Good Little Wives (5 page)

Bridget started in Randall's dressing room.

She yanked open one built-in cherry drawer, then another:

socks,

socks,

socks,

briefs,

briefs,

briefs.

How much of this
merde
did he have, anyway? How much did she? Did either of them really need several dozen sets of silk undergarments?

Consumption, she thought. So American. Like the society pages that triggered this frenzy. It had been the thought
of those pictures—lousy, grainy photos—that made Bridget think about passports.

Were there any worse pictures than those pasted on passports?

Then another thought sparked: Her husband would soon need his passport when he—not she—went to pick up Aimée.

She spun from the drawers to the solid teak,

hand-carved,

velvet lined,

twelve-drawer

jewelry chest.

Did men who lived outside New Falls have such opulent places to harbor their treasures?

Certainly not Luc.

She poked. She pried. She rummaged around.

A tie pin from St. Andrew's in Scotland.

Silver cuff links from Tiffany's that she'd given Randall on their tenth anniversary, bought with his money, which was also an American way.

A small gold bracelet he'd worn in the eighties when men were trying out that sort of thing.

But where was the ruby pinkie ring she'd given him when he'd agreed to let Aimée go to school in France?

And where was his grandfather's Patek Philippe watch?

And where,
mon dieu
, was his passport?

The safe!
her brain or
mon dieu
suddenly exclaimed.

Without wasting a second, she raced downstairs to Randall's den. She flew to the Rubens in the gilt frame on the wall (Rubens was one of Randall's favorites, a fantasy he lived out
through Bridget's full breasts). She pulled back the right side, spun the dial right, left, right, then tugged at the handle.

And there it was: the navy blue, pocket-size folder with the word “PASSPORT” hot-stamped in gold on the cover.

With a wide, happy smile, Bridget extracted the document. Then she closed the safe slowly, replaced the painting, and realized she needed to restore Randall's dressing room to its neat, anal order before he returned from the club.

In the meantime she'd find a perfect spot to hide his passport. What a pity he wouldn't be able to leave the country without it. And she would have to get Aimée after all.

 

Dana had been in the New Falls police station once when Michael was twelve and had stolen pumpkins from Mr. White's garden and pitched them into the Hudson to see if they'd float, which, according to Michael, they did.

It didn't look like the old brick police station where she'd gone the night her father had been arrested.

In New Falls the station was built out of limestone and had peculiar sharp angles that mimicked the library and the town hall.

“I'd like to speak with the investigator in charge of the Vincent DeLano case,” she said to the officer who sat at the welcoming desk.

The cop eyed her like a glazed cruller.

“About what?” he asked.

She realized she was still wearing her funeral clothes that exposed her as a New Falls wife—one of
those
. “About who might have killed him.”

Her point had been made; he picked up the phone and called an extension. She was quickly escorted to Detective Glen Johnson's office, a square glass cubicle with a desk and no windows.

“We have the killer,” Johnson said, standing up. He was a tall man, angular like the building. He leaned against his desk and folded his arms. “A neighbor called and reported hearing a gunshot. When we arrived, the killer was standing there, holding the gun.”

“Please,” Dana said. “The woman you've arrested is my friend. And I don't know if she killed Vincent or not, but I do know someone else might have had a motive.”

He studied her face.

She shifted on one foot.

“Vincent DeLano was a ladies' man,” she said, wondering if that were an outdated term. “Before he married Yolanda, while he was still married to Kitty, I know that he had at least one affair.”

“With…?”

“Well, I can't tell you that.”

“But you know this because…?”

“Because I was told.”

“By a reliable source?”

“Yes.”

He unfolded his arms, tented his fingers. “That woman wouldn't have been you, I suppose?”

“Me?” Good grief, she hadn't thought he'd accuse her. “Look, Officer, I'm trying to help. Kitty is my friend and I didn't sleep with her husband, but someone else did. Which
means that at least one other person might have wanted to kill him.”

He nodded and said, “By the way, where you were at eleven-thirty that morning?”

“Eleven-thirty? Why?”

He raised an eyebrow. She got the message.

“Eleven-thirty,” she repeated. “Well, I was having my manicure for Caroline's luncheon. Caroline Meacham.”

“We know about Ms. Meacham and her spring party. We might not be Manhattan's Twenty-seventh Precinct, but we know what we're doing.”

Apparently Detective Johnson was a
Law & Order
fan, too.

She sat down on a nearby metal chair. “Why do you care what I was doing in the morning?”

He circled his desk and pointed to his computer screen. “We have new information. The medical examiner has set the time of death earlier than we first thought.”

“You're kidding!”

The eyebrow lifted again.

“So Kitty didn't do it!”

“I didn't say that. But further examination showed that rigor mortis had begun to set in, so it had been a few hours. We're thinking eleven-thirty.”

“Could it have been suicide?”

“No. The trajectory of the bullet was all wrong for that.”

“So anyone could have shot him.”

“Any of many.”

“Like people you'd already ruled out.”

“Bingo.”

“Like all of the women at Caroline's party?”

He sat down and lodged his eyes on her. “Not all of them, maybe. But one, anyway.”

 

“Help,” Dana said when Bridget answered her door a few minutes later. “Is it possible Lauren killed Vincent?” She'd been heading home when, halfway there, she took a left not a right, because she knew this was something she could not figure out for herself.

“Why on earth would she?” Bridget asked as she let Dana into the house. “Did he beat Bob at golf?” She poured wine without asking.

Dana collapsed on the couch, then told Bridget about the Helmsley and the flagpole and the rest of the stuff.

Bridget made no comment.

“Aren't you shocked?” Dana asked.

“Actually,” Bridget replied, “yes. I am.”

They toasted each other and took a quick drink. Then Dana said, “I feel like our world is falling apart.”

“It might not be a bad thing. Maybe we were getting—how you say—too big for our pantaloons.”

It would have been nicer if Bridget weren't right.

“It's hard enough to think that Kitty was capable of killing Vincent. But Lauren?” Dana asked.

“Maybe she was afraid he would tell Bob about the affair.”

“I wonder if Bob would leave her.”

“Doubtful. He's an old man. And she raised all those kids.”

“Like they were her own.”

“But they aren't.”

“Neither was Vincent.”

They thought. They drank. They sat, thinking some more, black hair and silver, big boobs and little, Franco-American.

“Kitty is our friend,” Dana said. “But Lauren is, too.”

“We should warn her.”

“I'll drive.”

They set down their wineglasses and Dana found her keys and they opened the front door to leave. Unfortunately, on the other side of the door, stood Detective Glen Johnson and three other officers.

 

He asked where Bridget had been at eleven-thirty the day Vincent was murdered and if she'd had an affair with the man.

Bridget said she'd had a massage from eleven until noon and then stopped by her stylist's for a blow-dry. She pronounced “massage” as if she were in France, and “blow-dry” like a proposition.

Dana figured she'd done that on purpose just to anger the cops who had no doubt followed Dana to Bridget's. The Sherlocks of New Falls must have deduced that Dana would run to the woman whose name she hadn't disclosed.

She must remember to call Lauren, not pay her a visit.

Bridget then told the police if she were to have an affair, it wouldn't be with a man from New Falls. “Gossip, darling,” she said, sounding more like Zsa Zsa Gabor than Marie Antoinette. “It can
keel
one in a town such as this.”

No one suggested that gossip—or the fear of it—might have been what had
keeled
Vincent.

They asked the names of Bridget's masseur and hairstylist.
Bridget cooperated, then invited them to come back if there was anything else they needed. The men stared at her boobs, then reluctantly left.

The door barely closed, Bridget flew to her cell phone and began punching numbers.

“Thomas,” she said breathlessly. “It's me, Bridget. Pick up. Please.
Peeeeeck up the damn phone
.”

Dana watched as Bridget drained what was left in her glass and in Dana's, too.

“Oy vey,” Bridget said then, having morphed into Golda Meir. “Pick up, pick up, pick up.”

When Thomas did not, Bridget said, “Listen, this is important. The police
weel
ask you about me. Tell them I was at your place the morning Vincent DeLano was
keeled
, that I was there from eleven to twelve. If you don't, I
weel
have your balls for my dinner.”

She hung up, stared at Dana, and said, “That little bastard better remember I gave him five hundred for Christmas.”

“Bridget,” Dana said, “what are you doing? Did you lie to the police?”

“Mais oui
,” she said. “What else could I do? Tell them I was at my doctor's? That I was arranging for my chemotherapy?”

Dana reached for her wineglass, realized it was empty. “Make some sense, please.”

With a casual shrug, Bridget said, “Chemotherapy. For my cancer. Didn't I tell you about that?”

 

Half a bottle of wine later Bridget had decanted the details and dumped the sediment in Dana's lap: She had cervical
cancer. She'd had surgery. She'd had radiation. And now they wanted to inject her with poison,
mon dieu
,
quel ennui
—what a nuisance—that will be.

Dana was as stunned as when she'd learned Vincent had been murdered and Kitty had been arrested and Lauren had slept with him, too. “Bridget,” she said, “how can I help? Why didn't you tell me?”

Then Bridget explained that she'd told no one, not even Randall, not Aimée.

“They should know,” Dana said.

Bridget threw her a mind-your-own-beeswax kind of look.

“Bridget,” Dana protested, then Bridget held up her hand.

“Stop harassing me,” Bridget said. “Stop before I call the police.”

It wasn't very funny, but Dana laughed anyway, then asked, “What are you going to do?”

“First, I am making you promise to keep my secret.”

Dana supposed if she promised, she could ask for more wine, so she did both. It was, after all, not an appropriate time to comment that her mother had died of cancer, not cervical, but ovarian, “in that woman's place,” her father had told her when Dana was eighteen and she was living on Long Island and hadn't been told until her mother was dead.

She supposed she hadn't forgiven him for that, either.

Bridget poured and Dana drank.

“I'll have chemo soon. When Aimée has gone back to school after her holiday.”

“But that's two weeks from now.”

She shrugged again. “I don't think it will kill me.”

It was a poor choice of a word, whether accented by English or French.

“Besides,” Bridget added, “I don't want to miss Caroline's
partie magnifique
.”

Partie magnifique
. Well, that was one way of describing the hospital gala. “I think the whole thing will be awkward,” Dana said. She set down her glass because she was drunk.

Bridget sipped again, then said, “But everyone will be there. Maybe even the person who really killed Vincent.”

“Don't change the subject. I want to talk about your cancer.”

“And I,
s'il vous plait
, do not.”

Dana should have called the Hudson Valley
Red Cab to drive her home, but her house was only a few blocks away, and it was still daylight, and she wasn't
totally wasted
as her boys called it. She'd wait, however, until she was safely home before calling Lauren.

“The police want to question everyone,” she would warn her. “They know Vincent had an affair, but they have no way of knowing with whom.”

It seemed plausible, she thought as she turned into her driveway, lost control of her car, and promptly drove up on the lawn and through the euonymus that Mario had planted last week.

She decided her driving skills hadn't been impaired by the
wine but by the fact the twins' Jeep Wrangler was parked in the driveway and Steven would be angry if one of them had dropped out of college.

The mudroom was a landfill of big-footed sneakers and laundry bags. She traversed it and went into the kitchen, where Sam stood, head in the refrigerator.

“Hello,” Dana said, and when there was no answer she knew she must be competing with his iPod. “
Samuel!
” she shouted this time, and the kid jumped, banged his head on the deli bin, and spun around. There was no trace of headphones.

“Jesus, Mom, you scared the shit out of me.”

When her boys came home it always took a few days for Dana to clean up the frat house lexicon. She smiled. “That would be ‘Gosh, Mom, you scared the wits out of me.'”

He laughed.

He stepped toward her, she toward him. He lifted her into a six-foot-one hug. “Hi, Mommy,” he said.

She laughed that time, then wriggled from his arms and touched the top of his head. “Does it hurt?”

He waved his hand in front of his face. “Whoa. Not as much as your breath.
Gosh
, Mom, how much did you drink?”

“Probably not enough. But I'll make tea while you tell me what you're doing here and where your brother is.” She filled the tea kettle.

“Ah, well, I can start by saying my twin brother—Benjamin is his name—is upstairs in his room probably crashing from our four-and-a-half-hour trip home. I can then continue to express that the reason we're here might have something to do with the fact it's spring break.”

“Oh,” she said. “Well, I
knew
that. I just lost track of the time. There's so much going on.”

He rolled his eyes as if to say,
Sure, Mom
. Sam was a straight-arrow-looking boy, the younger of the twins, who took after his father the way that Ben took after her, as if one twin had received all Steven's DNA, the other one got all of hers. Michael, the lone birth, the first, resembled them both, the egg correctly having conjoined the sperm. “Aren't you boys going to Cozumel or somewhere?”

“Ben's leaving tomorrow.” He shuffled back to the refrigerator, grabbed a Coke, popped the top. “I'm staying here. I want to help you solve Mr. DeLano's murder.”

“What?” Dana asked, her head sliding into hangover mode.

“I want to study the law, jurisprudence, remember?”

“And you'll be home for how long? Ten days? You think you can solve it in ten days?”

“Maybe we can if we try.” It was so like him to want to help.

“What makes you think I don't have better things to do?”

“You were a journalist.”

Dana laughed. “That was a long time ago, honey. Now I'm a housewife. I'm a mother.” She'd always believed that her penchant for putting together pieces of a story rivaled her father's powers of deduction when he'd been a cop. Her sons didn't know about him, though: All they knew was he'd left and her mother had died.

Sam wrinkled his nose.

“Besides,” she continued, “the hospital gala is a week from tomorrow. I thought I'd help Caroline with her last-minute plans.” It wasn't exactly the truth, but even the gala would
be preferable to having one of her kids get too close to this mess. “And you should be with your friends. Doing college-age things.”

“I think murder is more exciting, don't you?”

The whistle blew. She steeped her tea.

“Not to mention I can use this for a sociology paper.”

Dana had always helped the kids with their homework. It had been more fun than tennis or golf. But there was the nonsense with Lauren…how much would she want Sam to know? Then she thought about Ben. “What about your brother? Will he go without you?”

“A whole bunch of kids from school will be there, Mom. Besides. He's a big boy now. He can take care of himself. Me, too. Please, Mom?”

“Oh, honey,” she said. “I don't know.” What she did know was that Ben was the party boy and Sam, the stay-at-homer, the quiet, shy one, who never cost her any sleep. “Well,” she said, “Maybe…”

He took that as a yes and pulled out a stool from the breakfast bar. “So, did she do it?”

Dana sighed. “Kitty? No. She says not.”

“Who else then?”

She could have told him about Lauren but she really was too tired to get into that now. It was bad enough she hadn't called Lauren yet and the police might have showed up at her door. “There's a chance Vincent had at least one mistress,” she said.

“A mistress? Cool.”

“Not to his wife.”

“What about her? The new wife? Has anyone checked her out?”

Dana held the tea mug to her lips and stared at her son as if he'd just asked if she'd walked on the moon. “Yolanda?”

“Well,” he said, “she's probably the one who gets the life insurance, or at least a bunch of money from his estate. Like everyone in New Falls, Vincent's probably loaded, so it makes sense, doesn't it?”

 

“Detective Johnson from the New Falls Police Department. Are you Lauren Halliday?”

Luckily Lauren had seen the cruiser pull into the driveway. She'd ducked behind the six-panel, early nineteenth-century Chinese screen with the soapstone inlaid artwork of cranes and pine trees and other images that symbolized long life in the Asian culture. Her husband had shipped it home from Canton as part of his efforts to deny his oncoming mortality.

“Mrs. Halliday is not available.” Florence had been around since before Bob's first wife died. When it came to protecting the family, she was tougher than a pair of big-toothed sentry dogs.

“We'll wait,” the detective said.

Silence followed. She pictured Florence, hands on square hips, eyes narrowed and glaring.

More silence.

Could they hear Lauren breathing?

Perspiration rose on her forehead. She remembered the time when she'd been a kid, trapped in the closet of her aunt's bedroom at the house on Nantucket. She'd been hunting for
her sandals; she'd thought her cousin Gracie had borrowed them. (
Stolen
was more like it.) But when she'd heard voices Lauren had closed the door. How was she supposed to know Uncle Raymond and Aunt Clara would choose that very moment in the
middle of the day
to have sex on the four-poster bed? Or that Uncle Raymond really did have sex on the brain the way she'd overheard Aunt Jane say to her mother?

“Maybe she'd rather come to the station,” the detective said now, and Lauren blinked back to the present and the Chinese screen and the bleak situation at hand.

She would not go to the station because that was where Kitty had gone and look where that had gotten her.

“Gentlemen,” she said, propelling herself from behind the screen, the courage to do so greater than the fear of ending up in a cell. “You must excuse my housekeeper. We've had some problems with men snooping because of my husband's business. He deals with investors who are out of the country.” She knew it made no sense, but it was the best she could do. “Florence was merely doing her job.”

“If you have problems,” the detective said, “you should call the police.”

She smiled, but did not say she'd call. “How may I help you?” she asked, her Boston–Palm Beach–Nantucket upbringing usurping her terrified self.

“We'd like to know where you were at eleven-thirty in the morning the day Vincent DeLano was murdered.”

She tipped her head to one side as if she'd heard incorrectly.

Eleven-thirty.

Vincent.

Murdered.

The tiny squirt glands in the back of her throat suddenly spurted and she knew the next thing that would happen was that she would throw up.

“She was here,” Florence said. “Having a bath.”

Lauren turned to Florence. “Was I?” she asked, because she didn't want to remember that day and because of course Florence would lie; she already had.

“Were you?” the detective asked.

“She was,” Florence added. “You were getting ready for Mrs. Meacham's luncheon. I remember because I was laying out your ensemble. You wore your Mikimotos.”

Lauren's hand went to her throat. “Yes,” she said. “I believe that's correct.”

The phone rang. The little group paused. Eyes ping-ponged around.

“It's okay, Florence,” Lauren said. “Answer the phone.”

The woman hesitated, then left the foyer with several looks over her shoulder.

“Is there anything else?” Lauren asked as if fully cooperating.

“Just one thing,” the detective said. “How well did you know Mr. DeLano?”

Lauren's private school posture faltered only a second. Then Florence called out, “Mrs. Halliday!” and waddled back to the foyer carrying the cordless. “It's for you. I believe it's Shanghai.”

It wasn't Shanghai; it was Dana.

“This is the first chance I've had to warn you,” Dana said in a rush. “The police might show up. Don't tell them anything.”

“Yes,” Lauren said, “that's wonderful news. Thank you so much for calling.” She clicked off the phone and asked the detective if they were finished. He repeated the question about Vincent, and Lauren simply said, “Well, he was Kitty's husband, if that's what you mean.”