorough.”
She wanted to throw a book at him. All the books. “That was a single error in judgment, and you have no right to come here and horn in on my story.”
“It’s not yours, but noted.” He flipped through his clips.
“I have asked the gods to curse you in many inconvenient ways.” She always felt as if she was tempting fate to wish truly bad things on people, even if they deserved it.
“Like what?” He pulled out a pair of reading glasses and perched them on his nose. She ignored how cute they looked. Wes was not cute.
“Your shoes will become constantly untied.”
He stuck out his foot to show a polished loafer. “Do your worst.”
“Your coffee will always be decaf.”
“I should cut back anyway.” He opened a new folder.
Nadine felt a bit desperate. “Your favorite brand of notebook will be discontinued.”
“Oh.” Wes looked up at her, bowed lips turning down. “That’s mean.”
“You deserve it. I know why you’re here. It’s to upset me. It’s part of your ongoing need to steal my ideas.”
“That is narcissistic as well as wrong. You know that you take up a very small amount of my day?”
“Then why do you care about Dot Voline? It has nothing to do with you. Admit you’re here because of the scandal.”
He only shrugged, leaving Nadine seething.
“Fine,” she said. “May your every meal be ruined by a person talking in exquisite detail about their dreams.”
Wes ignored her and got up to check a cabinet, leaving her staring at his back.
It was confirmed. She hated Wes. She stalked off to the stacks to find her own answers to Voline’s story. And to ask the gods to put salt instead of sugar into Wes’s desserts. That would show him.