Perfect Little Ladies (15 page)

It was not a closet. It was not a storage room. It was another bedroom with another door that led back into the hall. The décor was different—not pouffy but plain, with a simple twin
bed and a deep leather chair, an overfilled bookcase and a small window garden that held green shoots being rooted in the morning sun.

It was Malcolm’s room. The separate bedroom Jonas had told CJ about.

She sat on the bed, then slowly reclined. She turned her face into the pillow and imagined she picked up his scent: musky, woodsy, Malcolm.

Then she rolled over, stared up at the ceiling, and felt the tears slide from her eyes.

Yes, she thought, this bed felt
just right
. In another time, in another life, all of this would have been hers. The house. The husband. The boy.

Twenty-four

For the third day in a row, they were in the
city. Alice had no idea if this was a smart thing to do, but she’d grown to enjoy the rush of adventure, the thrill of stepping out of her life into the unexpected.

Besides, today would be foreplay for Bud in Orlando and the real excitement to come.

With a tiny smile, she let the heat fill her body without waving it off.

Of course, they hadn’t told Elinor about Manny’s warning. She’d seemed annoyed enough by the concept that Poppy’s Duane really might be behind this. When Poppy had pressed her again when they’d been curbside at Kennedy, the last thing Elinor said was, “No offense, Poppy, but blackmail is very complex. I don’t think your husband is smart enough.”

Hopefully, her words also negated Poppy’s notion that Duane had been Elinor’s lover.

Two blocks south of the Lord Winslow now, Alice pulled over. “Okay,” she said to Poppy, “I’ll get out here. Take over the wheel and drive around until you see me again.” She opened her door and looked out for traffic. But before Alice got out, Poppy said, “No.”

Alice turned toward her. “What?”

“I can’t drive this thing, Alice. I drive a sports car. This is a truck.”

“It’s not a truck, Poppy. It’s a Cadillac.”

Poppy shook her head. “I can’t. It’s too big.”

Alice sighed and closed her door. She set her clenched fists on the steering wheel. “Now’s a fine time to tell me.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t think about it until now. I guess I forgot Yolanda wouldn’t be with us.”

“Poppy,” Alice said, “you said you’d drive the getaway car. We agreed this is our last attempt to help Elinor.”

Poppy nodded, but her face was scrunched up like a scared little girl’s. She looked like she’d cry at any second.

“Okay,” Alice quickly said. “You don’t have to drive. Just sit behind the wheel and stay right here.”

“We can’t park here! I’ll get arrested!”

Alice wondered if anyone would tolerate Poppy if her best friends no longer did. “If a cop comes along, say something’s wrong. Say your battery’s dead. That you’re waiting for the tow truck.”

Poppy considered the option. “Well…”

“Well nothing,” Alice said. “Just do it, Poppy. I won’t be long.” She slammed the door when she got out.

She’d worn sneakers, not ladylike heels, which helped make walking the two blocks to the hotel kind of fun. How long had it been since Alice walked anywhere that didn’t involve shopping? Shopping wasn’t even a pastime she enjoyed. But it was something she was expected to do because she was a woman and her husband was rich.

Breathing in the summer morning, she wondered if it would be tacky to buy a pretzel from the man on the corner. Surely it wouldn’t be as bad for her figure as one of her father’s tasty guglhuph cakes made with heaps of butter and eggs and raisins and almonds and sweet cherry juice.

Yum.

Good Lord, she thought as she stepped off the curb when the signal changed, when was the last time she’d thought about that? When was the last time she’d thought of her mother, who’d died, and her father, who’d closed up his shop and returned to his homeland and had been so brokenhearted he’d died the next year? Was that kind of devotion a thing of the past?

If Neal died tomorrow, she’d be sad for a while, but she’d carry on. Wouldn’t she?

If she died, there would probably be a quick string of ladies willing to jump to his side, eager, even, to do things like go to the big dinner tomorrow that she couldn’t, wouldn’t make.

A tingle of guilt was swept away by a hot flash. She bypassed the pretzel man and kept walking.

When she reached the hotel, Alice realized she couldn’t very well march through the brass-trimmed revolving doors in the tan polyester and sneakers. She turned onto the cross street and studied the building. She spotted a loading dock and an open door. Quickly, she darted inside.

“Wella beetcha moloro,”
a man suddenly shouted, or at least that’s what his words sounded like to her.

She turned, flashed a smile, pointed to her watch. “I’m late,” she responded. “I don’t want to get fired.”

He shrugged, waved her off, and turned away.

Alice walked quickly to another door at the rear of the dock. She turned the handle. It opened easily. So much for security.

Breathing again, she looked around. She was inside a long, gray corridor that looked like the basement Poppy had described. All she needed was to find a service elevator. If she could get to the fourth floor, maybe she could find the housekeeper who took care of room 402.

Then, maybe later, she’d drive to the Lower East Side and buy a guglhuph or two. Neal might enjoy one while she was away.

Elinor was in coach because she did not want to call attention to herself. It had seemed like a good idea when she’d made the reservations. She’d forgotten, however, about the infamous middle seats, and wouldn’t you know, that’s what she’d been given, between a heavyset man who smelled like a turnip and a girl who looked ten or eleven.

She reminded herself it would only be for four hours and it would be worth it to seem ordinary. One of the crowd. Not Elinor Harding Young, Washington socialite turned slut-on-the-run.

She shivered. Thankfully, she’d brought her noise-canceling headphones. She put them on now and wished it was as easy to do away with what Carly Simon had once called the noise going on in her mind.

Yolanda had finished her third color of the day when her cell phone danced to “Chilito Lindo.” The peppy tune had been a favorite of hers when she was growing up, and now it made her think of her daughter, Belita, whom she hoped would be spicy and confident, with a great zest for life.

It was Manny.

“What are you doing?”

“It’s Wednesday. I’m working.”

“Oh.”

“What about you? Did you win the lottery and now you’re retired?”

“Very funny. I need to talk to you about your friends.”

“You talked enough yesterday. You scared them sufficiently.”

“Are you sure?”

Yolanda glanced up as Rhonda Gagne sashayed into the shop carrying Lady, her Chinese crested dog, who was hairless except for a few tufts of white fur. “Manuel, what do you really want? I am busy.”

He sighed. She hated when her brother sighed; it made her feel like such a little sister. “The ransom note,” he said. “I want to see it.”

Turning from Mrs. Gagne and the pooch, Yolanda replied, “I can’t.”

“Of course you can. Get it from Elinor.”

“I can’t,” she repeated. “I’m busy.”

“Yo, please. If the letters are as colorful as you say, they were probably cut out of magazines. If I can take a look, I might be able to figure out which magazines.”

“And that will prove what?”

“I won’t know until I see it.” He sighed again.

“Manuel,” she said, glancing back at her customer. “I have
clients in the shop. Can we discuss this later?” She had a lengthy break before her next customer once the Gagnes were groomed.

“I have to work later.”

“And I’m working
now
.” Mrs. Gagne had made herself at home on the leather spa chair. She’d slid off her sandals and placed her feet in the whirlpool as if Yolanda had already turned on the sudsy warm water, which she had not. Lady was perched on Mrs. Gagne’s lap, probably aware that after her mistress’s pedicure, Yolanda would give her one, too. Sometimes, Yolanda thought, she should have stayed in the Bronx.

“If you can get it today, I’ll make sure Junior takes you to dinner.”

Junior
again. Manny was trying to be funny, but Yolanda didn’t laugh. She’d heard her brother’s plea since before Vincent had come and gone: Junior Diaz had served with Manny in the army and now taught high school history. But Yolanda did not want a Spanish man. She’d come too far from the neighborhood for that.

She leveled her voice. “Manuel, I am going to hang up now.” And so she did.

“Yolanda, dear,” Mrs. Gagne cooed from the spa chair. “Is there a new man in your life?”

Wouldn’t Rhonda love to be the first to spread the news that Vincent DeLano’s widow had found a new man—this time, one of her own kind.

Yolanda quickly reminded herself that Rhonda Gagne—and her friends, and their friends—paid big New York dollars for their nails and their hair, dollars that went directly into Belita’s education fund and Yolanda’s 401(k).

She smiled. “Oh, no, Mrs. Gagne, that man on the phone is my brother. I don’t bother with the rest of them.”

The woman nodded and fluffed Lady’s tufts. “A wise decision, my dear. It’s amazing the world has lasted this long with men still walking around.”

Yolanda turned on the warm water and poured in the suds. She didn’t say that what was truly amazing was that Mrs. Gagne’s CEO husband headed an insurance firm on the Fortune 100, and she seemed to enjoy that side of him.

She snapped on the water jets and handed the woman the latest
Town & Country
. Glancing down at the elegant cover that pictured a home of museum proportions covered by teasers for articles within, she wondered if Manny could really learn something from the cut-out letters on the note and if Elinor would still be home after the woman and Lady were groomed.

Twenty-five

Alice made it to the fourth floor of the Lord
Winslow without being detected. She stopped by a mirror on the wall near the elevator, primped her hair, checked her lipstick, straightened the tan polyester. Aside from the delayed sex with Leonard, in her younger years Alice never would have dreamed of doing anything sneaky, immoral, or certainly illegal.

Good Lord,
she thought with a grim little smile,
I’m glad those days are over.

She pranced down the hall in search of room 402 and the housekeeping cart. In addition to tracking Elinor’s belongings, she’d already decided to do a bit more investigating. How she’d love to learn the name of Elinor’s lover!

She’d start with the woman who’d cleaned the room after
Elinor’s tryst. Housekeepers noticed things, didn’t they? The way the cleaning ladies in Mount Kasteel knew the families they worked for, the way the Yolandas of the world knew intimacies reserved for the moments when their clientele bared their souls along with their roots.

If Yolanda’s brother was right—and Alice feared he might be—Alice, Poppy, CJ, and even Yolanda might be in danger simply for butting in. But weren’t they entitled to know the whole story if their very lives were at risk?

Elinor must have dumped her lover.

Why else wasn’t he involved with the search?

Was he married?

Maybe he was the one doing the blackmailing, a gigolo only after her money.

Had she met him on the Internet?

Was it someone the rest of them knew, not counting Duane?

“Hey, you!”

Uh-oh.

Alice made an attempt at a game face. She turned. “Me?” She faced a young Asian woman who wore a dress that matched the one she had on.

“You late.”

Again, Alice tapped her watch. She hoped the woman didn’t notice it was a Chopard with seven floating diamonds and a white diamond face. It had been a gift from Neal on their twenty-fifth anniversary before Kiley Kate had started singing and Alice had started doing the rest. “I am not late. You early.”

The young woman crinkled her forehead. “You start?”

“No! Where is cart? Where are sheets? Where are towels?” It was all Alice could think of to say.

“Towels,” the woman said. “Yes. I have key.”

Alice had no idea what she’d do if another housekeeper showed up and staked a claim. “We start in room four-o-two,” Alice said as she followed the woman to a closet marked Housekeeping.

“Four-o-six.”

“Four-o-two.”

The woman shook her head rapidly as she unlocked the door and pulled out a cart heaped with linens and buckets of tiny soaps and shampoos. “Four-o-two occupied. Do not disturb.”

“But it’s almost noon. Who doesn’t ‘disturb’ by noon?”

The small shoulders shrugged. She pointed to the doorway across the hall. A red and white Do Not Disturb sign dangled from the handle on the door marked 402. The room where Elinor had done what she’d done with whomever she’d done it with.

The woman wheeled the cart from the closet with a swift, practiced move, then started quickly down the hall.

“Wait!” Alice called after her. “I must ask you something.”

“You late,” the woman muttered again. “We start in four-o-six.”

Alice caught up to her fashion companion. “Please. Tell me one thing. Do you always clean room four-o-two? Did you clean it last Friday?”

The cart came to a stop. “What?”

“Last Friday. Did you clean room four-o-two?”

“I no work Friday. I work Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. No Friday.”

“Who worked this floor Friday?”

The scowl returned. “Old lady like you. She here Thurs
day, Friday, Saturday, when big people come. Not me. I work Sunday, Monday…”

Alice grunted at the “old lady” comment. “Big people? What big people?” Did she mean big in size?

“Important people. Movie stars.”

Movie stars? Alice doubted that Elinor would appeal to Clooney or Pitt.

“Like who?”

“I don’t know names. I work. You work now. You late.”