Privacy didn’t hurt.
Harper took us to a small, semi-private room. It was rarely used but perfect for a conversation and a drink without having to go upstairs to their private quarters.
To my surprise, Ange was also there.
"I’m taking a break from work," she confessed. "My creative juices aren’t flowing at the moment. Maybe a little bit of time off coming up with cute designs for hand blown glass art will sort that out."
She smiled at Pamela. "It’s lovely to see you again. Not the circumstances, but—you know what I mean?"
"Thanks. I wish it would have been different." Pamela accepted a small whiskey.
I stuck to soda and signaled to Harper before joining Pamela.
She knocked her drink back in one gulp. "So, the cat's out of the bag," she muttered. "I wouldn’t have been able to keep it quiet much longer under the circumstances anyway, I guess."
"Most likely not," I said. I had no idea what she was trying to tell me, but encouragement didn’t hurt.
"I thought I’d been so careful. We’d been so careful."
“There’s always someone in a small town who's watching.” Even if it was just a cat through a window, spotting a masked stranger, I thought.
"I pretended I’d gone on a cruise because I didn’t want anyone to know that I had work done.” She touched her jawline.
"Cosmetic surgery?" I asked. "It looks great."
"Only, no real surgery—just a few tweaks. But yeah. I had to have my face bandaged and stay out of the sun for a little while, and Jake had agreed to look after me."
"But you had a fight, didn’t you?"
"How do you know that?" she asked me.
I gave her an enigmatic smile. It had only been a hunch, but a correct one.
"We had a small disagreement,” Pamela admitted.
"About what?" Harper asked.
"I told him that sometimes, not saying something was the better way."
"I don’t understand," I said.
"He thought I should go to the board of my company and tell them that my boss was being ageist and sexist and—" She glanced at us. "I was passed over for a job that had been promised to me because I was looking too old and not appealing enough to clients. My superior preferred a younger woman to be the front of the business."
"That’s absurd," I protested.
"That’s what Jake said. But he doesn’t know what it means to be a woman of a certain age. I decided to get a few tweaks done. And I will always be grateful to him for looking after me." She sighed. "Hepicked me up in the middle of the night. He attempted to be as stealthy as possible, the dear man." She smiled weakly. "We almost got busted straight away when that woman came out of the Reiki practice.”
Then she frowned. Now it was obvious that her skin was smoother than it should have been. To me, she looked great. I assumed she already would have looked great before, but I knew only too well that for women, there was a certain best-before date. And we had both passed that a while ago.
"Go on," I said.
"That’s strange," she said. "I thought he was stressed because I was almost seen after he tried so hard to arrange everything so I could lay low. But looking back: maybe it was because of her."
"The woman?"
"I don’t know," she said. "I only know that Jake was less than happy."
"The Reiki guy, huh?" Harper whistled through her teeth. "You’re talking about Willowmere’s most eligible bachelor. So why should Jake be displeased about seeing a woman leave the place?"
