by Mary Daheim
“Damned straight,” Chevy muttered, hurrying to the sofa where Paul was settling Connie against plush pillows embroidered with the elaborate initial G. Judith managed to extricate herself from the little group dominated by Erma. Purposefully, she walked over to Connie.
“Serena and I feel remiss that we haven’t been able to do anything for you these past two days,” Judith said, gingerly sitting down on the sofa. “I know we’ve hardly met, but I was widowed at a young age, so I can certainly sympathize.”
Connie’s dark eyes were wary. “Was he murdered?”
Judith kept her aplomb. “It was more like suicide. He ate and drank himself to death.”
Paul moved a few steps away, but remained within hearing range. Judith offered him a brief glance of acknowledgment while Connie hesitated before responding.
“Did your husband’s death make you feel guilty?” she finally asked.
“Yes,” Judith answered truthfully. “I always felt I’d enabled him. I worked when he wouldn’t, I bought the Twinkies, the
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liquor, all the things he shouldn’t have had if he wanted to be healthy.”
Connie’s gaze grew more intense. “How long ago has it been since he died?”
“Fifteen years.”
“Have you forgiven yourself?” Connie asked softly, leaning closer.
“Not entirely,” Judith replied. “Even though I know it wasn’t my fault. He did it to himself. Ultimately, we’re responsible for our own actions.”
Connie nodded slowly, her thin body rocking back and forth on the toile cushions. “Yes . . . perhaps . . . yes.”
Chevy appeared with brandy and a vodka martini. Paul took both glasses, then wordlessly handed the snifter to Connie. She nodded her thanks, but kept her gaze on Judith.
“You must be very strong,” she said.
Judith shrugged. “I had a son to raise. You do what you have to do.”
“Mags and I had no children.” Connie had looked away, her eyes staring blankly at the shifting scene across the room. Horace and CeeCee were talking to Jim Brooks; Erma appeared to be upbraiding Chevy despite Rhoda’s wagging finger; Renie had been cornered by Ambrose; Rick was standing aloof, drinking gin and observing the others.
Judith never knew quite what to say to someone who had been married but remained childless. “I had an elderly mother to look out for,” she finally said when Connie didn’t elaborate. “My son and I moved home with her.”
“She must have been a comfort,” Connie remarked.
“Uh . . . yes,” Judith replied. If hearing “I told you so, you dumbbell” at least twice a day could be considered comfort, she thought. But at least Gertrude had been there. And still was. “Are your parents living?”
Connie sipped her brandy before she answered. “My mother died when I was in my early teens. My father is still living, but in very poor health. He’s sold his homes in New 196
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York and in Paris. He prefers his native Buenos Aires, and seldom goes out at all.”
“My father died when I was a teenager,” Judith said, making another honest effort to forge a bond.
“Oh, yes?” Connie’s fine features softened almost imperceptibly. She leaned even closer and lowered her voice. “Did that make you feel guilty, too?”
“No.” Judith thought back to that unhappy time. “But of course I wished I’d been a better daughter. I had regrets, especially that I can’t remember him as well I should. But that’s because when you’re young, you take time—and everything else—for granted.”
“We do, don’t we?” Connie had grown wistful. “We don’t see our parents as people. We know them only as mother, father. That’s the tragedy of being their children, isn’t it?”
Judith didn’t answer immediately. “I hadn’t thought about it exactly in that way. But you’re right. When we get older—
while a parent is still living—we have more insight.”
Connie’s expression was ironic. “Do we?”
Paul touched Connie’s shoulder, where white piping held the black froth of cap sleeve in place. “Can I get you something else?” he inquired. “I don’t see any canapés, but you haven’t eaten all day.”
His words were like a tocsin. Erma had moved away from the others, pursing her tight red mouth. “Dinner is about to be served. Would you please follow me into the dining room?”
Paul moved to assist Connie to her feet. But Horace had thumped across the room.
“May I?” he said, offering a big hand to Connie. “Did you receive the flowers I sent? And the fruit basket?”
Connie allowed Horace to help her stand. “Yes. Thank you. They were very thoughtful.”
Judith was left to fend for herself, no easy task since the sofa was low and the cushions were deep. She was the last to arrive, finding her place between Jim and Paul. Horace had kept Connie next to him, at the opposite end. A sidelong
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glance to her left told Judith that Paul was discomfited, perhaps even fuming. Erma had her rightful chair at the head of the table, but no one sat in the other place of honor, though there was a chair and a setting. Judith wondered if that was Horace’s usual spot, but that he had been demoted because of the quarrel with Erma. Or perhaps, she considered, because he was so intent on being solicitous of the Widow Cruz.
Still, she felt obliged to inquire about the empty chair.
“Who isn’t here yet?” she asked Jim.
Jim looked puzzled, his gaze taking in the table. “We’re all here,” he said. “Even the ones who weren’t asked. I mean—the ones Erma didn’t expect. The kitchen help must have seen to it.”
“But there’s an empty place,” Judith pointed out.
“Oh.” Jim glanced at the vacant chair. “That’s for Wilbur.”
“You mean . . . ?”
Judith was interrupted by Erma, who was standing up and tapping a Waterford wineglass with a sterling-silver spoon.
“Family and friends,” she began, “we’re gathered here this evening in mutual sorrow for the untimely passing of our dear friend Magglio Cruz. May I propose a toast to his memory?” She waited while her guests got their cocktail glasses in hand. “To a man of vision and charm who has crossed the bar. Thank you, Magglio, for everything.”
A muffled response went around the table as glasses clinked.
Rick St. George was sitting across from Judith next to Renie. “At least,” he murmured, “she didn’t claim that he’d passed the bar. I certainly don’t want someone saying that about me when I’m gone.”
Judith couldn’t help herself. She turned to Paul and lowered her voice. “What about Dixie and Émile? Shouldn’t we toast their memories as well?”
Paul’s usually pleasant features hardened. “They were employees. Peons,” he added under his breath. “They don’t count in Erma’s world.”
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Judith winced. “I don’t understand that attitude. It’s so different from the one I know.”
Paul shrugged. Two young men were presenting the soup course. It looked and smelled like lobster bisque. Judith stared into the bowl, recalling that she had, in fact, collided with this same world of wealth and privilege a few years earlier. Along with Renie, the cousins had been asked to watch over a wealthy woman who lived in a gated community north of the city. The house—a mansion, really—had been called Creepers because of the vines that grew up its stone walls. But the place had been more like a prison, and death had lurked in its corridors and corners. No one in that family had been happy. Their money and their status had brought only grief. Judith felt the same sense of misery in the Giddon house that she had experienced at Creepers. She was tempted to grab Renie and bolt.
Instead, she tasted her soup and discreetly surveyed the other diners. Thirteen place settings, but one was vacant. Wilbur. Wilbur Giddon, Judith suddenly realized. The late Wi
lbur Giddon. Judith shivered, despite the long sleeves of her new pearl-gray suit. For the first time, she looked at the damask-covered wall behind the empty chair. A large oil painting of a large—and possibly oily—man loomed over the gathering. She didn’t understand how she could have missed seeing it upon entering the room, except that she had been focused on finding her place at the table. But the man in the portrait was bearded, balding, and wearing a Prince Albert frock coat with an ascot scarf. He evoked an era from the late nineteenth or early twentieth century, making it more likely that he was Wilbur’s grandfather. Whoever he was, he looked formidable as well as arrogant. Judith’s gaze dropped down to Anemone, who was seated on the other side of Paul. The young woman seemed so delicate and unprepossessing. It was difficult to believe that her bloodlines must carry some of the same genes as those of the man in the portrait.
Rick, who had been watching Judith, leaned across the
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table. “Elwood Edward Giddon,” he said. “At one time he owned most of Pacific Heights. Imposing, I suppose.”
“He looks like a big twerp to me,” Renie said to Rick in a voice just loud enough for Judith to hear. Rick laughed carelessly. “Aren’t all robber barons twerps? Power corrupts and all that. It’s such a relief not to have to work for a living. It’d ruin my disposition. I enjoy being a kept man.”
Rhoda, who was seated between her husband and Horace, laughed. “Ricky, darling, has it ever occurred to you that it was often the kept women who’ve been the brains behind those powerful men? I would never have married you if you’d been stupid instead of merely dashingly handsome.”
Ricky made a face. “Egad, my love, you’re putting me in the same class as the Mesdames de Pompadour, du Barry, and Montespan.”
Horace, who had been coaxing Connie to try the soup, turned to Rhoda. “Who? I’ve heard of de Pompadour and du Barry, but—”
“Montespan,” Rhoda said loudly and clearly. “She was Louis XIV’s . . .”
The explanation was lost in a clatter of spoon and crockery as Connie Cruz fell face forward into her lobster bisque.
SIXTEEN
ERMA GIDDON HOWLED like a wounded hound, clutching at her bisque-spattered bosom. CeeCee and Anemone were screaming, too. Horace was bug-eyed, staring at his fallen companion’s motionless figure. Ambrose, who was sitting directly across from Connie, picked up his bowl and poured the contents onto the Persian carpet.
“Poison!” he gasped, grabbing at his throat with a trembling hand.
“My Ferahan Sarouk!” Erma screeched. “You’ve ruined it, Ambrose! That rug cost more than you’ll make in ten years!”
Rick had risen, moving quickly past Renie and Horace to reach Connie. Feeling for a pulse, he gave a single nod.
“She’s alive. I believe she merely fainted.” Gently, he lifted her head and wiped her face with a napkin. Next to Judith, Jim was making an awkward effort to get out of his chair. “Let me help. I’m almost a doctor.”
“He needs the practice,” Renie murmured from across the table.
On Judith’s other side, Paul was doing his best to shush Anemone. CeeCee had stopped screaming when Ambrose pitched his soup on the floor. Rhoda was leaning her cheek on one hand and sipping the dregs of her martini.
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“I wonder,” she said musingly, “if there’s a salad course?”
Ambrose’s hand fell away from his throat. “You mean we’re not all going to die?”
Briefly, Rick scowled at the secretary. “Hardly.” He chafed Connie’s hands as her eyelids began to flutter. “I suggest we move her onto the sofa.”
“Yes,” Jim agreed, now standing between Erma and Connie. “Yes, that would be my medical recommendation.”
“Good thinking, old son,” Rick said. “Would you mind helping me with the patient?”
“What? Oh! Sure, here let me . . .”
But Horace threw up his hands in protest. “Wait! Consider the liability involved! Should she be moved in her condition? Would it be better to let her lie there with her head on the table until she’s fully conscious?”
“Good grief!” Renie exploded. “In that case, why not stick her face back in the soup bowl?”
Thoughtfully, Jim rubbed his chin. “She could drown that way, couldn’t she?”
Horace shrugged. “You’re the doctor.”
“No, he’s not,” Rhoda declared. “This is ridiculous. Ricky, move the poor woman.”
Rick, Jim, and Paul carefully eased Connie out of the chair. She was moaning softly and licking her lips. Gesturing at Jim, Renie looked across the table to Judith.
“Instead of the Mayo Brothers, we get one of the Marx Brothers. It figures.”
“What’s wrong with Mrs. Cruz?” CeeCee asked, her usually breathy voice shrill.
“Overwrought,” Horace replied, dabbing at his forehead with a napkin. He’d begun to sweat and had grown very red in the face. “Nerves. Exhaustion. Grief.” His eyes followed Rick, Jim, and Paul as they carried Connie out of the dining room. “Excuse me,” he said, his chair bumping Renie’s. “I must go to her.”
“Why?” The word shot out of Erma’s mouth like a bullet. Horace stopped in his tracks behind Connie’s empty place 202
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setting. A scant three feet away, Erma sat rigidly at the table’s head, her fingers splayed like fat claws on the arms of the Hepplewhite chair.
“T-t-to see if I c-c-can do anything,” Horace stammered.
“You can’t,” Erma snapped. “Sit down.”
To Judith’s surprise, Horace obeyed, again bumping into Renie, who was starting to look annoyed.
“Gosh, Panky,” CeeCee said, her voice no longer shrill,
“you don’t look so hot. Maybe you’d better take your pills.”
“Oh!” Horace felt around inside his suit jacket and withdrew a small bottle. With an unsteady hand, he removed a small pill and popped it in his mouth.
Renie was watching closely. She placed a fist over her heart. Nitro, she mouthed at Judith. Heart trouble, Judith thought. Apoplexy would have been her own diagnosis.
Rick walked briskly back into the dining room to make the announcement that Connie had come around. “I’ve sent for Dr. Selig,” he said. “Just in case. The poor woman is a wreck.”
Anemone rose from her chair. “So am I. Excuse me, Mumsy, I’m going to go to my room and lie down.”
Judith pushed her chair away from the table. “Let me go with you,” she said. “You look a bit shaky.”
“I am.” Anemone’s blue eyes fixed on Judith’s face. There was nothing uncertain about her cool gaze. “Thank you, I’d appreciate it. You’ve been so kind to all of us, even though we hardly know you.”
Erma snorted.
The staircase was steep and narrow, but it was carpeted and the handrail was solid. Judith took her time following Anemone to the second floor. The young woman didn’t speak until she had locked the bedroom door behind them.
“You must think I’m a terrible person,” Anemone said, indicating that Judith should sit on a chaise longue covered with a design of purple and yellow pansies. “I’m so glad you didn’t give me away when I fibbed about you being with me at the store.”
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“It seemed prudent to keep my mouth shut,” Judith said with a curious expression.
Anemone also sat, pulling a matching ottoman closer to the chaise longue. The boudoir was actually a small suite. Judith could see into a second room, where a bed was covered with—appropriately enough—a pattern of multicolored anemones.
“I didn’t kill Émile,” Anemone declared in a flat, quiet voice.
Judith waited. Anemone sat without moving a muscle, the blue eyes challenging her listener.
“Okay,” Judith finally said. “So you must have another reason for lying about me being with you in the dressing room, right?”
Anemone finally blinked. “Yes.”
“And that would be . . . ?” Judith coaxed. The young woman shook her head. “I can’t tell you that.”
An awkward silence fell upon the room, as if the fog that crept along the city’s steep streets and dark alleys had seeped through the walls to put distance between the two women. Through a lace-curtained bay window, Judith could see the ghostly glow of a street lamp in front of the house. She could imagine the same scene a century earlier, with the clip-clop of horse-drawn carriages moving in the night.
“Then I’m not sure why I should lie for you,” Judith said at last. “I only stray from the truth when there’s a very good reason.”
Anemone leaned forward, her hands clenched together.
“Please. This is very important to me. The reason, I mean. But I can’t tell you. It’s too . . . too humiliating.”
“Humiliating?” Judith repeated. A romantic rendezvous between the winsome ingenue and the middle-aged purser seemed unlikely. “Were you meeting Émile?”
“No!” Anemone clapped both hands to her cheeks. “No, I never even saw him. I swear it.”
As Judith recalled, the individual dressing room sections were divided according to the type and price range of cloth-204 Mary Daheim
ing featured in the open display areas. Anemone had been shopping in the suit department; coats and outerwear were featured between that part of the store and the designer boutique where Renie had discovered Émile’s body. If there was access between the separate dressing-room areas, Judith hadn’t seen it.
“Have you been questioned by the police since Dixie and Émile were killed?” Judith asked.
Anemone looked offended. “No. Why should I be? I hardly knew either of them. They worked for Mr. Cruz.”
“Did you know them before your mother arranged to go on the San Rafael?”
Anemone’s eyes narrowed. “You sound like the police.”
Judith waved an impatient hand. “You’re asking me to give you an alibi. If I lie for you, I’m guilty of a crime. It’s called impeding justice. My husband is a retired policeman. I refuse to do that, Anemone. I hardly know you.”