Perfect Little Ladies (20 page)

There
, she thought with a crunch of the stalk that was louder than she would have wished,
I’ve declared the possibility
.

She thought about swallowing the celery but feared it wouldn’t go down. Raising the square white napkin with the red and orange FlyUS logo up to her lips, Alice discreetly spit into it.

Was Neal really capable?

Was he really sneaky enough, distrustful enough, desperate enough?

She wondered what kind of a woman he would have selected. Young, probably. They always went for the young ones once they passed forty. Pretty, of course. A new trophy.

And smart. Today, the young women were all smart. They zipped up the ladder right alongside the men, their laptops and their BlackBerries and their short-skirted suits with the lace camisoles poking out from the top. And their stilettos that glammed up their calves in the boardrooms. And their dark-framed eyeglasses that hinted of their brains.

Would Neal ask for a divorce?

She plucked an ice cube from her glass and ran it up and down her throat. Why did they keep the airports so frightfully warm in the summer?

As best as CJ calculated, there were five cordless phones scattered throughout Elinor’s house: three downstairs, two up. Hopefully no more.

She waited until she heard Mac in the shower, then she quickly swept the place of the handsets. Though she’d forwarded the calls to her cell, she didn’t know if the house phone would still ring. She couldn’t risk the blackmailer calling with Mac in the house.

After quickly zipping herself into the polyester, she carted the handsets to her car, started the engine, rolled down the driveway, and escaped to the train station, hoping Mac would simply think she’d gone home, retreated from the temptation of him.

Now, she sat on the rumbling, rattling commuter heading toward Manhattan, gazing out the clouded window at the summer-slow Hudson. Maybe she could find some answers this morning that would finally set Elinor—and the rest of them—free.

“Is this seat taken?”

The voice sounded familiar. It belonged to Ray Williams, and it was just what CJ didn’t need.

“Hello, Ray.”

He sat beside her. “You going into the city?”

She decided not to point out that his question was moot, that they were both on the train headed south. “Yes.”

“Me, too. I’m meeting with the Santoris’ attorney.”

“The Santoris?”

“The people who cut off their trees.”

“I thought they paid a fine.”

“The association decided it isn’t enough. They want the trees removed and mature ones transplanted there. I found a place that will handle the job and move trees up to fifty feet tall. But we’re looking at more than a dozen trees. It will cost some big bucks.”

He was talking as if nothing had happened. He was talking as if he’d never told her that he’d slept with her sister and thought it was okay now to be sleeping with her.

Men,
she thought. The only one she’d truly ever trusted was Cooper.
Sleep is the poor man’s Prozac.
She wished she’d had some of either. Or both.

“So,” Ray continued, “you’re back? From your family business?”

CJ adjusted her purse on her lap, hoping that because he was a man, he wouldn’t notice her suspicious attire. “I’ll send Kevin home tonight.” She could not, of course, go back to Elinor’s. She supposed Mac would stay there until Elinor returned and they went to Washington for the party. As for the party, it was anyone’s guess what might happen there. She was too tired of trying to figure it all out.

“CJ?” Ray asked, “is everything all right?”

“Sure,” she replied, “everything’s fine. There’s just so much going on, with Jonas getting married and all.”

He seemed to believe her. “Can we hook up for lunch in the city?”

She shook her head. “Sorry. I have an errand to run, then I have to get back.”

Ray nodded, and CJ looked back out the window. She wondered if, after Jonas was married, she should go back to Paris
once and for all, if she would find happiness in the cafés and galleries, away from the melodrama of Elinor’s life, which always seemed to leak into hers.

Yolanda suggested that Poppy take a nap while she went downstairs to open the shop. She was halfway through Kristen Fitzpatrick’s highlights when her phone rang.

She figured it was Manny with news about Duane.

“Yolanda?”

“Yes.” She didn’t know the voice. If he wanted a haircut, he would have called the line for the salon.

“This is Junior Diaz. A friend of your brother’s.”

She reminded herself that the next time she saw Manny, she should kill him the way Poppy had killed the gardener.

“Manny has told me a lot about you,” he said.

“Has he?”

“He thinks we should meet. Have dinner, maybe.”

“No offense, Mr. Diaz, but my brother also thinks he should run my life. The truth is, I’m not dating anyone right now. And I don’t plan to in the near future.”

“But—”

“But thank you for calling.” She hung up the phone and returned to the highlights before she admitted he had a nice voice and maybe she was being mean.

Elinor went to the bank. The inside was built of marble and glass, with long counters in stainless steel. How bizarre, she thought, that one could stroll in to such a pristine environment and casually withdraw a half million dollars in cash. Five thousand one-hundred-dollar bills.

Of course, it no longer worked that way.

Instead of the cash (for which she’d have needed a suitcase, because it would have weighed more than a ten-pound sack of potatoes), she received credit cards. One hundred prepaid credit cards, each worth five thousand dollars, that she could use at ATMs back in New York.

All perfectly legal.

No questions asked.

No need to report any interest that would be taxed.

Because she was paranoid that the cards wouldn’t work, the bank teller went with her to a downtown ATM, swiped one of the cards, and cashed out the five thousand, two hundred dollars at a time.

“It’s either this, or I can wire the transfer,” the teller said.

A check would take too long to clear (up to seventeen days), and the wire transfer would alert her bank and maybe Malcolm, too.

“The cards will be fine,” Elinor said.

An hour later she stood on the wharf where the tenders came in. She called her home number.

The connection went through, but CJ didn’t answer.

She tried calling again, this time to CJ’s cell.

Thirty-three

CJ reached in her pocket and flicked off the
ringtone. The last thing she needed was to attract attention. She wedged herself into the revolving door between two men in gray suits and slipped through the lobby, which was crowded with more suits and luggage on wheels.

The elevators weren’t hard to find. She stepped inside one and quickly pressed 4.

On the way up, she tucked her wispy curls behind her ears. She’d never seen a wig that looked natural; she’d decided the dress and the sneakers would provide sufficient disguise. It felt strange, though, carrying only a small wristlette that held lipstick, a few breath mints, and a twenty-dollar bill. Other than her driver’s license, which she’d stuck inside her bra, CJ
had left all her IDs in her car at the train station. No sense advertising who she was in case she was stopped by security.

The doors opened on four and she stepped into the hall. So far so good.

She scanned the area for a housekeeping cart but saw none. A brass plate on the wall had an arrow that pointed to the right for suites 401 to 412, so that’s where she went. To the right, past the ice machine, around the corner. There it was. A rolling miniature Bed Bath & Beyond.

CJ inhaled a long breath and promised herself this was the last time, the very last time, she was going to enable her sister.

She went to an open door across from the cart, though it was marked Suite 406, not 402. She pushed open the door and looked in.

The living room of the suite was cozy yet plush, in a prewar-building sort of way. Ivory wainscotting belted taupe silk-papered walls that were topped with crown molding, artfully carved. A latte-colored sofa sat beside a mahogany bar; two dark leather wing chairs hugged a wide-manteled fireplace that CJ would bet wasn’t faux.

“Hola,” she said into the room, though who knew what language anyone spoke in New York anymore.

A short, round figure emerged from another doorway, a squirt bottle in one rubber-gloved hand, a box of disposable something in the other. The woman stared at her but didn’t respond.

CJ smiled. “Are you the woman who cleans four-oh-two?”

The woman stared at her blankly. She didn’t move.

CJ repeated her request, this time in Spanish.

No recognition.

Great
, CJ thought. French was the only other language CJ knew, but she doubted the woman had come to New York by way of Paris.

She smiled again.

The woman screwed up her face.

CJ stepped back to the door, pointed to the numbers, then made a four, a zero, and a two with her fingers.

The woman set down her squirt bottle and reached into her pocket. In an instant she was on a cell phone.

“No!” CJ said, waving her hand. “No, it’s okay!” She backed out of the room, her face frozen in its smile. Not wanting to alarm the housekeeper any more than she apparently had, she spun around just in time to come face-to-face with another woman, a larger woman, who had on a dress identical to hers, except that it puckered at the bulge of her breasts.

“You need help?” She had unpleasant breath and a furry dark moustache that Yolanda would no doubt love to wax.

“Oh,” CJ said. “Hello. You speak English.”

The woman shifted her New York Giants’ shoulders.

“I’m trying to find whoever cleans suite four-o-two. A friend of mine stayed there last week and left something behind.” Perhaps it was too soon to have mentioned her quest. This woman probably wouldn’t believe that a housekeeper had a friend who’d actually stayed at the Lord Winslow in a suite that cost at least a thousand dollars a night.

The big woman laughed. “What did your friend leave? The room service tray with the leftover scones?”

CJ blinked. Elinor always had dry toast and jam unless she was away. Then she ordered scones, a lapse into decadence she thought would go unnoticed, undeniably like the affair.

“I gave them to the birds,” the big woman said, revealing a row of surprisingly small teeth. “Why do you want them, Miss Elinor?”

CJ sucked in her cheeks. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Apparently you can’t help me.” She snapped her face away from the woman and walked down the hall at an unreasonable clip.

“But, Miss Elinor, I was just teasing. I’m the one who is sorry. Please don’t tell…”

CJ waved her hand and called back, “I don’t know who you think I am, but my name isn’t Elinor.”

“I like what you’ve done with your hair. I think your man-friend will like it, too.”

Man-friend,
CJ thought as she pushed through the exit door and scrambled down the stairs. She wondered if the large woman had any idea that Elinor’s man-friend was who he was.

Thirty-four

Manny didn’t get back to Yolanda’s until
after one o’clock in the afternoon. While Yolanda worked in the shop, Poppy played with Belita in the apartment upstairs, brushing her hair, tying it with ribbons, painting her fingernails and toenails bright pink. Who would have thought Poppy could make a little girl giggle just by being silly, by being herself?

“He’s gone,” Manny announced.

Poppy looked up from her seat at the tiny child’s table, locked eyes with him, and reminded herself she was a married woman before she realized what he’d said. “What?”

“Duane. He left town with a couple of suitcases and his brother. Your houselady saw him go.”

There was something sweet about the way he called Nola her “houselady” and not her “housekeeper” or “maid.”

“Where did he go?” Poppy asked.

“He didn’t tell her. They packed up his brother’s car and drove away.”

“Bye-bye,” Belita said, making her small, manicured fingers open and close in her hand.

“Yes,” Poppy said. “Bye-bye is right.” She straightened the bottles of polish and creams on the table, then lifted Belita from the soft rug on the floor. “They must have gone back to Nevada. But Elinor’s gone. If he’s the blackmailer, he needed her money…. Oh! Maybe I’ve been wrong. Maybe my husband isn’t involved in any way—”

“Or maybe he is.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Your woman—Nola—said one of the suitcases was very lightweight. As if there was nothing in it.”

She gasped a small gasp, then Belita did, too. “Elinor’s gone to get the money. Do you think Duane found out and followed her there?” Poppy asked breathlessly.

“Where is she?”

“Grand Cayman. She went yesterday.”

“Why didn’t anyone tell me?” He seemed more slighted than angry.

Poppy tried to smile. She didn’t want to say she hadn’t thought that he cared.

“When will she be back?”

“Tomorrow.”

“Is she alone?”

The question surprised her. She had no idea if Elinor had gone by herself. Had her lover gone with her? “I…I don’t really know. I think so.”

“Is she traveling under her own name?”

“Of course. I doubt she has a passport with an alias on it just because she is rich.”

Manny winced.

“Sorry,” Poppy said, standing up, so small beside his tall, hard-bodied self. She went up to her tiptoes and kissed him on the lips. “I’m so scared for Elinor, and I’m so confused. Are you going to go to Grand Cayman?”

He paused. “Someone should. To make sure she’s okay. It can’t be me, though. She doesn’t know me. I’d probably scare her to death.”

Poppy didn’t say that Elinor didn’t scare easily. “But CJ’s guarding the house, and Alice is in Orlando, and Momma’s too fragile, and I’m under arrest.”

He put his hands on her waist. They were so big and she was so small that his fingers and thumbs nearly clasped together, from front to back. “Which leaves my sister.”