The Key. Jennifer Sturman

amazes me how sexist this profession still is,” Jake said in disbelief. “It makes me ashamed to be a guy, practically. But it’s a good idea, keeping a record like that.”

      “I just hope I’ll never need it.”

      “Does anybody else know?”

      “About the notebook? Just my friend, Luisa. It was her idea in the first place.”

      “Not even your fiancé?”

      “Peter? No. He’s already upset enough about how hard I work. And he gets angry when I tell him about partners acting like assholes; he’d go ballistic if he knew they were acting like lecherous assholes.” I paused. “Why? Do you think I should tell him?”

      Jake flashed his rueful smile again. “You’re asking the wrong guy. As my ex-wife would attest, not to mention everyone I dated before her, I’m not exactly an expert at relationships.” He took another sip of his bourbon.

      “Me, neither.” My track record before Peter had been more than a little checkered on the good judgment front. Then with a jolt I remembered the other thing I’d wanted to talk to Jake about. “I can’t believe I forgot to tell you this,” I said.

      “Tell me what?”

      “Last night. There was an anonymous e-mail on my home account about Perry and the Thunderbolt deal.” I explained about the e-mail and what Peter and I had sent back.

      “What a strange thing to happen.”

      “Mostly it was just creepy.”

      “I bet. I wonder why this Man of the People guy got in touch with you, specifically? How did he even know you were working on the deal? Do you think it’s somebody who knows you but didn’t want you to know who he is?”

      “Could be. Although, I had another idea, too. Dahlia mentioned yesterday that two different people had called from Thunderbolt for a team list. Maybe one of them was actually this Man of the People guy and he was only pretending to be from Thunderbolt. She would have given out all of our names.”

      “Names, yes, but how did he get your personal e-mail address? And why did he contact you, instead of me? Or Mark, for that matter?”

      Peter and I had discussed this at length. “He may have tried different variations of all of our names at all of the likely e-mail services—AOL, Hotmail, Verizon. My home account is nothing clever—just my first name and my last name plus my broadband provider. He could have sent out dozens of other e-mails, most of them to addresses that don’t exist or belong to other people. And if they belonged to other people, they wouldn’t have responded—they wouldn’t have had any idea what the e-mail was about. And maybe he did try to e-mail you, and Mark, too, but he didn’t hit on the right addresses?”

      “I definitely didn’t get anything on my Yahoo account. I checked it last night.”

      “I just hope I did the right thing. It felt wrong not to follow up in any way. If the deal is dirty, then it seems like I have a professional obligation to do something about it. But I didn’t want to get anyone at the firm involved before I knew more, because I didn’t want to give Gallagher even more reasons to hate me.”

      Jake nodded his head. “I think you did do the right thing. It was a bit of a catch-22, but you made the right decision. Even with Gallagher out of the picture, it’s probably better to find out what’s going on before making any accusations.”

      “I’m glad you think so.”

      “Will you let me know if you hear back from this guy?” he asked. “We should definitely get to the bottom of this, especially since Perry’s still so gung-ho on getting the deal done.”

      “Sure,” I said.

      It was good to know we were in this together.

      chapter ten

      W e left 21 a little after three. I’d only had a glass and a half of wine when all was said and done, but I could definitely feel it as we walked back to the office. The bourbon seemed to have no effect whatsoever on Jake.

      His cell phone rang on the walk back, and while nothing he said into it was particularly revealing, there was something about the way he spoke that made me think he was talking to a woman. An uncomfortable feeling washed over me. It took a moment to identify what, precisely, it was, and when I did, I wished I hadn’t.

      Jealousy.

      This was inappropriate in every possible way, and I did my best to shunt it to the back of my mind, where it festered quietly for the rest of the day.

      Four hours later I was sitting with another glass of white wine before me, but this time in the King Cole Bar at the St. Regis Hotel on East 55th Street. The rich colors of the Maxfield Parrish mural that gave the room its name glowed from the wall above the bar, tarnished somewhat from decades of cigar and cigarette smoke. Now the place was smoke-free, thanks to Mayor Bloomberg, and while the nicotine-deprived might complain, business was still going strong. Every table in the small lounge was full, and a throng of people occupied the remaining floor space, drinks in hand as they vied for the next empty table.

      Fortunately, my friends had arrived before me and secured a cozy corner spot for us. It wasn’t unusual for any of them to be in New York on occasion, but I couldn’t remember the last time they’d all been here at once. Luisa had trained as a corporate lawyer and was even affiliated with a local law firm, but mostly she did work on behalf of her family in South America. Their international holdings were extensive and complex, and their affairs brought her here regularly. Emma, an artist, was a Manhattan native, but she’d been living in Boston with her boyfriend, Matthew, for the last few months. She was in New York to go over preparations for a gallery show that was going up in April. Hilary was a journalist, and she’d been camped out in Jane’s guest room in Cambridge of late, putting the final touches on a true crime book about a string of serial killings that had occurred in the area. When she heard that Emma would be driving down, she hitched a ride and scheduled meetings with several publishers who’d shown interest. And when Jane heard that all of our other former roommates would be here at the same time, she’d arranged for a substitute at the school where she taught and insisted on coming along. “I’m nearly six months pregnant—this may be my last opportunity to go anywhere for a while,” she explained.