Naughty Little Secrets. Mary Wilbon

gather her things, too. When they were both ready to leave, Dale turned to her.

      “So, you’re the only one here who knows my dirty little secret. I guess that means I have to do whatever you say to keep your silence. Who do you want killed?” asked Dale, laughing offhandedly at his own joke.

      Intrigued, Sindee looked at him and asked, “Who do you have in mind?”

      Dale stopped laughing. It took a few beats before he realized she was now joking with him. Then he laughed again when he was sure she had been toying with him.

      “Maybe it won’t come to that,” she said, sounding cagey, “but I have figured out a way we can get some extra money out of this place.”

      She waited for his reaction. She watched him as she lit a cigarette using the lighter he had given her.

      Sindee made sure he saw the masks. She took a long drag, then slowly released the smoke.

      He didn’t speak, but she knew he was interested.

      Sindee stepped closer to him. Dale leaned in.

      “I’m working on a personal project in addition to this show,” she said. “I won’t tell you how I got the start-up money, so don’t ask me. You don’t want to know. That’s not your concern. I’m not proud of it, but sometimes you find yourself doing things you never thought yourself capable of doing. But, at any rate, I have the money now, and I’m ready to go. I need your help. It could mean a lot of money as a result if we do it right. Are you in?”

      Dale took a long look at her. “You practically own me. Of course I’m in,” he said.

      “Good, we can talk about it over a drink. That is, of course, unless you have other plans for tonight?”

      Sindee was fishing for information to see if he had met anyone special yet. She had tried to get Dale to go out for a drink after several of the rehearsals, but he had always rushed out immediately afterward, brushing her off, always with the excuse that he had to meet someone.

      Sindee was dying to know who. Maybe she could get him to open up about it tonight.

      Sindee was the theater’s most accomplished gossip. She got all the tasty tidbits on everyone. It was killing her that Dale had a secret he wasn’t sharing with her.

      “No, no,” Dale said. “I don’t have any plans for tonight either. I was just going to go home, turn on the TV and watch Lifetime, the cable channel for women and gay men. It’s their annual ‘Twelve Days of Christmas Agony’ marathon. Every movie is a ‘My husband was a cheatin’, lyin’, wifebeatin’ bastard, but I loved him anyway, right up until I killed him’ extravaganza. But if we’re going out for a drink, I really have to pee first.”

      “Well, the exit is right over here: closer than the men’s room. Why don’t you just do it in the parking lot?”

      “Whip it out in the parking lot, in winter? I know what you’re up to, my sexually schizophrenic friend,” teased Dale. “You just want to see the cock that cost Disney millions.”

      Sindee returned his teasing. “Of course I want to see it. But, I am the most sexually clear person you will ever know. Being bisexual means I just want to fuck everyone.”

      Dale smiled and hugged Sindee and they began to laugh boisterously.

      “Are you two ready to leave?”

      Startled, Dale and Sindee looked up into the balcony in the direction of the voice.

      “I’m getting ready to turn off the lights,” called out Rachel.

      “Yes, we’re leaving now,” Sindee replied, trying to sound as calm and nonchalant as possible.

      She exchanged a worried look with Dale and they both wondered how long Rachel had been standing there and exactly how much she had overheard.

      Again Rachel spoke, “Have you two seen Addison?”

      “You might try the office, that’s the last place I saw him,” Sindee said.

      “Thanks,” said Rachel. “Good Night. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.”

      Both Sindee and Dale smiled nervously up to her and waved.

      As Rachel closed the balcony door Dale whispered, “Oh my God! Well, I don’t have to go to the bathroom anymore. She just scared the piss out of me.”

      Dale took hold of Sindee’s arm and pulled her in close. He stole a look over each of his shoulders. He spoke very softly, his eyes searching the theater. He wasn’t going to chance being surprised again.

      “How much do you think she heard…everything?”

      “I don’t know. Let’s just get the hell out of here and go for that drink,” Sindee whispered back.

      “We’ve got a lot of planning to do.”

      The two friends quietly left the theater together, each confident they were spending the approaching Christmas with the one person they trusted without reservation.

      3

      Slick helped Laura onto the stair seat and walked down beside her.

      Judson, head of the household staff, was standing at the bottom of the staircase holding a small tray with two Absolut martinis on it.

      Typical Judson, thought Laura, when she saw him waiting there. He had an astonishing gift of anticipation; always the right thing at the right time. He always seemed to be ten steps ahead of those he served, knowing what they needed before they knew it themselves.

      Judson was an anachronism, but he was the only other person in the world Laura trusted as much as Slick.

      Judson came from a long tradition of English personal service. Before she’d been born, Judson had been her father’s personal valet. When Laura was a little girl, and her parents were away, it was Judson who had taken care of her scraped knees, driven her to and from school and tennis lessons. It was Judson who had convinced her that it probably wasn’t a good idea to eat a worm.

      Laura remembered that when her parents were away, she had the run of the house. At least Judson had let her believe that for the few hours between finishing her homework and bedtime, she ran the house.

      It was the rule that she had to finish her lessons first. There was never any backsliding on that. Laura had to earn her grades and not rely on her father’s prestigious name.

      Owen was very strict about that; so, in turn, was Judson.

      But once her homework was done, Judson would let her into her father’s study. It was a wondrous room to Laura, filled with her father’s papers and books. Laura would climb into her father’s big swivel chair behind his giant desk. She would sink into the cushions and look at the papers on his desk.

      She was never allowed to touch anything on the desk, but she was fascinated.

      Judson would stand by, silently watching in case she tumbled from the chair.

      Laura never knew Judson was following her father’s instructions. From this early age, Owen wanted Laura to be comfortable in his study and in his chair.

      For the longest time, Laura believed Judson was a member of the family. She was too young then to recognize that delicate line of familiarity at which the rich and their servants separated themselves.

      After her father died, Laura asked Judson to become head of staff. She offered him a suite of rooms in the southern end of the mansion and was grateful when he accepted. Often she wondered what he thought of the changes that had taken place from the days when her father owned the house until now.

      Laura’s father, Owen Charles, had made his fortune in the early 1950s in New Jersey’s clamming industry. He started with a few small boats working out of the Atlantic Highlands. By the time he retired, he had built one of the largest clamming concerns on the Northeast Corridor. His company employed