A Dress to Die For (31 page)

Yet Laura still found it surprising when he did, maybe because it was such a spectacularly acrobatic fall, or maybe because it happened so fast. The high prince slipped, legs and arms splayed like a kid in a snowsuit, and twisted, hitting his head on the edge of the pier. His skull bounced, and he struck the water not with a splash, but a plop.

Laura and Ruby ran to the edge of the boat and looked into the water to find neither hide nor hair.

“Who’s going in after him?” Ruby asked, clearly broadcasting that it wasn’t going to be her.

“Get out of the way,” Soso said. He was already out of his coat and hat. Wearing only his leather pants, he jumped into the freezing water of the Hudson River.

Dad and the princess had disappeared, but a second later, a head-splitting alarm rang out. Three honks, then three whistles, over and over. A light flashed into the clouds like the Bat Signal.

Laura stood on the edge of the boat, but Ruby grabbed her arm. “Are you kidding me? You could drown in a bathtub.”

Soso came up without the prince and went right back down. He seemed to do this an infinite number of times, until Laura was sure he would rise like a block of ice in a glass of whiskey.

The police came in five minutes, and the Coast Guard followed in ten. They pulled Soso out of the water and deposited him onto the princess’s boat, covering him with silver blankets and cutting off his Brunican leathers.

Still, there was no sign of Salvadore.

Philomena sat by Soso and held his hand for a while, whispering in Portuguese. Laura watched them from a bench on deck. They were close. Closer than two people who hadn’t seen each other in fifteen years. Certainly closer than a wife would be to someone loyal to a hated husband. Once the princess left to sit with Dad, Laura took her place.

“Soso,” Laura said, “you helped Dad get out?”

“The tunnels go right under my house.” Soso had been given a paper cup of hot something, and he sipped it gingerly. Around them, the Coast Guard still searched. Lights swung across their vision, and alarm bells rang. But no Salvadore.

“Thank you,” Laura said. “I’ll die angry at him, but you were a good friend.”

He shrugged. “It’s hard to deny love when you see it.” He indicated Dad and Philomena, who sat in the back of the boat. Philomena cried, and Dad stroked her short, Bernard-Nestorized hair.

“You wanted us to say the gown was real,” Laura said. “What was the difference?”

“Your father found out you’d be hurt if the bond was lost. He was trying to find you a way out. If you claimed it was real, you could make a case after Jobeth had her check.” Soso unscrewed a flask and took a hit. “It was a ridiculous idea, but he was very definite, desperate for you not to be hurt.”

“What happened to Barney and Henrietta?”

“He killed them, of course, because he caught them escorting the princess out. It was terrible and messy, and Joseph and Philomena didn’t see each other for a year after.”

“And Samuel Inweigh?”

“Depressed artist. Killed himself over your mother.”

She smiled, not because she was glad Samuel was dead or that he’d been that sad but because Mom had probably rivaled the princess in beauty and grace, and the fact that her mother would never admit it to herself had kept her alone most of her life.

“You going back?” she asked.

“Of course.”

Brunico was his home; that had been no lie. She’d make a bet he loved it enough to go swimming for the high prince without really looking for him.

“What’s waiting for you there besides your family?”

“A mess. We have no ruler. No heir. No leader ready.”

Ruby paced the pier, talking on the phone Soso had returned to her, explaining to Elaine why she wouldn’t be at the Self-Actualization Society’s fundraiser for reasons that were so complex she couldn’t even begin to tell her over the phone. When she saw Laura looking at her, she said good-bye and hopped down. “I just talked to Jimmy,” she said.

“I thought that was Elaine?”

“Before that. Mom’s getting out of the hospital. They were going to check her out tomorrow, but she threw a fit, and they tested her early. She’s fine. Jimmy’s packing her up.”

Laura had no words. She just wrapped her arms around her sister, and they hugged on the deck of the princess’s boat.

“This is so sweet,” Cangemi said over the sound of the helicopters. “Really. But I need to take depositions inside.” He pointed at Laura’s feet. “Where are your shoes?”

She felt pulled in a hundred directions. She wanted to talk to Dad, hug Ruby, and bring Mom home. And the need to talk to Jeremy about her conversation with Sheldon was so overwhelming it couldn’t be denied another minute. “My shoes are a long story, which I’ll be happy to tell you, but you have to let Ruby go get our mom out of the hospital.”

“I’m not taking orders today. Try tomorrow.”

Laura crossed her arms. “You owe me.”

“How is that?”

“You got to go do your real job because I was on top of this.”

He laughed. “Carnegie, you—”

“You know it’s true. Come on. You can talk to her tomorrow. What’s the difference? You know she didn’t kill the prince. Nobody did. Don’t you have real murders to investigate?”

He looked Ruby up and down, then Laura, then Ruby again. “Sneak out,” he said to Ruby. “Come by the precinct tomorrow at ten. You’re a minute late, and I’m arresting you for something.”

Ruby dashed off before Laura could even thank the detective.

It took two hours to describe to Cangemi the events of the previous days. She did it right next to the Saffron gown, which was undoubtedly the most perfect thing she’d ever seen. Mom was an artist.

When Cangemi was satisfied, she took a second to close her eyes and rest her mind. She wanted to go to sleep. She wanted to forget the whole thing. She wanted to forget the vision of her father running in pumps. She wanted to forget the smudged lipstick and the Cuties and those perfect shoes. She wanted to forget the notes he’d left to let them know he cared but that said nothing important because he didn’t know any of the three of them anymore.

But as she closed her eyes, wishing Dad away, she remembered a day at the beach. It started with the feeling of sharp sand between her toes and went to her hair tickling her face as it blew in the hot wind. She was digging a hole, and it filled with water as she went deeper. Dad was going to teach her about drainage. He was going to teach her how to get the water out of the holes so she could dig really, really deep, deeper than anyone had dug before, but she couldn’t find him, and her hole was becoming a saltwater lake.

She stood up and looked toward the ocean, where Ruby, at some ridiculously young age, had been out bodysurfing with Dad. It was Laura’s turn to ask him something, her turn for his attention, but Ruby was such a pig. She pigged up Mom and Dad all the time. She looked back up at Mom, on the sand under their umbrella. Ruby, cross-legged on the blanket, was eating a sandwich, likely thinking of new ways to torment her baby sister.

“Dad!” Laura yelled at where he’d been, because if he wasn’t out in the waves getting pigged up by Ruby, and he wasn’t digging a hole with her, where was he?

He poked his head out of an oncoming wave. It pushed him forward, breaking into a fringe of white froth. For a second, he was lost under the foam, but she didn’t worry. Then he didn’t come up. She didn’t see him. Had it been too long? She went up to the water. “Dad!” He was nowhere. She was in a panic. Where could he be? Was he drowning? She called for him again, and still nothing. Looking up at the lifeguard station, she saw guys eating sandwiches and obviously looking in the wrong direction, because they couldn’t see Dad, and neither could she.

She saw it all then. Dad, gone. Dead and drowned. Out of her life. She felt such a sharp pang of loneliness and despair, such endless pain that she sat down in her hole/puddle and, in the way of four-year-olds, bawled her eyes out. She couldn’t get her breath, such was her anguish. So when a wave came, and she was stuck in the hole, crying, it surprised her, overwhelming her. She couldn’t step out because her feet were stuck in the hole. Salt burned her throat, and the rushing in her ears deafened her. She was dying, for sure. The water had killed Dad, and now it would take her away from Mom and Ruby, too. The wave pulled her body back out to sea, where she’d be lost and lonely forever.

Then arms came, and she felt a yank and a sucking feeling at her heels as she was pulled out of the hole. Dad turned her and patted her back until the water came up and then held her in his arms while she cried.

“What happened, Lala?” he asked with panic in his voice.

She could barely stop crying long enough to get the words out. “You were gone. I thought you left.”

“Never, Lala. I just got pulled a little down the beach. I would never leave you.”

Never. He’d said never.

She wanted to be mad. She wanted to take that newly minted memory and mine it for every bit of anger she could. She wanted to use it to build her strength enough to pick up him and his freaking girl/boyfriend and throw them both overboard so she could watch them drown. But she couldn’t, because the memory didn’t make her mad. She felt nothing but a sadness that scratched at the armor of the same old rage, denting it enough to flaw it and bend it, making holes where the metal buckled, and under that metal was nothing. That was it. Empty. The armor of anger was a shell protecting a love that had leaked out. Sometime in the past twenty years, she’d let go and didn’t even know it.

“Dad?” she said when she approached him and Philomena. “You have to take the dress back to Brunico.”

The police idled on the pier. The Coast Guard called out something on a microphone, as if the prince would suddenly answer after the hours that had passed.

Dad and his lover looked up at her with tear-filled eyes. Their plans and dreams were dashed. They never could have gotten away from the pier with the authorities crawling all over them.

“What would be the use?”

“You’re holding the Brunican princess. Bring her back, in the gown. No one will deny what’s in front of their eyes. She’ll marry you. You become high prince and change those stupid laws.”

“But I don’t want to be high prince.”

“You don’t always get to pick your job, Dad. But you can stay with the princess. And really, it’s such a small country.”

He seemed to think about it for a second. “That would make you heir to the throne.”

“Ruby,” she said. “She’d be the heir. I’d just come get a fancy hotel room for a week.”

“For vacation,” Philomena said as if she’d already warmed to the idea.

“Yeah,” Laura said. “Me. A vacation.”

CHAPTER 22

Laura turned the key gently. Her plan was to slip quietly into Jeremy’s warm bed and tell him everything in the morning. He’d left the lights on for her, so she walked in without kicking or breaking anything.

As soon as she turned the corner from the hall, she saw him sitting at the kitchen bar, papers with rows of numbers before him.

“Hi,” she said. “It’s one in the morning.”

“I was waiting for you and beating myself with the books.”

She dropped her keys on the counter. “I got the dress back.”

“You what?”

“It’s in the hands of its owner. Your bond will be returned to you in forty-eight hours.”

His reaction was swift and sure. He wrapped his arms around her so tight she thought he’d cut off circulation to her head. He buried his face in her neck, whispering thanks and praise between kisses. “Tell me how you did it,” he said, pressing his lips to hers.

“It’s hard when you’re kissing me.”

His hands found their way to her waist and under her shirt. “Tell me tomorrow then. I can’t stop kissing you.”

She wanted to fall right into him. Her body demanded it. Her mind found excuses and rationalizations to do it, but when he dug his hands in her waistband, she pulled back. “Jeremy. I can’t.”

“Why not?” He kissed her shoulder.

“It would be dishonest.”

He held her away from him and looked deeply into her face. He turned to stone right before her eyes, stepping back and leaning against a barstool, arms crossed. He wore a T-shirt he must have owned since high school and sweatpants from the same era with holes and worn patches. “Dishonest? Oh, this should explain a few things about this last week.”

“You don’t have to get hostile and defensive right away.”

“Speak.”

Standing there in the space between him and the door, she felt vulnerable. She wanted to sit but thought maybe she’d need a quick way out. “I’m resigning.”

“You’re
what
?”

“I’m taking Barry’s offer.”

“Oh, God, no. You are kidding me.” He put the heels of his hands to his eyes. The gesture was fully his, a way of expressing despair and frustration. She never imagined he would make it in reaction to something she had said.

“Please,” she said. “Listen. If you still want to back Sartorial, we want you to, and I know I can’t go into your design room anymore, but I’ll be right across the street, and I’ll be in to work with Ruby. I won’t be the first person to arrange things this way, Jeremy. Please. I’ll help you look for a replacement. Don’t be upset.”