Murder Can Rain on Your Shower (13 page)

convinced her that it was safe to continue. ‘‘BanJean’s

really wasn’t doing at all badly. Not when you consider

that it had been in existence less than a year. But Bobbie Jean had expected that it would be like an

instant magnet for everyone in the area with an Amer

ican Express card. And when that didn’t happen, she

took Karl and me to court, claiming that we’d been

defrauding her. Or anyway, that was one reason for

the law suit.’’

‘‘What do you mean ‘
one
reason’?’’

Grace flushed. ‘‘I should tell you that Bobbie Jean

wasn’t a very moral person. In fact, she was almost notorious for her, um, sexual doings. And she devel

oped this . . . these
feelings
for Karl.’’ The flush deep

ened. ‘‘I’m not sure exactly when she decided that she

had to have him—you know what I mean—but six or

seven months after BanJean’s opened, she suddenly

began stopping in for lunch several days a week. And

by herself, too.’’

‘‘She hadn’t done that before?’’

‘‘No. She lived on Long Island, and while the res

taurant wasn’t terribly far from her home, it wasn’t right around the corner, either. So previously she

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would just come in sporadically, mostly for dinner.

And always with some gentleman friend.’’

‘‘What makes you think your husband was the rea

son for this change in pattern?’’

‘‘Because she propositioned him one afternoon

when I was out with the flu,’’ Grace said matter-of

factly.

‘‘He told you about this?’’

‘‘Oh, not right away. And only under pressure. I

noticed that Karl had suddenly begun acting very cool

toward Bobbie Jean, even attempting to avoid her.

And for her part, after increasing her visits to the restaurant like that, all of a sudden she cut way back on them. Also, she practically ignored Karl when she did show up. I questioned him about it, but he insisted

I was imagining things. Eventually, though, I became

positive that my imagination had nothing to do with

it, and I confronted him. Karl did a lot of hemming and hawing, but like any good wife’’—a small smile

here—‘‘I nagged the life out of him. And he finally

came clean.’’

Well, I wasn’t too surprised to learn that Bobbie

Jean’s sexual aggressiveness had entered into her

falling-out with Grace. The fact is, when Allison had omitted this element from her abbreviated version of

the hostilities between the two women, it had crossed my mind that at least this was one feud the deceased had been involved in where she’d kept her panties on.

Evidently, however, that had not been from choice.

‘‘Did you ever confront Bobbie Jean about this?’’

‘‘Not until she slapped us with that law suit—which

was soon afterward. Before then, I was too concerned

about what it could do to BanJean’s if I brought things

out in the open. Anyway, Bobbie Jean denied

everything.’’

‘‘And you think she filed that suit because she was

a woman scorned?’’

‘‘I certainly think that entered into it,’’ Grace de

clared. ‘‘And I would guess that what she found partic

ularly disturbing about her failure to seduce Karl was

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that he was
my
husband. Let’s face it, I’m no Pa

mela Anderson.

‘‘Incidentally, Desiree, I happen to be married to a very handsome fellow. Wait.’’ And unclasping the

purse in her lap, she extracted a bulky brown wallet and flipped it open to a photograph. Then leaning

across the desk, she handed me the wallet. ‘‘And by the way, he’s a terrific person, as well,’’ she in

formed me.

The headshot was of a fair-haired man with a daz

zling smile and dark, piercing eyes above thick, dark eyebrows. ‘‘He
is
good-looking,’’ I agreed, returning the wallet. But the skeptical part of my brain alerted me to the possibility that the photo could be twenty years old or more.

Obviously the possessor of psychic powers, Grace

said, ‘‘That was taken last year.

‘‘I recall the first time Karl asked me out,’’ she

mused. ‘‘I was almost convinced that I’d misunder

stood him. But I hadn’t. I was the one he wanted

when we were in our twenties. And fortunately, I’m

still the one he wants. I’m sure a great many people don’t understand it, and I don’t blame them. Heck,

even I don’t understand it.’’ At that moment she

grinned, a sweet, shy kind of grin. And all at once
I
could understand it. I mean, there was something very

vulnerable, very endearing about that expression—and

something very appealing about this woman.

Don’t
go
overboard!
I quickly cautioned myself. Which was definitely sound advice. After all, there was

a one in four chance (or so I persisted in regarding it) that this timid, self-deprecating little lady here had just treated her former partner to a lethal dose of poison.

Grace was now sitting there stock-still, with a far

away look in her eyes, so I prompted, ‘‘You were

telling me what motivated Bobbie Jean’s lawsuit.’’

‘‘Yes. As I see it, she had been completely trauma

tized by Karl’s rejection. I realize I’m not a psychia

trist, Desiree. I did get to know her fairly well, though,

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and it’s my opinion that Bobbie Jean measured her

worth as a human being by her success with men. But

anyhow, that suit gave her the opportunity to humili

ate my husband—
and
me, for that matter—as she felt she’d been humiliated.

‘‘While it’s true that she did have very unrealistic expectations for the restaurant,’’ Grace added, ‘‘I

don’t think she ever believed deep-down that we’d

been defrauding her. She
let
herself believe it because she wanted to.’’

‘‘Precisely what is it you and your husband were

supposed to have done?’’

‘‘She accused us of falsifying the purchase receipts, which she based on the word of an ex-employee—Ty

Gregory—who had a grievance against us. Ty had

been a waiter at BanJean’s since we opened. He was

quite attractive, and for a while there was some talk at the restaurant about him and Bobbie Jean being

lovers. From what I gathered, the affair was over be

fore she made that play for Karl, but it’s very possible

it resumed after Ty was let go—or maybe even be

fore that.’’

‘‘Why did you get rid of Ty?’’

‘‘Karl and I didn’t want to, honestly. But we had

no choice. From the beginning there were complaints

from our customers about his attitude, and we kept

warning him that he’d have to be more pleasant to

people. But it didn’t do the least bit of good. And so about nine months after he started with us, we had to

terminate him.

‘‘Well, it wasn’t too much later that Ty told Bobbie

Jean we were in cahoots with some of our suppliers

to deny her her fair share of the profits. The story he gave her was that we purchased inferior meats and

produce for the restaurant but that these suppliers

were providing us with bills indicating we paid top

dollar and bought only the best. Naturally, Ty was

also claiming he was fired because we were afraid that

he suspected the truth.

‘‘Anyway, the upshot was that Bobbie Jean sued us

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for fraud. And word of the action got around. Not

only did it make the newspapers—which was bad

enough—but, in addition to
that,
Bobbie Jean wasn’t hesitant about attacking us to anyone who was willing

to listen.’’

And now Grace, looking like she was about to burst

into tears, grabbed up a handful of dress fabric and began to twist it. ‘‘She eventually lost the suit—luckily,

Ty made a terrible witness—but Karl and I lost even more. Our reputations were seriously damaged by

Bobbie Jean’s taking us to court like that. After BanJean’s went under, it was more than a year before my husband could find another position. Even today he’s

not managing the same class of restaurant or making

the same kind of money he once did.

‘‘At any rate, Karl and I made the decision to turn around and sue Bobbie Jean for slander. In hindsight,

we both recognize that it was a pretty stupid move on

our part. And this would have held true even if we’d won the case—which we didn’t. You know, Desiree,

I’m amazed at how many people have that ‘where

there’s smoke there’s fire’ mentality. That suit of ours

only served to remind everyone of Bobbie Jean’s ac

tions against
us
two years earlier—and raise the old suspicions all over again.’’

‘‘You seem convinced it was this Ty who manufac

tured the lie about the suppliers—and not the other

way around,’’ I put to Grace. ‘‘I mean, isn’t it just as likely that it originated with Bobbie Jean and that she

induced him—maybe bribed him—to back her up?’’

‘‘Well, I can’t be a hundred percent certain, of

course. But I have to figure it was Ty who dreamed

up that little fairy tale. Bobbie Jean had always held creative positions; she knew nothing about the busi

ness end of things—particularly when it came to the

restaurant industry. It’s hard for me to conceive that the idea of suppliers’ phonying up receipts would even

occur to her. Ty, on the other hand, had to be aware of the existence of practices like that.’’

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I agreed that this made sense. Following which I

asked Grace how she and Karl had ever hooked up

with Bobbie Jean in the first place.

‘‘Allison and I grew up together. Since grammar

school we’ve been
like
that.
’’ She crossed her middle and index fingers. ‘‘And about a dozen years ago we

formed a bridge club with some other women. We

met once a month on a Saturday afternoon. This was

while Bobbie Jean was working for some high-toned

fashion magazine in Paris. But soon after the club’s inception, she came back home. And, as it happened,

one of our members suddenly chose to abandon

bridge for golf at that time. So Bobbie Jean—who was

an excellent bridge player—asked if she could take

Fiona’s place. Of course, we were all familiar with her

terrible reputation—she’d achieved almost legendary

status by that point. But everyone agreed to let her join anyway, primarily because of Allison. Besides, the

way we looked at it, we’d just be spending a few hours

with her every four weeks over a card table.

‘‘Well, Bobbie Jean and I had only been casual ac

quaintances before that—she spent almost half of her

adult life living abroad, you know. But as a result of the bridge games we grew pretty chummy. She could

be very pleasant, very warm, and nobody else has ever

been able to make me laugh the way Bobbie Jean

could.’’

‘‘But didn’t the things you’d heard about her give

you pause about becoming buddy-buddy with the

woman?’’

‘‘Initially I kept my distance. But I couldn’t help it; eventually I came to really like her. So I chose to think that the stories about her behavior could have been exaggerated or that there might have been exten

uating circumstances.’’ Grace smiled ruefully. ‘‘You

might say I was in denial.’’

‘‘What she’d done to Lorraine didn’t have any effect

on you?’’

‘‘I knew very little about it. Actually, I hardly knew

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Lorraine. It wasn’t until she’d moved back East and

found out that I’d been one of Bobbie Jean’s casual

ties, too, that Lorraine and I became close.’’

‘‘And how did you feel about Bobbie Jean’s having

run off with Carla’s husband?’’

‘‘That didn’t even happen until a few years later. I
was
aware that there had been some sort of hostility between Robin—Carla’s mother—and Bobbie Jean.