by Jane Heller
“Amy Sherman?” said one of the cops while flashing his badge at me.
“Yes?” I said, clutching my robe to my chest.
“I’m Detective Rojas and this”—he nodded at the others—“is Detective Burnett and Detective Vincent. We need to ask you some questions.”
“Oh, okay. So this must be about the guy in Seven G, right?” I said, referring to one of my neighbors. He’d gone a little postal a few days ago and whacked the washers and dryers in the laundry room.
“No, but we’d like to come in,” said Detective Rojas.
“Why? I’m not in trouble, am I?” Yes, I had left work early, but Celebetsy wasn’t crazy enough to sic the cops on me, was she?
“We’d just like to talk to you, Ms. Sherman,” he said, and muscled past me into the living room, his buddies close by.
Now I was getting nervous. What could they possibly want to talk to me about?
“Tell us about your relationship with Stuart Lasher,” said Rojas when we were all seated and after he had explained that he was with the NYPD but that the other two were from Mamaroneck.
My relationship? God, had they wired that hotel room? And if so, why? “He’s married to a friend, that’s all.”
“When was the last time you saw him?” said Rojas.
“Let’s see. Maybe a couple of weeks ago? He was with his wife and I was with a date, and we all had dinner together.”
“But you were supposed to see Mr. Lasher at the Plaza earlier today, weren’t you, Ms. Sherman? Weren’t you?”
Yikes. So they knew about us? So they did wire the hotel room? So they overheard me talking to myself as I sat there waiting for him to put in an appearance?
“Yes, I was supposed to see him at the Plaza,” I said, figuring I might as well come clean. I’d become a big fat liar, but even I drew the line at cops. “I had planned to meet him there at noon, but he never showed up.”
“And you have no idea where he is?” said Burnett.
“No. Why?”
“Because he seems to have disappeared,” he said.
I grabbed the arm of the chair. “Run that by me again?”
“Mr. Lasher is missing,” he repeated. “We’re just checking around, gathering information.”
“Oh my God. You think he’s dead, is that it?”
“It’s possible.”
I felt dizzy suddenly, as if I might go into some sort of swoon. Sure, I’d wished Stuart dead plenty of times after the way he’d betrayed me—he was a shit, after all—but I’d never really meant it. No, he couldn’t be dead. Maybe he just went off to play golf and got lost driving home. Maybe he was on some highway somewhere without any way to communicate with the outside world. Maybe it was his cell phone battery that was dead, not him.
“Just curious,” I said. “How did you guys know I was supposed to meet him today?”
“There was a notation in the address book that was found in his car,” said Rojas. “He had written down your name and the date, place and time of your meeting. What can you tell us about that, Ms. Sherman?”
“Oh, well, the address book was a recent gift from his wife, “ I said. “She buys him these little—”
“Not interested in that part,” he said rather sternly. “What can you tell us about the reason for your meeting with him? And don’t bother pretending it had to do with the publicity campaign for his wife’s book, because she didn’t know anything about the meeting until we told her about it.”
They’d told Tara about it? You see that? I couldn’t get away with anything. Leave it to her to find out I was planning a rendezvous with Stuart, even though he and I had taken such pains to keep it a secret. Leave it to me to agree to a rendezvous with a man and then have that man go missing.
Tara must be ready to scratch my eyes out, I thought, trying to imagine her coping with Stuart’s disappearance and the fact that he and I were, on the surface of it, “involved.”
“Ms. Sherman, I asked you a question,” said Rojas, bringing me back to the matter at hand.
“Right. You want to know why I was meeting Mr. Lasher at the Plaza,” I said. “I’ll tell you everything, but first let me process all this a second, would you? You’ve just given me very disturbing news, and I’m trying to compose myself. Does Mrs. Lasher have any idea what could have happened to her husband?”
“That’s why we’re here,” said Rojas.
“What is?” I said.
“Mrs. Lasher,” he said. “She thinks you killed her husband.”
“Killed him? Me?” My eyes almost popped out of their sockets. How could she accuse me of something so heinous? Even if she did assume I was fooling around with Stuart, how could she believe that I was capable of murder? And how could she blab to the cops that I was capable of murder? She had pulled some pretty rotten stunts over the years, but this was beyond rotten. This was—
“Weren’t you engaged to him once upon a time, Ms. Sherman?”
“Yes, but—”
“And didn’t he break up with you just before your wedding so he could be with Mrs. Lasher?”
“Yes, but—”
“And weren’t you extremely bitter about it?”
“Yes, but—”
“And weren’t you so bitter, in fact, that you didn’t speak to either of them for several years?”
“Yes, but I went to therapy! I worked it out! I got centered!”
“Not according to Mrs. Lasher. She claims you said you wished her husband didn’t exist.”
I racked my brain. Had I ever said that? Had I? Okay, yes. I’d said a variation of that, when I went to their house for lunch the first time. But I hadn’t meant anything by the remark! It was just a throwaway line!
“Now, why don’t you tell us why you were meeting Mr. Lasher at the Plaza today,” said Rojas, his voice turning soft and sympathetic, as if he hoped to soothe me into confessing to the ultimate crime of passion.
Oh, I told them what they wanted to know all right. More. And when I was finished, I wasn’t the only one with the bull’s-eye on my forehead. Yes, by the time I’d given them an earful about Tara—especially how she was supposed to be so happily married but must have known full well that her husband was hitting on other women—the back-stabbing Mrs. Lasher had some explaining to do of her own.
Tara
20
Poor Amy. Poor, poor Amy. That’s what you’re thinking as you contemplate her current predicament, isn’t it? Of course it is. You’re asking yourself, How could such a bright, caring, well-intentioned woman have gotten herself into trouble with the police? How is it possible that someone so kindhearted, so hardworking, so eager to please landed smack in the middle of something as tawdry as a love triangle involving a man who was missing and presumed dead?
I’ll tell you how it’s possible: Amy Sherman is not Mother Teresa, any more than I’m the Antichrist she’d have you believe I am. That’s right: Contrary to what she’s been handing you, beautiful blond prom queens are not, by definition, evil incarnate. We’re decent human beings who have our own crosses to bear, so to speak. For example, the general public assumes we’re stupid. What’s more, women are always jealous of us. Worst of all, everybody sucks up to us, wants something from us, even though they don’t like us very much and only pretend to. Take dear sweet Amy. She just got through telling you how she used to adore being my best friend as a kid, but she was secretly hating my guts! How two-faced is that?
Granted, she does have her pluses. She’s skilled at her job and respected by her colleagues and she helps blind people across busy intersections. Oh, and she rescues tiny animals. When we were in elementary school, she was always rushing to the aid of birds. They would fall out of trees and she would feed them eyedroppers full of Gatorade and then build them little infirmaries out of shoe boxes and cotton balls. A regular Girl Scout, that Amy.
But listen up, people. She is not perfect. She doesn’t wash her hair often enough, she has dreadful taste in clothes, and she’s hope
lessly clueless when it comes to accessories. I used to have to drag her to buy new handbags, for instance. If left to her own devices, she’d wear the same purse forever, with whatever outfit she had on her back, and it was frustrating, because she was a pretty girl. She’s still a pretty girl. She’s just so damn holier-than-thou, if you know what I mean. You heard her version of our story up to this point, and it’s bullshit. Total bullshit. She wants you to buy into the idea that I’m this selfish, shallow, morally bankrupt bitch and that if it weren’t for me, her life would be one big piece of cake.
Well, here’s a bulletin for you: Her life is not my problem. Was she, in fact, my best friend at one time? Yes. Did I hang out with her on a daily basis when we were younger? Yes. Did I get a kick out of her worshipful attitude toward me? Even take advantage of it on occasion? Yes. But am I responsible for making her feel bad about herself? Not a chance. As a famous person once said (either Eleanor Roosevelt or Dr. Phil, I can’t remember which), “No one can make you feel bad about yourself without your permission.” If Amy feels “reduced” by me, as she relentlessly puts it in her version, then she’s the one doing the reducing.
Have I been blameless in every case when it comes to Amy Sherman? Definitely not. I’ve made mistakes and I’m ashamed of them. But there are two sides to every story, and I’d appreciate it if you’d allow me to lay out mine. With your indulgence, I’d like to go back to the beginning, to the part where she was moaning about how I stole Stuart two weeks before their wedding. Once you’ve heard the saga from my perspective, you might just change your attitude toward me. So do I have your attention? Good.
“Can I buy you dinner, Tara?” Stuart said one evening after Amy left us to run off to a fund-raiser for oppressed writers in Swaziland or someplace like that. It was a little over four years ago, just a few months before their wedding. I had accompanied the two of them to Bloomingdale’s because Amy wanted to show me the china they’d registered for. Actually, she didn’t want to show me the china. She wanted my “input” on the china. She was always gushing about how she valued my opinion when it came to things like china and crystal and stemware, not to mention skirts and slacks and tops and jackets and shoes and lingerie and jewelry and makeup and—Well, as I’ve already said, her taste isn’t great. The point is, she was the one who pulled me in the night Stuart invited me to dinner. I didn’t insinuate myself in her little pre-wedding crap. She initiated all of it—the maid of honor thing, the getting to know her fiancé thing, the traipsing around Manhattan, looking at the china thing. I was happy to help, really, but I want to make it clear that I had a life of my own and it didn’t include sucking my thumb while I waited for my old pal Amy to call. I was living and working in the city, and I was hardly inactive socially. Yes, it’s true that I was between boyfriends, having just endured a wrenching breakup with an actor on Guiding Light. It was also true that I was tired of the dating merry-go-round. I wasn’t getting any younger. I wanted to find a man who was interested in settling down and starting a family. So I suppose that’s what drew me to Stuart—the fact that he was interested in settling down and starting a family, just not with me.
“Dinner?” I said. “Sure.”
“Great. How about the Four Seasons?”
That was another thing that drew me to Stuart: He not only had money, he enjoyed spending it. I admit, I like that in a man. I also found him appealing physically. He was very tall and on the slim side, with narrow wrists and long, tapered fingers. But I liked his big brown eyes the most; they were eager, like a puppy’s, full of frisky need.
We went to the restaurant and we were alone together for the first time since Amy’d introduced us. Stuart ordered champagne and we toasted his upcoming nuptials and he filled me in about Lasher’s Meats & Eats—specifically, how he planned to take over the family’s chain of gourmet food stores when his father retired.
“What about your brother?” I said. “Or isn’t he as ambitious as you are?”
Stuart smiled. He seemed to appreciate that I was reading the situation correctly. “Jimmy takes after Dad. He’s a walking cliché: ‘Everything by the book’; ‘The customer’s always right’; ‘Slow and steady wins the race.’ You know the type.”
“You’re more of a fast mover, is that it?” I asked, engaging in what I assumed was harmless, if slightly flirtatious, banter.
“Let’s just say I go after what I want,” he replied, and then he summoned the waiter over and instructed him to tell us the specials.
Once our meal was served, we picked up the thread of What Stuart Wanted, which turned out to be not only the top position in the family business but all the perks that went with it. “I can’t deny that I’m attracted to nice things,” he said, then ran his brown eyes over me.
Wow, I thought. He’s actually flirting with me, too. The guy’s marrying Amy, but his cheeks are flushed and he’s loosened his tie and he’s giving me the Look.
It’s probably just the champagne, I decided, and steered the conversation back to Lasher’s Meats & Eats. There was discussion of the soaring prices of caviar, truffles, and everything organic. There was discussion of expanding the network of stores into other states. There was discussion of how hard it is to get and keep honest employees. And then, as I was about to ask whether Lasher’s had considered selling fancy cookware to go along with all the fancy food, out popped another remark about me.
“Amy told me you were the most popular girl in school,” said Stuart. “I can certainly see why, Tara.”
“You can see why she told you, or you can see why I was popular?” I said, teasing him.
“Both,” he replied. “I guess what I mean is that you’re not only beautiful but you’re easy to talk to.”
“Thank you. But why do you sound so surprised?”
“Oh. Well, I guess it’s just that Amy never described you that way.”
“What way?”
“Easy to talk to. Accessible. Sympathetic. Intelligent.”
My smile faded as he ticked off his adjectives, and I actually flinched on the last one. “How did Amy describe me, then?”
“I got the impression from her that you were sort of”—an embarrassed laugh—“taken with yourself and not wildly concerned about others and that your interests weren’t particularly broad.”
My eyes widened. “Amy said that?”
“Well, not in those exact words.”
Stuart started to look genuinely uncomfortable now, and to compensate, he ordered us another bottle of champagne. We both drank it. Too quickly.
“So tell me more about what you think of me, versus what Amy has told you about me,” I prodded, trying to keep my tone light but itching to dig further inside this little Pandora’s box he’d dropped on the table.
“What I think of you is that you’re beautiful and vivacious and charming. And really, really sexy.” He was slurring his words. Vivacious came out vicious.
“Aw, shucks, Stuart. You’re just flattering me.” I feigned modesty, but I was the most popular girl in school, and guys had been having wet dreams about me since I was fourteen.
“No, I’m not just flattering you. If I weren’t engaged to Amy”—he hiccuped—”I’d chase after you myself.”
“That’s sweet, but you are engaged to Amy,” I reminded him.
He pouted. “You’re hard to resist, Tara, and it wouldn’t be the worst thing if you and I got together for one night. One teeny-weeny night of passion.” He made growling noises to give me a taste of what an animal he’d be, I guess. “Come on, hon. It would be my last hurrah as a single man.”
“Stuart.” I wagged a finger at him. “I’ll say it again: You’re engaged to Amy, and Amy’s my best friend.”
He shook his head. “Amy hasn’t thought of you as her best friend in years.”
“What did you say?”
He drained his glass of Dom Pérignon and poured himself another. “I probably shouldn’t have opened my mouth. Never mind.”
“Don’t b
e silly. I’m a big girl. I can take whatever it is. Go ahead, Stuart. What did you mean when you said Amy doesn’t think of me as her best friend anymore?”
He sighed. “She told me she only asked you to be her maid of honor for old time’s sake, as a nostalgia sort of thing. She doesn’t think you two have anything in common now, except your”—he hiccuped again—“history. Basically, she threw you a bone, Tara. She fulfilled her childhood obligation to you by sticking you in the wedding party. She doesn’t plan to see you again after the big day, so if I were you, I’d forget about the ‘best friends’ bit and just go on with your life once the festivities are over.”
He patted my hand, as if to console me, but I was too stung to feel his touch. I went numb, actually. Cold. Out of body.
Was he telling the truth? I asked myself. Had Amy really said all that to him? Or was he just a mean drunk, trying to put a wedge between us so he’d get me into bed? Maybe he messed with people’s heads on a regular basis, for all I knew.
On the other hand, Amy had been sending me mixed signals since we’d gone our separate ways after college. One minute, she’d act as if she wanted to keep her distance; the next, she’d call me to ask if we could get together. One minute, she’d give me attitude about my interest in clothes and hair and makeup; the next, she’d plead with me to help her with her own. One minute, she’d put me on a pedestal; the next, she’d knock me off.
“I’m sorry if I spoke out of turn,” he said. “It’s just that you seem like such a straight shooter. I thought I should be straight with you about Amy. About you and Amy.”
Yeah, Stuart was telling the truth, I realized as my stomach went sour. He had sensed her ambivalence toward me and articulated it pretty well, considering his inebriated state.
“Tara?” he said. “You okay?”