“Maybe they didn’t give last names,” Aggie said weakly.
“Dad knew Jimmy’s was Buko.”
“Maybe the wind blew Dad’s last name away. It’s always windy.”
“Sure,” Angela agreed.
It was hopeless. Jimmy and their father had met. Aggie’s weak-kneed boyfriend had deposited himself in their suite. Aggie was the one Jimmy wanted and she was too sick to go to him. Angela mentally threw up her hands. Visions of the money, of the Giacometti, of prison bars, flitted across her vision. Aggie must have sensed her defeat.
“Let’s try one more time,” her quiet law-abiding librarian sister suggested. “You go tonight and see what happens.”
“I feel like a lamb trotting off to the slaughterhouse.”
“We don’t know that,” Aggie argued. “We’re only guessing. Go one more night, and then I’ll take over.”
“If I survive,” Angela added.
She dropped her head into her hands and tried to think. Maybe her sister was right. Maybe Jimmy didn’t know the man he met was their father. Maybe….There were too many maybe’s. She looked into her sister’s swollen but gleaming eyes. Aggie really wanted one more chance with Jimmy.
“All right,” Angela agreed. “One more night.”
“But,” Aggie began then stopped.
“But what?”
“I probably don’t need to say this,” Aggie apologized in advance.
“Then don’t,” Angela agreed, knowing what her sister would say. “Jimmy is in for a dry night, I’m afraid.”
“How will you…?”
“I have no idea,” Angela admitted. “Maybe Richard will burst in and they’ll fight a duel.”
She flopped back on the bed beside her twin.
“Swords or dueling pistols?” Aggie asked seriously.
“Both!”
The twins erupted into identical giggles, distinguishable only by the occasional sneeze.
Chapter 20
Jimmy allowed the hangdog Richard to continue his resignation speech. Perhaps it was cruel of him, but the lawyer had after all knowingly intended to betray him. That he hadn’t was a circumstance beyond fate, a twist that cast Jimmy’s own recent misery into comic relief. Finally he took pity on the demoralized man and halted him in mid-sentence.
“Stop.” He held up a hand. “Sit down, Richard.”
The lawyer looked bewildered but he dropped into the nearest chair.
“The woman you fucked… made love to,” he amended at Richard’s glare, “last night wasn’t Aggie. She was her identical twin, Angela.”
“What?”
“You know I usually walk on the seawall early in the morning,” Jimmy reminded Richard, who nodded. “I met an interesting couple this morning, Gordon and his new wife, Mary.”
Richard looked too confused to form a question so Jimmy continued.
“Gordon and Mary Trout.”
“Holy shit,” Richard whispered.
“The proud papa whipped out a photo of his daughters.”
“And you could see….”
“That there were two of them, carbon copies for looks, both gorgeous. Our two Aggies”
“What are the parents doing in Vancouver?”
“A surprise visit to Dad’s vacationing twins to announce their marriage. This is their honeymoon.”
Richard shook his head. “That’s an amazing coincidence.”
“Not really, when you think about it,” Jimmy argued. “Besides, I already knew everything.”
“How?”
Jimmy handed Richard a color photocopy of a high school yearbook page. A casual reader might have thought the student doing paste-up had made a mistake and inserted the same photo twice. However, close inspection revealed an upward twist of the mouth on one face and a slight lift of the left eyebrow on the other.
“It’s uncanny,” Richard marveled.
At first Jimmy was surprised how calmly the lawyer accepted the strange but logical explanation for their recent confusion. Then he remembered that this was the man who had steered him around reefs and through narrow legal passages to immense profits. Richard’s mind was razor sharp and accustomed to rapid rethinking. He wondered how the lawyer would take his next proposal. Jimmy rubbed his hands together and gazed speculatively at his attorney, but Richard preempted his sentence.
“How did you figure out which was the one you liked?” he asked. “I mean whether she was really Aggie or Angela.”
“I looked in the back of the book where they list the activities. Angela was a cheerleader and a member of the art club. Remember the Modigliani book? And Aggie was a library assistant. My hunch is that Angela hatched up the scheme and somehow persuaded her sister to help her out.”
“Why not answer the ad as herself?”
“Unfortunately, I know the answer to your question,” Jimmy admitted reluctantly.
“And…” Richard prompted.
Jimmy thought for a moment. The lawyer would find out soon anyway.
“Angela is a high class hooker in New York City. She goes by the name Angel.”
Richard looked stunned. He dropped his head into his hands. Jimmy could imagine the unwanted pictures that were flashing in the lawyer’s head. Richard never dated, not since the accident. His first night of sex in God knows how long, and she turns out to be a prostitute. He gave him a few minutes to recover.
“I think she’s trying to get out of the life,” he commented eventually. “That’s why she wants the money.”
“How did you figure all this out?” Richard asked, his head still bowed. “The man I sent didn’t get anywhere.”
“He wasn’t local. The people in the South are pretty close-mouthed to strangers. Before I left for Auburn, I hired the one local detective agency to snoop around the Trout father. The agent got the family’s former address from a bank loan record. While the mother was alive, they had lived in a small town outside Auburn named Waverly. The detective and I went together and interviewed a few neighbors. From there it was easy.”
“And Angela is a prostitute.” Richard winced as he said the word. Then he straightened in his chair and looked Jimmy in the eye.
“Was. I called a New York detective agency and gave them her real name. We already had the box number. They got me the rest of the information within a couple of hours. She started out as a secretary for one of the top call girl outfits and moved up from there.”
“What makes you think she’s quitting?”
“She’s here for one thing,” Jimmy said. “She could be making three hundred an hour in New York but she’s not.”
The lawyer winced again.
“You’re hardly the person to scoff at second chances, Richard,” Jimmy reminded him.
The lawyer was pale now.
“I know that,” he admitted. “But prostitution?”
Jimmy dropped the topic. If Richard couldn’t grab happiness, then let him wallow. He recalled the plan the lawyer had momentarily distracted him from. He stood up and leaned forward across the desk.
“What do you say we give the girls a run for their money?” he offered.
“What do you mean?”
“Revenge.”
The single word floated across the silence between the two men. Jimmy watched as the sense penetrated Richard’s ears and a slow broad smile creased his face. The lawyer leaned back.
“What do you propose?”
“Let’s see how far they are willing to go,” Jimmy suggested. Richard nodded and he continued. “We won’t tell them we’ve figured out their plot.”
“You need to at least hint that you know something,” Richard amended. “Give them something to worry about.”
“I imagine Dad has told them about the man he met on the beach. They should be shaking in their beautiful little shoes.”
“Are you clear on your goals?” Richard asked lawyer-like.
“What do you mean?”