“I’m serious.”
“So am I. That’s a feeble line.”
“But the thought behind it is sound. I want to see you, Susan.”
“No problem. You’re good at breaking and entering. Surprise me some time.” She hung up, then made a coward’s dash for the door to the garage. The phone rang behind her, but she ignored it, and before long the Jaguar’s purr drowned it out.
As soon as Savannah got into the car, she told Susan about her talk with Megan. Susan immediately suggested they detour into Providence before heading north. “I know you, Savannah. If we don’t make sure she’s all right, you’ll be thinking about it all day, and I don’t want to think about Megan all day. It’s depressing.”
“Talk about depressing, you should have heard Dianne’s theory about the kidnapping. She’s convinced that Megan could have handled being raped better than she did.”
“Dianne’s an imbecile.”
“What was she doing at your house?”
“I’m not really sure. She said something about how ‘cool’ I was last night. She said that Malcolm O’Neill was asking about me after I left. She was probably sniffing around for little tidbits to give him. I’m sure she’s trying to impress him herself.”
“She’s married.”
“Since when has that stopped her? If she sets her eye on Malcolm, a wedding band won’t put her off. And what better cover than acting as a courier between Malcolm and me?”
“Are you interested in him?”
“Not particularly.”
“Then what use do you have for Dianne? It amazes me that you can stand the sight of her, after what she did.”
Susan kept her eyes on the road. “She was just sticking up for her brother.”
“By publicly denouncing you as co-chair for the Sperry fund-raiser? Not that I ever had any fondness for John Sperry; he would have made a lousy senator. But you’d put in a lot of work on that, and you raised plenty of money. Far more so than Dirk, you had a right to be there, taking pride in what you’d done.”
“But you’re right. Sperry would have made a lousy senator.”
“You didn’t think so at the time.”
“Maybe I did but couldn’t admit it. What you fail to realize, Savvy, is that sometimes people have ulterior motives for doing things. You don’t actually believe that the people who organize fund-raisers for charity do it purely out of the goodness of their hearts, do you? They do it for the power it brings. They do it for the publicity, because their names go up in lights alongside that of their cause. They do it for prestige.”
“So that’s why you went all out organizing a party for John Sperry? You did all that work without even believing in the man?” Savannah’s gaze was steady. “I don’t buy it.”
Susan darted her a dry look. “How about I did it because I had nothing else to do?”
“I think you did it because you happen to be really good at that kind of thing. Do you know that there are people who make careers out of planning functions like that? You have a marketable skill.”
“Savannah…”
“I know I’ve said it before, but it’s worth repeating.”
“I am not going out looking for work.”
“We’re not talking walking the streets, knocking on doors. We’re talking putting out subtle feelers to several large organizations.”
“Uh-huh. And what am I going to put on a résumé? I haven’t held a paying job in my life.”
“You’ll put down the nonpaying ones. You’ve held enough of them.”
“Come on, Savannah. I’m named to the boards of institutions for one reason alone—I give money. Anyone with a little smarts knows that the amount of work involved is zip.”
“You’ve planned at least a dozen affairs comparable to the Sperry one. You could get recommendations in a minute.”
