In telling me exactly how many people she employed and what their duties were, I ascertained the size and schedule of her staff in the New York apartment—valuable information I stored away for future use. I learned, for example, that Monique didn’t like people “living in.” She had two maids, sisters from El Salvador, who occupied small rooms in the bowels of the building where a rabbit warren of such quarters existed mainly for building and tenants’ staff. One of the sisters came in every morning at eight-thirty sharp to fix Monique breakfast.
“As you remember, Jo, I cannot function without café au lait in the morning. And this idiot girl makes the coffee exactly the way I like it, just like mud. She’s stupid but very dependable. And she cleans like a dream.”
“You’re lucky . . . Who was that very grand-sounding Englishman who answered the phone when I called?”
“That’s Trevor, my butler. He used to work for a member of the British royal family. He never talks about it. He signed a contract saying he wouldn’t. I made him sign one with me. He’s very good. Very correct.”
Trevor, I learned, didn’t arrive at the apartment before ten.
Anthea, the English secretary, came in at one in the afternoon. The new chef never arrived until the evening, unless there were “people for lunch,” as Monique put it.
Under the circumstances, one would have imagined Monique would have been on top of the world, above the petty peeves and jealousies affecting has-beens and wanna-bes. But as our lunch progressed, a curious thing happened. Little barbs crept into her conversation. They were innocuous enough at first, so I let them pass. But by the time we reached dessert, Monique had become quite aggressive. We were talking about Southampton when she said: “That first summer was horrible. Everyone was so nasty to me, including you, Jo.”
“Me?”
She looked at me incredulously. “My God, yes. You were dreadful.”
“In what way?” I was truly mystified. I thought I’d been so kind to her, taking her in and all.
“You treated me like a servant . . . Making me answer the phone, giving me your cast-off clothes . . .”
“You offered to help me to pay me back for my hospitality. That’s what I understood anyway.”
“I certainly did not offer to run your errands,” she said with indignation.
Was she purposely lying? Or did she really not remember? And which was worse?
“You took advantage of me because I was poor and I had nowhere to go,” she went on. “You never would have treated Betty or June or any of your grand friends like that if they had come to visit you. You used me, Jo. You know you did.”
I simply could not believe it. If there were a definition of chutzpah, this was it. A woman who was fucking my husband behind my back in order to get all his money now had the nerve to accuse me of using her. Still, I kept cool. I decided not to remind her of Lucius’s plan to bring her in as my new social secretary once he had gotten rid of my old one. I just let her complain.
“I remember all the people who treated me badly,” she went on. “What was it you always used to say? ‘I may not remember, but I never forget.’ I will never forget those people who ignored me as if I did not exist . . . But I don’t hold a grudge against anyone. Not even you. And when they die, I will go to their funerals and cry as if I had cared about them.”
As I listened to this bizarre tirade, I wondered exactly whom she was addressing. She was definitely talking to somebody, but it wasn’t me. It was as if she were replaying some ancient childhood drama. I suddenly had the oddest feeling that perhaps this whole nightmare I’d been through had been some sort of macabre revenge—not on me, but on an unresolved past. She still had an ax to grind. And clearly, her victory over me did not appear to be complete in her mind.
“You know, Jo, I really did love you,” she said. “You betrayed my love by treating me so badly. You know that, don’t you?”
“I don’t see it that way. I’m sorry you do.”
Her conversation was striking in its narcissism and insularity. The world was a mirror in which she saw only different reflections of herself. The rest of lunch was spent on more of her petty grievances. When the coffee finally arrived, I was exhausted. At that point, she asked to see the necklace.
“It’s back home,” I said, adding three lumps of sugar to the espresso to give me energy.
“What?” she cried out.
Other diners glanced at us.
“Naturally, I didn’t dare take it to work,” I said. “I thought we agreed you’d stop by after lunch.”
“I never said that.”
“I’m sorry. I misunderstood.”
“I have the check right here in my purse. You were supposed to bring the necklace.” She was indignant.
“I apologize. I’ve had a lot on my mind. So if you want the necklace, you’ll have to come back to my apartment.”
“I can’t. I have an appointment.”
My heart froze.
“Oh? What time?”
“Two-thirty.”
Shit. That was precisely the time Oliva would be walking into McCluskey’s office to sign the will.
“Do you mind being a little late?” I sipped my sweet espresso, trying not to look doomed.
Monique reached inside her purse and pulled out a tiny white phone that looked like a compact. She punched one button and waited. Whoever she was calling was on her speed dial. I signaled the waiter for another coffee. Monique whispered into the phone.
“Nate, darling, I’m going to be a bit late . . . I don’t know . . . Around three or three-thirty, probably . . . Yes . . . Yes . . . No, I will meet you there . . . Fine, I’ll tell you everything . . . Me too . . . A bientôt, cherie . . .” Monique put the phone back in her purse. “I’m meeting Nate,” she said.
“So I gathered. When’s the wedding?”
“We haven’t set a date yet. We’re going to Pearce this afternoon to pick out a ring.”
“No ring yet? The papers said you two were engaged a while ago.”
“I want to pick it out myself. I don’t want a diamond. I want an emerald this time.”
I noted her use of the words “this time.”
“Emeralds are supposed to be bad luck in an engagement ring.”
“Only for those who can’t afford them,” she said.
While she talked, my brain was clicking. I figured this unforeseen scheduling conflict might work very well in my favor one day. If trouble ever did arise regarding the will, Nate Nathaniel would have to swear in court that Monique called him to say she’d be late for their appointment that afternoon. And even if Monique later told him she had gone to my apartment after lunch, he couldn’t prove it. I’d swear in court that Monique and I had had lunch, yes, but that afterward, Monique left me to go to an appointment.
I could see myself on the witness stand saying, “I think she mentioned something about going to a lawyer’s office . . .”
I insisted on picking up the check to save time. I paid cash. My credit cards were long gone. We had to leave the restaurant by two o’clock to be on the safe side. As we were walking out the door, we ran into Betty and June, who were just coming in. June gave me a tepid greeting. I couldn’t blame her under the circumstances. I’d gone behind her back to Charlie and I still owed him a lot of money as well. I owed Betty money, too—the ten thousand dollars I’d borrowed from her to pay Oliva. But knowing Betty, I figured she’d forgotten all about it.
Betty blurted out: “Talk about the odd couple.”
“Hello, Betty, hello, June,” I said in a somber voice.
Monique, who was always uncomfortable around June and Betty, hurried past them, murmuring a brief hello.
I knew June was still angry at me, so I whispered something to her calculated to whet her interest. “I’ve got something amazing to tell you. I’ll call you.”
June and Betty went on chatting. They were having one of those Wasn’t-That-Dinner-Divine-Last-Night? conversations, where all compliment
s are calculated to end in criticism of the hostess.
I followed Monique out the door, pleased we’d been spotted by the Town Criers. I had purposely chosen Pug’s because it wasn’t too far from my apartment. We walked home. I looked around to make sure no one was watching us before we went inside.
“I cannot believe you live here,” Monique panted, following me up the steep flights of stairs leading to my apartment.
“Hold on to the banister,” I cautioned her. “The stairs are rickety.”
Once again, I was grateful not to have a doorman because it was so important that no one see us for the next hour. I glanced behind me to check if Monique was using the banister for support, like I told her. She was.
Just before I reached the second landing, I feigned a swoon. Monique was directly behind me. I teetered back and forth and then, in a great lurching movement, I pretended to fall backward. In an effort to save myself, I grabbed her hand which was on the banister, “accidentally” grinding the sharpened silver key ring I was holding into her skin.
“Aieee,” she cried, clutching her hand in pain.
I steadied myself. The infliction of such suffering was a queer and terrible sensation for me. Monique moaned. I saw blood where the key ring had bit into her flesh.
“Oh my God, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry.” I steadied myself with some effort—not just for effect, but because I really did feel dizzy as a result of this intentional act of violence.
“Merde alors,” Monique cried. “Tu es vraiment folle, toi. What have you got there? A razor?”
“Monique, please, I didn’t mean it. It’s my key ring. The drugs make me woozy.”
“I need a bandage,” she said testily. She wasn’t hurt too badly, just badly enough.
I unbolted the police lock, opened the door of my apartment, and showed her in.
“Come this way,” I said, leading her toward the kitchenette.
She stood for a moment, seeming to forget about her wounded hand as she took stock of the bleak surroundings. Most of the crates were gone and I’d neatened things up a bit, but there was still a striking impermanence to the place. It was more like a pit stop than a home.
“Jo, I had no idea.”
“Oh, it’s not so bad. You get used to it.” I turned on the cold water in the kitchen sink.
“How could anyone get used to this?” She said it under her breath, but I heard her.
“Most people in the world would find this apartment more than adequate.”
Her attack made me oddly defensive about my little lair. She walked into the kitchenette. “Put your hand under here,” I told her.
I ran cold water on the top of her hand. She smarted from the pain. She had a nasty scrape and some swelling.
“I’m so sorry,” I said again.
And I actually was. I couldn’t believe I’d done it. I wrapped an ace bandage around her hand—one I just “happened” to have—identical to the one Oliva had worn to the lawyer’s office. It was bulky, but it did the trick.
Monique sank down on the couch in the living room in slow motion. She seemed kind of stoned, looking around with a vacant expression and her mouth half open, cradling her wounded hand close to her chest. I could see she was suffering less from the accident than from an overdose of reality.
“Monique, I really am so sorry, I—”
“Stop apologizing,” she interrupted me. “It’s a bore.”
“Can I get you anything? Some water?”
“The necklace. You can get me the necklace . . . I hope my hand is not going to scar . . . Imagine having to try on rings today. Thank God it’s my right hand . . . Here’s the check,” she said, pulling out an envelope from her purse with her left hand. She threw it onto the coffee table.
“I’ll get the necklace.”
I went back into the tiny kitchenette and opened the refrigerator door.
“Don’t tell me you put it in there?” Monique said.
“The freezer’s a wonderful place to hide things. Come see.”
She got up reluctantly. I took out the Stouffer’s TV dinner box and showed her how I’d carefully hidden the necklace case inside it in tinfoil and a plastic bag. I handed her the red leather case. She opened it, remarking how cold the case was. Her eyes flashed when she saw the necklace. She forgot all about her hand.
“Fantastique,” she whispered.
“You’re still happy you bought it? It’s not too late to change your mind.”
“I adore it. I have always adored it.”
“Try it on.”
“I’m so late.”
“Nate won’t mind. Don’t you want to see yourself in it?”
Monique hesitated, looking at her watch again. “Quickly alors.”
She took off her jacket. I helped her put on the necklace. She had trouble fastening the clasp with the bandage on her hand. I showed her into the bedroom where she could admire herself in the full-length mirror inside the closet door. She unbuttoned her blouse to gauge the full impact of the necklace against her décolleté. Striking a pose, she said: “C’est vraiment magnifique. The necklace of a queen.”
I stood beside her and we both admired her reflection together for a long moment. Then I helped her take it off, pretending to have some trouble with the clasp in order to buy more time. “Hurry,” she said. “I’m so late.”
She wedged the red leather case with the necklace inside it into her large pocketbook. I could tell her hand was smarting from the way she kept rubbing the bandage.
“Will you get a cab?” I asked her.
“Yes, if I can find one in this neighborhood,” she said testily.
“I’d walk up to Lexington, if I were you.”
I didn’t want some cab driver to remember picking up Monique in front of my door. I let her out of the apartment, waited a couple of minutes, then followed her. My luck seemed to be holding. There were no taxis. She walked as far as Park, paused, then proceeded towards Madison. Pearce was only a few blocks down. She’d obviously decided to walk the rest of the way.
As I watched her, I wondered if Oliva’s part of the plan had gone as smoothly as mine.
Chapter 33
On my way back to work that afternoon, I stopped briefly at Bloomingdale’s for alibi purposes. Then I dropped off Monique’s check in an ATM at my bank. I knew she would meet Nate and tell him everything about our time together. But if he ever asked me, I would simply deny it all, saying something like: “I gave her the necklace at lunch, Nate. She mentioned she was meeting you but that she had another appointment first. I think she said something about a lawyer. I forget. I went shopping.”
I would swear on a stack of Bibles that I had no idea how she had hurt her hand or, indeed, that she had hurt her hand at all. “When we had lunch, her hand seemed fine. She must have done it later.”
I stayed at work late to appease my supervisor and also because the thought of being by myself frightened me a little. I couldn’t believe what I had done. So far I’d pulled off my end of the scheme successfully. But I couldn’t shake the moment when I had purposefully pummeled Monique’s hand, grinding my key ring into her skin. If that bothered me, how in hell was I possibly going to kill her? At least with the Rotinal, I could dispose of her in a way where there would be no contact.
I figured it was about time I used New York’s rumor mill to my own advantage for a change, so I called June, who was genetically incapable of keeping a confidence. The coolness in her attitude didn’t last long when I told her I had a big juicy secret to tell her. I made her promise, swear on her life, that she would not breathe a word of what I was about to say—knowing full well that this was like telling a bird not to chirp.
“The grave?” I said.
“The grave,” June swore. That was our little code for top secret.
“Well,” I began solemnly, “when I had lunch with Monique today? She told me she thinks she might be—”
“Pregnant?” June jumped in.
“No
. Terminally ill.”
June gasped. “No! You’re kidding. With what?”
“She wouldn’t tell me exactly, but I think it might be—”
“Cancer,” June immediately said. “Everyone has cancer. It’s an epidemic. Has she seen a doctor?”
“She won’t go. She’s too afraid.”
“Tell her she has to go immediately. Early detection. That’s what I tell women all the time. Remember my scare?” June said, referring to her lumpectomy eight years earlier. “Tell her to come to my Cancer Survivors benefit next month. She’ll see.”
“I gave her the name of a doctor. But who knows if she’ll go?”
“Well, let’s face it, she’s French. French doctors are the worst. They nearly killed Charlie when we were in Provence. Gave him cortisone for a sore throat. He blew up just like a balloon. Interesting she told you, of all people, though, isn’t it, Jo? Betty and I couldn’t get over the fact you two were having lunch together. Betty said it was like Hitler and Churchill having a friendly bite.”
“Honestly, June, I think she feels really guilty about everything that’s happened. She was so sweet at lunch, I can’t tell you. She kept apologizing to me, telling me one day she’d make it all up to me. I have no idea what she meant, but I have to say I felt sorry for her.”
“Jo, that is so big of you.”
“She said to me, ‘Jo, if I am sick, I know it’s because of some sort of divine retribution.’ ”
“She said that? She actually said that?”
“She did.”
“Who knows?” June sighed. “Maybe it is.”
I hung up knowing that in a matter of moments, the rumor that Monique was terminally ill would be on the wire, along with the fact that she and I were friends again.
Oliva showed up at my apartment a little after eight that night. I had a nice, cold martini ready for her when she arrived. I hardly recognized her. She was wearing a blond wig and a tight skirt and sweater. I figured it was better not to ask. She handed me a shopping bag with the suit and hat I’d loaned her folded up inside it.
Social Crimes Page 30