The Perfect Woman (Rose Gold Book 2)

by Nicole French

  “Good girl,” I murmured, ignoring Derek’s inquisitive look. The idea of Nina disappearing inside a house like this made me want to jump through the screen and yank her out of there.

  The door closed, but Nina waited on the porch, moving back and forth from heel to heel while she peered around the neighborhood. A few minutes later, the door opened, and this time a man exited to stand next to her on the porch. He was tall with graying hair and a mustache, and wore a pair of old jeans and a t-shirt that I could tell was badly stained under the arms even from this far away.

  “Who is that?” I asked.

  “That,” Derek said. “Is Ben Vamos.”

  “The guy you found on the census?”

  Derek nodded. “Yeah, we got another break, Zo. Some of the Newark department stepped up to help. Turns out Ben Vamos is a known entity around there. Slumlord, low-level crack dealer too. This video is theirs. Weird story, actually. Hungarian immigrant, but he grew up running for the Russian mob here and there before he started his own enterprise. In 1990, right before the census count, his wife was killed during a raid when his relationship with the Russians went south. She had a daughter from her previous marriage.”

  “Little Katarina Csaszar, whoever she is,” I said, following along.

  “That’s right,” Derek said. “According to the Newark boys, he brought Sara Berto, his wife’s cousin, over from Hungary to help with the girl. They think Károly Kertész—otherwise known as Calvin Gardner—was Sara’s cousin but he was already here. They all moved into Ben’s house like some Hungarian Brady Bunch.”

  “Here’s the story…” I added, but Derek just kept going.

  “Ben got Calvin wrapped into his business. Small-time shit, mostly. Meth deals, maybe a car jack here and there. Then, from what I can tell, Ben got lucky. Another relative died of cancer and left him everything he had, which included a shitty house in Pompton Lakes, plus the remains of a hefty settlement from Dupont.”

  I raised a brow. “From the chemical spill?”

  Derek nodded. “Looks that way.”

  I turned back to the video, which now showed Nina chatting with the man. As Vamos chain-smoked two cigarettes in less than three minutes, she kept pushing a nonexistent piece of hair behind one ear. Though I couldn’t hear the conversation, it was clear she was uncomfortable. I didn’t blame her. He was the last person I’d ever expect to be standing next to someone like Nina, much less someone she would seek out.

  “So what happened to the money?” I asked, wishing I could hear the conversation. Or maybe not. From this perspective, I could only see the back of Nina’s head, but Vamos was leering openly at her. I didn’t like it. At all.

  “He took that money and started investing it in real estate,” Derek said. “He owns most of that block right there, and loads like it all over New Jersey. He’s a slumlord, Zo. One that makes a nice chunk of change.”

  I stifled a growl. The mustachioed gorilla had just stroked Nina’s arm. In the video, Nina laughed nervously. She tried to step back from Vamos, but every time, he kept taking steps into her personal space. It was just a video, but I wanted to punch him in the face anyway. Leave her the fuck alone.

  “Any family left?” I asked. “Sara, maybe?”

  Derek shook his head. “Sara went back to Hungary, remember? The Newark guys think she did take Katarina with her. No records of their return.”

  I grimaced. “So Calvin names a woman on the other side of the fuckin’ world as his ‘known person.’ Go fuckin’ figure.”

  Derek nodded. “Yeah. It looks like that might be the case. But maybe it doesn’t matter. Because look.”

  I stared at the video as Nina reluctantly shook Vamos’s hand, then slid around him on the porch. He didn’t leave her much room, forcing her to press her body against his greasy one in order to leave. He clearly enjoyed making her uncomfortable.

  “Fuck,” I muttered. Watching this was torture.

  Nina exited the property and got back into the Escalade, then drove away. Vamos remained on the porch, taking his sweet time as he smoked another cigarette, looking up and down the sidewalk until it was finished. And then, finally, he disappeared back into the house.

  The video ended. For the first time, I wondered if I had made a mistake in not letting her tell me what she knew about her husband’s dealings. I had assumed that she was mostly in the dark, considering how estranged they were most of the time. But on top of that, anything I discovered through her would have been grounds for my potential disbarment. So really, it was better that I was discovering it this way.

  It didn’t make it any easier to take, though.

  “He did all that off a settlement?” I asked finally. “The property, everything?”

  Derek looked at me like I was an idiot. “Zo, come on.”

  “Okay, so what, a silent partner?”

  Derek nodded. “We tracked it down. Most of his properties are owned jointly between him and an LLC that’s registered in Delaware.”

  I looked up. “Don’t fuck with me. It cannot be that easy.”

  Derek nodded, filling the gaps. “No jokes, my friend. Ben Vamos and Pantheon co-own about twenty houses in the New England area. Could be more. We got guys in Connecticut, Jersey, and Massachusetts now helping to track them down. Starting with this one where your girl paid a little visit.”

  “Then why wasn’t Calvin there?” I demanded. “Why the fuck would she be there instead?”

  Derek just looked sorry for me, like I was a lost puppy and he wanted to pat my head.

  “I’m sorry, Zo,” he said. “I really am. But you gotta face it: your girl’s involved. I think she needs a bug. And probably a tail on her too.”

  Dread filled the pit in my stomach. Like I’d been punched before and now someone had filled that hole with cement.

  “All right,” I said, my mouth feeling wooden. “I’ll get the warrant tomorrow.” I couldn’t stop staring at the video, now frozen back on a frame of the Escalade, Nina’s head silhouetted through the window. Then, another thought occurred to me. “She, ah, she mentioned she’s going to Boston. Taking her daughter up to school there, and she’s planning to take some classes at Wellesley herself. Stay up there for a while.”

  Derek’s eyes opened wide. “What? Shit. Zola, we won’t be able to plant anything if she leaves the city. That’s way beyond our jurisdiction.”

  “I know.”

  I worried my mouth, then pressed play on the video. I needed to see this again. And again and again if necessary in order to do what needed to be done.

  “I—I can get it planted,” I said slowly. I kept my eyes trained on the video, hoping to God Derek wouldn’t understand exactly how I could make that happen. “I can do a lot more than that. If you want. She leaves on Wednesday, and she, um, she likes me.”

  Derek gave me a long look that I chose not to address.

  “She’ll tell me what we want to know,” I kept on. “She’ll—she’ll let me get close. All the way to Boston, even. If that’s what we want.” I shrugged. “No one has to know.”

  I shouldn’t have doubted my partner. When I looked up again, full comprehension shone in his eyes. But to my relief, there was no judgment there. Maybe some pity. After all, what I was suggesting wasn’t strictly legal, though it was by no means uncommon. It was more that he understood the personal cost of it.

  “All right,” Derek said, standing up. “I’m going to get a glass of water.”

  And give you a second to come to terms with this. He didn’t say it out loud. He didn’t have to.

  He went inside, and I was left there with the video. I watched again as Nina shied from Vamos’s greasy touch. As she spoke to him with awkward familiarity.

  “Christ, doll,” I murmured as she sidled past him once more. “What the hell have you gotten yourself into?”

  III

  Chiaroscuro

  Then

  Chapter Twenty-One

  May 2009

  “This look
s amazing.”

  Nina smiled as she and Caitlyn both surveyed the lavish spread in front of them. The long dining room table was still mostly empty, but one end was jammed with Nina’s favorite foods she had enjoyed in Florence: penne strascicate, a platter of grilled peppers and other vegetables, fried artichokes, and a rare, aged Wagyu steak sliced into thin ribbons on a cutting board. It was a bit much for a lunch for two twenty-one-year-olds, but she was in the mood for things she hadn’t had the heart or stomach for in fully a year.

  After all, it was almost time to celebrate.

  “It really does look splendid, Marguerite,” Nina told the cook. “Thank you so much. I know I made things difficult with the recipes.”

  Marguerite merely beamed in response, then stepped back to wait for other instructions.

  “It’s been ages since you’ve hosted me for lunch, you know,” Caitlyn babbled on. “I was beginning to think you had forgotten about all of us, tucked in your own world here with the baby. Madison said you even skipped spring fittings in Paris.”

  Nina shrugged. She couldn’t care less about her couture wardrobe anymore, nor any of the silly girls who once made the semi-annual trips with her. “It’s an easy world to be tucked into. And I don’t mind doing it.”

  “Isn’t that what the nanny is for, though? Honestly, N, I really don’t understand why you don’t just leave the baby at home with people you hired to take care of her.”

  “I didn’t actually hire her. That was Calvin’s doing.”

  Caitlyn watched with barely conceded disdain as Nina took Olivia out of the pram and cradled her against her silk-covered shoulder. Her Prada blouse would have to be laundered immediately, if it could be saved at all from the horrors of spit-up. There were worst things.

  “What do you think, darling?” she cooed to Olivia. “Should Mama let other people raise you?”

  “Oh, N. I didn’t mean it like that.”

  But Nina was too happy to have company and good food to be annoyed for long. This meal, after all, was supposed to be an olive branch of sorts. And it was true—she had neglected Caitlyn and many others over the past few months.

  She couldn’t really explain why, exactly, she wanted to remain alone with the baby. Call it a mother’s sixth sense. Maybe it was just hysteria. But for whatever reason, she always felt like something genuinely might happen to her daughter if she weren’t right by her side.

  The baby cooed, her temper settled by the simple embrace. Olivia’s eyes, a dark, deep brown compared to Nina’s gray, twinkled brighter than the chandelier above them, and for a moment, Nina was looking at her child’s father. Her real father.

  Peppe. With any luck, she’d see him soon.

  “Please don’t wait for me,” she said to Caitlyn. “I’m sorry, I just have to feed Livy—otherwise I won’t be able to take more than two bites.” She turned. “Marguerite, can you bring some wine for Caitlyn, please? The Poliziano, please.”

  Marguerite bobbed, then left to retrieve the wine. While Caitlyn began dishing herself up, Nina pulled an earlier prepared bottle from the custom Celine bag at her feet, a gift from her mother when she had returned from the spring season in Paris. It was a little odd to be using a one-of-a-kind handbag to store diapers and bottles, but Nina had to admit, she quite liked it.

  “What?” she asked Caitlyn, who was making a surprised face at the paraphernalia. “I am her mother. And for the record, while I do have help, I like doing this.”

  Seven months into the job now, it still felt strange to say it. Strange, and yet completely normal. She was her mother. As completely and more emphatically than Nina had ever been…anything.

  “I’m just shocked,” Caitlyn said, nodding at the bottle. “Calvin seemed to think you were going to nurse her forever.”

  Nina frowned as Olivia pushed the bottle away, as she often did. “I still pump, but I’m trying to get her used to the bottle for the times when I do leave her with someone else.” Then, something else occurred to her. “You talk to Calvin about breastfeeding?”

  “I—no. We just ran into each other at a lunch or something.” Caitlyn waved a hand through the air like she was batting away a fly, then spooned some vegetables onto her plate. “He happened to mention it.”

  Nina blinked, then focused on trying to get Olivia to take the bottle again. She still generally didn’t care for it when her mother was readily available.

  “People act like six or seven months is an eternity,” she said. “Many women do this for years, you know.”

  Caitlyn snorted. “Good lord, could you imagine a toddler walking up to you and asking for it like a box of crayons or something?”

  Nina shrugged. Perhaps a year ago she might have snarked at the notion, but these days, she felt more and more that no one was in the position to judge what a mother did for her child.

  Nina didn’t mention how many times Calvin also commented jealously on the state of her breasts. She didn’t understand why. Aside from the fact that they were small, never anything to write home about, it wasn’t like he had ever touched them anyway. Or ever would.

  One month, Peppe. I’m coming.

  In just one more month, this miserable year of marriage she and Calvin had promised each other would be over. She would move on, and her first order of business after the imminent divorce was going to Florence and introducing Giuseppe to his daughter. She hadn’t yet gotten up the nerve to contact her former lover, but that was neither here nor there. The tickets were purchased. The summer villa rented.

  After that…who knew?

  “Come on, darling,” she cooed to Olivia. “Take the bottle so Mama can have a bite with her friend.”

  But it was no use. Olivia batted and pawed at Nina’s shirt, shoving the rubber nipple away until finally, Nina conceded.

  “I’ll be right back,” she said to her friend. “It won’t take more than twenty minutes, and then I can put her down.”

  “Oh, you don’t have to leave,” Caitlyn said, waving her fork around. “Trust me, ever since Kayla ‘breast is best’ Cartwright had hers last March, she’s been whipping it out all over the place. Central Park, Bergdorf’s, you name it. Half of New York could probably sketch her nipple from memory.”

  Nina hid a smile. While she was so far the youngest of her own cohort to have children, it didn’t surprise her that there would be a few of the older ones—new money, mostly—to embrace what they saw as more “natural” methods of childrearing. She, however, generally fed her daughter alone, lest she risk the shame of her husband or the prying eyes of staff. She honestly couldn’t imagine nursing Olivia in public. But then again, there were a lot of things she couldn’t imagine doing these days.

  And it really had been a long time since she had seen her friend.

  “All right,” she said, almost nervous as she unbuttoned her blouse. “I will.”

  “Good job, N. Live a little,” Caitlyn joked even as Olivia craned her head eagerly.

  “What are you doing?”

  Both girls whirled around, and Nina yanked her shirt closed.

  “Oh, hello,” she said as Calvin entered the room. “I thought you were traveling again this week. I wasn’t expecting you until tomorr—Mother? Grandmother?”

  “Hello, Nina.”

  Calvin stepped aside to reveal Violet, as addled as ever by the effects of Valium and likely a Bloody Mary within the hour, followed by the petite, imperious, and extremely sober Celeste de Vries, who peered around the yawning dining room as though she were inspecting a starving artist’s garret apartment. This, of course, was the bigger surprise. Celeste de Vries didn’t visit other people. They came to her.

  “I see you haven’t done much to the place,” she remarked dryly as she walked in. “I had expected more of you, Nina. My cousin had such terrible taste in wallpaper.”

  “She really did,” agreed Violet as she examined the teal jacquard. “God, look at it. It must have been done when I was a child.” She turned brightly, if slightly vacan
tly, to her daughter. “Hello, darling! I was at Mother’s when your lovely husband paid us a house call. We decided to return the favor.”

  She smiled, revealing a row of bright white caps, but the expression didn’t reach her eyes. Nina rocked Olivia, who was starting to fuss again.

  “I—I’m sorry. I, I’ve been busy. As you must remember.” Nina gulped, not knowing exactly what else to say. What did she really care about wallpaper at the moment? She had a baby to take care of, and it was only now, seven months into the job, that she was starting to feel a little like she was getting the hang of it.

  But the entire situation was odd. Her mother barely remembered she existed on the best of days, and her grandmother called people to her, not the other way around. What on earth was going on?

  She didn’t have time to find out. As if to reinforce her mother’s point, Olivia gave a great yowl. Caitlyn smiled at her plate while Nina pushed back from the table.

  “I’ll only be a moment. I just need to feed Livy,” she said as she stood up. “Marguerite made more than enough if you would like to join us.”

  But Celeste’s voice stopped her before she could make her exit.

  “Nina.”

  How could a single word carry so much force? And yet, Nina couldn’t ignore its pull. Not from the one person whose opinion she had ever cared for. She never understood how she could be so terrified by Celeste and yet desperately admire her at the same time.

  “Cook, for God’s sake, get the nurse,” Calvin snapped just as Marguerite reentered the room with the wine.

  Her eyes widened as she caught sight of the other visitors, and wordlessly, she bobbed and dashed off in the direction of the nursery.