Camilla T. Crespi - The Breakfast Club Murder (13 page)

“Could we please order?” Margot called out after her.

“She’ll be back,” Beth said and turned to Lori. “Are you sick?”

“Callie thinks so. I’m just beat.” She took a sip. And scared. Maybe depressed. She had to get herself together for Saturday’s dinner. In a fit of early morning optimism, which had lasted about ten minutes, she’d called Jonathan and told him her arrest was not imminent, her daughter didn’t want her around, and she was going to go ahead with the dinner.

“Thanks, Margot,” Lori said. “I will call Warren. I don’t mind having a lawyer on my side even if he isn’t into criminal law.” Warren had negotiated her divorce. He’d been kind in his gruff way, and told her she was a horse’s ass not to ask for alimony. Maybe he knew something useful. Warren and Rob had been friendly until Rob dumped her. Warren had taken their divorce very badly, saying it brought back the time Margot left him. He claimed he was still in love with her.

“What’s the plan for us?” Beth asked.

“To find out as much as we can about Valerie.” Lori filled her in about the phone being off the hook, then turned back to Margot. “Do you know any of Valerie’s friends? People I could talk to?”

“I don’t think she had any, but let me think about it, go through my old address book. Her office manager, Ruth what’s-her-name. She was a friend from way back. High school, I think. Valerie dragged her over to my house a couple of times. A sad girl. Never opened her mouth.”

Lori’s hand flew to her mouth. “Oh, Lord, I forgot about Ruth. She must be devastated, poor woman. I have to write her a note.”

“You should grill her on Valerie,” Margot said. “I bet she knows a few unsavory things about our dearly departed.”

“God, Margot,” Beth said. “You are heartless.”

“Maybe, but also realistic.”

“I doubt she’ll talk to me after my physical outburst in Valerie’s office,” Lori said.

“Let me, then,” Margot offered.

“Thanks, but be kind, tactful, compassionate. Promise?”

Margot crossed her heart with a finger. Beth chortled.

“Hi everyone, sorry, but the camp bus was late.” Janet, in a lace-edged white blouse and jeans, slipped into the booth just as Callie came back with a tray holding a slice of apple pie for Lori, a toasted whole wheat unbuttered English muffin and no jam for Margot, a large orange juice and a fruit salad for Janet, and English Breakfast tea and a cheese Danish for Beth. Lori and Beth thanked her.

Callie fixed Margot with her Greek warrior look while Janet gave Lori a hug. “Why waste your breath and my time with an order when all of you have the same stuff every morning you’re in here?”

“One day we might surprise you,” Margot said, managing a tiny frown on her smoothed forehead.

Callie grunted and left.

“It’s such a terrible thing to happen,” Janet said in a whisper. Her face was craggy with worry. “I’m so sorry for you and Jess and Rob.”

“Thanks,” Lori said, kissing her cheek. “Jess thinks she now has to give up having fun and take care of her dad.”

“I know,” Margot said. “She told Angie she can’t go to Cape Cod and now Angie told Warren she won’t go, either, which means he’s upset and I’m stuck with a moping daughter and twelve bottles of Skin So Smooth.”

“I hope Rob will convince Jess otherwise,” Lori said.

“Hey, gals,” Beth said, ready to fit the conversation into a brighter groove. “Our Lori here made quite an impression on Mama Ashe, and from what Jonathan tells me, that’s like getting an abortionist to win over the pope. Good for you.” She gave Lori a high five, which Lori returned half-heartedly. “All right,” Beth sighed. “Here’s what I can do for the cause. Jonathan Ashe knows half of Manhattan, probably the same half that Valerie knew. If you want, I’ll ask him to see what information he can ferret out about her. Unless you want to ask him yourself?”

Lori noticed a hint of a smile in Beth’s eyes. The woman was relentless. “Jonathan is all yours.” She had enough on her plate without having sex take over her thoughts.

“What can I do?” Janet asked.

Margot leaned over her coffee mug before Lori could answer. “How well do you know Jonathan?” she asked Beth.

“He’s bought a lot of art from me.”

“You know him?” Lori asked.

“His father and mine were best friends.” Margot leaned closer to the group and almost purred, she was so pleased with her piece of gossip. “I hope he’s paid you for all that art because I heard he just got burned in some real estate deal.”

“How do you know that?”

“Warren told me,” Margot said. “Which reminds me, thanks to my dear ex, I lost out on a lot of money with a real estate deal. I was going to invest in Waterside Properties, which is in the Bronx of all places. Lots of land and abandoned buildings along the water. Now it’s been sold for oodles of money to some big German developer. There was a big article about it in the
Times
yesterday. Rob’s in on it, lucky bastard.”

Lori put her fork down. “Rob? Are you sure?”

“Well, he’s the one who asked me to go in on the deal with him a couple of months ago,” Margot said, “but Warren advised me not to, so I didn’t. Whatever other faults he has, my ex has never made a mistake about money.” Margot jangled a bracelet. “I guess there’s always a first time.”

Janet shook her head, as if ridding herself of a bad thought, and speared a pineapple chunk. “I don’t understand why you left Warren.” She looked at Margot with wide, questioning eyes. “You’re such good friends. Isn’t that enough to keep a marriage together?”

“Maybe.” Margot retreated into a crunchy silence by nibbling her toasted English muffin.

Janet turned her attention to Lori and asked once again, “How can I help?”

Lori hesitated. She was reluctant to involve her. Janet had been through enough with her mother’s death and Seth being out of a job for so long. Which reminded Lori. Had Seth given Janet his good news? She didn’t look in the least relieved.

“I’ll ask Seth to talk to Rob,” Janet offered, a smile coming to her face at last. “Rob must know everything there is to know about Valerie. Maybe he even has some suspicions as to who did it.”

Aside from me,
Lori thought. “Great idea,” she said. She planned to pigeonhole Rob herself, but there was no guarantee that his answers to her, if any, would be honest. “Okay, we’re set. Margot, you’re going to talk to the neighbors about whether anyone saw a strange car that night and you’ll talk to Ruth. Beth, you’re going to convince Jonathan to go snooping among his Manhattan friends, and Janet is going to ask Seth to help with Rob. And I, to start with, am going to talk to my mother whose friend, Joey Pellegrino, a retired police captain, supposedly can get the scoop on what the Hawthorne Park detectives are up to. Then I’ll call Warren and see what he says. Okay, girls, thanks for coming. What would I do without you?” Lori stood up. She had to get back home to deliver her car to the police.

“If you don’t eat your pie,” Beth said, getting her wallet out, “Callie will never give you another one.”

“No one knows what Callie will do,” Callie said, appearing behind Beth. “Not even Callie.” She handed Lori a plastic bag holding two apple pies. “If you want to share with your girlfriends, that’s your business, but don’t microwave. Turns the dough into a wet towel.” She started gathering the half-eaten plates and mugs and putting them on a tray. “Out, gals, people are waiting.” A line had formed outside. “You’ll pay next time.”

“Thanks for the pies.” Lori planted a kiss on the back of Callie’s neck. “I’m going to eat one all by myself and save the other one for Jess.” Then she whispered so the women wouldn’t hear. “I want to talk to you about what you said.” Lori trusted her girlfriends completely, but she did want to understand why Callie had made that comment.

“Can’t.” Callie fussed with the plates and flatware and did not turn around. “Too busy.”

“I’ll come back after the lunch hour, then.”

“This is a bad day. Forget what I said.” Callie, her face averted, waved her hand behind her. “Go. Go. Please.”

Lori stepped back. “See you next Monday.” Outside, the women were waiting. Lori joined them. Margot slipped her the car keys to the Mercedes. They all kissed goodbye and went their ways.

As Lori reached her car, a man popped out of a store doorway, pen and notebook in hand. He blocked her way. “Mrs. Staunton, is it true you socked your ex-husband’s wife in the face hours before she was murdered and you have no alibi for that night?”

Lori took a quick look at him. Young, eager, trying to do his job for some paper. But not on her back.

“Your fly is open,” she said, pointing.

He looked down long enough for her to slip past him and get in her car.

“Hey, wait a minute!” he yelled as she drove away.

Lori was staring out the kitchen window at the dandelions growing in the cracks of the walkway. She could always get on her knees and start weeding. The police had come and driven her to Margot’s where she’d picked up the Mercedes. Back home she changed into shorts and a T-shirt and made her phone calls. Ellie was too busy booking a group tour of Britain’s Lake District for forty-two retired English high school teachers to talk for more than two minutes, and her police captain, Joey Pellegrino, hadn’t called. Warren was out of the office. Jessica’s cell phone was off and no one answered at Rob’s apartment. When she called his office, Katie, Rob’s secretary, informed her that he had taken the week off.

It was too hot for weeding.

Across the street, Nancy Fisher waved at her. Nancy had probably seen the police take her car away, Lori decided, and was dying to find out more. Nancy had once been a casual friend, coming over for coffee and harmless gossip a couple of times a month. Once Rob left, she suddenly claimed she was too busy to stop over. Lori had noticed that other married women she had been friendly with avoided her now. “Do they think divorce is catching?” she had asked Beth. “More likely, they see you as potential bed fodder for their husbands” had been Beth’s answer. Lori walked away from the window now, without waving back.

She had let the police have her car without a warrant, happy to know the judge had refused to issue one, which meant the police didn’t really have a case against her. Lori felt she had relinquished the car with great flair, hoping the policeman who came to pick it up would refer back to Scardini how cooperative she’d been, how innocent she obviously was. Besides, she liked the idea of driving Margot’s obscenely expensive and beautiful Mercedes sports car for a few days. Let the mean-spirited of Hawthorne Park—Nancy Fisher included—think she’d splurged on a new car to celebrate Valerie’s death; she didn’t care.

She glanced at Alec Winters’s flowers. They needed a change of water. And a thank-you note was due. That would keep her distracted for another twenty minutes. Then, Jonathan’s cabbage roses needed a makeshift vase. Ellie had insisted on floating them in a bathtub full of cold water to stop them from drooping. The narrow asparagus steamer would be perfect, a wedding gift she’d never used but couldn’t bring herself to throw out because it seemed so elegant and posh to own one. Lori ran upstairs, gathered the roses, dripped water all the way down the stairs, cut the ends of the stems on a bias, filled the poacher with warm water, and arranged the flowers inside. She changed the water in Alec’s vase, removed a few yellowing petals, and placed both bouquets on the kitchen table. She stepped back to survey the effect. So many flowers together was overkill, maybe, but why not feel like a star on opening night, surrounded by gestures of devotion from two admirers? Lori waited for the flowers to work their magic. They didn’t. She felt more like a corpse in a funeral parlor waiting to get the burial over with. Why wasn’t anyone getting back to her? Why was Valerie dead? Why was she alone?

Time to stop feeling sorry for herself and write that thank-you note. Lori extracted a box of note cards from under the pile of cut out recipes sitting on top of the small desk at one end of the kitchen. Each card depicted a vase of flowers painted by a different painter—Manet, Redon, Matisse, Van Gogh.

Dear Alec,
Lori wrote in her mind as she crossed over to the table.
Your flowers are—
No, Alec was too informal. He’d called her Mrs. Corvino. Lori dropped down in a chair, picked Van Gogh’s irises, and began to write.

Dear Mr. Winters,

Your flowers are incredibly beautiful. Thank you. You’ll be happy to know the cleaners were able to remove all the stains on my dress.

The little white lie would make him feel better.

There was no need for you to send anything, although I’m glad you did. I do appreciate the recipe, even though I wonder how you were able to get it. I thought it was a family secret. Are you part of the family?

Lori crossed out the last sentence. He might feel compelled to answer her, maybe even think she was flirting with him. She should have remembered Ellie’s childhood warning and written a draft copy first. Those cards had cost two dollars each. Lori took out another card—
Pansies on a Table,
by Henri Matisse.

Dear Mr. Winters,

Your flowers—

God, what was she doing, sending pansies to a gay man?

A swoop of Lori’s arm threw the cards and her pen on the floor. She strode over to the phone and called her mother again. “Has Pellegrino gotten back to you yet?”

“He’ll call when he knows something. I gotta go. By the way, Jess called.”

Lori felt a punch in her stomach. “She called you?”

“That’s what I just said. She was helping Rob pick coffins, can you believe he’d put her through that? And she was upset and didn’t want to call you because she knew she’d start crying the minute she heard your voice and want to come home and she can’t break down because her father needs her. She wants you to know she’s okay.”

“Why didn’t you call me? I’ve been worried about her.”

“And how should I know that? Do you ever tell me anything?”

“You’re a mother, damn it, you should know,” Lori wanted to yell into the phone. Instead she walked to one of the cabinets, phone to her ear, and took out the canister of flour, then reached down in the lower cabinet for the bag of red boiling potatoes she’d bought last night.