Booked for Trouble (20 page)

“Butch, then. He'll come.”

“I am sure he will,” Mom said. “He's quite handsome, isn't he?”

“Butch? I hadn't noticed.”

“If you like that overly large, manly sort.” She dismissed the overly large, manly sort with a wave of well-manicured fingers. “He's obviously very fond of you.”

I felt my color rising. “He's Josie's soon-to-be brother-in-law. It's just a family thing.”

“I have eyes, dear. He has a way of looking at you when you aren't looking back that any fool can read. He's handsome and charming and very nice, and he clearly adores you. But you'd be making a big mistake getting involved with a policeman.”

“I'm not getting involved with—”

“Their divorce rate is astronomical. The job always comes first, even though they say it won't. Before family. Before children. Not to mention the constant worry about the danger.”

“But we're—”

“Now, if you must remain in the Outer Banks, dear, Theodore would be a much better choice. Such an educated and intelligent man.”

“Theodore isn't interested in me, Mom.”

“He's shy, dear. All he needs is some encouragement.”

“Don't you dare. I don't even like . . . Hey, why are we talking about men, anyway? You have a stalker threatening you, or have you forgotten?”

“I haven't forgotten.” She stuffed the note in her pocket. “I'll meet him. And you'll come with me.” She walked away without waiting for me to agree. She never did; she simply assumed that any sensible person would always agree with her.

I ran to catch up. “I suppose two to one isn't bad odds. I have my phone. I'll set it so I only have to press a button to get nine-one-one. We'll keep the door open.”

“You can hide.”

“I'm not going to hide.”

She unlocked the door. “Get in the closet.” The room was neatly made up; a light breeze off the balcony stirred the curtains.

“I am not getting in the closet.”

“Bathroom, then.”

We froze at a sound from the hallway. Then a woman laughed, footsteps continued on, and my mother and I breathed again.

“He might not talk if you're here,” Mom said.

“He'll have to.”

“I intend to find out what this is about. Karen dared to malign my reputation, and I was publicly accused not only of theft but of murder and dragged off to the police station as though I were O. J. Simpson. When the police finally admitted they'd made a mistake, their apology was hardly satisfactory and not made in public. I may have to sue for damage to my reputation.”

“Mom!”

“Get into the bathroom, Lucille.”

She used her
Go to your room, young lady
voice. Despite myself, I did.

I made myself as comfortable as possible, meaning not very, and amused myself by checking Facebook. Nothing new out of Boston. My friends were either still dating the same guys or complaining about their husbands. I resisted posting “Hiding in hotel bathroom, waiting for killer.”

I'd give this farce fifteen minutes and then take my mom to spend the night at her sister's, even if I had to tie
her up in the four-hundred-thread-count sheets and wheel her out of the hotel in a housemaid's cart.

A knock on the door.

I stopped breathing.

I heard the door open. My mother said, “Who are you?”

“Norm Kivas. Karen's husband.”

“W
hat do you want, Mr. Kivas?” my mother said.

“Shut the door.”

“The door stays open.”

“Don't matter to me if the entire place hears your business,” he said. “The police aren't going to charge you with the murder of my wife.”

“Who told you that?”

“Never mind.”

Doug Whiteside, I guessed. If Doug was taking a run for the mayor's job, he'd have tried to make friends in high (and not so high) places.

“I want twenty thousand dollars,” Norm said.

To my surprise, Mom laughed. “Because I didn't kill your wife? That's a new one.”

“Karen talked about you. A lot, for many years. She didn't like you much, you know. Said you were a terrible person in school. One of those stuck-up girls quick to make fun of ones not so pretty, ones without much money.”

“I'll agree that your information's correct in one aspect. I was one of the pretty ones.”

Don't be glib, Mom. He's serious.

“But,” she said, “my family didn't have any more money than almost anyone else at our school.”

“Karen kept track of you, you know, for years. I told her you weren't worth her stewing over, but she couldn't let it go. You moved to Boston, married into some big-shot family. Had kids. Brought your kids to visit your sister every summer. I thought she'd gotten over it, as the years passed. But then here you were, back again, still high-and-mighty, still lording it over us peasants.”

“Mr. Kivas, that sounds nothing but sad. If Karen was jealous of me all these years, then I'm sorry for her. I truly am. And I'm glad we parted as friends. You might not believe that, but it is true.”

“It wasn't fair, Karen always said. You should've paid for being a greedy, bullying cow. Instead you struck it rich.”

“Mr. Kivas, this conversation is at an end. Good-bye. I'm sorry for your loss. But it has nothing to do with me.” Mom had slipped into her hoity-toity Boston Brahmin accent, the one that had been fading over the last few days. I didn't think that was wise: she was only reinforcing Norm's point. I doubted she even knew how she sounded. This was her defensive posture, her fighting voice. It couldn't have been easy for a teenage girl from an Outer Banks fishing family to fit into my dad's family and social circles. She would have learned early to fight with the only weapons she had.

Speaking of fighting—if I had to, I was ready. I had one hand firmly on the bathroom doorknob and the other on my phone. I flexed my knees and bounced on the balls of my feet, prepared to move.

“Karen told me all about it,” Norm said, “back in the early days when we was first married. You were a
common thief, she said. You saw something you wanted, and figured you were entitled to it. Everyone in school knew it. But they wouldn't do nothin' because of your family having connections.”

“My family had no influence whatsoever. On anything. That was all a long time ago, and things that may, or may not, have happened when we were in school are of no consequence now. Good-bye.”

“I have proof.”

“Proof of what, pray tell?”

“Melanie Harris told Karen. Told her you stole her purse. She wrote it down. Made a statement like. Karen kept it.”

“That sounds like something Karen would do. She probably pulled it out from under her pillow at night and dreamt of revenge. I have absolutely no idea what the statute of limitations is regarding the theft of a hundred dollars, but it isn't thirty-five years.” I realized that they were talking about the incident Ellen had related to me. Mom suspected of stealing a classmate's purse containing a hundred dollars to buy herself a dress for the dance. And how Mom had been so guilt stricken, it had changed her for the better. Poor thing.

“How'd you know it was one hundred?”

“Oh, gosh, you tricked me there, Inspector. Now go away.”

“I'm not gonna take it to the cops. But there's other people'll be interested. Your daughter's living here now, isn't she? Think she wants to know what her mother's really like?”

“I doubt,” Mom said, with a deep sigh, “that she even cares.” At that, she sounded so sad, I almost threw open the bathroom door and declared, “I do care, Mom!”

“Think about it,” Norm said. “You can afford it. I'm not askin' for nothing you don't have. I've met this girl, see. She wants me to buy her nice things. She wants to go to California for a vacation. I've never been to California.”

“Didn't Karen have life insurance?” Mom asked.

Norm growled. “Stupid woman rewrote her policy after kickin' me outa the house. Our kids get it all.”

“Way to go, Karen!” I would have shouted if I hadn't remembered I was hiding.

“I'll be back tomorrow,” Norm said. “Have the money ready.”

The door shut. Mom said, “You can come out now.”

“I'm going to Detective Watson,” I said.

“Don't bother,” Mom said. “I'll ask for a new room, and tell the desk to keep him away.” She plopped down on the bed. “I'm sorry, Lucille. Sorry you had to hear that. It's true, I'm ashamed to say. There was this girl, back in school, Melanie Harris. She was overweight and had bad skin and absolutely no fashion sense. She wanted to be my friend. Her family was better off than ours, so I told her if she wanted us to be friends, she'd have to give me money. She wouldn't. Clearly Melanie had a good deal more pride than I did. I stole her purse one day. I liked the purse and didn't think it fair that she had a better one than I did. I convinced myself that I deserved to have a nice purse. I found one hundred dollars in it. I used the money to buy a dress to wear to a dance. I told myself she shouldn't have been carrying that much money around, so she deserved to lose it.”

I sat down beside my mother, and wrapped her in my arms. I didn't tell her I knew the story already.

“I found out that I wasn't as tough-minded as I thought I was. I had a horrible time at the dance, and took that
dress to the charity shop the next day. I've never in all my life stolen anything since. One good thing came out of that, though. I never told Melanie I'd taken her money, but I knew she knew, and slowly we became friends.”

“What's Melanie doing now?”

“You might have seen her on TV. She went to law school, married a man in her class, and they moved to the Midwest. Where she's now the senior senator. Her married name's Melanie Brackenfield.”

“No kidding?” Not only a United States senator, but a rising star. There was even talk of a presidential bid.

“I'd like to say she owes it all to me,” Mom said. “But that isn't true, although I do think I played some small part in convincing her she didn't have to follow along behind the in crowd, begging for scraps of attention. And I knew, not that it matters, that Melanie had told Karen about the hundred dollars.”

“But it does matter, Mom. Don't you see? Norm Kivas must have killed Karen. Obviously he did it for the insurance money. And then he found out he isn't entitled to it. I bet he's splashed money on this new girlfriend, and now . . . whoops . . . can't tell her he doesn't have any more. Doug Whiteside might toss a few bucks his way to get Norm to support his mayoral bid, but aside from the grief factor, Norm's no benefit to any political campaign. He needs money, and he needs it now. I've suspected him all along. You can't trust a man who doesn't like libraries.

“You're not staying in this hotel one minute longer. If he killed Karen, then who knows what he'll do when you don't have the money for him?” I got to my feet. I tossed her Louis Vuitton suitcase onto the bed, marched to the closet, and began tearing clothes off hangers. “We're outa here. Now. No arguments.”

She said nothing. I turned and looked at her in surprise. She was smiling, a soft, gentle, genuine smile of the sort I hadn't seen for a long time. “Mom? Do you understand what I'm saying? I'm taking you to Aunt Ellen. Uncle Amos can tell the police what's happened.”

“I understand, dear. You're right. I'm glad you're here for me.”

“Oh, Mom.” I dropped onto the bed beside her and gave her a hug. We held each other for a long time. When I finally pulled away, Mom's eyes were wet. I felt more than a touch of moisture in my own.

“Your father's having an affair with his secretary.”

“What?”

“You heard me. I might not even mind so much if it wasn't such a horrid cliché.”

“Dad's sleeping with Mrs. Ferguson?” The very idea was preposterous. Mrs. Ferguson had been assigned to my dad the day he'd arrived at the firm, still wet behind the ears. I had no idea how old she was, but she'd seemed ancient when I first met her. I'd been nine, allowed to visit “the Office” for the first time, and everyone at the law firm had looked old to me. Still, she had to be at least ten years my dad's senior. She kept guard over Dad as though he were the castle and she the moat, full of dragons and sea serpents. My brothers and I were terrified of her. I sometimes thought even Mom was terrified of Mrs. Ferguson.

“Don't be ridiculous,” Mom snapped. “Of course he's not sleeping with Mrs. Ferguson. Mr. Ferguson had a skiing accident over the winter. He broke a good number of bones. The old fool should have known better than to go skiing at seventy-five. Mrs. Ferguson took time off to care for him, and then decided to slip into retirement.”

“I always thought she'd die in harness,” I said. “I didn't even know she was married. I figured ‘Mrs.' was an honorary title.”

“They pulled some fluff of a thing barely out of diapers from the typing pool to take her place.”

“I don't think law firms have typing pools anymore, Mom.”

“And, as if in some low-budget French farce, your father began sleeping with her.” The tears began to flow in earnest. “What am I saying? I care, yes, I care.”

I held my mother close. “Did he tell you?”

“Evangeline did, of all people. Ricky told her. You know what these sordid affairs are like. The couple thinks they're being so discreet, but everyone in the vicinity, except the rejected wife, knows.”

“What are you going to do?” I asked. This was a side of my mother I'd never seen before. Weeping, heartbroken. Vulnerable. I held her close while she cried in my arms.

“I don't know what to do. I didn't tell him that I know. I left for New York that night. I had my little shopping spree charged to the household account, not my personal one. So he'll know I'm upset about something.”

“Has he called you since you've been here?”

She shook her head.

“You can't stay here forever, Mom.”

“Why not?”

“Because your home's in Boston, and your grandchildren are there. Not to mention that you can't just walk away from an almost forty-year marriage without a word.”

“I can if I want to.”

“You don't want to. Do you want me to call him? I
didn't phone him about the death of Karen because you asked me not to, but I think I should now.”

“It's so, so . . . humiliating.”

“I know, Mom.” And that was the crux of it. Poor Mom. Her pride was everything to her, her pride and her place in Boston society. If Ricky knew, then everyone at the club would know. There was nothing Ricky loved more than spreading gossip.

“I won't say anything about what you've told me,” I said. “I'll say I'm calling for a chat and mention how much fun you and I are having. I'll see what he says and take it from there.”

I didn't bother to mention that I had never in my life phoned my dad for a chat. He'd know immediately that I knew what he'd been up to.

I gave her another hug and then pulled away. “I'll call him later. Right now, let's get out of here. I'm taking you to Aunt Ellen's, and we're going to tell Uncle Amos about Norm's blackmail attempt.”

She gave me a weak smile. Her eyes and nose were red and her eyeliner was smudged. “Give me a minute.”

It didn't take her much longer than that to get rid of the red and reapply her makeup. She came out of the bathroom looking dewy fresh, as though she didn't have a care in the world.

How,
I wondered for approximately the thousandth time,
did she do that?

“I'll drive you,” I said.

“I can drive myself.”

“No. I don't want you alone. We don't know where Norm is—he might be watching the hotel. Aunt Ellen or someone can come back with me to get my car.”

It was dark by the time we left the room. The
registration clerk was on the phone. She held up one finger to indicate she'd be right with us.

“I'll get the car while you're waiting,” I said. “Do you have the valet ticket?”

She handed it to me. The clerk was still on the phone.

“While I'm doing that,” I said, “call Aunt Ellen. Tell her we're coming.”

“I think my phone's out of power. With all that's going on, I forgot to charge it.”

I pulled my iPhone out of my pocket, typed in the passcode, and handed it to Mom. “Use mine.”

I headed outside to get the car.

“Be a few minutes,” the valet said, jogging up to the kiosk. “I've a couple of others to sort out first.”

“Give me the keys and I can get it myself.”

“Sorry,” he said, “some of the cars are blocking others.”

I was impatient, anxious to get going, but there was no rush. “I'll wait,” I said.

George Marwick came around the corner of the building. A gust of wind lifted the long strands of hairs stretched across his head, making him look as though he were trying to sprout wings.
Why do men not know how unattractive that is?
He gave me a huge smile. “Good night, Lucy. See you tomorrow?”

“Probably not,” I said. “Mom's checking out now.”