The Unquiet - J. D. Robb [76]
Oliver poured a glass of milk and carried it into the den. Nine o’clock. A useless time of night, too early to go to bed, too late to get any work done. He phoned Sharon, one of his partners at Cullen Pratt McGrath, and told her the evening had been a bust: The senator he was supposed to schmooze never showed up. He’d had a good conversation with a couple of guys working on a geothermal startup in Colorado, but he didn’t bother to tell her that. If work wasn’t directly billable to a client, Sharon wasn’t interested.
He checked his e-mail. Turned on the TV and flipped through the channels. Nothing but C-SPAN, and he wasn’t in the mood. A movie? He pulled Tombstone from his enormous Western collection and stuck it in the DVR. He knew the film almost by heart, though, and by the time Val Kilmer told Johnny Ringo he was his huckleberry, Oliver was up and pacing the room, restless. Something nagged at him. Something felt unfinished.
Charlie had given his promise, but he might weaken. He had before. He’d been known to go off the deep end. It was no more than a responsible grandson’s duty to assess this new danger firsthand.
“Hello. It is Madame Romanescu.” The exotic, honeydipped voice sounded so familiar, he realized he’d been hearing it in the back of his mind all night. He listened to her spiel, happy to hear it was still his lucky day, and when the operator told him to, he punched in his Amex number.
A series of rings; a pause; another series of rings.
“Hello?”
How could anyone get so much . . . not sex, exactly . . . so much tenderness into one word? “Hello,” Oliver said briskly. “Madame Romanescu?”
“Yes, it is I. How are you?”
“I’m—My name is Oliver Worth, and I’m calling about my grandfather.”
“Oh dear. A problem with your grandfather. Yes, I can hear that you are worried, tense—”
“Yeah, you could say I’m worried. He racked up an eighthundred-dollar phone bill last month talking to you.”
Silence; he imagined it full of alarm and guilt.
“Ah,” she said at last. “Is he . . . I can’t divulge a caller’s name. Is he . . .”
“Charlie, his name’s Charlie. He’s an old man on a fixed income.”
“Charlie. Of course. A lovely gentleman. He lives in a retirement community.”
“That’s right. I’ve asked him to stop phoning, but I can’t be sure he will, so I’m asking you to stop taking his calls.”
“But, Oliver—I may call you Oliver?”
“Sure, whatever.”
“Oliver—if he wishes to call, if it’s a help to him, because there is no one else to whom he can say certain things—”
“Look, I don’t mean to be rude, but if my grandfather needs to talk to someone, I’ll get him a qualified therapist. He lives alone, and he’s vulnerable. The highlight of his day is reading the obituaries and the foreclosures. So I’m asking you, if you’ve got any . . .”
“Decency?”
“Any . . .”
“Integrity?”
The rueful smile in her voice threw him off. “Look,” he said again, “Madame Romanescu. What you’re doing isn’t illegal, I assume, but in this case it borders, in my opinion, on the unethical. I don’t know what he’s told you, but Charlie doesn’t have that kind of money to throw around. He lives on his savings and his Social Security. That’s it.”
“Oh dear.”
“Limited savings. Limited Social Security.”
“Yes, I see. Very well, then.”
“Not only that, he’s got a history of not always—What?”
“I said yes, all right. If you insist. I didn’t understand—naturally I don’t want to make trouble for Charlie. It’s just that . . . I’m afraid it will be sad for him. Because he is lonely.”
“Oh, is he?” Oliver wavered between annoyance and embarrassment. She was probably right, but it was pretty damned presumptuous of her to point it out. “Everybody’s lonely,” he said in a careless tone he immediately regretted.
“That’s true,” she said gently. “Yes, that is very true,” and for some reason he felt absolved. No wonder Charlie was in thrall to this woman. “Perhaps you could talk to him, Oliver? A bit more? Spend a little more time