Riptide (24 page)

“Mom.” His voice was small and sad. Instead of returning her embrace, he tried to steady her.

It felt to Christina that her son was pushing her away.

“You said you weren’t going to drink anymore.” Tyler’s sweet little-boy eyes swam with tears.

More than anything, Christina wanted to make Tyler’s tears go away. She reached for him.

Tyler resisted.

In her semidrunk state, it was enough to throw her off-balance. She tumbled over and landed in a heap on the floor.

“My God,” Pamela shrieked.

“Mom, Mom, are you okay?” Tyler fell to his knees and tried with all his might to pull her back up.

“I’m fine,” Christina mumbled, rolling onto all fours to get her balance. She struggled to her feet, leaning heavily on her son’s arm. “I’m fine, don’t worry.”

Pamela looked ready to throw up. “I think it’s best if we leave,” she said stiffly.

We. Christina glared. “I don’t think so.”

She would have said more, but Tyler cut her short. “Okay, Aunt Pamela,” he said, his voice cracking. “I’ll grab some stuff from my room.” He turned to his mother.

The look on his face was pleading, pure torture.

“I want to go to Grandmère and Granddad. I’m sorry, Mom.”

The closet shrank around them until it was no bigger than a tomb and deathly quiet except for the pounding inside Christina’s head, which she understood to be the sound of her heart breaking.

“Okay.” Christina nodded. She had failed again. Tyler deserved to leave without a messy scene. “Go ahead, Ty.” She kept her voice steady. “I’ll see you in a few days.”

He gave her a peck on the cheek, without looking at her, and was gone.

To her credit, Pamela didn’t look so smug for once. In fact, she was choking back sobs. “Good luck, Christina,” was all she managed as she brushed past.

Christina was unable to move for a full minute after they’d gone.

“Dammit,” she said aloud, kicking the safe door.

It slammed and bounced back open, hitting her in the shins.

Which hurt.

“Dammit,” Christina said again.

There were wads and wads of cash.

Why would Jason, a banker, keep so much cash around?

Christina frowned. She dropped to her knees and began gathering stuff. There were thousands of dollars here, along with the DVD and a stack of papers. She stuffed it all back inside the manila envelopes.

Both envelopes bore the return address for the law offices of Maurice Gold in Rockefeller Center.

The icy thing from deep inside her gut returned, slithering through her veins, telling her to stash the envelope someplace where even the cleaning ladies wouldn’t find it.

If Jason had wanted to keep it hidden from her, then she wanted it to stay hidden.

But where?

She didn’t know the combination for the safe, so that was no use.

She heard movements downstairs. The front door slammed, followed moments by the deep rumble of Pamela’s Land Rover starting up.

Pamela and Tyler were gone.

Time was running out.

She looked around in search of a hiding place. The master bedroom suite had never felt comfortable to her. It belonged to Jason. And the guest room where Christina had been sleeping felt like, well, like a guest room.

Danny’s footsteps rang out on the bare wood floor of the living room downstairs.

Christina clutched the envelopes and tried to think.

Tyler’s room. She hurried down the hall, taking care to tread softly.

The single twin bed was mussed where Tyler must have lain. Christina fought the urge to crawl into it the way he had, pull the covers up over her head, and try to go to sleep to make this awful day go away. The way Tyler had tried.

The rumpled pillow still bore the imprint of Tyler’s head. The blanket and spread were rumpled.

Most heartbreaking of all was Humpy lying there, abandoned.

Tyler had left in such a hurry he hadn’t bothered to take his old friend.

Humpy was a poor substitute for a mother’s love, but it was all Tyler had right now. And he’d left him behind.

Christina went to the bed and gathered the old camel in her arms, cradling it, and decided she deserved to die.

Danny’s voice echoed up the stairs. “Christina?”

Startled, Christina remembered the envelopes. She needed to hide them. Fast.

Her gaze came to rest on the empty space at the top of the bookcase. Humpy’s space.

“Christina?” Danny’s voice got louder as he moved up the stairs. “You okay? Your sister-in-law and your son just left.”

Christina tightened her grip on the envelopes. Whatever that paperwork contained, every instinct she had told her to hide it. Even from Danny.

Humpy’s space would do just fine.

“Christina? Where are you?” Danny was in the upstairs hall now.

Christina stuffed the envelopes into Humpy’s hump, careful to close the Velcro around the opening.

She walked over to the hutch, stood on tiptoes, and placed the animal back on his shelf. She stepped away to check.

“Where are you at?” Danny, impatient now, walked down the hall to the master bedroom suite.

Humpy keeled over on his side, off-kilter now, with an empty space next to him like a neon sign.

The stuffed camel looked drunk like Christina, trying but not able to fit in with the tennis trophies and snow-globe paperweights and whatnot.

“Christina?” Danny, exasperated, was heading this way. “Christina?”

Christina stepped up on tiptoes once more and righted Humpy with hands that shook. She pushed together the
snow globe and one of the trophies, grabbing another stuffed animal from a different shelf at the last second before springing away from the bookshelf. There was no time to check.

“There you are.” Danny appeared in the doorway.

Heart pounding, Christina turned back to the bed and began smoothing the covers.

“What?” Danny frowned, one hand on the knob. “You don’t answer when I call you?”

C
hristina came to in late afternoon or early evening, she wasn’t sure which.

The phone was ringing, and she knew it had been for some time, so that she had made it a part of her dreams. Dreams of loss. Nana was there, alive but not, in a place of noise and darkness, shaking her head sadly while Christina searched for something that was already gone.

Christina’s head bounced in the ruts on the road between drunk and hungover.

The sharp, high scent of vodka swam up into her nostrils. A glass on the nightstand was half-full. Groaning, she turned her head away.

The bed beside her was empty.

Rain splashed the windows in horizontal sheets. Waves pounded the shore like giant wrecking balls.

The plasma-screen TV was tuned to the weather station. A forecaster stood outlined in eerie bas-relief against a man-sized map of Long Island, while a giant fur ball slowly spun toward the south shore.

These images did nothing to ease the throbbing in Christina’s skull.

“A tropical storm warning is in effect from the Jersey
shore all the way to Montauk and Block Island,” the forecaster said. “If you’re on the coast, you can expect tides surging up to six feet above normal. You should also be on the lookout for riptides, which are extremely dangerous and unpredictable.”

The forecaster droned on, but Christina couldn’t focus. Sitting up required all her concentration. Too fast, she knew based on long experience, and she would vomit.

The dress she had worn this morning to Jason’s memorial service lay on the floor like a crow with crumpled wings. She stepped around it, heading for the guest room, where she kept her clothes now.

There were sounds from Jason’s walk-in closet.

Danny was in there on a step stool, running his hands along the high shelves, so intent he didn’t notice Christina at first.

Christina cleared her throat. “Did you lose something?”

Danny whirled around. He was dressed in Jason’s robe, one Tyler had given him last Christmas. “Just checking.”

“Checking?”

Jason’s hats, usually lined up in neat rows, were off-kilter. Golf hats, tennis visors, ski hats, and even a fedora from Brooks Brothers he’d bought and never wore.

“You never know what you might find.” Danny shrugged.

Christina said nothing. She needed Tylenol.

“After my father died, it was years before my mother got around to going through the closets. When she fi
nally did, she found a pile of old savings bonds that woulda come in handy early on. You know?”

Christina did know. “We have lawyers for that.” Hadn’t he told her that both his parents died within weeks of each other? She frowned, her gaze went automatically to the safe, its door hanging open, useless.

She didn’t know the combination.

Danny followed her gaze. “Looks like someone cleaned you out.”

Christina shook her head and looked away. “It’s okay.” The pounding inside her head moved down into her shoulders.

“So, you kept important stuff in there?” Danny’s tone was casual, helpful.

Christina shrugged. “No, not really.”

“Is that right?” Danny said, keeping his tone light.

But he stared at her long enough that Christina became aware that she was still naked.

They had had sex again after Pamela and Tyler had left. Danny had held Christina at first while she cried, comforting her in Tyler’s room. It was a new role for him, for them, and it felt awkward.

He had kissed her, slowly and comforting at first, then deeper, tasting the vodka she’d downed.

“Takes the edge off,” he’d said with a knowing little smile.

Before Christina had a chance to feel embarrassed, he snapped his fingers. “I have an idea.” He dragged her out of Tyler’s room and into the hall, giving her a push toward the master bedroom.

Jason’s room.

“You go cozy up. I’ll be back in a sec.” He returned
with two tumblers of Grey Goose on ice and a spare bottle from the freezer. They passed the rest of the afternoon in a blur on the California king bed.

Christina’s experiment with the sober life was officially over. She had returned to the two things she could always count on, no matter what.

This time, however, she was off her game.

She couldn’t get a buzz no matter how much she drank.

And she couldn’t climax.

“You okay?” Danny raised his head from between her legs, wiped his mouth, and did a long, slow neck roll.

He looked haggard. They had never spent so much time together. Danny always went back to his place in the Springs after one of their afternoon fuck sessions.

“I’m good.” Christina shifted her weight, trying to get comfortable.

“Good.” Danny got back down to business. “Because Operation Cheer Up is under way.”

Christina fell back against the pillows but her climax, when it came, was pale and faint.

Like her vodka buzz.

As opposed to her current hangover, which was pounding at her full strength.

Her cell phone chirped.

She squeezed her eyes shut.

“Whoever it is, fuck them.” Danny was off his step stool and across the closet in the blink of an eye. He snapped his fingers. “I got just the thing for a hangover. Let’s get out.”

Rain lashed the bedroom windows, so it was impossible to see across the yard to the tops of the dune.

“I don’t know,” Christina began.

Danny smiled, warming to his idea. “Let’s go to the best restaurant in the Hamptons, just you and me. No more sneaking around.”

She opened her mouth to tell him she felt sick, but he put a finger to her lips. “No excuses.” He raced off. “I got something that will perk you right up,” he called.

There was no use arguing with Danny when he got his mind set, so Christina headed for the guest room. She was reaching for a pair of designer jeans when Danny burst into the room, a ball of energy now, holding a leather bag the size of a shaving kit. “You’re gonna like this.”

Christina tried again. “I’m kind of tired.”

Danny was bent over the contents of his bag. “You got a handheld makeup mirror?”

Wearily, Christina got one for him.

When she returned, Danny handed her a rolled-up crisp new bill. Swiping the mirror with the sleeve of Jason’s robe, he measured out white powder and used a razor blade to cut it into thin rows. “This is the best shit to leave Colombia.”

“Danny,” Christina began. She had used cocaine only rarely, and not recently.

“No ifs, ands, or buts.” Danny grabbed her by the wrist.

She hesitated.

He guided her hand, the one with the rolled-up bill to one of the lines of powder, and pushed her down by the back of her neck. “It’ll make your hangover go away.”

And a short time later, she had to agree. She sipped her Grey Goose cocktail, modeling outfits in a fit of giggles.

They settled on a short pink cocktail dress she’d bought on a whim and never worn.

Danny used his teeth to nibble the tags off, nuzzling her breasts along the way. “My bitch is ready to go.”

Christina surveyed herself in the mirror and frowned. He had never called her his “bitch” before. The dress was lower cut than she remembered. “Maybe it’s too much,” her voice unsteady thanks to the cocaine and vodka.

Danny stood behind her, cupped a breast in each hand, and squeezed. “You know, you could go even bigger.”

This set Christina to giggling.

“Come on.” Danny led the way back to Jason’s room. “My turn.”

Christina followed. Seeing Danny wearing Jason’s robe that was a size too large had been macabre just a short time ago. But the cocaine had made her feel alive again, like she had been living her life in black and white and suddenly stepped into Technicolor.

At the entrance to Jason’s walk-in closet with its three-way mirror, Danny wheeled around and pulled her to him. Kissing her full on the lips so it made a smacking sound, he watched their reflection in the full-length mirror. “Let’s find something classy for me.”

And they did, shoving aside hangers until they found a sport jacket spun from a fine weave Irish linen and made to order. Christina had purchased the fabric many years ago on Jermyn Street and had the jacket made, but Jason hadn’t liked it.

Danny stood, preening and slicking his dark hair back till it gleamed. Under the jacket, he wore a plain white dress shirt that was too big, but he kept it open at the neck so it wasn’t noticeable. He settled for his own black denim jeans.

All of Jason’s pants were too big.

They were almost ready to go.

Danny watched Christina don a pair of Cartier diamond drop earrings that Jason had given her when Tyler was born. He let out a low whistle. “Nice ice.”

“I worked hard for it,” Christina replied. She had suffered with morning sickness throughout her second trimester. But it was during the first, she recalled, that Jason began staying out till the wee hours.

Danny went through her jewelry box, examining its contents. “Is all this shit real?”

Christina nodded, not bothering to tell him about the safe-deposit drawer at the bank on Park.

He fingered a heavy platinum necklace with a large sapphire pendant nesting in diamonds. “Wear this,” he ordered.

The necklace was over-the-top with the earrings, and both were too much with the sleeveless summer shift. Christina was about to tell him that, but Danny was working the clasp at the back of her neck.

He stepped back to admire his choice. “Works your cleavage.” He licked his lips wolfishly.

Christina was unsteady, working her feet into silver slingback sandals.

Danny surveyed himself in the mirror and scowled. “I need something.” He pulled off the black plastic watch he always wore, even when he was plastering. “I can’t wear this piece of shit.”

Christina thought of Jason’s Rolex, sealed inside the plastic bag from the coroner’s office, down in the garage. Even in her cocaine-fueled state, that would be pushing the envelope.

Danny pouted. “Now I got nothing.”

The Rolex was going to sit there, go to waste. So what if Danny wore it for a couple of hours? Nobody would know. And Christina Cardiff had not had a night out in about a million years.

A million and one years, to be exact.

“I have just the thing,” she said playfully.

Danny’s pout faded.

She experienced no more than a passing twinge when she used Danny’s penknife to slit open the Suffolk County seal on the evidence bag inside the garage. Not even a twinge. They had stopped to do more lines with a chaser of champagne before leaving the house.

She reached inside the bag, feeling her way past the swim trunks, now dry, to the small baggie at the bottom that contained the Rolex and Jason’s wedding ring. She fished out the Rolex, leaving the baggie and ring where they were. “Here,” she said, “now you’re as good as me.”

Christina made for the old Suburban, which would make the most sense in a storm like this.

Danny held back, eyeing Jason’s sports coupe. “You know, I’ve always wanted to drive a car like this.”

In the end, they took Jason’s car.

The station was bustling despite the fact that it was after five on a Friday, the time most people would be heading home for a barbecue or, on Long Island in the summer, off to the beach. Police stations, like firehouses, bus depots, and emergency rooms, never slowed down.

The scent of coffee permeated the conference room, thanks to the ancient Mr. Coffee setup that had been brewing in one corner for as long as Frank McManus could remember. He offered some to his guests, who took one look and shook their heads.

Señora Rosa and her niece, Marisol, sat across the table from him, clutching their pocketbooks.

They looked like they’d rather be having root canals. In hell. Still, something had prompted them to drive over here unannounced. He’d been surprised when the sergeant on duty had buzzed to say he had visitors. “Thank you for coming out in the rain,” McManus said to get the ball rolling.

The women exchanged nervous glances.

Waiting to see whether INS agents were going to leap out from the men’s room next door. Based on the loud flushing coming through the wall, you could only hope they’d stop to wash their hands.

“It’s good,” Frank said. “No problem for you to be here.” He gave a nod that was meant to reassure them. New York State remained a safe haven, meaning undocumented aliens could contact law enforcement or seek medical treatment without any risk of arrest. Which made McManus’s job easier, so people could speak up to help solve a crime without fear they’d land in jail.

Like now. “No problem.” McManus put some body language into it this time, leaning all the way back in his chair till it gave a warning squeak.

The term “conference room” gave the place too much credit. It was nothing more than a battered steel table surrounded by a graveyard of chairs no longer suitable for desk use.

“So?” McManus said, using his best it’s-all-good tone.

The two women exchanged nervous glances.

Marisol prepared to speak, leaning in close to the table.

Her voice was soft, but the look in her eyes was not.

“I have some information about Meessus Christina Cardiff.”

Langdon’s Roadhouse was an East End legend, hidden at the end of a narrow lane that twisted through wild marshes before opening onto a sandy bay. The path to the front door wound past mounds of shells from little neck clams six inches deep in places, castoffs from generations of diners on the back deck.

A sign behind the scarred oak bar advised no drinks would be served before six. Next to the sign was a battered clock with hands permanently fixed at five minutes past six.

Jason Cardiff had been a regular.

The lone valet on duty, huddled in a windbreaker that was no match for the storm, recognized Jason’s Porsche and sprang into action with an oversized umbrella. His smile faded when he saw Danny at the wheel. “Good evening, Mrs. Cardiff.” He rushed around to her side.

“Good evening,” she murmured, accepting his hand to pull herself out of the car.

“Hey, sport,” Danny called. “Leave it right here in front.”