I know she would have preferred Bobby, but she got me instead. I wasn’t sure why we couldn’t do this over the phone, but she had sounded so completely unnerved that having someone who was acquainted with the situation—that would be me—to relate the latest developments to in person seemed to be the only way she was going to get off the proverbial ledge. At least she had had the good manners to realize that it had been an imposition, I thought, as I spied a coffee urn on the table alongside some of the most delicious-looking chocolate chip cookies I had ever seen. I prayed silently that they were for us and not the troll-children.
I took a seat at the giant kitchen table, which was more of a casual dining set than a standard breakfast nook kind of table. Her kitchen, as it had been before, was gleaming and spotless. I thought guiltily of the dingy rug at my back door, the one that I wiped my feet on when I came in the house but that Crawford seemed to think was invisible, preferring instead to track his mud throughout the first floor until I screamed at him to take his shoes off. How did she keep this place so clean with six people in residence, four of whom used to live under a bridge somewhere? I thought about this as she scurried about, pouring me coffee, handing me milk, and freshening up her own cup. Her racing around the kitchen led me to believe that she had already had a few more cups than her tiny frame could safely absorb. I pulled her cup away from her.
“Maybe you should switch to decaf,” I said.
She laughed, but as always, at least lately, the laughter turned to tears.
“What happened?” I asked.
“Is it weird that I called you?” she asked, before launching into the story of Sassy’s call.
I employed my old trick of counting to ten before speaking, but my silence spoke volumes. She looked crestfallen.
“It was weird. I knew it. I’m sorry,” she said.
“It’s fine,” I said. “I’m here now, and I want to hear what happened.” I reached down for my messenger bag on the floor and came face-to-face with one of the midget children, a different one from the sleepwalker. I gasped. “Oh, hello, honey,” I said.
The child, of indeterminate gender, just pointed at me. “Her,” it said.
“That’s Alison, Devon,” Christine said, scooping the toddler up in her arms and handing him a cookie that was as big as his pretty impressively sized head; I wondered what the late Mrs. Morin had looked like. “You remember her, don’t you?”
“Her,” he mouthed around a big chunk of cookie.
I stared back at him, determined not to be spooked. How scary could he be? He was wearing one of those patterned diapers that promised that he would be a “big kid” any day now. Clock was ticking, Devon. Kindergarten appeared to be right around the corner, and he was still crapping in his pants.
“Go find your sister and put on a show,” Christine said, watching him run off. She dropped her head into her hands. “I’m too old for this.”
I had to agree with that. I was tired just watching her try to take care of the kids, never mind actually interacting with them.
She took a big bite of the cookie in front of her, half eaten and on a paper napkin. “I don’t know why I’m eating,” she said, seeming to lose her train of thought.
“Sassy,” I reminded her. If she didn’t focus, Devon would be potty trained before I heard even one detail from this tale.
“Right.” She took another bite of cookie. “Sassy was Chick’s wife. They divorced right before he vanished.”
I knew that already, but again I kept my mouth shut.
“Ask Bobby,” she said, invoking my husband’s name in that familiar way that made the hair on my neck stand up. “We weren’t crazy about her, but I’m sure her family didn’t know what to make of Chick either. He was kind of a character.”
You think?
“Anyway, when it came to the divorce, we never did hear Sassy’s side of the story, but Chick’s side was pretty horrible. Cheating, abuse, drinking … you name it.”
Having seen Ms. Du Pris’s wedding announcement, none of this came as a surprise. She had tattoos over her tattoos, and that was back in the day when only women of ill-repute had “ink.”
“The weird thing was that her family was really wealthy.” Christine shook her head. “I think she was kind of the black sheep. The rest of the family seemed quite lovely. Genteel, in fact.”
That didn’t surprise me as much as it surprised Christine. The Stepkowskis were a study in skewed family dynamics, but only in reverse: Christine was the only genteel one among a group of Neanderthals. Sassy should have fit right in. Christine was the Marilyn in the family of Munsters.
“How did she find you?” I asked.
“How does anyone find anyone these days?” she asked. “She found me online. Through my Facebook page. My cell phone number is listed in my info section.”
Which is precisely why I don’t have a Facebook page, but I saved that conversation for another time. The last thing I needed was my students or my colleagues scanning my wall for personal information or insights into my personality or habits. I was already suspect among many people on campus; why give them more ammunition? “Hmmm,” I said, sounding more thoughtful than judgmental, I hoped. “So what does she want?”
“She wants money. All of it, whatever that means. I don’t know if she means the ten thousand he gave the girls or the quarter million he had stashed in his mattress.”
“I didn’t know you could actually get that much money into a mattress.” That was one of several pieces of this puzzle that still amazed me. I thought the old stuffing-money-in-the-mattress scheme was an urban legend.
“I told her that it was with the public administrator and that we didn’t know who would get it.” She looked at me. “It sure won’t be her, if I have anything to say about it.”
“How could it be? They’ve been divorced for ten years.”
“Yes, but that’s where it gets complicated. Apparently, Chick owes her back alimony, and she said she’s going to fight for it.”
“So pay her off and keep the rest.” Sounded simple to me. This still didn’t sound like something that would push Christine over the edge. Christine didn’t need the money. Or did she? I thought back to the conversation I had overheard the last time I was here, the one where Tim was talking about getting the money. I waited for the piece of the story that would reveal all.
“She said she would burn my house down if I did anything to stand in her way.” She looked at me. “She would do it, too. That’s what she tried the day Chick filed for divorce. She tried to burn their house down.” She shook her head in disbelief. “She came from such a nice family. A lovely sister and brother, and her parents were just so…” She looked for the word. “Genteel.”
On second thought, Sassy Du Pris sounded like a real charmer—definitely someone not to be trifled with.
“Wait,” I said. Something occurred to me. “Back up. How did she know about the money?”
Christine blew her nose on the napkin that had previously held her cookie. “That’s the weird part,” she said. “She said Chick called her right before he died.”
Twenty-Five
Crawford went white when I mentioned her name.
“So you remember her?”
“Remember her? I’ve been trying to forget her for ten years,” he said. He pulled off his gun and his badge and stowed them in the uppermost cabinet in the kitchen, the one that no one, myself included, could reach. He shuddered. “She was scary.”
“You were scared of her?” I asked, resisting the urge to laugh.
“She was scary,” he repeated. “Really scary.”
“Scary enough to kill someone?” I asked, thinking back to Christine’s contention that Chick had been murdered.
“Everyone, at one time or another, could probably kill someone,” he said rather cryptically.
“That’s a nonanswer.”
“Yes, she could kill someone,” he said, grabbing a beer from the refrigerator. “Hell, she tried
to burn the guy’s house down. With him inside. What does that tell you?” he asked. “Want a glass of wine?”
“And that’s a nonquestion,” I said.
He busied himself opening a bottle of red from the wine rack. He shuddered again. “I had hoped I would never hear about her ever again.”
“I think I saw her at the cemetery,” I said.
He went even whiter. “Really?”
I told him about the big blond lady, the one with the hat that obscured her face but didn’t do anything to hide the cascade of yellow hair, looking into the distance at Chick’s family, gathered graveside.
“Sounds like her.” He wiped a hand across his face. “So she’s back.”
“That bad?” I asked.
“The worst,” he said, pouring a generous amount of wine into a large goblet and handing it to me. “Did I ever tell you about their wedding?”
“Up until a few weeks ago, I didn’t even know Christine had a brother named Chick. Why would you have told me about their wedding?”
“Good point,” he said, draining his beer. Obviously, the telling of this story required liquid courage. “They had it at Tavern on the Green. Really swanky. Her parents looked shell-shocked the whole time; whether it was because of her or him, it was hard to tell. The bridal party consisted of Chick’s neighborhood buddies and her ‘friends from work,’”—he finger quoted—“and me.” He laughed. “In case I wasn’t clear, her friends from work were strippers, just like her.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry, Crawford.” I couldn’t help but let out a chuckle. Next to that crowd, he was a stiff.
He grabbed another beer and pulled out a container of leftover pasta. “Can I eat this?” he asked.
“Be my guest,” I said, looking forward to the rest of the story.
“Anyway,” he said between forkfuls of cold pasta, “you can only imagine the bachelor party. Chick wanted us to rent a party bus and spend the night trolling the city for strip clubs. I went to the dinner beforehand and then begged off.”
“Wise move.”
“Anyway, the wedding. So you’ve got her family, the strippers, the hoodlums from the West Side, me and Christine, and Christine’s family.”
I got a mental picture.
“So it’s time to cut the cake, and everyone is singing and watching what the two of them will do. Will they gently feed each other a piece of cake or will it get messy?”
“Messy!” I called, getting in on the fun of the retelling of the most bizarre wedding reception in history.
“Bingo. She takes the cake and pretends that she’s going to feed him and then picks it up and shoves it in his mouth, breaking his two front teeth and giving him a bloody nose.”
“You’re making this up,” I said.
“I wish I was.”
Now I knew why Christine had been so upset. Sassy sounded like a complete loon.
“Her family was mortified, and Chick was taken out of his own wedding reception in an ambulance.”
I thought back to my own staid first wedding and the fact that Chick and Sassy had gotten married on exactly the same day. All signs were pointing toward that particular day as being a bad-luck day to tie the knot, even if I had only married your run-of-the-mill philanderer and not a dancer from an all-male nudie revue.
“Speaking of her family,” I said, “where do they fit in? How did they get a kid like her?”
“Apparently, she was adopted as a teenager by the Du Pris family. She was orphaned after her parents died in a car accident. So she was well on her way to being a hell raiser before the Du Pris family got their hands on her.” He shook his head and forked in another mouthful of pasta. “She had a nice sister and very sweet little brother who were her adoptive parents’ biological children. They all seemed close even if Sassy stood out from the rest. Those poor people. I can still see the look on her father’s face when she broke Chick’s teeth.” He came over and gave me a hug, kissing me lightly on the forehead. “Before I forget, thank you.”
“For what?”
“For going to see Christine. She must have been a wreck.”
“You could say that.”
“She was terrified of Sassy and her temper. Sassy would flare up at the drop of a hat, and she and Chick would go at it.” He went back to his pasta. “I’m used to that kind of marital pyrotechnics, having been on a number of domestic abuse calls, but Christine? She just couldn’t handle it.”
“Is that why they got divorced?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Who knows. It was acrimonious. I can tell you that. That’s why when Chick called her his ‘sweet Sassy’ or something like that, I was surprised.” He shook his head. “That wedding never should have happened.”
I got up and opened the refrigerator, rooting around for something to eat. I spied a hunk of Manchego cheese in one of the drawers and a pear that had inexplicably landed at the back of one of the shelves but still looked edible. “Having never met this Sassy person, I can’t imagine why she is so frightening, but I’m getting a picture. She told Christine that she would burn her house down if she didn’t get the money.”
“Sounds about right.”
“Should Christine call the police?” I asked.
He finished off the pasta while standing, never sitting down at the kitchen table to eat like a civilized human being. “I’ll take care of it in the morning. I’ll make a call to Greenwich PD to keep an eye out for her.” He chuckled. “She’s not hard to miss, what with the hair and the boobs.”
I was busy looking for some crackers and was glad I was facing away from him; this way, he wouldn’t be able to see my face as I grimaced at the thought of him riding to the rescue of his ex. Again.
He came up behind me and wrapped me in a tight embrace, and I forgot, momentarily, that I was on the verge of exasperation. I leaned back into him and let my head rest against his chest, his heart beating next to my ear.
“She always was such a worrywart,” he said, and to me, he sounded almost wistful, as if her worry habits were something that he had once cherished and treasured.
I stiffened. “Okay,” I said, pulling away. “That’s it. Can we get through the rest of this night without talking about Christine, or her crazy family, or her sociopathic former sister-in-law, or Chick’s money and where it came from?”
He stepped back and leaned against the sink. “What’s going on?”
I sounded as irrational as I felt. I knew Crawford didn’t have any romantic feelings for Christine anymore—he hadn’t in over a decade—but I wasn’t secure enough to have her so enmeshed in our lives and constantly needing support. That’s why she had Tim, in my opinion. He was her husband and he needed to support her. Just because he worked long hours at whatever he did and left her alone a good portion of her waking hours wasn’t my concern. Or Crawford’s. I told him all this in a tear-filled rant that left me thinking that maybe I was losing my mind and perhaps got him to think that might be the case, too.
“Besides, those little kids are weird,” I said between sobs.
He put his arms around me. “I know,” he sighed. “The weirdest. They all look like trolls.”
Something about the way he said it, acknowledging that Tim’s brood was a strange little assortment of midget demons, made me laugh until I was gasping for air. It was just the sort of release I needed after thinking much too hard about Christine, Chick, and the oddly named Sassy.
Twenty-Six
I’d like to be able to say that my first reaction the next day, upon seeing Christine coming down the back steps of the building, was joy, but it wasn’t. It was a very unattractive curse word that had two parts, one of them being “mother,” and shouldn’t have entered the mind of—never mind be uttered by—a cultured, supposedly intellectual college professor. There she was, though, jauntily skipping down the steps toward my office, I assumed, a spring in her step that I hadn’t seen in a long, long time.
I realized I had forgotten to call Max back. I tried her offic
e, but her assistant said she hadn’t come to work. A call to her cell went straight to voice mail. A text was unreturned, something that had never happened; Max can text faster than anyone else I’ve ever met. Seriously, she should be in some world texting competition. She’d clean up.
When Christine got to my office, I made a great show of how busy I was, pulling my hair up into a messy ponytail and wiping imaginary sweat from my brow as I toiled over a stack of papers that I had already graded. After a perfunctory knock, she plopped into a chair across from my desk. I guessed she was staying for a while.
“Hi, Christine. What’s up?” I asked, circling a red A on the top of some kid’s paper whose face I couldn’t connect with the name.
“I need a favor.”
Great. Another favor. I couldn’t think of one favor I would be able to give her, especially if it included babysitting the troll children. I tried to look neutral on the subject of favors requested by my husband’s ex-wife.
She elaborated. “I can get back into Chick’s apartment today. The detective who responded said I could meet him there at four o’clock.”
It was three, and I was done for the day. I saw where this was headed.
“Please?” she asked. “But you can’t tell Bobby.”
I dropped my head onto the stack of papers. “Why did you have to say that?”
“What?”
“‘Don’t tell Bobby.’” I groaned. “Don’t you know that’s a surefire way to entice me into doing something I shouldn’t?”
She giggled. “That’s what I was banking on.”
I grabbed my bag, in its usual spot under my desk, and pulled out my phone. “Listen, I don’t have a lot of time. I want to get over to the medical center to see Max’s father. I haven’t been to visit him yet.” I texted Max to let her know that I would be there later; I was still feeling bad that a day had passed and I still hadn’t seen Marty.
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