Two of the Deadliest (2009)

Elizabeth George's anthology of new stories on the sins of lust and greed was published by HarperCollins in 2009, with contributions from Laura Lippman, Susan Wiggs, Marcia Muller, Carolyn Hart, Nancy Pickard and George herself alongside a second section of writers who had been her students. It opens, after Pickard's story of a woman eating a whole cake, with Patricia Smiley's "The Offer", in which Mari Smith, jobless, scammed out of her savings and limping on a broken heel, arrives at Los Angeles airport for an interview at a pet-wash start-up and lets a limousine driver mistake her for a Marion Smithson. (Open Library)

Watches

Cartier (unidentified model): In "The Offer", the azure welcome bag left on the limousine seat for Marion Smithson holds Herve Leger perfume, an Hermes scarf and a svelte case with a gold Cartier watch. Mari, who has told herself she is only borrowing the ride, strokes the burnished gold, takes off her own Timex and slips the Cartier on, meaning to remove it before the hotel; she counts each minute of pleasure on it along the freeway, puts it back in the bag, then wears it again to the Pleasure Club's dinner and the ballroom interview. In the candlelit lodge at the end, drugged by champagne, she feels someone grab her hands and the Cartier slip off her wrist as rope goes round them. The maker is named; the model is not.

Source text: Her fingers tingled as they parted the tissue, going deeper into the bag until they'd unearthed a bottle of Herve Leger perfume, an Hermes scarf, and a svelte case that held a gold Cartier watch. She lifted the watch from its repose and stroked it gently with her fingers. (Elizabeth George, ed., Two of the Deadliest, scan cataloged as HarperCollins, 2009, p. 13, in "The Offer" by Patricia Smiley, which the contents page lists from p. 9, closing up the OCR's line-break hyphen in "fingers"; she wears it on pp. 16, 17 and 23 and loses it on p. 25; Internet Archive scan OCR)

Timex (unidentified model): Mari's own watch is a Timex, removed in the limousine so that the gold Cartier from the gift bag can take its place on her wrist. The text names the maker in that one sentence and gives no model.

Source text: She removed her Timex and slipped the Cartier over her hand, allowing it to caress her skin. She knew she would have to remove the watch before she got to the hotel, but until then, she decided to accept her good fortune. (Elizabeth George, ed., Two of the Deadliest, scan cataloged as HarperCollins, 2009, p. 13, in "The Offer" by Patricia Smiley, which the contents page lists from p. 9; Internet Archive scan OCR)