The Villa

out. She'd leave the drama for Rene. Instead she sauntered, and felt good about it. Just as she felt good about dropping another bill on the table where Rene's bodyguards sat watch.
    "This round's on me," she told them and walked out laughing.
     
    "I put on a pretty good show." Steaming now, Pilar paced back and forth over the Aubusson in Helen Moore's living room. "And, by God, I think I came out on top. But I was so angry. This woman is gunning for my family and she's wearing my damn earrings while she's taking aim."
    "You've got documentation on the jewelry, insurance records and so on. We could take issue."
    "I hated those stupid earrings." Pilar gave a bad-natured shrug. "Tony gave them to me as a peace offering after one of his affairs. I got the bill, too, of course. Damn it, it's hard swallowing how often I was a fool."
    "Then spit it out. Sure you don't want a drink?"
    "No, I'm driving, and should be heading back already." Pilar hissed out a breath, sucked in another. "I had to blow off steam first or I might have given in to road rage and ended up in jail."
    "Good thing you have a friend on the bench. Listen to me. I think you did exactly right by facing off with her. A lot of people would disagree, but they don't know you like I do."
    Helen poured herself a couple of fingers of vodka over ice. "You had things to say, and you've waited too long to say them."
    "It won't change anything."
    "With her? Maybe, maybe not." Helen sat, stretched out. "But the point is, it changed something for you. You took charge. And personally, I'd have paid good money to see you tell her off. She'll go on her little rant on her trashy talk show and very likely end up getting hammered by various audience members who take offense at her designer suit and ten pounds of jewelry. Wives," she continued, "who've been cheated on, left holding the bag for women like her. God, Pilar, they'll rip her to tattered shreds before it's done, and you can bet Larry Mann and his producers are counting on just that."
    Pilar stopped pacing. "I never thought of that."
    "Honey, Rene Foxx is just one of God's many custard pies. She hit you in the face, sure, but so what? Time to wipe her off."
    "You're right. I worry about the family, about Sophie. Even though it's tabloid press, it's press, and it's going to embarrass her. I wish I knew how to shut her up."
    "You could get a temporary restraining order. I'm a judge, I know these things," Helen said dryly. "You could file suit—libel, defamation. And you might win. Probably would. But as your lawyer, and your friend, my advice is to let her have her rope. She'll hang herself with it sooner or later."
    "The sooner the better. We're in an awful mess, Helen."
    "I know. I'm sorry."
    "If she says things that hint we may have arranged for Tony to be killed, that Margaret was involved… The police have already questioned us about a relationship between Margaret and Tony. It worries me."
    "Margaret was the unlucky victim of some maniac's lunacy. Product tampering doesn't even have a target, that's why it's lunacy. Tony was deliberate. One has nothing to do with the other, and you shouldn't start linking them in your mind."
    "The press is linking them."
    "The press would link a monkey with an elephant if it upped the ratings and sold papers."
    "You're right there, too. I'll tell you something, Helen, over the anger, under the worry I felt when I talked to Rene, I realized something. I confronted her on this point because it mattered, because it was important, because I needed to take a stand."
    Sipping her drink, Helen nodded. "And?"
    "And it made me realize that I never, not once, confronted her or any of the others, the countless other women in and out of Tony's life. Because it stopped, he stopped being important. I had no stand to take. That's very sad," she said quietly. "And not all his fault. No, it wasn't," she went on before Helen could do more than spit out an oath. "It takes two to make a marriage, and I never pushed him to be one of those two in ours."
    "He started chipping at your self-esteem right from the beginning."
    "That's true." Pilar held out a hand, took Helen's glass for a small and absent sip. "But a great deal that happened, and didn't happen, between us was as much my doing as his. I'm not looking back with regret. I'm looking back, Helen, because I'm never, never going to make those mistakes again."
    "Okay, fine." Helen took the vodka back, toasted with it. "To the new Giambelli