Tuesday Mooney Wore Black

by Kate Racculia

  “But we should have a plan anyway. In case she’s sad and there are clues.” Tuesday sucked down the dregs of her drink. “What song did you choose?” It was nine-thirty. McFly’s had filled. The karaoke DJ was setting up.

  Dex hadn’t. He’d been too focused on this slightly different iteration of Tuesday – fuzzier around the edges, sloshing out of her typical container – to think of a request.

  “How about I choose for you,” Tuesday murmured, and it was Dex’s turn to blush. She’d been in the audience for karaoke roulette before, sure, but she had never given any indication that she wanted to play along. He was stunned. And thrilled.

  Tuesday pulled her phone out of her bag. Her face, reflecting the light of the screen, glowed in McFly’s grubby darkness. Then she laughed. She turned the screen around for Dex to see.

  His rendition of “I Don’t Know How to Love Him” in the style of John Denver and the Muppets was both one of his crowning karaoke roulette achievements and one of his last clear memories of the evening. They drank more gin and more tonic. They listened to a lot of ear-bleedingly awful karaoke. When Dex finally slithered into his bed, around two-thirty in the morning, he was grinning and spinning.

  But then Saturday dawned far too early and far, far too bright, and these stupid brick and cobblestone streets were – Jesus, who thought these were quaint? People who had People to carry them around in litters?

  “This brunch,” he said over his shoulder to Tuesday, “is a social call. We’re not assuming anything, but we’re also not assuming nothing either.”

  “You are so hung over right now,” said Tuesday.

  “Takes one to know one,” said Dex.

  Louisburg Square was a block of adorable warm brownstones, some undulating with turrets, all with charming wrought-iron fences and grillwork, huddled around a long green park. Number 13½ had an intercom in place of a doorbell, and Dex, after ringing, hadn’t even announced their presence before the door buzzed open. They stepped into a dark, shining space. The floor was black marble buffed to a high gloss, and the walls, above a mahogany chair rail, were papered with purple-black and navy blue damask. A weak chandelier hung too high above them to do any good. Tuesday’s head was still tender from gin and lack of sleep.

  Looking at the white bear-mop of a dog sitting in the middle of so much darkness was like looking straight at the sun.

  “Where are its eyes?” whispered Dex.

  “I don’t know.” She’d pushed her sunglasses into her hair on the stoop, but slid them back down. “But I don’t think you should be trying to make eye contact.”

  The beast greeted them with unusual stoicism for a dog: it raised its snout and snorted, once, in their direction.

  “Hello?” Lila Korrapati Pryce’s voice emerged, before she did, from what could have been a shadow but was more likely a dark-papered hallway. She was wearing a shocking-pink T-shirt, sweat-pants, and no shoes. Her toes were shiny cherries. Tuesday pushed her sunglasses up into her hair again. She opened her mental file on Pryce, Lila Korrapati and scribbled: freshly pedicured. Lila looked tired but eager, like she was expecting a cluster of old friends from college rather than one person she barely knew, and another she’d never met. But her eyes were bright and she smiled, and Tuesday believed it. She was happy to see them. It was real.

  While researching her late husband, Tuesday had given Lila a brief pass, so she had the basics – fortyish; born in Cambridge; went to Harvard and had been, prior to marrying Vincent Pryce, a high school English teacher. Tuesday, independently of Dex, had made a firm decision about her plan for this brunch: it was an unmissable opportunity for field research. Grieving, she wrote in her mental file. Obviously. But also glowing.

  “This is Roddy,” Lila said, setting her hand on the dog’s head. It disappeared into his hair.

  “This is Tuesday,” Dex said, putting his arm around Tuesday’s shoulder and squaring her in Lila’s direction. Tuesday shook Lila’s hand. Confident grip. Warm. Eye contact. Wry twist of her mouth, as if to say: I know you are not Dex’s Roddy.

  But Lila actually said, “I’m glad it was you.”

  “Me?” said Tuesday.

  “I’m glad it was you,” Lila repeated, “who found the first clue.”

  Tuesday stretched her lips into a smile and nodded, hoping her silence would do exactly what it did.

  “Something about you,” said Lila, “reminds me of Vince.” She propped her hands on her hips. “Shall we brunch?” she said, turning back toward the shadow hallway. “I have a brunch room. A whole room for brunch. Sometimes, when I am totally out of fucks to give.” She tilted her head, and for a moment Tuesday wondered if she’d completed her thought without vocalizing it. But then she continued, “I eat dinner in there.”

  Dex grabbed Tuesday as they followed their host down the dark hall.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I didn’t mean to create a parallel between you and the dog.”

  “Well, you did,” said Tuesday.

  The hallway opened into a small room, not quite as dim as the foyer – the ceiling was high, and tall windows overlooked a spiny black wrought-iron fence and the square beyond – but still wearing that dark damask. The various accoutrements of brunch were laid on a sideboard: a linen-lined basket of assorted bagels and a row of white ramekins gleaming with purple, pink, and orange jams and jellies; a platter of fruit and sugar-dusted pastries; a bloody mary bar, with hot sauce, Worcestershire, olives and horseradish, pickles gored with tiny plastic swords, a shining silver ice bucket. There was a platter heaped with French toast, a platter heaped with sausage patties, and a platter heaped with scrambled eggs. It was enough food for the three people who entered the room and the one person who was already in it to subsist on for several days.

  The man already in the room – Tuesday pulled out a fresh mental file – was sitting at a beautiful old wooden table (easily, Tuesday assessed, an antique; likely worth several hundred thousand). He looked to be in his early to mid-thirties, trim, ruddy, dark-eyed, and intensely adorable in a human teddy bear sort of way. His hair was short and still mostly dark but beginning to lighten. He looked huggable.

  And familiar.

  He pushed back from the table.

  He hadn’t yet straightened before low bells rang from the foyer.

  Lila wobbled a little. “Huh,” she said. “I wonder who that is.” She looked at the man, who still hadn’t stood, let alone introduced himself. He frowned at her, shook his head the tiniest bit: Why are you looking at me?

  “Grab a mary,” Lila said. “Roddy and I will be right back.”

  Dex shrugged at Tuesday and addressed himself to the brunch bar.

  “What a spread,” he said. He looked back over his shoulder at the stranger, who finally rose all the way up. Deliberate, Tuesday wrote in his file. A careful man. She doubted he was Lila’s sibling – at least not biologically; he was white – but they were clearly comfortable with one another. They could speak without words.

  Ex? she scribbled. Love unrequited?

  “How do you know Lila?” Tuesday asked.

  The man smiled. “We met at work,” he said.

  “Aww,” said Dex, flicking his head toward Tuesday. “So did we.”

  “I’m Tuesday,” said Tuesday, and this time the stranger held out his hand and she shook it. He had warm hands. A little sweaty.

  “Bert,” he said. “We taught together, Lyle and I. She taught eleventh-grade English, I still teach music. I conduct the orchestra.”

  “How long have you been friends?” Tuesday asked.

  “Six years,” he said. “No – seven. We met through work, and then we were roommates for a few years. Until she met Vince.”

  “And how long were they together?” Tuesday asked.

  Bert hesitated. Not, Tuesday suspected, because he didn’t know the answer, but because he was sensitive too, maybe more sensitive than she herself was, and he recognized a researcher when he saw one.

  “So
rry,” Tuesday said, though she wasn’t.

  “Tuesday can be an intense conversationalist,” Dex interrupted, handing her a very large bloody mary with a bendy straw and a giant pickle-olive-pickle-olive shish kebab balanced across the rim. “But I can vouch for her good intentions.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Bert. “Small talk isn’t my favorite, even under the best of circumstances. And these circumstances are—” He waved his hand. Conducting, maybe. Trying to pull an answer, like a refrain, out of the air.

  “Strange,” said Tuesday. Bert nodded and laughed a little.

  He shoved his sleeves up, crossed his arms, cupped his elbows in his hands. He had nice arms and hands, no matter how sweaty, and a tattoo on the inside of his right forearm. Tuesday couldn’t tell quite what it was. He squeezed himself. He was nervous. She would have put good money on nervousness being one of his natural states.

  Dex handed him an unasked-for bloody mary, and Bert beamed.

  Bert was Dex-nip. Tuesday knew Dex couldn’t help himself when the boys were cute, couldn’t shake his Tiger Beat aesthetic (“Too much Marty McFly, too young,” he’d once explained), but maybe Bert couldn’t help himself either. Not with a boy like Dex, silver-tongued and charming, who made you drinks you didn’t have to ask for.

  She licked the tip of her mental pencil and summarized: work spouse, roommate, friend, Dex-nip.

  He was so familiar, and she didn’t know why.

  “Have we ever met be—” was all she got out before Lila’s voice returned to the room, also in the middle of a sentence: “—do join us, we have so much food. Right through here.”

  Two familiar-looking women followed in Lila’s wake whom Tuesday did know, though she’d never met them.

  Her mental pencil, stunned, hovered in midair. Her senses crackled, then tuned themselves up to eleven.

  The first, the younger, didn’t give Lila a chance to speak for her. She advanced into the room and slid a disturbingly porcelain hand into Tuesday’s.

  “Emerson Arches,” she said.

  Everything about her was disturbing and cool. She didn’t blink. She was thin and composed, wearing a rose tunic under an oversized, oatmeal-colored cardigan and what would have been tackyass jeggings on a BU student yet were perfectly chic skinny jeans on her. She was blonde, but not originally. Her dye job was impeccable, her hair immaculately treated and moisturized, but it looked wrong against her dark eyes, the slap of freckles on her nose, and the boozy blush of her cheeks. Her brows were two dark bolts. Her teeth were a little sharp. She was uncanny.

  Kind of like her brother.

  “Lyle was telling us all about you,” she said, and Tuesday wondered, as she always did when someone used that particular phrase, what she was supposed to say in response. Thank you? That’s nice? Emerson’s voice was low, slow; her accent didn’t have enough affect to be affected. “And your recent notoriety. It’s nice to meet a fellow meme.”

  Tuesday made a note. Sister, like brother, had more of a sense of humor than she would have expected.

  “Nice to meet you too,” Tuesday said. Dex shot in front of her and pumped Emerson’s hand hello.

  “Dex Howard,” he said. “Financier.”

  “And this,” said Lila from behind, her voice a little thick, “is Constance Arches.”

  Emerson stepped aside to reveal the only woman who could possibly have given birth to her. She possessed the same contained fierceness, a tigress in a shell of cashmere and six figures’ worth of tasteful jewelry. Tuesday’s mental file cabinet slid open. So this was Constance Arches. Chief executive, in her husband’s continued absence, of Arches Consolidated. Forbes-anointed billionaire head-of-family. Not legally a widow (yet) – but did she, as the surviving Arches, carry forth the feud against Vincent Pryce? Was she here to call Lila out? She had a sharp white bob, no bangs. Her eyebrows were light but penciled. Her facade was vaguely Anna Wintour, dipped in liquid nitrogen. Constance caught Tuesday’s eye and held it. And held it.

  “Hello,” said Tuesday. She was full of a sudden and tremendous desire to break everything.

  “We brought muffins,” said Constance.

  Tuesday’s eyes fell to the pink box this woman was cradling, tenderly, as if it were a sleeping child, in her arms.

  “Vincent loved muffins,” Constance continued. She looked down, and Tuesday felt palpable relief. Constance Arches was carrying an extraordinary amount of pain. That layer of ice was a necessary containment; if her insides got out, she would immolate.

  “He loved brunch,” Lila said gently.

  “Minimum effort,” said Constance.

  “Maximum enjoyment,” finished Lila.

  A heavy silence settled over the room, thick as dust. Quiet enough to hear Dex’s straw reach the bottom of his first bloody mary.

  “Who wants another?” he asked.

  Dex preferred to be useful. His definition of usefulness was more elastic, more encompassing, perhaps, than the average American’s, but there was no time that required the deployment of an elastic definition of usefulness quite like the aftermath of a death. It was useful for Dex to make a second round of strong bloody marys, and it was useful for him to serve both Lila Pryce and Constance Arches a plate of food at their respective seats. It was useful for him to keep making eyes at that adorable Bert, to quicken the blood, his own and someone else’s. It would be useful, also, to keep Tuesday in check, to remind her that she was not Miss Marple, that this was an informal brunch and not an interrogation. His brain was getting progressively more bloody maryed, and so was Tuesday’s. He suspected it was making them both become more themselves.

  Therein lay the danger.

  “Please, everyone, have a seat,” said Lila. “Wherever you like – only – Dex. Over here. Next to me.”

  Interesting: next to Lila, but between Lila and Bert. Dex set the last of this round of bloodies in front of Lila and took his assigned seat. “Poindexter,” he said, finally introducing himself formally, officially, usefully to Bert. Dex was a romantic cynic, not a cynical romantic; he didn’t actually believe in love at first contact, but Bert shook his hand, said “Hi,” and looked him in the eye – and Dex could see that he was half embarrassed about Lila’s ham-fisted seating-nudge, but, beneath that, he possessed a steady kind of honesty, a gentleness, a desire, always, to believe in good. And Dex thought, It’s you.

  At last.

  And there was no worry or rush or panic or any of the things he usually felt when he met someone he was going to fall in love with. Only a warm opening in his chest that could have been happiness.

  “Hey,” Dex said.

  Or maybe it was the bloody mary.

  “I’m dying,” said Emerson. Across the table, or in another galaxy, Dex didn’t know anymore. “To hear more about this game.” Dex looked up. Tuesday was sitting across from him, between Lila and Emerson. “First. How did you crack the first clue? How did you know to go to the T station?”

  “There was a hidden message,” Tuesday told her, “in Pryce’s letters to the editor of the Globe. And then there was – a – sign, a symbol to follow, in the station itself.”

  “Did you take pictures? You must have.” Emerson took a refined but serious gulp of bloody mary. “Can I see?”

  Tuesday hesitated. Weighing, Dex knew, the pros and cons of sharing this information. God, she was always herself; she couldn’t not be if she tried. Finally she pulled her phone out of her bag.

  “Have you seen that anywhere else around town?” Tuesday asked.

  “What is – is that a raven?” Emerson leaned forward. “What is it pointing at?” She pointed her own finger.

  “Down the tunnel, the tracks toward Boylston. A section of wall had recently been fake-bricked up.”

  Emerson started to chuckle. Then she swallowed it, as though she were acting out of turn. Dex had recognized her immediately, before she’d introduced herself. He didn’t know as much about richies as Tuesday did, but he did work in finance. He wanted to ba
sk in her presence – she was tailor-made for his tastes: an impeccable, sophisticated, and slightly ridiculous creation of a self – but it was almost as if she wouldn’t let him. Or anyone, really. There was a dead seriousness about her person that Dex suspected she could put on and take off like a piece of haute couture, and, at the moment, it was bolted to her body. She was coiled, a cobra in Tory Burch flats, capable of striking to kill.

  Emerson’s finger moved over the screen and flicked to the next picture.

  Tuesday started and pulled the phone away.

  Dex thought, Dick pics, and snorted. Tuesday was the only person he knew with figurative, not literal, dick pics on her phone: of Archie the dick, pics she felt compelled to hide from his sister.

  It was time for him to intervene.

  “Constance – may I call you Constance?” She was sitting at the far end of the table, across from Lila. She nodded. “How did you know the deceased?”

  Everyone at the table stiffened. Dex felt his spine straighten in sympathy.

  Bert coughed into his fist.

  “We were neighbors,” Constance said. “On the island.”

  Tuesday gave Dex the sliest of side-eyes. There’s so much more to it, the look said. I’ll tell you later.

  “He built the Castellated Abbey in, what – the mid-aughts?” Tuesday asked. “Was that when you first met?”

  Constance turned her head slowly. Dex could practically hear the clockwork whirring in her neck.

  “Yes,” she said.

  Emerson took another elegant slurp of bloody mary.

  “Have you figured out the next step yet?” Emerson asked Tuesday quietly, as if there were enough people around the table for them to have a casual side conversation.

  “No,” he heard Tuesday say to Emerson. “Not yet at least.”

  “The prince of darkness,” quoted Lila, smiling dreamily, “is a gentleman.” She hadn’t touched her bloody mary or her plate of food.

  “Do you know what that means?” Tuesday asked her. Far too aggressively for the occasion, Dex thought critically, and kicked his leg in her direction beneath the table. He didn’t connect with anything but air.