Cross Your Heart and Hope to Die

by Nancy Martin

  “I wanted to make sure he was okay. He was running away from his uncle, and I—Come to think of it, you held me back!”

  “A reporter’s job,” he said, “is not to interfere with the news. We’re supposed to observe, not go sticking pretty noses in places—”

  “Let’s not talk about my nose, shall we?”

  Richard’s gaze slid to the bruise on my face again. But he said, “The kid said something about not wanting to buy women’s underwear.”

  “I’ve only heard rumors.”

  “Maybe I’ve heard the same ones.”

  “All right, one theory is that Hemmings wants the Brinker Bra to become a subsidiary of Lamb Limited. It will be a very profitable investment and have the added advantage of establishing him as a real asset to the Lamb company. Right now, he’s only Orlando’s babysitter.”

  “You know Hemmings Lamb pretty well, right?”

  “A little.”

  “He’s a nut.”

  “He’s complicated,” I said. “And his relationship with Brinker is . . .”

  “Is what?”

  “Even more complicated.”

  “Are they friends? Enemies? Lovers?”

  “Maybe all three, in a way.”

  Richard raised his brows thoughtfully.

  I said, “If they are forging a business relationship now, I’m sure it’s volatile. Years ago, Brinker—Well, it doesn’t matter. It’s Hemmings who has the power now. He’s got the Lamb fortune behind him, and that has certainly turned the tables. I can’t begin to guess how the two of them could function as a team. Some very screwy dynamics are at work.”

  Even as I spoke, my thoughts played hopscotch.

  I knew Brinker and Hemorrhoid had found perfect partners in each other before. The sadist inside Brinker had been drawn to the masochist in Hemorrhoid, and the two of them were like tinder and flame. Had their relationship escalated even beyond what I had witnessed in their teenage years? Had one of them turned violent enough to kill?

  And why had Kitty Keough wanted to meet with Hemorrhoid and Brinker on the day of her death? What had she known about them that I wasn’t seeing?

  My brain made another leap. I remembered what I had found when I went home after the fashion show.

  I walked in to find Michael’s new evil minion, Danny Pescara, in the kitchen looking as if he’d gone three rounds with Mike Tyson.

  And Michael had gone off into the night to help him fix something.

  Richard said, “What are you thinking?”

  Nothing I wanted to share with a reporter bent on investigating organized crime. I needed to see Michael.

  Chapter 7

  Both Richard and I got off the train at the first stop. He went looking to buy a ticket back to the city while I went outside.

  Libby was waiting for me in the parking lot, thanks to the message Lee Song had communicated for me.

  “I made my first sale!” she cried as soon as I climbed into the welcome warmth of her minivan. “That nice photographer bought the bracelet right off my wrist!” Her eyes gleamed with the fanaticism of the newly converted. “He said it was—Well, do you think it’s true that Asians are the least endowed men in the human race?”

  “Libby, could we please agree that my coworkers are off-limits to Potions and Passions? How am I supposed to look at Lee with a straight face now?”

  “I’m doing a public service! Maybe I should make Asians my target customer.” Libby adjusted the switches on the dashboard so that the heater began blasting my frozen toes. “By the way, Emma didn’t get on the train with Brinker’s entourage.”

  “Where is she?”

  “I don’t know. I guess she and Monte had bigger fish to fry.”

  “Were they planning to marinate the fish in vodka first?”

  “Judging by the way his hands were all over her, something else was on their minds. How does Emma do it? Put her in the middle of the scorching desert, and she’d come home with somebody yummy.”

  “If you think Monte is yummy, you need your head examined.”

  Libby helped me pat Spike dry with a handful of aloe-scented tissues. “Okay, so this one may be a new low for her. You’d tell me if I was such a twit, wouldn’t you?”

  “I’m your sister, Libby. You can always count on me to call you a twit. But Emma can take care of herself.” I hoped I might believe my own words if I said them often enough.

  Libby stuffed the wet tissues into a small trash bag and began wiggling as if she’d dropped a jelly bean down her sweater.

  “What’s the matter? What are you doing?”

  She lifted up her sweater and tried to wedge her fingers under her Brinker Bra, without success. She blew a sigh. “It’s still really stuck.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “I can’t get this thing to budge. Can you help?”

  I reached over tentatively and gave her Brinker Bra a tug. She was right. It didn’t budge. I tried a more vigorous yank. No luck.

  “I think it’s starting to constrict my blood flow,” Libby said. “What if my breasts start to atrophy?”

  Wouldn’t hurt. But I said, “I don’t think you need to worry.”

  “Try again. Maybe you can loosen it.”

  Spike popped his head up to watch us.

  With a deep breath, I tried to get a double-handed grip on the Brinker Bra. I braced my feet against the floorboard and give it a long, steady pull.

  “Ow!”

  “Boy, that’s stuck like concrete.”

  “Try one more time.”

  “Lib—”

  “Just once more.”

  Spike climbed into Libby’s lap and sniffed the bra. Then he propped his front paws on her collarbones and began to give her chin a commiserating licking.

  I got a firm grip on the Brinker Bra while Libby put her hands on my shoulders. “Ready?”

  Just then a passerby with a briefcase stopped in front of the van and gave us a curious stare through the windshield.

  Libby rolled down her window. “Take a picture; it lasts longer!”

  He scurried off.

  “Pervert.” Libby sighed and looked down at herself. “I have to say, at least it still looks great, right?”

  “If there was something seriously wrong with all the Brinker Bras, we’d have heard by now. There would be publicity.”

  “So I got a defective one?”

  “Well . . . why don’t you try soaking it off in the bathtub when you get home?”

  “Good idea.” Libby pulled down her sweater. “Where is the handsome reporter? I saw him go after you. Did he get on the train? Or did you manage to ditch him?”

  “He found me. Lib, I need to go home.”

  She spun the van around in the parking lot. “Are you going to tell me what happened?”

  “I’m not sure what happened.”

  Libby heard my tone and sent me a speculative glance. “Oh, yeah? Did he try something? I hear there are men who like to have sex in moving vehicles. On the train, did he—”

  “He didn’t try anything! I need to talk to Michael.”

  She dropped me at Blackbird Farm and roared off, her mind already working on a new Potions and Passions sales plan.

  The bright yellow crime scene tape wrapped around my back porch was the only sign of the earlier catastrophe. Kitty’s body was long gone. The forensics team had cleaned up everything but a lone paper coffee cup sitting on the porch railing. I picked it up and went inside. The house was empty. I put Spike on the floor, and he scrambled off to find something to destroy.

  I threw the coffee cup in the kitchen trash and called Michael’s cell phone. No answer.

  Starving, I made myself two slices of toast with crunchy peanut butter and ate them while listening to the phone messages on my answering machine. Three people had called to ask if I’d accidentally forgotten to phone them with invitations for my New Year’s Eve party. After those came the voice of Tom Nelson, my lawyer.

  “Nora, it�
��s Tom. The police have scheduled your interview for tomorrow, nine in the morning. The fact that they’re not anxious to talk to you right away makes me a little uncomfortable. It means they think you might hurt a case they’re building against somebody else, and I have a suspicion you know who that is. Call me anytime, here or at home.”

  Calling Tom wasn’t going to change anything, so I sat down and wrote up a short article for the Intelligencer about Brinker’s send-off party. It wasn’t exactly sparkling prose, but it got the job done. But I read it again and heard Kitty’s voice bawling me out for doing a half-assed job, so I rewrote the paragraphs, adding some sparkle, and felt much better about myself.

  “One for you, Kitty,” I said to the air.

  I e-mailed my piece to Stan, then dashed to the phone when it rang. I was almost disappointed to hear the voice of Jill Mascione, an old friend and the part owner of her family’s catering business.

  “I wanted to thank you,” Jill said after we exchanged pleasantries, “for sending me the hospital auxiliary job, Nora. We’re going to get a lot of business from them—at least a dozen events plus their outdoor festival in July. We’re even thinking of expanding the kitchen this year, no small thanks to you.”

  “It’s your service that attracts customers, Jill, not me. I’m glad I could help a little.”

  “Hey, I’m free on New Year’s Eve. Want to go out on the town?”

  I had to admit to her that I planned to entertain at home that night and cordially invited her to come.

  “Great!” she said. “Usually I have to work. It’ll be wonderful to be a guest for a change.”

  So I couldn’t suggest she bring along some food and drink, could I? Jill worked so hard, she deserved a night off to relax with friends.

  She asked, “How’s your job going?”

  “It’s going,” I said. “But I’m living paycheck to paycheck.”

  “Don’t worry. I see a great future for you, Nora.”

  I wondered if Jill had a clue what kind of salaries newspapers paid these days, but decided not to bring up the subject. We chatted for a few more minutes, then said good-bye. While the phone was still in my hand, I tried Michael’s cell phone again. He didn’t answer.

  I ran a load of laundry and cleaned up the stack of magazines Spike had massacred in the living room.

  There had been a time when I didn’t think I could start my life over. After Todd died, I couldn’t face trying. But Michael and I made each other laugh, and pretty soon we were talking about things I’d never say to my own sisters, and all of a sudden it had seemed like a great idea to have a baby—a life together.

  Now I wondered how I had ever gotten along without him.

  And why was I starting to feel as if I might be forced to?

  Feeling disloyal, I wiped down the kitchen, sorted my mail and wrote a check for my electric bill with some of the precious few dollars left in my checking account. I looked at the balance and knew I didn’t have nearly enough money to cover the next installment on my tax bill. But I wasn’t going to give up the home that had been in my family for two hundred years, dammit. So I went into the library.

  I looked through my favorite books in the collection of first editions. The first one I pulled out was a copy of Walden, and I found myself thinking Michael ought to read it. The bits about living a deliberate life would appeal to him. I withdrew a few more books and tried to decide which ones I could bear to part with. A dealer had once offered a princely sum for the whole kit and caboodle. I wondered if I still had his phone number. But was selling the book collection as bad as selling the house?

  I put my laundry into the dryer and eventually gave up waiting for Michael. I went upstairs to take a bath. Later, with Spike curled up in bed next to me, I tried to sleep, but the swirl of people and their convoluted lives kept me awake for a long time. I must have fallen into an uneasy doze at last, because when I woke in the morning, my head was fuzzy.

  No Michael.

  Tom phoned at seven thirty.

  “Sorry for the early call, Nora, but the police have postponed your interview.”

  “Why?” I blurted out. “Tom, did they tell you anything?”

  “No, they didn’t, sweetheart, I’m sorry. They’re holding Abruzzo a little longer, but after twenty-four hours, they have to arrest him or release him.”

  When Tom hung up, I got dressed. Since Libby hadn’t solved her problem with the Brinker Bra, I decided to forgo wearing my freebie and instead slipped into a camisole with matching panties before taking a tour of my closet.

  If you don’t know where you’ll end up at the end of the day, always choose Armani. I put on a black suit with a thin fuchsia thread. I had fuchsia leather gloves to match.

  Then I telephoned for my car service to pick me up.

  Due to my annoying tendency to faint at emotional moments, I did not possess a driver’s license. That hadn’t been a problem when I lived in the city and could use public transportation and cabs to get around, but now that I was camping out in the wilderness of Bucks County, I needed more flexibility. Fortunately, my employer—and my grandfather’s former tennis partner—had rolled the services of a car and driver into my Intelligencer employment contract, which had seemed like a perfectly civilized part of any employment package at the time. It was a perk I now sheepishly recognized not every reporter enjoyed.

  My driver was Reed Shakespeare, a part-time college student who earned a few extra dollars by driving a town car for one of Michael’s many business ventures—a limousine service. Although I’d been riding with Reed for several months, we still hadn’t developed a comfortable driver-passenger dynamic. Reed took himself and his identity as a young, urban African-American male so seriously that driving a Miss Daisy around town was more embarrassing to him than if I’d asked him to sit with me naked on a park bench. But he accepted the job because his mother insisted, which I found rather endearing, although I wouldn’t dream of telling him so.

  Michael tried to make Reed feel more like a member of his posse than a chauffeur, and I let him be the boss when we were together. Still, Reed resisted getting chummy.

  “Does that animal have to come with us?” Reed demanded when Spike ran out of the house and began to joyously jump up on Reed’s leg. “Shouldn’t he be recovering at home?”

  “He chews his cast when he’s alone,” I said. “The vet says he’s better off with me. Us, I mean. He still thinks you’re his family, Reed.”

  Spike had come to me as a gift from Reed’s mother, who owned a terrifying terrier that had tangled with a stray.

  Spike lovingly peed on Reed’s shoe.

  “Did you get a chance to pick up any newspapers, Reed?” I asked, climbing quickly into the backseat.

  “No,” he said. “No time this morning.”

  “Usually you make time,” I observed. “Is there something you don’t want me to read today?”

  He shoved Spike onto the seat beside me and closed the car door without answering. We drove into the city with Spike panting at the window.

  After reluctantly agreeing to keep Spike in the car, Reed dropped me at the Pendergast Building, home to offices of the Intelligencer.

  Instead of taking the elevator to the ninth floor, I went to the security desk and used the house phone to call Stan Rosenstatz, my editor. The company’s automated telephone system routed me through three different menus before I was finally encouraged to press 5 for a real person, who picked up and immediately connected me to Stan.

  Ten minutes later he came down to meet me, a lanky drink of water tying a worn, hand-knitted scarf around his neck. “What’s wrong with your cheek?” he asked.

  “I fell.”

  His own face—usually careworn and pale from a lifetime spent molelike in the newsroom—was unusually animated this morning.

  “Let’s go up the street to talk,” he said. “I know a place.”

  We walked a couple of blocks to the Turf Club, a wood-paneled betting parlor just a
short walk from City Hall. A welcome blast of heat hit us as we stepped inside, along with the noise of televised horse racing.

  In the middle of the morning, the place wasn’t crowded, but a gang of regulars hung around the televisions, mostly men and mostly smoking like dragons. With stubby pencils and well-thumbed copies of the Daily Racing Form in their hands, they were intent on the races televised from tracks in Europe. I could see a rainy gray racetrack on all the screens, with graceful horses flickering like lightning.

  Stan took me upstairs to the Clubhouse, where each booth boasted its own television set. As the horses rounded the turn and headed for home, a handful of racing enthusiasts intently watched the screens.

  No shouts rose as the horses flashed across the finish line. In silence, tickets were torn, and the only noise became a few groans and mutters.

  “Back here,” Stan said. “Nobody will bother us.”

  He found us a table in a quiet corner and shut off the television there. The bartender brought Stan a cup of coffee before we had time to sit down. Stan asked for a Reuben sandwich, and I said I’d have a BLT. I peeled off my gloves and asked for a tomato juice, no vodka. The bartender nodded without a word and went away.

  Stan hung up my coat, then sat on the opposite side of the table and pushed a stack of photocopies across to me. “It’s Kitty’s schedule. We made a copy before the cops came yesterday. They took the original book for their investigation, and she may have kept a pocket version with her. If so, the cops have that. This one is all we have to go on. Trouble is, it’s in some kind of code.”

  I flipped open the pages and clumsily found my way to December. Not only would the book provide us with a way of piecing together Kitty’s coming plans, we could also check where she’d been recently.

  I glanced down at a few of the entries and nodded. “I can read this, Stan. The organizations are in initials, and the locations of the events are here, too. I can decipher her coming schedule. Fortunately, this week isn’t very busy. It’s the social season’s post-Christmas lull.”

  I ran my finger down Kitty’s notations. The Brinker Bra launch had a line drawn through it, and my initials were printed in the margin. Below, alongside the hyphenated names Brinker Lamb, she had written the number seven with the word Oaks.