Fortune's Daughter Read Online Free

curtains, in the dishwater and in every kitchen cabinet. And even though Rae knew it was impossible for Carolyn to have tracked her down after all this time, she found herself searching through the closets and kneeling to peer under the bed—and there were times when she actually believed she might find someone hiding.
    The scent of Chanel was particularly strong on that Monday when Rae came in late to work.
    â€œDid you have some woman up here?” she asked Freddy Contina.
    â€œI wish,” Freddy said.
    Rae turned the air conditioner to fan and opened some windows. It was somehow much worse to smell that phantom perfume during the day; at night there seemed the possibility of an explanation: the woody scent of the bamboo outside the kitchen window, a neighbor’s cologne filtering through the walls, the terrible power of nightmares.
    â€œSpeaking of someone being up here,” Freddy said, “I don’t want Jessup in my office while I’m gone.”
    Freddy acquired films in Europe and redubbed them; he was leaving that day for Germany, and whenever he was away Rae invited Jessup up for lunch. Although the last time, when Freddy was in Italy, Jessup didn’t touch his food—he spent the entire hour going through the accounts file, and there wasn’t a thing Rae could do to stop him.
    â€œNever bring your personal life into the office,” Freddy advised.
    â€œWhat have you got against Jessup?” Rae asked.
    The two men had met only once; Jessup had asked so many questions you’d think he was interviewing Freddy for a job.
    â€œHe’s the mass-murderer type,” Freddy said.
    â€œWhat’s that supposed to mean?” Rae asked, offended.
    â€œOr maybe the lone-assassin type,” Freddy reconsidered. “I can just see him up in his room, writing in his diary and polishing his rifle.”
    The idea of Jessup’s keeping a diary made Rae laugh.
    â€œYou don’t know Jessup,” she said.
    â€œThat’s just it,” Freddy said. “I don’t want to know him, and I don’t want him in my office, Rae.”
    As soon as the car came for Freddy, Rae telephoned Jessup. She was planning to order up from the deli on the corner and put it on Freddy’s account, but Jessup was out on a job and no one seemed to know when he’d be back. Rae could have ordered something for herself, but she felt the urge to escape from the office. She had found a woman’s turquoise earring on the couch in Freddy’s office, but the scent of Chanel was so unnaturally strong that even if Freddy had spent all night with a woman who had doused herself with perfume the aroma would have been gone by now. And yet there it was, in the filing cabinets and the carpeting, just as if Carolyn was in the office. And so Rae went out, even though the air itself was orange and so thick it seemed as if thousands of butterflies had settled above Hollywood Boulevard.
    The minute she left the building, Rae knew she had made a mistake. It was noon, and so hot that the few people there were on the sidewalk seemed stunned. When Rae walked past a jewelry store she found herself staring at a tray of gold chains in the window. In all the years they had been together Jessup had never given her any jewelry, not even a cheap silver chain or a semiprecious stone. All at once, Rae ached for a ruby ring. She nearly walked inside and asked to look at a tray of uncut stones, but suddenly she felt as if she was drowning. On the hot sidewalk, in the middle of a city built out of the desert, she was going under. Maybe it was just that she couldn’t get enough air in her lungs, or that the shadows along the boulevard were deep blue. The edges of things had begun to blur, and had she been submerged in ten feet of murky water it wouldn’t have been any harder to take another step.
    This had happened to Rae once before, when she was seventeen and had come down with pneumonia. Even