Puppet Read Free Page B

Instantly she regrets her choice of words. “I’ll meet you back here in an hour.”
    “Where you going?” she hears him ask, but she is already halfway down the center aisle of the courtroom, the ocean roaring in the distance as she steps into the hallway and runs toward the bank of elevators to her right. One opens just as she approaches, which she takes as a good omen, and she checks her watch as she steps inside. If she moves fast enough, she can just make it to the club for the start of her spinning class.
    She checks her phone for messages as she runs south along Olive toward Clematis. There are three. Two are from Janet Berg, who lives in the apartment directly below hers, and with whose husband Amanda had a brief, and unnoteworthy, fling several months earlier. Is it possible Janet found out about the affair? Amanda quickly erases both messages, then listens to the third, which is mercifully from her secretary, Kelly Jamieson. Amanda inherited the relentlessly perky young woman with spiky red hair from her predecessor at Beatty and Rowe, a woman who’d apparently grown disillusioned with being a grossly overworked and woefully underpaid associate in the busiest criminal legal firm in town and left to become the trophy wife of an aging lothario.
    Nothing wrong with that, Amanda thinks, nearing the corner of Olive and Clematis. She considers trophy wife a noble profession.
    Having been one herself.
    She calls her office, begins speaking even before her secretary has time to say hello. “Kelly, what’s up?” She crosses the street as the light is changing from amber to red.
    “Gerald Rayner called to see if you’d agree to another postponement on the Buford case; Maxine Fisher wants to know if she can come in next Wednesday at eleven instead of Thursday at ten; Ellie called to remind you about lunch tomorrow; Ron says he needs you at the meeting on Friday; and a Ben Myers called from Toronto. He wants you to call him, says it’s urgent. He left his number.”
    Amanda stops dead in the middle of the street. “What did you say?”
    “Ben Myers called from Toronto,” her secretary repeats. “You’re from Toronto originally, aren’t you?”
    Amanda licks at a fresh bead of perspiration forming on her upper lip.
    A horn begins honking, followed by another. Amanda tries to put one foot in front of the other, but it is only when she notices several cars impatiently nudging toward her that her legs agree to move.
    Puppet!
she hears distant voices cry as she weaves her way through the moving line of cars to the other side of the street.
    “Amanda? Amanda, are you there?”
    “I’ll talk to you later.” Amanda clicks off the phone and drops it back inside her purse. She stands for several seconds on the sidewalk, taking deep breaths, and exhaling all reminders of the past. By the time she reaches the glass door of the fitness center, she has almost succeeded in erasing the conversation with her secretary from her mind.
    Something else Amanda Travis doesn’t like: memories.

TWO
    B Y the time Amanda changes out of her work clothes, finishes securing her hair into a ponytail and lacing up her sneakers, the spinning class is already under way, and every bike is taken. “Dammit,” she mutters, slapping at her black leotards and realizing she is surprisingly, perilously close to tears. They really should get more bicycles in here, she thinks, deciding that eight bicycles are hardly enough for such a popular class. She toys briefly with the idea of pushing one of the other women off her seat, trying to choose between the well-toned teenager showing off in the front row or the breathless fifty-something-year-old struggling in the back. She settles on the latter, thinking it would probably be an act of mercy to dislodge her. The poor woman will give herself a heart attack, if she’s not careful. Doesn’t she know that spinning classes are for those who don’t really need them?
    Amanda stands in the doorway for