Last to Know (14 page)

“Just no flip-flops,” Rose said, closing the door and striding off to her own room, already pulling her shirt over her head. Time was of the essence. She still had the melon to cut, as well as the filet mignon for the stroganoff. She would get the girls to arrange the prosciutto on the plates. Oh, and she mustn’t forget the bowls of almonds for the drinks, as well as the special pigs-in-blankets Madison had made. Funny how old-fashioned bits of sausage wrapped in pastry were the most popular item at any drinks party. Men adored them, memories of their childhood, she supposed.

She could hear the girls down the hall talking to Bea, exclaiming how lovely she looked in something they had dressed her in; heard her eldest son’s shower go on; God if she didn’t hurry there’d be no hot water left, it was always a bit short here at the lake with the small boiler.

Five minutes later she was in the blue and white caftan, sitting at her vanity, brushing her unruly dammit hair and deciding simply to tie it back; powdering her sunburned nose—she should use more sunscreen—a flick of pink lip gloss—Dolce & Gabbana’s Beauty—and a spritz of Tom Ford’s Neroli Portofino, a little exotic for a woman as down-to-earth as herself but it was a Christmas present from the children.

Oh, God, she wailed inwardly, where is Wally … oh God, please let him show up … let everything be all right …

“Mom!” Diz had stuck his head out in the hallway and was yelling for her. “I can’t find my sneakers.”

“On the kitchen table,” Rose answered automatically; her children always believed she knew where everything was, and mostly she did, except where her husband was.

But a few minutes later, down in her kitchen again, she could not find the knife she needed to cut the melon. It was her favorite old Wüsthof, she used it for almost everything from melon to filet mignon.

“Frazer, where is it?” she demanded as the twin appeared, looking cute in a little white skirt and a red off-the-shoulder jersey top.

“Where is what?”

“My good knife, the German one I always use for cutting.”

“That’s what a knife is for.” Frazer waltzed over to the corner where the knife holder was and took out another. “Here, Mom, use this. It’ll all be the same in the end.”

Grumbling, Rose began to slice the beef and the onions while Madison went to set up the music. “Leonard Cohen, a bit much?” she called to her mother.

Rose groaned. “Something happy, please,” she said; though she loved Leonard Cohen it wasn’t exactly upbeat cocktail hour background music.

Frazer put on Neil Young, who was singing quietly about pretty much the same things Leonard was, then set up background stuff for the rest of the evening.

Roman came down. Rose had not seen him all day. He’d been at his books. But Roman had always been remote, even as a child; now he was still in his own world, up there in his room under the eaves. Half the time Rose didn’t even know if he was there. And maybe sometimes he was not, and sneaking out, doing what kids his age did, party and look at girls. But Roman wanted to be a doctor and was starting premed in a few weeks’ time. Rose knew she was going to lose him too; everyone said once your child left for college, that was the end of life as you knew it. You were on your own from then on.

“Handsome devil,” she said, eyeing him. “Better watch out for those girls tonight, I invited two especially for you, nieces of the Elliots, they’re staying for a few days.”

Roman groaned. Diz came in and stood next to him. He spread his arms and did a twirl. “So?” he asked, looking at his mom.

Rose laughed; he really was cute with his sandy hair still wet and combed flat to his head, and his ears sticking out. He looked like an alien from
Dr. Who.
“You’ll do,” she told him with a wink.

And then suddenly Wally was there, rounding the corner of the terrace pushing a wheelbarrow filled with ice. He waved at them. “For the champagne,” he called. “I’ll leave it out here, then I’ll go and get the wine.”

Rose’s heart was pounding … he had come back … he was here … he was coming to the party … fetching champagne … everything was all right after all. She wanted to run to him, to kiss him, to have him hold her and tell her everything was all right between them, that he still loved her … but all she could say was, “I already took out some wine. It looks pretty good. You might want to open it, my love, let it breathe … I suppose.”

“I suppose you’re right.” Wally came and stood next to her, he dropped a kiss on her hair. “I’ll do that, then a quick shower and we’ll be ready for the onslaught.” He was smiling as he turned to leave. And then Bea walked in. And Wally’s smile froze.

She was wearing a pink cotton dress with a scoop neck and a short flared skirt with a thin gold belt fastened around her waist. Her blond hair was pinned up at the sides with gold barrettes, accentuating the slope of her cheekbones. She wore mascara and pale lip gloss and small gold earrings in the shape of a leaf and gold strappy flat sandals.

“Well,” Rose said, looking up from her chopping duties, at her husband and her eldest son. “I must say you clean up good. You look lovely, Bea.”

Bea hung her head, sneaking a glance at Roman though. “Thanks to the twins,” she said. “They put me together. I wouldn’t have known how, myself.”

“Why ever not?” Wally snapped. “How old are you? Twenty-one, I heard. The twins are only sixteen.”

There was a sudden awkward silence. Rose turned horrified from her chopping board. “I think Bea meant she had no clothes with her, she lost everything in the fire, the girls had to lend her an outfit.” Always the mediator, she smiled at her husband. “Of course you haven’t met Bea yet. Well now, Bea, this is Wally, my husband.”

Bea’s head was down. “I know who you are,” she said in a small voice. “You’re very famous.”

“Hmm.” Wally’s reply was noncommittal. He did not welcome the girl into his home. He simply turned to Rose and told her he would put the champagne on ice. Ignoring Bea, Roman followed him.

“I could use a glass now,” Rose said, checking the ingredients for her stroganoff: the beef fillet was already cut into strips, onions already chopped, mushrooms, sliced. If she sautéed the onions now, it would take her only ten minutes to finish off the dish, which meant quickly browning the beef strips in butter, then adding the mushrooms and the onions, stir until heated through with a little beef broth, add sour cream and stir again.
Et voila.
Served with buttered fettucini, also straight out of the pan, it would be heaven, she knew.

“I can help you do that.”

Bea was at her side. She took the spatula from Rose’s hand. “All I have to do is stir the onions right, so they don’t dry up.”

Rose watched her approvingly for a few seconds, and said she must have done some cooking before.

“Not much,” Bea told her. “I liked to cook, but Mom … well, she didn’t enjoy good food. We pretty much lived on cold cuts and canned soup.”

No wonder the girl was so thin. Rose spotted Wally, back on the terrace, already opening wine. She went over to him and said, “I missed you today.”

He lifted his head from the wheelbarrow full of ice, now crammed with chilling bottles. “Caught a couple of little ’uns, threw ’em back in,” he said, not directly replying to her unspoken question as to where he had been all day.

He opened a bottle of champagne, precisely, as with everything Wally did, twisting the bottle so the cork slipped out with a mere wisp of smoke. He poured Rose a glass and she nodded her thanks and walked away. Things were so wrong between them she did not know what to say, or what to do.

Now, she had to think about Bea. Earlier that afternoon, she had telephoned each of her guests to tell them that they had taken in the daughter of the woman who had died in the fire across the lake. “We’re giving her shelter,” she’d said, “just until things get sorted.” When she’d put down the phone she’d wondered what she meant. How could things get “sorted” for Bea? They were talking murder now.

“Mom?” Diz was at her side and she gave him a smile and put an arm round his shoulders.

“Mom, if I knew something—a secret, let’s say—but it was something I didn’t think I should tell because it might upset people, what do you think I should do?”

“Do?” Rose asked. “Why, Diz, my boy, I think you are better off keeping your secrets to yourself. We don’t want to go around upsetting our friends, now, do we?”

Diz, still unsure, was silent. Then “Maybe,” he said guardedly.

Rose went to greet her neighbors, who arrived all at once, along with the girls she was hoping to set Roman up with, but they hung back shyly until the twins pulled them out onto the terrace with tall glasses of something they called virgin margaritas. Then Bea came out from the kitchen, politely offering round the bowl of almonds and the pigs-in-blankets that she had rescued from the oven because Rose had completely forgotten about them.

Rose saw Roman go quickly over to help Bea. She stood back, looking at her “party,” the same one with the same people she gave every year, only this time it was different. The atmosphere was different. Evening Lake had changed. The women, as always, Rose thought with a sigh, had gathered in a small group at one end of the terrace, sipping their champagne served by Wally, who was busy filling up glasses and offering no small talk, while the men grouped together at the other end.

Rose wondered why it was that, until she sat them down at the table, her guests inevitably gravitated to their own sex. She went over and joined the women.

Of course they were talking about the fire. “Just like something from one of Wally’s books,” someone said. “And that poor child, losing her mother, the entire house gone … I never saw anything like that blaze … that explosion … I thought we were all going to be blown to heaven.” Good old Rose, they said admiringly, if privately a little doubtful she had done the right thing, taking on such a burden with that girl. Such a tragedy.

Sipping their champagne they looked out of the corners of their eyes at Bea, wondering what was to become of “that girl” when she left Rose.

Rose excused herself and went and stood by the deck rail with its festive fairy lights, staring across the rippling dark lake at what used to be a house. A home. Only she knew there had been a murder. Someone here, in Evening Lake, had killed that woman. Maybe even someone she knew.

24

Divon Formentor was in jail and Jemima Forester felt like a traitor. Guilt-ridden, she paced her apartment, inasmuch as she could “pace” a mere six hundred square feet while dodging the blue sofa and the white IKEA coffee table, while tripping over the shag rug that had been the latest thing for young people a year ago and which she guessed was probably already out of style. She gave the rug a vicious kick, tripping herself up again in the process.

Sinking onto the rug, she stared blankly around her small home. The walls were lacquer-red. She had painted them herself over the course of several weekends and several coats. Now, though, she wondered about it; a redhead could get lost among all this red. And the mouse-color shag rug was wrong too; somehow she’d expected it to set off all the color, the indigo blue sofa, the red walls, but all it did was look like it belonged somewhere else. Besides, her heels always caught in it. If she could have gotten rid of it she would but she could not afford another right now.

Her parents had donated the forty-six-inch TV clamped to the wall opposite the sofa, which she kept permanently on because it gave the illusion of company. “Other voices, other rooms”—hadn’t someone once said that? Capote, she thought. Anyhow, the sound of voices was company when she was up at 2
A.M.
watching old movies, or “working.”

Working at what? she asked herself, still plumped on the shag rug, staring into space. She was a twenty-eight-year-old actress. At least she had told herself for twenty years she was an actress, starting out as a child doing juice commercials, graduating to appearances on children’s TV, then teenage shows, then in a well-known exercise and fitness video that brought her some kind of temporary acclaim and a fair bit of money, enough anyhow to get her own small apartment, fix it up, and begin to think of another life because acting jobs were not coming her way. She was too “unusual,” the casting directors said, too distinctive with that fiery red hair, alabaster skin, and pale eyes. “We’ll think of you when we have something more ‘Goth,’” was what had put the final knell of doom into Jemima’s actress ambitions. She had contemplated going blond but realized it would not work, said thanks but no thanks and quit on the spot.

That was a year ago. Having watched too much TV, she told herself it was easy, she would become a private detective. She would start at the bottom with cheating husbands and anxious wives, to make a bit of quick money, then move on to “the good stuff.” Real income. She told herself she was now a grown-up and had immediately taken an advanced computer course where she had learned a few “special” tricks from fellow students, like for instance how to hack, which she thought might be illegal but if she had to use it to catch a criminal, in her new career as a private eye, it probably didn’t count. She’d put an ad on Craigslist and in the local newspapers touting her services, so far with no results. She was, in fact, an unemployed private detective, with not even a wife wanting to keep tabs on a cheating husband. Now, she sat in front of her sixteen-inch MacBook Air trying to figure out what to do next with her life, while checking out other people’s. Which was why she was involved with Divon really.

Because of her friendship with Divon, she had been doing a bit of investigating into where the drugs were coming from—not on Divon’s level, but beyond that—and had come up with some interesting, though scary findings. Divon had admitted to her he’d been involved with Lacey Havnel, the lake house woman, and intimated he knew who she was involved with, “higher up.” Divon had not actually told her that last bit but Jemima knew he knew. And if she asked herself why he wasn’t telling, she knew the answer to that too. Because he was scared shitless.

She untangled herself from the rug, kicked it back under the coffee table, and began to pace again. What she really needed to pace properly, though, was a dog she could take for a brisk walk, with the dog tugging on the lead and her bracing herself, stepping fast after it. A dog like Squeeze, she thought. Which brought her back to Harry Jordan again.