Well Bred and Dead

by Catherine O'Connell

  And then there was the third reason which, to my thinking, was the most important of all. I felt duty-bound to defend Ethan’s honor. This call to arms had been prompted by my phone conversation with Sunny the night before. I had finally returned her call after putting if off as long as humanly possible. We consoled each other over the loss of our friend, and Sunny actually shed some tears, though real or for effect I couldn’t say. Then I told her about Ethan’s suicide letter to me, leaving out both the will and his reference to having committed some terrible deed. Sunny loved to gossip, and I didn’t want his memory sullied over some incident that was most likely overblown in his depressed mind. She sniffled loudly and lamented that she hadn’t noticed anything wrong with him at lunch on Tuesday.

  Then to my complete surprise, she brought up the matter of the birth certificates. At first I was stunned that she knew of their existence, but then it dawned on me that of course Detective Velez would have asked her if she knew anything about them, too. After all, she was the last one of us to see him.

  “What do you think they mean?” she asked. “Do you think Ethan was some kind of a fake?”

  “Fake?” I leapt to his defense. “Fake what? He wrote books. How can writing books make anyone a fake? One certainly can’t fake a book.”

  “I don’t know. I just find it disturbing. Maybe he had something to hide. Maybe he wasn’t who he claimed to be.”

  “Sunny, I would suggest we not jump to rash conclusions here. There’s probably some completely reasonable explanation for those documents. Maybe they belong to some of his relatives.”

  “Ethan made a point of saying he didn’t have any relatives.”

  “Living relatives. Maybe these belonged to some cousins or some other relation.” I didn’t want to admit to her how disturbed I was, too—that not only had Ethan killed himself but that he might have deceived me on top of it. “Listen, would you mind if we kept the birth certificates as our little secret for now—until we learn more? There’s Ethan’s memory to think of, you know.”

  “I think that’s a good idea,” she said, agreeing a bit too readily. “Will I see you at lunch tomorrow?”

  “Wouldn’t miss it for the world.” Now there was no choice but to attend the lunch. I didn’t trust Sunny and needed to be there to deflect any idle chatter.

  The very moment we hung up my house line rang. Howard, the night doorman, informed me that Detective Malloy had arrived. I instructed him to send the evidence-gathering detective up and was waiting for him in the foyer when the elevator door opened. He took the envelope containing Ethan’s letter from me and looked through the open door behind me into my residence. He whistled at the view and made a none too subtle request to see the rest of the place. Claiming exhaustion, I told him he would have to see it some other time. He jokingly repeated his offer to buy if I was ever in the market to sell.

  The minute he left, I took a Halcion and went to bed.

  I studied the St. John suit in the mirror. The way the knit hugged my curves really did compliment my shape. I regretted leaving it on the hanger for so long. Next I turned to my makeup. The day called for special care, a lighter shade of foundation than usual to create a slightly wan appearance, a subtle shade of lipstick, no mascara in the event of tears. I fluffed my hair and assessed my appearance, satisfied that I had struck the appropriate balance between sophistication and grief. Then I turned my head toward the light and caught sight of a deep volcanic fissure alongside my mouth that hadn’t been there last week. Wrinkles seemed to be popping up like weeds lately. I thanked God for the paralyzing Botox injections that kept my forehead as smooth as a baby’s bottom and only wished I didn’t need to smile so I could use them around my mouth.

  Already suitably late, I went downstairs where Jeffrey hailed me a taxi. He held the door as I dashed out into a gale-force wind, trying to get into the cab before it destroyed my hair. The weather had changed dramatically since Wednesday, and it was cold, damp, and blustery. Low-hanging clouds obscured the lake and shrouded the tops of the buildings. Like fruit just beyond reach, spring had only been tantalizing us.

  It would have been a perfect day for a funeral. But I was going to lunch.

  Rene greeted me at the restaurant door, referring to me as Madame Cook in his lovely French accent. Both he and Scarlet’s itself were old-school, cool oases in today’s desert of vulgarity. Dining at Scarlet’s meant subdued elegance, white linens, and most importantly, waiters who took one’s order without ever stating their names. It was light-years away from the garish dining emporiums that had become so popular, where the chairs were as comfortable as packing crates, the tables so tightly spaced one could easily eat off one’s neighbor’s plate, and the noise level so high one had to shout to be heard over the pandemonium. Personally, I preferred a quiet evening with my cat to dining under such stressful conditions.

  Rene conducted the ritual of leading me across the room to the same table this group of women had occupied once a month, every month, for more than ten years. The sound of chatter died at my arrival and all coiffed heads turned in my direction, jaws frozen partially open and drinks frozen in mid-air. I scanned the table and noticed everyone was there, plus one extra. An unwelcome extra. Sitting at the far end of the table next to Sunny was Connie Chan, her upturned black eyes gleaming at me from her flawless oriental face. She was not one of our group, and she had no business being with us.

  Then, as suddenly as they had stopped, the voices started up again, a cacophony of sentences layered one upon the other.

  “Oh, Pauline, how terrible about Ethan…”

  “It’s such a tragedy.”

  “He was a true dear.”

  “He will be sorely missed.”

  I crossed my hands over my heart to signify my devastation and took the open seat next to Elsa Tower. Reading Elsa’s column in Pipeline, the elitist rag of the Gold Coast and the North Shore, was a Monday morning ritual that found the better part of society holding their breaths as they scanned the highlighted names—hoping to see theirs mentioned in a good light, dreading its appearance in any other. An elfin figure with a kindly round face, Elsa had a mean streak in her that ran deeper than the Gulf Stream. She always wore a hat, and one could mark the season by her choice of chapeau. They were fur-trimmed in the winter, white and airy in the heat of summer. That day she was optimistically heralding the arrival of spring in a red straw with a flower-covered band.

  “Will you tell us what happened, Pauline?” Whitney Armstrong’s voice stood out among the others, the breathiness of it at odds with her sculpted face. She wore an enviable mint green suit whose designer I couldn’t place. The table fell silent again, and every eye in the collection of painstakingly made-up and surgically improved faces fixed upon me.

  “Well, I was waiting for Ethan to show for our Wednesday lunch at the Cape Cod. He’s never late for anything you know—”

  “I was at the Cape Cod and saw poor Pauline. She was at wit’s end with worry,” Marjorie Wilcock interrupted loudly, making no mention of who her dining partner had been. She was already running her words together, and her hand trembled ever so slightly as she raised a vast martini glass to her lips.

  “…so I started thinking, this is very unlike Ethan,” I continued, ignoring Marjorie. “I tried him at home a couple of times and when I didn’t get an answer, I began to suspect something might be wrong. So finally, I got in my car and drove over to check on him myself.”

  There was a hesitant silence. Then Suzanne Free, the young concierge from the Drake who had just recently been welcomed into our fold after her engagement to Dexter Worthington, asked sweetly, “So how did you get into his apartment?”

  “It wasn’t easy. I had to bribe the most horrible man. When he finally did let me in, I went directly into Ethan’s bedroom and…” I lowered my eyes to the table. “…there he was.”

  “Oh my God, are you saying you actually saw the body?” Germaine Appleton gasped. She was stunning in wheat-colore
d Armani, her sable coat draped across the back of her chair. Her husband, Robert Appleton, owned the Appleton Furs chain, so Germaine nearly always sported something that once had a face, and went fur-trimmed even into the depths of summer.

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “How gruesome that must have been for you!”

  “It wasn’t terribly pleasant. There was a bullet through his head, you know.”

  “You poor dear. What did you do then?”

  “Well, called the police, naturally. And do I have to tell you how useless they were? They treated me as if I were a criminal, forcing me to wait for hours. And when they finally did allow me to leave, I went back to my car and found a hundred dollar parking ticket on it.”

  “The insensitive bastards.” That coming from Eleanor McFardle. Her mother was an Addison from the meat packing family. Old money. It was the first time I had seen her since she had her eyes done, and the difference was remarkable.

  “I heard it was a suicide, but I’ve also heard rumors that he was killed by a gay lover…” These words spoken by Jacquie Washington, the sole black member of our group. The former model had started her own agency after getting a bit old for the industry herself. Though her husband was William Brown, the fabulously wealthy owner of the eponymous publishing empire, she continued to work.

  “Absolutely untrue. I received a suicide note from him in the mail yesterday.”

  A collective gasp was heard round the table. “I’d have never believed it,” said Jacquie. “Ethan was about as unlikely a person to take his own life as anyone I know. Aside from being overly preoccupied with himself, I would think he was too squeamish.”

  “Ditto that,” said Germaine. “Did anyone here ever pick up on a problem?”

  “I sure didn’t,” Sunny said. “I had lunch with him on Tuesday and he seemed his normal quirky self. He told me he was working on his speech for the North Shore Writer’s Guild. He even asked me to take a look at it.”

  There was much speculation around the table as to why Ethan might have killed himself with just about everyone agreeing that he had never given any of them the slightest indication that he had been unhappy. He had been a fixture in most of their lives, always a ready and attentive escort, quick with a compliment or juicy tidbit of gossip. No one could begin to count how many boards in town would have an empty seat.

  “Not to mention, we’ve lost a damn good walker on top of it,” Eleanor lamented. “I don’t know who I’ll get to go to the art openings with me now. Albert despises them.”

  “He was our Truman Capote, that’s for sure,” said Germaine, quick to add, “before Truman wrote “La Côte Basque,” that is.”

  “Ethan had more scruples than Truman,” said Jacquie.

  “I wouldn’t be so sure about that.” All heads turned to Whitney. “I mean, well, with a writer you can never know,” she added in a voice more Monroesque than Marilyn herself.

  “All I know is Ethan was very good to me,” said Suzanne, the soon to be former concierge. “He introduced me to everyone. He even acknowledged me in his book.”

  “Honey, if you bought Ethan a cup of coffee, he’d acknowledge you,” Marjorie gushed sloppily.

  “Who’s taking care of the funeral arrangements?” The first words Connie Chan had chosen to utter caused the fine hairs on my neck to bristle. A chorus of voices echoed the same question. I shot Sunny a glance as if to say what is this woman doing here. Our eyes locked for a moment. She quickly looked away.

  “No arrangements have been made so far. The body won’t be released until the police finish searching for his next of kin,” I said.

  Two waiters brought our food and small satellites of conversation sprung up around the table as the fashionably slim picked away at salads with the dressing held to the side and plates of broiled fish. Sitting beside me, the usually inquisitive Elsa had been uncharacteristically quiet. Now that the others weren’t paying any attention she came true to form, peering at me from under the red brim of her hat, her blue eyes ruthlessly probing above the balls of her cherubic cheeks. “Rumor has it he won’t get buried until they solve the mystery of the multiple birth certificates,” she whispered.

  I was astonished, wondering where on earth Elsa would have gotten the information. But I didn’t have to wonder long. There was only one other person at the table who knew about the birth certificates. Even though we had agreed to keep their existence under our hats, Sunny had gone back on her word and run straight to the worst hat of all. And I knew why. Always the social climber, she was trying to solidify herself with the gossip columnist. My anger was bubbling like my Perrier, and I wished at that moment that I had ordered something stronger to drink.

  “So Sunny told you?”

  “Of course she did,” Elsa replied, slicing into a veal medallion floating in Madeira sauce. She was the only one of us who seemed to have no concern about her weight despite the extra stone she was carrying. No one would have ever dared say anything to her about it. Elsa’s kindly face was deceiving and her wrath could be devastating. Her column could either deify or crucify a person, depending on her fancy. She looked at me and chewed with great satisfaction. “So why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I was going to, Elsa. But I wanted to wait until we knew more. I don’t want to see him disparaged.” I glared down the table. Sunny’s traitorous dark head bobbed in animated conversation. “When did you find out?” I asked.

  “Sunny called me the minute she learned about them. I asked her not to tell anyone else, to give me the exclusive,” she added. Which explained why Sunny had agreed with me so readily last night. Elsa continued between bites, “It will be a delicious item in Monday’s column.” She lowered her voice. “Especially when Connie Chan reads it and realizes she sat through this entire meal and was still left out cold. So what do you make of these birth certificates?”

  I acquiesced, feeling the damage was already done. “I honestly don’t know. One of them was for an Ethan Campbell born in England, one for a Daniel Kehoe born in Boston. And a third for the mother of the Boston Daniel Kehoe—whoever he was.”

  “Strange isn’t it? Ethan never said a word about coming from England. He claimed to hail from New York.”

  “Yes, I know. Perhaps he had a British cousin or was born overseas and his parents moved to New York when he was a baby.”

  “That still doesn’t explain why he would have the other two birth certificates.”

  “Friends? Relatives?” I suggested.

  “You know, Pauline, I smell fish, and when I smell fish it’s usually fish. There was always something about that little man I couldn’t put my finger on. He was such a name dropper it was almost as if he had studied up on them. But I never challenged him because he was one of my greatest sources. He’s passed on more intelligence to me than you could ever guess. Things even I wouldn’t print. So I figured why cut off your nose to spite your face.”

  “Well, whoever he was, he was a good friend to me.” I was not surprised to learn where Elsa came up with so much of her biting material. Ethan had a way about him that encouraged people to confide in him. For a minute I wondered if he had shared any of my secrets with Elsa, but decided he hadn’t. Otherwise I would have already read, Which tall and prominent widow is dating a man nearly half her age who works in a popular eatery? Word has it that she’s given him a leg up on a modeling career and he’s giving her a leg over in return. Elsa knew no loyalty when the tidbit was juicy enough. “Will you be kind to him in your article?”

  “Kinder than a lot of other people would be.” She forked another piece of veal into her mouth and chewed it with gusto glancing down the table at Connie Chan.

  Gallons of water and pots of decaf later, with the waiters setting up the nearby tables for dinner, the party was breaking up. I wanted to speak with Sunny in private, but she was still talking to Connie Chan, so I rooted around in my purse looking for some imaginary object while I waited for them to part ways. In the meantime, Whitney,
seeing that Elsa had gone and I was available, came rushing over to speak with me. As I watched her approach, moving fluidly on her heels, her hips so enviably narrow and her legs competitive to mine, I felt as green as her suit. Except for the way her man-made bosom really distracted from the designer’s intent.

  “I adore it,” I said touching her sleeve. “Balenciaga?”

  “Thierry Mugler,” she replied.

  “Whitney, you must forgive me for not getting back to you,” I said. “I know it was terribly rude, but I simply haven’t the heart to talk about Ethan. You can understand, can’t you?”

  “Of course I understand. Don’t even think about apologizing. Our poor Ethan.” Though her wispy tone was sympathetic, I thought I detected a sound of cynicism lurking beneath it. “Pauline, can I ask you a favor?”

  I couldn’t imagine what kind of a favor Whitney could want from me. Fortune magazine counted her husband among its legendary five hundred year after year, and unlike many of his wealthy brethren, Jack Armstrong clearly adored his wife. No dalliances for the lingerie baron. Not only did he beam when in her presence, he let her spend freely at her own whim without ever questioning her. What could I possibly do for her?

  “I was wondering, since you and Sunny were Ethan’s best friends, are the two of you going to take care of the funeral if they don’t find any relatives?”

  I think I grimaced. No, I know for certain I grimaced. Though Sunny and I were the obvious people for the task, I couldn’t imagine Nat Livermore parting with any of his copious funds for the man he used to refer to as “that fawning little faggot.” That would leave it to me. The memory of what it had cost to bury Henry resurfaced and I’m sure my expression grew even more dour.

  “I’m sorry, am I’m upsetting you by talking about this?”

  “No, no. I just had a sharp pain. It’s gone now.” I tried to look solemn. “If no family turns up, it’s possible the arrangements could fall to us.”