Dead at Breakfast (15 page)

He'd assumed for years that he'd marry again and have children sooner or later, but whether because that early mistake had made him overcautious, or for some other reason, it never happened. Women were so irate about all that it cost them to be the child
bearers during those bra-burning, hairy armpit years, the mess of their periods, cramps and headaches, childbirth itself . . . but how about the fact that if they wanted to have babies, they could?

When he first met Sarah, he was managing the Clift in San Francisco, a small gem of a hotel off Union Square that catered to the old line, well-born, well-heeled traveler. She had had a small restaurant of her own back east, she said, dinner service only, but running her own place had been too much for her, and like so many people who want a fresh start, she decided to try California. She had taken the only job that was open at the Clift kitchen where she had friends, doing food prep and other lowly tasks. It was a little puzzling, since the nature of the job didn't sync with her résumé, but she said she wanted the experience of a big kitchen. And she needed the health insurance. The executive chef had liked her and moved her up quickly; her cooking skills were real. What was clear to Gabe, though, was that she'd had some kind of very hard time. Romantic, financial, some kind of breakdown. He didn't know what, and she wasn't talking, but certain things made him think she'd been living very close to the edge. She was much too thin, and she had the health problems of a person who couldn't or wouldn't take care of herself. At first, given his own experience with his mother, he suspected substance abuse, but he knew the signs very well, and she didn't have them. She wasn't impulsive, or compulsive. She didn't lie, there were no unexplained absences. She could take a glass of wine, no problem, and not reach for another.

He'd been attracted to her from the start. They were of similar ages, and her diction and manners told a different story from her battered appearance. He liked a woman with a bit of mystery, and he paid attention to her. She was having a problem with her neck when they first met, and he sent her to a celebrity chiropractor. The chiropractor discovered she was missing two teeth in the back
of her lower jaw and said Oh, well, no wonder. He couldn't fix her until she had the teeth replaced. Gabe lent her money to have the work done, since even the hotel's fancy health plan didn't cover it. She accepted his friendship, at first warily, but eventually, warmly. The teeth were fixed, her neck pain went away, her skin and hair looked better, healthy, and she gradually filled out and began to smile and laugh more. For a brief, to Gabe heavenly, interlude they were lovers. Then a restaurant out in the avenues offered Sarah her own kitchen, and she was gone. Eventually the Clift was sold to one of those “groups” that believe that a hotel lobby should be so dim that you need a flashlight to sign the guest register, and attracted young hipsters from Europe or the movie business wearing black and sporting name brand luggage, watches, and strollers. Even their babies wore black. Gabe decided it was time to go back east. They didn't see each other again for years, until he bought the inn and asked her to come with him, and she came.

As he drove into Bergen, he had a sudden thought of the lunch tray that would be sent up to him as soon as he was back in his office. A big tumbler full of green slime that Sarah made for him, two rye crisp crackers, and a pot of green tea. Every once in a while he called down to the kitchen and asked for a club sandwich or a bacon cheeseburger, and Sarah laughed, and sent green slime. He was allowed to eat whatever he wanted for dinner, that was something. And of course, there was always the chance that if he got down to fighting trim she would marry him, though his belief in that was, he recognized, a triumph of hope over experience.

Just Barb's. A plate of fried shrimp with tartar sauce, coleslaw, and French fries. A real Coke, with caffeine and sugar in it. He passed the restaurant, regretted it, stopped at the corner, and parked the car.

Shep Gordon and Carson Bailey were sitting in a booth, drink
ing coffee. Shep gave Gabe a wave, beckoning him over. “Take a pew,” Shep said expansively, and Carson scooted over to make room.

“You look like you're just finishing up.”

“We've got most of the problems of the world solved,” said Shep. Evidently they were in the mood for company. Or an audience. Gabe sat down. Sandra appeared, and took his order.

“You got anybody left up at the inn?” Shep asked.

“Mrs. Babbin and her friend. They're staying on for a few more days. Mr. Clark was still there when I left this morning, but I think he leaves tonight.”

“There's a lot of nervous chat in the county about what you're going to do,” said Carson.

“How do you mean?”

“Whether you'll rebuild, or. You know. Shut it down.”

The bluntness of the question, given his state of fatigue and muddle, struck Gabe dumb for a moment.

“The inn means a lot to Bergen,” said Carson. “Town's biggest employer.” As if Gabe didn't know that.

Sandra arrived with a knife and fork for Gabe, and a glass of water.

“There's a lot of bad feeling toward Cherry Weaver, I'll tell you that,” said Shep. “A lot of people saying she as good as killed this town, if the inn goes.”

Gabe's food arrived. He looked at it and suddenly saw it as a big mound of grease with a calorie count in the four figures, and thought of Sarah. Shep reached over and took a shrimp from Gabe's plate with his fingers and ate it. Okay, fuck it. If I end up as big as Shep, I'll join the police force and scare people for a living, Gabe thought.

“Poor Cherry,” he said, chewing. He shook salt onto his mound of shrimp, and added ketchup.

Carson Bailey gave a bark of laughter. “Poor Cherry!” He shook his head. “Poor Cherry is going to have a good long stay at the taxpayers' resort in Windham. ‘Poor Cherry.' After what she did to you?”

Gabe swallowed. “You guys are that sure she did it? Antippas smoked in his room all the time, you know. Housekeeping was in a swivet about it. The curtains, the bed clothes, all stank of smoke. I didn't know how I was ever going to rent it out again, unless I redid the whole room.”

“Won't have to worry about
that
now, anyway,” said Carson.

No, thought Gabe glumly, and his rage at Alexander Antippas drained away. Again.

“Her own lawyer thinks she's guilty, you know,” said Shep. “Little Miss Weaver.”

Gabe stopped chewing and looked at him.

“Really?”

Carson's and Shep's eyes met. They were feeling extremely pleased with themselves.

“Her lawyer
told
you that Cherry did it? Is that even legal?”

“She's pretty green. The lawyer. Might be her first criminal case.”

“But how could she do a thing like that?”

Shep and Carson began to chuckle, Shep's noise a deepish huh, huh, huh, and Carson's more of a giggle.

“I guess you get what you pay for,” said Carson.

Shep said, “She was having a cigarette in front of the jail, and a corrections officer we know was standing right there, smoking a cigarette. He asked her how the case was going and she said, it wasn't the case she'd hoped for. Said Cherry didn't want to take a lie detector test, and in Crim Law they teach you it's not a good sign.”

“Oh,” said Gabe. “Well that's not exactly a confession.”

“No, but if her own lawyer thinks she did it, it tells us a lot.”

The assistant AG for the great state of Maine caught Sandra's eye and pointed to his coffee cup and his pie plate. He was reupping on both.

The Antippas house was in the hills, near enough to the Hotel Bel-Air that the family could order food as if they were calling room service and send one of the kids to pick it up. It wasn't the house they'd lived in when Jenny was small and the babies were born; that had been a more modest affair in Studio City. The new house was a gift from Jenny. She'd commissioned it when her first album went triple platinum. The architect was a famous devotee of Frank Lloyd Wright, and his creation was dug into the hillside, with bedrooms cantilevered out over the drop below, and an infinity pool that seemed to float above the cityscape, so when you were in it, especially at night, it was like swimming in sky.

What had been called a living room when Lisa was growing up in Ontario was called by the architect the “great room,” as if it were winter quarters for medieval Norsemen with the family and servants and animals all cooking and eating and sleeping around the same hearth to survive the winter. The great room had walls of glass, and when Lisa and Glory walked in at the end of their journey, it was so filled with flowers that they were walloped by the mass of colors and smells obscuring the fact that once a family had lived here. Some of the “floral tributes” had been in place since Tuesday and a swampy odor rose from the vases, but Lisa's children had no idea about changing the water or removing dead stems. More arrangements covered the dining room table, most still wrapped in cellophane, with cards attached. “Condolences,” “Deepest Sympathy,” “Our thoughts are with you at this
difficult
time,” from Jenny's agent, her manager, her record label, her stylist, the stars of the morning talk shows, her publicist, and the publicists of half the recording artists in Hollywood. The children had just left
them wherever they found room, and waited for their parents to come home. Then a fresh wave had arrived when news of Alexander's death hit the papers, from all the same people and some new ones. “At this difficult time.” Why did they even try?

Sophie and Ada were sitting in the great room, waiting. They burst into tears as they heard, at last, the sound of the dog's scrabbling toes on the slate floor of the hall. As Colette rushed toward them they were rushing the other way, into the two women's arms. They shook and sobbed there. Then they switched, and embraced and sobbed in the arms of the other. Jeremy was downstairs in the family gym. Someone sent for him, and he appeared, wearing shorts and a sweaty T-shirt with a picture of Artemis on it, a relic from her “Break Me” tour. His earphones were around his neck, and as he moved close to them, they could hear Jenny singing from the tiny iPod strapped to Jeremy's arm. He too began to cry, as he hugged first his mother, then his aunt. Colette pranced among them, upset, overjoyed, annoyed, and confused, barking.

The housekeeper, Manuela, came out of the kitchen and she too was embraced, as she murmured in Spanish with tears in her eyes. She was a plump woman in a pale blue uniform with wire-rimmed glasses and her glossy black hair in a bun. She gestured at the jungle of flora in the great room, then led the way into the dining room.

“The children wanted you to see them,” said Manuela.

“I understand.”

“You want me to fix them?” She meant change the water, trim the stems, save what could be saved. Lisa reached for the card attached to an enormous bunch of white roses. “Our thoughts are with you in your sorrow.” From the law firm Alex used when someone sued him.

“No. Please. Please get rid of them. Keep the cards.”

Manuela's husband, Freddy, came in from the car with the luggage, and carried it through to the bedrooms. Lisa followed him, limping. She had been longing to be at home for the last five days,
but now that she was here she felt trapped. It was too much sensation, too much intensity, too much horror. The intrusion of all the curiosity and false sentiment was more of a burden than she'd expected, and added to it now was the grief of her children, all looking to her to make it better somehow, to help, to cope. They said God never sent you more than you could handle. Who were They, and what the hell did They know about it?

She walked into the bedroom she had shared with Alex for so many years. She'd just had it redone in the spring. The walls were covered in French hand-blocked paper, patterned in gold vines on a cream-colored background. The gold vines caught the evening sun and flared, as if they were burning without being consumed. The headboard of the enormous bed was covered with sand-colored shantung silk, matching the curtains and the carpet. There was an oily stain on the silk on Alex's side of the bed where his head had rested when he watched the enormous TV embedded in the wall above built-in pear wood dressers.

She watched Freddy put the suitcases on the silk-upholstered bench at the end of the bed, Alex's covered with
L
s and
V
s. Alex had liked logos that let the world know how much he had paid for everything. She could get rid of those now. No more Louis Vuitton luggage, no more scarves with linked Chanel
C
s on them, that Alex gave her at every birthday. If she wanted to get rid of them. Did she? She couldn't tell. She'd been Alex's creature for so long.

Alex's suitcase. The police had brought his suitcase and the clothes, whatever they didn't think was evidence, to the room she and Glory shared, and Glory had packed it for her. Glory had really tried, this week. The suitcase stank of smoke and wet, although things that had been in the closet had survived the hosing surprisingly well. The maid must have closed the closet doors. Alex never did.

And now. Should she unpack it? Why? Should she send his beau
tiful custom-made shirts to the laundry, so they could hang in the closet for no one to wear, ever again?

His clothes? His sock drawer? His desk, his computer? Did she really want to know what was in them?

What if it had been she who had died? What would be found in
her
drawers? The sex toys from Babeland in her bedside table? Maybe she should tape notes to them right now: these were presents and I never used them. And I never threw them out because I was planning to give them to the poor. What a good idea.

Maybe she should just throw the suitcase out without unpacking it. Or give it to Freddy. Maybe someone at his church weighed 350 pounds. You could put two of Freddy in one of Alex's suits; maybe they could figure out a way for two people to wear the clothes at the same time.