Perfect Little Ladies

by Abby Drake

  Elinor let the compliment go. “I saw him again late this afternoon.”

  “So?”

  “So this time he didn’t know that I saw him. He was sitting in the lobby, looking in the other direction.”

  “And?”

  “And he had a wire coming out from his ear.”

  “A wire? To an iPod?”

  “Or a microphone. If he’s Secret Service.”

  Yolanda didn’t pretend to know what was going on. She only knew Manny expected her to take care of Elinor, so that was her mission, and that’s what she would do. For the first time, however, she wondered if her big brother was right—that they were in way over their heads.

  “I’ll stay here with you in the room,” Yolanda said. “We’ll keep out of sight until we leave tomorrow.”

  “Fine,” Elinor replied. “But you take the bed, I’ll sit in the chair. I won’t fall asleep anyway.”

  What CJ would really love to do was call Cooper.

  She walked Luna around the lake—not something she usually did after dark. But the moon was full and bright, the stars big and bountiful, and CJ needed some air. When they’d lived in Manhattan, CJ and Cooper had walked at all hours of the night, in any weather. Snowstorms had been their favorite. The West Village at Christmas, when the white lights twinkled like the stars did tonight, when CJ felt like they were in a storybook setting, Dickens, perhaps. They held hands and were quiet; there was comfort in love.

  She wondered how he was doing in Denver, if the theater he managed had lived up to his expectations, if they knew how lucky they were to have a man of his talent. She wondered if he was still writing.

  He’d sent a card at Christmas, another on her birthday, the way he’d done for years. Sometimes he sent a small gift: a music box he’d found in an antique shop, a hand-painted silk coin purse, a button that supposedly had come from Annie Oakley’s jacket. He’d often told CJ she belonged in the class of independent, adventurous women.

  The cards attached had said little of his life: He hadn’t mentioned if he was involved with someone else.

  For her part, CJ sent things like red maple leaves and a jar of pure maple syrup on his October birthday, a silly keychain that read I NY. A few years ago she’d found a Playbill from the original production of Death of a Salesman. She’d been planning on framing it, but she decided it was too intimate a gift, so she wrapped it in brown paper and packed it in the bottom of a drawer.

  She folded her lightweight shawl around her shoulders and smiled. It was always nice to think about Cooper. It reminded her that she really did have happy times to remember.

  She wondered now what he’d have to say about Elinor.

  “You are so different,” he used to say, “for identical twins.” He’d considered writing a play about twins, but the end between them had come before the first act.

  Luna pranced up beside her now and nudged her hand. “What is it, girl?” CJ asked. “Have you found a possum, or worse, a skunk?”

  The dog ambled ahead, stopped, turned to look at CJ, then ambled some more.

  And then CJ saw a figure in the night shadows. A tall figure—a man, it appeared from the clip of his gait. He approached on the dirt road with a purpose. It was Malcolm, of course, she’d know his walk anywhere, anytime, day or night.

  “Walking after dark?” he called out. “Isn’t that dangerous?”

  CJ felt a crimp at the base of her neck. “I have my guard dog along.”

  In a few more yards, he was next to her. He looked tired and unhappy.

  “Mac?” she asked. “What is it? What’s wrong? Is it Elinor?”

  He shook his head. “I have no idea. I thought you said she’d be home today. I tried calling her cell, but I only get voice mail.”

  CJ couldn’t very well tell him the reception to Grand Cayman might meander in and out with the Gulf breezes.

  “I thought you might have the number of the seamstress in Phillie. You didn’t answer your phone, either, so I drove over. Your car is here. Your house lights are on. I figured you and Luna had gone for a walk.”

  She suspected they knew each other’s habits more than they realized.

  “I’m not sure if I have the number. Let’s go back to the house, and I’ll take a look.”

  “Thanks. Elinor has been acting so strangely lately. It’s a little upsetting.”

  She couldn’t imagine why Elinor hadn’t called Mac. “Well,” she said lamely, “it’s not every day Jonas has an engagement party.” But her heart started pumping a little bit harder at the fear that Yolanda might not have reached her sister in time.

  Thirty-eight

  “The decorators are finished?” Mac asked when they stepped inside the cottage, because, God knew, he never forgot anything. It was a quality that made him essential as a lobbyist but a tough guy to lie to.

  “It turned out the paint they ordered didn’t come in.” CJ busied herself in her junk drawer, where, only days before, she had pulled out her camera and sworn herself off ever helping her sister again.

  Mac stood waiting, watching.

  She looked up. “Maybe she forgot to charge the battery. Let me give her a try.” Before he could protest, she grabbed her phone and speed-dialed Elinor’s cell.

  Thank God, she answered.

  “E?” CJ said with her brightest possible smile. “Where on earth are you? Malcolm has been so worried!”

  She paused, tipped back her head, and faked a laugh. “Well, no, he’s not in Washington, he’s right here at the cottage. Here, I’ll put him on and you can tell him yourself.” Okay, so it was a lousy thing to do, knowing her sister would be unprepared to sling a quick excuse at Malcolm. CJ supposed that when E had seen that the caller had been Mac, she’d avoided his calls, leaving any dirty work up to others—namely CJ.

  She moved to the jar that held Luna’s cookies and extracted two for her good, patient dog. Luna’s crunching helped mute Malcolm’s words.

  She filled the dog’s water bowl, then turned to the refrigerator, took out a pitcher of iced tea, and poured a glass. She left the pitcher on the counter in case Mac wanted some, though she preferred that he leave, that he went to the house or to Washington or to the moon, she didn’t much care where, as long as he stopped showing up in her presence when she was alone.

  “Elinor will be back tomorrow,” he announced as he hung up the phone. “She thought I was in Washington.”

  CJ smiled. At least her sister was okay. Maybe. “Is her dress ready?”

  “I didn’t ask. Some woman named Yolanda is with her. Isn’t that her hairdresser?”

  “And manicurist. And pedicurist.”

  Mac nodded. He stood in one place, with no visible intention of leaving. “I’ll talk to her about Janice tomorrow. God, I wish she’d make time for our daughter.”

  They both knew, however, the odds of that happening. Jonas, after all, had always come first.

  She gestured toward the pitcher. “Tea?”

  Mac shook his head. “I’d better go.”

  Yes, she thought. You’d better.

  He started for the door and CJ followed him, then he stopped, turned, and they nearly collided. “Oh,” he said. “Sorry.”

  She took a step back. She looked at the floor.

  “So you’re okay then?” he asked. “You don’t need anything?”

  She could have said she hadn’t been okay for years, but what would that accomplish? So instead, she lifted her eyes and said, “I’m fine. I’ll see you in Washington. At the party.”

  He hesitated a second, then nodded a short nod and finally let himself out the door.

  Bud was a gentleman, wouldn’t you know.

  He bought her two drinks, then said he had to call it a night, that he was on duty in the morning, that he had to make a rabbit come out of a hat, and that being a magician was sometimes more stressful than advertising.

  If Neal had sent him, he was a really good actor.

  He did not ask to walk her to her
room. But when he stood up and she was still seated, he said, “How about dinner tomorrow night?” and she said, “Yes,” because she was a moron and menopause clearly had made her more insane than she already had been.

  After she said yes, she smiled. “My commitments are over at eight o’clock. Why don’t you give me a call then?”

  That’s when Alice did possibly the most stupid thing she ever had done: She gave him her cell number. It was as if that one whiff of Bijon had made Alice fair game, that if Neal could become an infidel, then so could she.

  Besides, who would have thought she’d meet someone online who turned out to not be a loser? Neal probably hadn’t sent him. Her husband would not have supplied her a man with such class. Unless he was trying to make the landing softer when he dumped her.

  After Bud left, she stayed at the table and ordered another drink.

  What she really wanted was to be with her friends—Elinor, Poppy, CJ.

  What she really missed was their conversation, their glasses of wine, their being there for each other, their problem solving.

  Like when her mother had died and her father closed the bakery and left the country, leaving Alice alone.

  Like when CJ left Cooper and came back to Mount Kasteel and said she didn’t need their support even though they knew that she did.

  Like when Poppy killed the gardener and she and her Momma wanted everyone to think her momma had done it, and they pretended to go along with it because Poppy was so upset, comatose, nearly, sitting in a trance all afternoon in the bed of impatiens.

  Like the fact that they’d never spoken about it since, out of respect for all parties involved.

  They’d stuck by one another through prom gowns and weddings and babies and now this so-called adult part of their lives, the part that sucked most.

  She took another drink and wondered what advice her friends would offer about Bud the magician:

  “Go for it,” Poppy might say.

  “Whatever works for you,” CJ would say, then Elinor would add, “Whatever you do, keep your panties on, or at least keep them in your sight.”

  Thirty-nine

  The morning sun was orange and pink and some melonlike colors Yolanda had never seen. And there was quiet. Peaceful, blissful quiet, interrupted only by soft sounds of gulls and rhythmic strokes of waves upon sand.

  It was not the Bronx. It was not New Falls or Mount Kasteel.

  She’d slept better than she’d slept in years, lulled by the whoosh-whoosh of the paddle fan. When she’d awakened in the morning, the first thing she noticed was Elinor, sitting in the same position she’d sat in last night, staring out at the dawn from a small slit in the drapes. Yolanda didn’t ask if she’d been able to sleep.

  After a quick shower, Yolanda’s search for a coffee shop had brought her here, to a boardwalk overlooking the beach.

  “On a clear day,” the car-rental clerk had told her, “you can see Cuba.”

  She didn’t know if it was true. She didn’t even know if it was possible to see more than three hundred kilometers on a clear—or any kind of—day.

  Maybe.

  Maybe not.

  She wondered how many relatives were still there. Her father had two brothers, three sisters. Only one brother had gone to the mainland with him on the raft. Yolanda had aunts, Belita had cousins…would they ever see them? Would they ever be free?

  She closed her eyes and listened to the gentle surf until she was aware that someone stood beside her.

  “Good morning,” a voice with a thick accent said.

  Yolanda didn’t want to open her eyes. If this was the man who’d been following Elinor…the Secret Service…?

  She didn’t respond, but the man didn’t leave.

  Oh, God. What would Manny want her to do?

  “Stay out of it,” his words echoed, yet now he had sent her smack into the chaos.

  She steeled her body, ready to run. Then she snapped her head quickly and flashed open her eyes. “What?” she snarled. “What do you want?”

  But the man was barely a man at all, just a slim teenage boy in baggy shorts with dirty blonde hair that needed a good comb.

  “Spare change?”

  His accent wasn’t Spanish but northern European, from Denmark, Sweden, one of those places. One of Yolanda’s cus tomers hailed from that region; she’d been a runner-up in the Miss World contest and had married one of the rich men from New Falls.

  She dug into her pocketbook. “Here,” she said, dropping a twenty into his palm. “Get yourself cleaned up. Get a job. Do something with your life. You’re luckier than you’ll ever know.”

  “Thank you,” Elinor said a little while later when Yolanda returned and took paper cups filled with coffee and rolls with jam from a small bag.

  “No problem.”

  “No.” Elinor said. “Not just for the breakfast. Thank you for everything. For leaving your daughter and your business to come down here to be with me. For dragging your brother into my mess. For helping me when I don’t deserve it. I’ve never even tipped you that well.”

  Yolanda laughed. “Life is about more than tips, Elinor. When I was married to Vincent, I wanted everyone to tolerate me. I learned than in order for that to happen, I had to tolerate them. We live different lives, but we’re just women.” She shrugged and uncapped her coffee.

  “Yes,” Elinor said, “we’re just women. Thank God for that.”

  CJ spent the morning wondering how she was going to explain to Elinor that she’d left the house because Malcolm had been there. Before leaving for the airport, she steamed the gray silk that she’d wear to the party, then folded it between tissue to cut down on the wrinkles. She brushed her matching high heels and packed her evening purse with tissue, a lipstick, breath mints. Domestic chores, CJ had found, were often a great distraction.

  Still, she left early for JFK, because she ran out of things to do. Naturally, the traffic moved swiftly, because it always seemed to unless one was late.

  Thankfully, the Cell Phone Lot wasn’t full. She could wait there until Elinor’s flight arrived. When she turned off the engine, CJ realized she was exhausted. She almost wished the blackmailer was Duane and they could be done with this. But somehow that would have been too easy….

  Her phone rang.

  “Where are you? Our plane was early. And the Secret Service is in hot pursuit.”

  If it had been anyone but Elinor, CJ might have said she’d watched too many movies about Eliot Ness or ones starring Tommy Lee Jones. But Elinor wasn’t given to histrionics like Poppy, and she certainly had good reason to fear that the feds might be watching.

  A chill shuddered through CJ as she pulled out of the lot and headed toward passenger arrivals. If Elinor was being followed, it probably meant that politics were involved, that politics were playing a role in the blackmail. And where politics were concerned, the one thing CJ knew was that chances were it would not end up good.

  Traffic crawled toward the terminal; CJ drummed her fingers on the steering wheel. The women should get together tonight and discuss a next step. But with Alice in Orlando and Malcolm in Mount Kasteel, things weren’t going to work as they should. Besides, Poppy had phoned CJ that morning to say she was busy with Yolanda’s baby, that she and Manny and Belita had stayed with Momma last night. CJ hadn’t asked if Poppy was really under arrest and, if so, for what. She had no room left in her head for additional subplots, though she wondered if something was brewing between Poppy and Manny, and what Duane might do if he found out.

  Suddenly, she remembered the note. Manny had said he wanted to see it. He was a police detective. He knew what he was doing, unlike the five women.

  She must remember to get the note from Elinor, if it wasn’t in ashes already.

  Finally, up ahead, she spotted Elinor and Yolanda. CJ looked quickly but didn’t see any men in black on their pulp fiction tails.

  “The note,” CJ said once Elinor had climbed into the front seat and Yolanda was se
ttled in the back and they were headed north on the Hutchinson Parkway. “Do you still have it?”

  “It’s home.”

  “In the safe?”

  “Hardly. After Jonas found it in my purse, I stashed it in an old evening bag. A Judith Leiber frog. In my closet.”

  Yolanda supposed this was not a good time to suggest selling the bag on eBay. She’d done a lot of that lately, selling various baubles, mostly things Vincent had bought her. It was expensive to be a woman alone, trying to eke out a living in Westchester County.

  She looked out the window and reminded herself that one day it would be worth it. Belita would grow up in a town filled with opportunities. She would not know the struggles of her mother or her mother’s parents before her. She would never know life on an island.

  For some silly reason, small tears rose in her eyes.

  “Manny wants to see the note,” CJ continued. “We’ll take E home first, and she can give it to us. Then we can take it to Manny. He called out sick today. He’s with Belita and Poppy at Poppy’s mother’s. They stayed there last night.”

  Yolanda did not have to ask what Manny had been doing with Poppy all night. After all, she had seen that kiss.

  Forty

  CJ and Yolanda followed Elinor into the house. They waited in the foyer while Elinor went upstairs.

  “Have they lived here long?” Yolanda asked as her gaze skirted the lovely paintings, the marble tiles, the movie-set staircase.

  “A while,” CJ replied. She’d forgotten that Yolanda was usually at Elinor’s in the role of hired help and didn’t ask questions that might be construed to be personal.

  “Except when we’re stuck down in Washington,” Malcolm said as he walked in from the doorway that led to the kitchen.

  CJ felt her blood pressure rise a point, maybe ten. “Malcolm,” she said. “We brought Elinor home from the station.” She stammered a bit, couldn’t very well add that E was upstairs retrieving the blackmailer’s note. “Do you know our friend, Yolanda?” Good grief, she couldn’t remember Yolanda’s last name. She had only known her by one name, like Cher or Madonna or the artist formerly known as Prince, who, she thought she’d heard, was called that again.