Her eyes flashed with the petulant outrage of a little girl caught in the cookie jar, thinking it very unreasonable of you to have come into the kitchen at that precise moment. Then her eyelids lowered.
“Your mother think of that?”
“I don’t need all my fingers to count to nine,” Matt informed her. “If that box had been mailed with just those pictures, it would have been crushed. And if that stack of pictures had been alone, the ends would have been curled. To keep the prints flat and the box unbroken, that box must have been nearly full.”
Ada cocked her head and unleashed a sweet little smile. “You’re so clever,” she murmured. “Any time you want to go to hell, I’ll lend you my handbasket.”
“It was full, wasn’t it? What were the other pictures?”
“Well, I can’t talk about it here. Not with all these City ears open.” She waved at a passing ear. “Come over to the house in the morning and we’ll talk.”
Matt frowned. “In the….”
She spread five pink fingers toward the crowd. “Marshall never gets up until three or four in the afternoon when we’ve both been to a party like this. It’s the best time.”
“Hung over?”
“It’s the food,” she confided, leaning in. “He loses track of how much he eats and goes into hibernation.”
He took the page of notes from his shirt pocket, found a clean space, and wrote “Morning.” “No hangovers for you?” he inquired, refolding the paper so a clean sheet was outermost.
“Oh, that’s such a waste of time.” She craned forward to peek at the paper as he slipped it away. There was nothing for her to see, but Matt had a view of more Ada Silberwetter than he needed.
She knew it, too. “Come over good and early and you can stay for lunch.” Her lashes fluttered at him. “You could tuck me in for my afternoon nap.”
Matt stepped back, realizing he had lost the initiative in this match and was paying defense again. He raised his empty paper plate between them, almost as a shield as she slid forward some more.
“Stay for supper,” she purred, “And I‘ll get out all the family albums for you to study. I have some bearskin poses you wouldn’t believe.” Big round eyes bored into his; it didn’t help when she suddenly closed them. The eyelids created rounded mounds which echoed what he was trying to ignore.
“Oh dear,” she said, her voice devoid of any surprise or dismay as the wine glass slipped from her hand.
It was empty. She started down. “No!” cried Matt. “I’ll get it!” Anything to keep her from bending over any further. He stooped to snatch at the stem, and felt the pens and pencils in his pocket start to slide free. His left hand, paper plate and all, clapped up to avert the avalanche.
“That’s what I like about you,” she said, plucking the glass from his right hand. “Thank you. You always think of unexpected things to do.”
Matt muttered something ungrateful as he peeled the plate away and began to pick little lumps of cheese from the front of his jacket. Ada came forward to help.
“People come to parties to have fun, you know,” she murmured. “It’s not ALL about murder and extortion Those aren’t Christmassy.”
“This isn’t a Christmas party,” Matt pointed out, brushing crumbs from one lapel. “It’s the year-end get-together.”
Ada took hold of the other lapel and, before he could pull back, pressed her head against t and rolled wicked eyes up at him. “It shouldn’t be hard to unwind and enjoy yourself. I could help. I’m soft and I’m handy.”
“Yes.” Matt looked for a way to pry that lapel loose. “Like toilet paper.”
“Oh, how very blush-making.” She stepped away, a hand on one hip and the other at her throat, as if preparing to clutch pearls. Mock affront spread around her smile, and not a sign of a blush at all. Her nose came up, and she sniffed. “So I suppose a piggyback ride is out of the question?”
Matt shuddered, rolling the paper plate between his hands. Did he want to apologize or not?
Ada’s trilling laugh decided that for him. He gritted his teeth, and kept his lips pressed against each other. She put a hand to his necktie. He resisted, just, the impulse to slap it. Like a mosquito, she’d be out of the way and let him hit himself.
“I suppose I’m one of those girls your mother warned you not to play with.”
She pointed one toe straight ahead of her and looked down at it. Matt tried not to, mumbling something about Marshall’s mother not warning Marshall.
“Why, I’m the very best kind of wife for him!” She released the necktie. one hand flipped up behind her head. “You know how sensitive people so high in the City are to gossip. But if anyone starts telling stories on me, everyone says ‘So what else is new?’”
She closed her eyes very slowly and opened them again. “Besides, I’m never going to turn into one of those bright tidy women with high cheekbones, who smile all the time and blink whenever they talk.”
This was true. Matt wound his hands around the paper plate and swallowed hard.
Her eyes glittered. Matt started to turn away, but her pupils did first, sliding all the way to her left. She did not have the kind of eyes that could do this and go unnoticed.
“And,” she went on, a little louder, “I’m not one of those little pattycakes who have legs like matchsticks with all the wood scraped off.”
Holly MacTaggart and her retinue had moved close enough for Matt to see them too as Holly stiffened and stopped. The half dozen men around her halted as well.
Holly’s head did not turn toward her relative. “Didn’t you say you were just in California?” she demanded, breaking in on a comment by a tall, reedy young fan. Her voice was a little high, a touch brittle. “One of my grandmothers was in Hollywood for a while. I think she expected a screen test, but some producer just needed a ton of tits and ass to sprinkle around the pool.”
Ada’s shining eyes were turned on Matt again. “Besides,” she said, “I was an asset around the office. My typing was so-so, but could I take dictation! I had to work for it, you know: my grandfather was a garbage collector.”
“Excuse me. Are you Mr. Benz? Mr. Matthew Benz?”
Matt turned, missing Holly’s remark about trash. One of the waiters, a thin man with a broad face and such excellent diction that English could not have been his first language, was standing on his left.
“I am.”
“Mr. Benz, there is a man with a message for you. This way, if you please.”
Matt turned to Ada, whose eyes were now turned toward his midsection. Looking down, he found his hands had rolled the paper plate into a cylinder while witnessing the combat.
Those eyes rolled toward the ceiling. “And I thought you didn’t care.”
Matt opened his mouth but said nothing. She was entitled, after that toilet paper remark. He followed the waiter back to the corridor he had so recently left.
Progress was slow, moving among the roving bands of celebrants. When he and the waiter paused to let a quartet pass, Matt looked back. Holly, a little red of cheek, was leading her fan club away, but one of the men was looking with interest at Ada Silberwetter. He leaned forward to make an observation. The jerk of Holly’s head and the man’s expression of surprise gave Matt a hint about the reply.
Holly moved on. The straggler looked from her to her stepgrandma. Then he shrugged and started after Ada, who was undulating away as if she didn’t know he was behind her.
Matt turned to follow when the waiter started again. Then he stopped, with one more glance back. He frowned. Exactly what kind of photographs would Ada Silberwetter feel she had to hide?
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