Perfect Little Ladies.

Abby Drake.

Prologue.

Panties!.

That was the word that caught Elinor's eye in the note that she held in her hand.

It was a colorful note, comprised of red and black and yellow and blue letters in different type sizes and styles, each letter, each word, pasted onto a single sheet of paper the old-fashioned way, not printed from a computer with thoughtless emotion.

It was a colorful note, a clever invitation perhaps, a ribald request for her presence at a ladies' luncheon, a charity auction, or maybe high tea. One or two of her friends, after all, were known to have slightly twisted senses of humor.

It was a colorful note, but...

After a moment, after a breath, she let her gaze travel the page.

Found: One pair Lavender Lace Panties!

Where: Dumpster, New York Lord Winslow Hotel!

Cost: $500,000 for their return!

Instructions to follow. Stay there and wait for my call.

Elinor supposed she'd had a worse day in her life, but right now she didn't know when.

One.

Alice and Poppy were drying their nails in the late August sun. They were poised on chaise lounges that were perched on the terrace of Elinor's country house north of Manhattan, far from the frenzy of Washington, D.C. The house had been a gift from Elinor's husband, Malcolm, right after the weight-loss drug Ranilin had won FDA approval and he'd received a sizable bonus for his efforts. Finally Elinor had been able to return home on weekends and be with her oldest and dearest friends, Alice and Poppy, whom she counted on for everything, including their opinions of the acrylics they were now testing for Elinor to wear to Jonas's engagement party, which was only a week away.

She did not count on advice from her sister, CJ, unless the situation was dire. It did not matter that they were identical twins.

CJ (Catherine Janelle, named after their mother's mother) sat on the top step of the wide marble stairs that led from the terrace to the topiary garden and wondered why she'd been summoned along with the oldest and dearest. So far, they'd been there an hour; since then, Yolanda had been gluing and shaping while Elinor had been flitting, which Elinor didn't do well. Poppy was more the flitting type, but they were all nearing fifty, too old for that sort of thing.

"Seltzer?" Elinor (who'd been named for their father's mother, who'd only had one name because "one was sufficient") asked for the ninth or tenth time.

The o & d shook their heads. At their age, sipping meant peeing, which was not easy when one's nails were tacky.

"Elinor," Alice, the plucky one plucked, "will you please sit down? You're driving me mad with your wandering."

"Ditto," added Poppy, whose nickname had been coined from the color of her flame-red hair so long ago that CJ had forgotten what her name really was. Veronica. Victoria. Something like that.

Elinor sat but said nothing.

CJ sighed. She rose from the stairs and strolled toward her sister. "What's going on, E? You're nervous about something, but I doubt it's the party. You have far too much experience as hostess-with-the-most-est to be suffering simple frayed nerves."

Alice looked at Poppy, rolled her eyes, and wiggled her fingers. Poppy giggled and waggled her toes. Like Elinor, they'd been pampered girls who'd become pampered wives, so CJ forgave them their trespa.s.ses.

Elinor set the pitcher on the Italian flagstone and stared at the lime slices that dipped and bobbed as if they, too, were at sea.

"Well," she said. "Well."

Yolanda approached, shaking another bottle of enamel, that one creamy peach. Whichever shade was selected must blend with Elinor's mango Versace gown that said "Washington wife" with its straight, elegant lines, yet "playful" with its vivid tone. Elinor would look regal. She always did.

CJ would wear less obvious gray silk that she'd hand-painted with violet fringed tulips, like the ones Jonas had helped "Auntie CJ" plant at the cottage when he'd been a boy. The flowers were his favorites, he said every year, so it seemed only fitting. It would be their little secret, in a bittersweet way.

"Well, what?" Alice barked, because she could be as snappy as the old librarian who'd worked at McCready School for Girls when Elinor and CJ's father, Franklin Harding, had been headmaster, autocrat, person-in-charge.

"Well, give her a minute to think," Poppy excused, because she was as good at excusing as Elinor was at looking regal.

"Hold out your hand," Yolanda, the nail tech, demanded. "I don't have all day." She had, after all, a business to run, the top-notch hair and nails salon in New Falls, the next town over. Yolanda made house calls on special occasions.

Elinor shook her head. "Not now," she said soberly. "I'm being blackmailed."

Well, that made no sense, even to CJ, who was used to her twin sister's frequent cryptic-speak.

"E?" CJ asked. "What did you say?"

Alice and Poppy stopped wiggling and waggling. Yolanda screwed on the top and set down the bottle.

"I'm being blackmailed," Elinor repeated. "And I desperately need your help."

The Harding sisters were identical twins whose hair was what told them apart: Elinor's, always in a neat, ponytail-place, CJ's, short but askew, in need of combing. When they were kids they'd been cute, two little clones, too adorable for words. As adults, however, their identical-ness disturbed them both; neither wanted to be mistaken for the other, because it had taken them too long to just be themselves.

Still, a few years ago, when their ebony locks had started sparkling with silver, Elinor was appalled that CJ wanted to dye them. Washington, after all, wasn't New York, where only money mattered, or L.A., where looks were what reigned. In Washington, success was all about power and wisdom, and silver hair was oddly connected to that.

Or so Elinor said, anyway.

It hadn't mattered that CJ did not live in Washington but in the old family lakeside cottage in Mount Kasteel, named by Dutch settlers for the castle on the south side of town that overlooked the lake, the Hudson River, and part of Manhattan on a clear day.

In the end, CJ had not dyed her hair, and they'd remained looking alike.

CJ excused herself from the ladies, crossed the terrace, went through the French doors and into the house in search of vodka to add to the seltzer. It would take more than the flavor of a couple of limes to endure this latest Elinor complication.

Behind the bar in the main-floor billiard room she located a bottle of Skyy. She took out a small gla.s.s, filled it with an inch, then downed it quickly and neat.

"CJ," Elinor said. She stood in the doorway, her tall, lean, size 6 frame silhouetted against the afternoon backlight. "It's not nice to start drinking without me."

CJ poured another, downed that one, too. "I have a feeling I'm going to need it."

Elinor sighed, strode to the bar, and poured her own drink. It occurred to CJ that her sister was well suited to the Georgian house that might have been too big for a family of ten but was perfect for a larger-than-life woman despite the fact that her daughter was now out of grad school, her son was about to be married, and she and her husband also owned a sizable Washington town house. Elinor, of course, was the show-off, not Malcolm. He was too busy being a lobbyist-genius for DeBauer Pharmaceuticals, while Elinor was busy doing...well, it had been years since CJ had really known what her sister was doing.

"Does Malcolm know about the blackmail?"

Toying with her gla.s.s, which was Baccarat crystal (CJ had been there the day the delivery arrived from Neiman Marcus), Elinor said, "No. Malcolm isn't to know."

"Then why on earth have you chosen to alert Alice and Poppy and, for G.o.d's sake, Yolanda?"

"I told you," she said. "I need everyone's help."

It was not the first time Elinor had begged for a.s.sistance. But it was the first time she'd included an entourage.

"Why is someone blackmailing you, E? Is it about...?"

"No," Elinor said, cutting CJ off. "If it were that, we would handle it ourselves."

CJ breathed again. Relief, she supposed. "Well then, you should call the police."

"I can't."

"A private investigator."

"I won't. There's too much at stake."

This house, CJ supposed. The town house in Washington. Elinor's perfect life with her perfect husband, and their reputation as Washington's go-to couple.

"Elinor, have you done something that deserves blackmail?" CJ didn't say "something else," because that wouldn't have been nice.

Elinor seized the Skyy and turned from her sister, her mirror image. "Come back to the terrace. I'll tell you my plan. Trust me, dear sister. It's better this way."

Two.

"Yolanda, live asked you to join us because I respect you," Elinor began. "And because I believe you have street smarts, which the rest of us sorely lack."

They a.s.sembled their chaises in a small circle, as if they were campfire girls or wagon-train people.

Drinks were poured.

Silence fell.

And then Elinor related a tale of lavender lace and a Dumpster outside the New York Lord Winslow Hotel and a ransom for a half million dollars.

Alice laughed. "Well, this is absurd. Do tell us that this is absurd."

But Elinor said, "No, it isn't absurd. I suspect the panties are my La Perlas. I bought them last year in Milan."

Poppy narrowed her eyes. "Haven't you always worn cream-colored silk?"

CJ supposed Poppy knew that from too much togetherness in too many spas.

Yolanda simply listened, street smart as she was.

Closing her pewter-colored eyes, just as their father had done when he'd felt things were futile, Elinor said, "My lover prefers pastels to neutrals." Then her voice dropped. "Yes, ladies," she said, "I have a lover. I'm human, I've failed."

What had been silence became total dead air.

A lover? CJ thought. Elinor has a lover? CJ wasn't sure if she was more astonished by the sin or by the realization that she-and apparently the oldests and dearests-hadn't been told before now. This kind of secret was far too juicy to have been concealed from best friends.

Yolanda spoke first. "Is your lover the one who's blackmailing you?"

CJ wanted to ask who the lover was, how long Elinor had had him, and if he was young. There was so much of that in her sister's circle: the caterers, the ma.s.seurs, the page boys from the floor of the Senate.

"He wouldn't dare."

"Are you sure?" That came from Alice.

Poppy, in the meantime, had turned as pale as the marble statue of Venus that stood in the topiaries.

"Elinor," CJ said, "if you want our help, you'll have to tell us the details." She hoped that a jolt of reality would make Elinor reconsider spilling the rest of the beans.

"I can't tell you everything," Elinor said. "We'll just have to leave it at that."

"We can't 'leave it at that,'" CJ said. "Tell us who you are s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g, how often, and where."

Elinor laughed, though it wasn't a ha-ha kind of laugh. "We're middle-aged women," she said. "We've probably all had at least one inappropriate relationship in our lives."

Alice grimaced.

Poppy twittered.

CJ made no comment; Yolanda didn't have to. They all knew the fury her marriage had caused in New Falls when she, the hairdresser, had run off with one of the Wall Street husbands, who'd later wound up dead, shot through the head.

"But do tell the truth," Elinor continued. "Don't you want to know why?"

CJ thought about Mac, her brother-in-law, about Janice and Jonas and the family her sister had built. She thought about the audience present: Alice, Poppy, Yolanda. Then she thought about her mother, who would be mortified that Elinor had chosen this grandiose terrace for airing her dirty laundry, La Perla though it was. "No," CJ replied. "It does not matter why."

"Well, that's too bad, because that's the easy part. The embarra.s.sing truth is, Malcolm has been disinterested in me for a number of years, and, as I said, I am human. Believe it or not."