Camilla T. Crespi - The Breakfast Club Murder (2 page)

Out came the charming, full-of-regret smile she’d discovered was an Italian specialty whenever she asked for something they had no intention of giving you. “
Mi dispiace, signora.
It is a family secret.”

Before Lori could start to plead, Alec Winters stood up and pushed himself through the small space between the two tables. Suddenly Lori saw her table tilt, watched helplessly as the plate of hot, sauce-laden gnocchi slid down and overturned on her lap. With a cry, she shot up from her chair. The plate crashed to the floor and every diner in the place turned to gape at her. Her mind flashed back to another evening in a fancy restaurant in Greenwich. She’d thrown a glass of red wine in her husband’s face. A roomful of diners had gaped at her then, too. Lori held back a scream of rage as the American leaned into her and put a hand on her elbow. She heard a mumble of words, saw his other hand wave a napkin in front of her. She shrank back. He pushed forward. The carafe fell over, splashing red wine all over both of them. Lori stayed rooted to the spot, fighting the humiliation of tears as the waiter offered more napkins, as the man, Alec Winters, offered to pay for the cleaning, offered to pay for the meal, offered to buy her a new dress.

“I don’t want your money,” Lori cried out. She threw the napkins back at the waiter, fumbled in her bag for euros, dropped them on the table and ran out of there.

Alec followed. “Please let me help. I can’t tell you how sorry I am. Please. It was all my fault. Let me make it up to you.”

Lori whipped around. “I’ve gotten really good at taking care of myself.” He was unexpectedly tall. She had to crane her neck to look him in the eye. “I don’t need your help. I don’t need anybody’s help. Got that?”

He took off his glasses and nodded.

“Great!” Lori walked away at as fast a clip as her high heels could manage on the cobblestones, her chest throbbing with anger, shame, hurt. She was a good person. She had given up work to be Rob’s wife, had cooked countless meals for the law firm’s partners, for his clients. When Jessica came along, she divided herself, her time, between the two of them. Everything had gone wrong anyway. She didn’t deserve this last humiliation. She didn’t deserve any of it.

The
pensione
was a twenty-minute walk away through meandering narrow streets. Lori slipped off her heels and walked on the cobblestones still hot from the June sun. In the dark no one saw the mess her dress was in, the mess she was in. In the dark, Lori let herself cry for the first time since she and Rob divorced eight months ago.

The
pensione
owner handed over Lori’s room key without giving her a glance. On the one hand, she was grateful. On the other, she resented being invisible. It was a familiar see-saw. Since she had found out about Valerie, her moods had gone from one day raging to be the center of the whole universe’s attention, the next shutting down and hiding from everyone.

In the hotel room, Lori took off her new dress. She wiped off as much of the sauce and wine as she could with a towel. There was no chance it was going to come clean; the silk was too thin and fragile, but she wrapped the dress in the tissue from the store, making sure to fold over the front so that it wouldn’t stain her other clothes. She was going to keep the dress as a reminder of her past—irretrievably stained, but with its beauty still showing. Lori felt better after that good cry. Not everything had gone wrong with her life. She had Jessica, her independent, willful, and wonderful daughter, who was thirteen but vacillated between thirty-five and two. She had her home. Her friends, Beth, Margot, Janet. Her impossible mother. And soon, she hoped, she’d have herself back.

Getting ready for bed, Lori avoided the mirror over the dresser. She knew only too well what she’d see: an oval face, large hooded brown eyes, and a long nose that showed her Italian heritage. Full lips she had to stop biting. A forehead ruled with frown lines. A parenthesis of folded skin edged down from her nose to her mouth. She was ready to blame all her aging on Rob. After all, she’d lost her husband and her dentist.

Lori brushed her teeth. Who in his right mind fell in love with a dentist? Sure, dental costs were very high, but Rob’s insurance included dental. To add insult to injury, Valerie was a year older than she was. Weren’t men supposed to leave their wives for young, sexy babes? All right, some people might consider Valerie beautiful in an anorexic, flat-chested way, but Rob always claimed, while they were grabbing at each other, that he loved Lori’s big breasts, her full ass. God, why was she going over this again? Lori stood up. “Don’t forget you’re great!” a self-help guru had decreed in one of dozens of How-to-Survive-Divorce books she’d devoured. She couldn’t remember the last time she felt she was great, if ever, but she had only herself to work with, so she’d have to do.

As Lori moved, the bathroom light caught the prominent streak of gray cutting across one side of her thick, dark hair. She’d had it since her early twenties, a legacy from her now-dead father. That streak had made Rob give her a second glance when he’d spotted her at the party she was catering, and during the early years Rob would nuzzle against her, run his hands through her hair and call her his sweet-smelling skunk. She’d get all squishy inside, knowing he wanted to make love to her. The day the divorce was final she’d gotten a pixie cut, dyed the streak black. Jessica had burst into tears when she came home. “You don’t look you!” Now the gray was growing out, her hair covered her ears, and she was gaining back the weight she’d lost in the last eight months, which pleased both her and Jessica. They were both used to a rounder woman.

Jessica was with her father now. Today. His wedding day. Well, it was over by now, and Valerie was officially Rob’s wife and Jessica’s stepmother. Jessica had pleaded to be allowed to go to the wedding. The thought of it still made Lori tremble with hurt and anger. She’d wanted to forbid it, wanted to yell to her daughter, “I know you hurt, but I do, too. I need you. Stay on my side.” Instead she had told Jessica she was free to go if that was what she wanted, then picked up the phone and booked a flight to Italy. Lori felt betrayed, even though part of her understood Jessica’s need to be included in her father’s new life, her fear of being pushed aside by her father’s new woman. But Lori’s feelings were so raw she had no control over them.

After a long shower, Lori finished packing, checked her airline ticket for the umpteenth time, asked the concierge to wake her at eight a.m. so she would have plenty of time to get to the airport and go through security. Once in bed, she tried to read the mystery she’d brought with her, but the bedside light was too dim, she was too tired. She turned the lamp off and found herself thinking about the tall American standing in the small restaurant piazza, taking off his glasses as if to show her how sincere he was, nodding to her. A cluster of wisteria dangling over his head had given him a comic look. Craggy face with sharp cheekbones, dust-colored hair limp across his forehead. A studious face. A kind face. A harmless man who tried to help. She regretted treating him badly, regretted even more showing her own vulnerability. Her list of regrets was so long she started counting them and fell asleep.

Lori stands in her bedroom of the Connecticut house she’s lived in with Rob since she was pregnant with Jessica, all dressed up in her new silk dress and impossibly high stilettos. “Isn’t it beautiful?” she asks Jessica, who is looking at her from the doorway. “You could never be beautiful,” Jessica answers and disappears. As Lori runs out of the room to find her, one of her heels catches on the edge of the carpet and she falls. When she picks herself up, her chin is bleeding down her dress and she is standing on an unpaved country road lined with poplars. In the distance she can see Jessica’s long legs scissoring the air. Lori kicks off her heels and runs after her.“Wait for me!” Jessica turns, waves and keeps running. A car speeds past Lori, covering her with dust. She starts to cough and recognizes Rob’s new Mercedes. The car overtakes Jessica and brakes to a stop. The passenger door flings open. Jessica jumps, the door closes, and the road is suddenly empty.

Lori woke up, snapped on the lamp. One twenty-three a.m., seven twenty-three a.m. in New York, a Sunday. Jessica would still be asleep in Rob’s new apartment in Manhattan, but if she waited any longer, Jessica might be having breakfast with her dad and the new Mrs. Robert Staunton. It was now or never. Lori reached for the phone and dialed Jessica’s cell number.

Jessica answered after the first ring. “Who is it?”

“Jessica, sweetie.”

“Mom! What are you doing?”

“I know I wasn’t supposed to call, but I love you and I’ve missed you so much and I wanted to apologize for being angry at you. Can you forgive me?”

“I can’t talk! I don’t even know why I answered this stupid phone. God, Mom, how could you?” Her words sounded like the hiss of a cornered cat.

Lori felt them like a jab in her stomach. “Did I wake you? Is that it?”

“Wake me? Do you know what time it is? Seven thirty p.m. Valerie’s about to walk down the aisle!”

Lori groaned. She’d gotten it all wrong. New York was six hours back, not forward. Why was she so dumb? Why couldn’t she get her act together? Why? Why? Why? “Oh sweetie, I’m so sorry. I got confused.”

“I don’t believe you.” Jessica started to cry. “Oh shit, now I’m going to look terrible.”

Listening to Jessica’s sobs, a boulder dropped on Lori’s chest. “Jessica, you can never look terrible, you hear me? You’re beautiful even when you cry and please don’t use that word. I’m going to hang up now and you’re going to wipe your face with a tissue. You will always look beautiful and you’re going to be fine. I love you, honey.”

Lori hung up and lay back on the bed.
My poor sweet daughter. She’s scared about the future, just like I am. Except Jessica’s thirteen. In a couple of years she’ll be clamoring to get away from her parents, to throw her beautiful self at what life has to offer on her own. I’m forty-one, look sixty, feel eighty.

Lori snapped off the light and closed her eyes. Her mother’s voice pierced the darkness. “Lori Corvino, stop feeling sorry for yourself this minute!”

For once she was right. And yet . . . Lori breathed deeply and tried to release the tension in her body, something that she was learning in Pilates class. And yet . . . she had to help Jessica and also help herself. How?

Lori walked through the double doors of the customs area at Kennedy into the crowded arrival area. A line of darkly dressed men held up signs with names on them. It brought back the memory of the only other time she came home from abroad—a summer trip to Europe with Beth right after graduating from college. She’d been dating Rob for about a year and he was furious that she preferred ten days in foreign lands with Beth to his company in steamy New York State. Lori was flattered by Rob’s need for her, mistook it for devotion. She invited him to come along, out of loyalty more than desire, as she knew he would require all her attention and she wanted a last girl fling with Beth before they both plunged into new jobs—Beth as a social worker at the public high school in Hawthorne Park, and Lori as the owner of a company of one, Corvino Catering. Rob saw no reason to travel that far. “Not even for you.” Only later did Lori learn that he was terrified of flying.

As Beth and Lori walked out of customs, Lori had seen Rob in the front row of men, dressed in a dark suit, with a chauffeur’s hat on his head. When he saw Beth and Lori coming, he held up his sign, which read:
Mrs. Robert Staunton?
It had been such an exhilarating moment, the surprise of it had left Lori dumbstruck. Beth had to push her forward into Rob’s arms. Lori and Rob were married three years later, a week after Rob graduated from law school. Beth was her only bridesmaid.

Now Lori was standing alone, in a line for the van that would take her back home to Hawthorne Park, willing the memory away. The Connecticut van eased in front of her and stopped. The driver got out, swung the back door open, and began to stow luggage. As Lori moved up the line, she felt a tap on her shoulder.

“Let me give you lift.” Rob, without a sign this time, looking even more handsome, more tanned, nineteen years later.

Lori turned cold. “Is Jessica all right?”

“Yes, she’s fine. I just dropped her home.” His smile was reassuring, believable. Why was he here then—a day after he married someone else? And why hadn’t she put on makeup, combed her hair before getting off the plane? So many times she had fantasized about looking drop-dead gorgeous when she ran into Rob for the first time after their divorce. Well, not drop dead, but at least really good, and instead she looked like something the dog had slept on. If they had a dog, which they didn’t because Rob was allergic. Good, she would get a dog. A golden retriever that shed a lot of hair. That way Rob could never come back to the house. Great idea.

“Go away, Rob.” She reached down to pick up her suitcase. Rob grabbed the handle before Lori had a chance to. Bent close to his head, she smelled a new musky scent on him. Of course, that’s how it should be. He or Valerie had probably thrown out that last bottle of Armani she’d bought him just days before she found Valerie’s love note in his coat pocket.

“I’m taking the van, Rob. Suitcase or no suitcase.”

“We need to talk. The car isn’t far.” He walked away with Lori’s suitcase. Everything always on his terms. Even after the divorce. She meant to stand up to him. She had the strength for it finally—fury had poured concrete into her backbone—but she guessed that his need to talk had to do with Jessica. They had joint custody over her. Lori could divorce Valerie’s lover, but not Jessica’s father. Lori followed him, curious and a little anxious.

The day was cloudy and humid, but the silver Mercedes sparkled, it was so new. It still had that leather smell. Rob had waited until after the divorce was granted to buy the Mercedes and a two-bedroom apartment on Park Avenue. Lori had accepted a generous monthly payment for the upkeep of the house and Jessica’s needs, but only a lump sum for herself, enough to give her a year’s respite while she got Corvino Catering back on its feet. Still, she couldn’t help wondering how much money he had managed to hide from her and her lawyer. Maybe he had come to give her the monthly check he owed her. He was two weeks late.