Almost True Confessions

by Jane O'Connor

  “Wake up, Tim.”

  “Wha?” Only a faint stirring.

  Rannie shook him by the shoulder. “Wake up!”

  His head emerged from the cocoon, his hair spikier than ever. He blinked and as he returned to a conscious state smiled groggily at Rannie.

  “You’re the covers hog! I’m freezing.”

  “Sorry.” His voice was raspy from sleep. He managed to unfurl part of the quilt and held it over her tentlike. “Come on in.”

  Rannie nestled beside him. Almost immediately the heat radiating off his body enveloped her.

  In no time, Tim fell back asleep. Rannie did not.

  How odd . . . When she’d gone to sleep a few hours earlier, Tim’s presence had been nothing more than comforting; now it was arousing. She swallowed hard as she felt a familiar tingling in her breasts and farther down, deep inside her. Oh, the magic of endorphins; when all else failed, you could at least count on pure animal drive to restore some glimmer of hope about life and the future. Rannie peeled off her T-shirt and socks, snuggled closer, hooking a foot around Tim’s leg.

  “Hey, you,” she whispered, kissing him on the neck, on the ear, on his jawline.

  Instinctively, Tim reached out and drew her closer. As soon as he felt her bare skin, he murmured, “When did you lose that hot negligee?”

  “Listen. I can’t get back to sleep and it’s your fault. So you owe me.”

  He was wide awake now. Tim sat up and shimmied out of his boxers.

  “Lie back,” Rannie said, and, straddling Tim, began flicking her tongue back and forth over his right nipple, then the left, then the right again. Tim murmured something unintelligible. When he started to maneuver himself inside her, Rannie pushed his hand away. She wanted to call the shots tonight, and she wanted to stretch out the “intro.”

  Tim understood. Obligingly, he raised both hands over his head, signaling “I’m all yours.”

  With one hand, she traced the outline of his eyebrows, the rim of his eyelashes, and the curve of his nose and lips. It was like she was drawing a picture of his face, a face that was better than beautiful to her. When she bent down to kiss him, his mouth opened and she ran her tongue over the place where one of his front teeth overlapped the other. Then she leaned back and stroked Tim’s chest with one hand, while with the other, she stroked her breasts. However and wherever she touched Tim, she touched herself as well.

  Tim was watching her. “You are something,” he said.

  Yeah, this was one thing she was good at, something that had always come naturally. Rannie closed her eyes, slipped in Tim’s cock, and started rocking back and forth, slowly at first, squeezing him inside her, ratcheting up the rhythm little by little. Every time she felt herself edging too close to an orgasm, she’d lean back, not moving until the tension in her body lessened a bit; then she’d start moving again. Tim met her thrust for thrust. He wasn’t a talker; he didn’t ever make a lot of noise. He was purposeful, intuitive, and almost calm about fucking.

  Brushing away Rannie’s hands, he cupped her breasts. Even their breathing was in sync, quickening at the same instant. One part of her wanted to hold back; if she didn’t, this would be over. But she couldn’t and so there was nothing to do except go with the moment.

  One of them came a nanosecond before the other but who—Tim or Rannie—she had no idea. She remained stone still until the last little waves had finished rippling through her, then lay beside Tim.

  He held her hand in both of his. “So it was me instead of an Ativan,” she heard him say. Already her eyes were closed: she felt peaceful. The last thing Rannie remembered was Tim carefully arranging the quilt over her.

  She slept deeply but not nearly long enough. The next time her eyes opened, the room was filling with a harsh and cheerless gray light. Shreds of an upsetting dream floated before her but were disintegrating rapidly; in the dream Rannie was somewhere with Ellen and Ret, who were dead but neither one realized it. Dream Rannie was in anguish, unable to decide whether to break the news or leave them happily ignorant.

  It was nearly six o’clock. The police must have called Ellen’s parents by now. Was there any news worse than hearing your child had been murdered? How did a parent go on for even a minute, much less a day, a month, a year? Rannie no longer expected good luck; nowadays a glass somewhat less than half full seemed acceptable. All she asked from the God she didn’t believe in was to avoid life-shattering bad luck.

  All at once an icy, irrational panic seized hold of her, forcing Rannie out of bed, back into her T-shirt and socks and down the hall, where she peeked in on Nate, her pulse slowing at the sight of him asleep on his back, mouth open, safe and sound.

  She was up for good. After grabbing her bathrobe, a pink terrycloth number from Mama Bookman, she made a pot of Zabar’s house blend and sat in the living room with her mug, waiting for the caffeine to kick in. On the coffee table was the Times crossword puzzle that Tim had been working on last night. A Monday puzzle and almost half was blank. It irked Tim that Rannie dismissed the early weekday puzzles as being too easy to bother with. And it irked her just as much that he actually liked the word scrambles in the Daily News. The snob in her wondered if such a difference could count as the root problem of their relationship.

  Rannie gathered up all the sections of yesterday’s paper for recycling. Underneath them lay the copy of Tattletale, Ret Sullivan’s face suddenly staring up at her. It was unsettling.

  The photo was from Ret’s red lipstick, French twist glory days. A sly taunting smile played on her lips, a smile that said, “I know lots of secrets.” Rannie found herself picking up the book. For some reason, the credit line caught her eye. “Written by Lina Struvel.” The longer she looked at the name, the phonier it started to sound. A pseudonym?

  Rannie located a yellow legal pad and a Bic. First she wrote out the name backward and came out with Anil Levurts. No cigar. After that, she tried a code that she and her friends used for passing notes in elementary school, a code that had seemed so “top secret” to ten-year-olds. Rannie rewrote the name, substituting B’s for A’s, C’s for B’s, D’s for C’s, and so on. She wound up with Mjob Tusvwfm. No cigar, not even cigar ash.

  Then all of a sudden certain letters in the author’s name started jumping out at her, calling attention to themselves. The “R,” the “E,” the “T.”

  To be sure, Rannie wrote out “Lina Struvel” first and then wrote “Ret Sullivan” underneath and began drawing lines between matching letters. Well, what do you know! A word scramble!

  Ret had written Tattletale, every over-the-top flattering word of it! It wasn’t a biography at all; it was Ret’s autobiography, actually more like a really long mash note to herself.

  Rannie sat back on the couch, sipping coffee, and mulled. She bet the idea had been Larry’s. It was so like him to play a game like this. “Who better to write it?” Rannie could almost hear him saying to Ret. “It’ll be a hoot. Say whatever you want about yourself.” Why wouldn’t Ret have jumped at the offer?

  So everything Larry had said yesterday about being out of touch with Ret for years was a bunch of baloney. Rannie tried to be objective about his deception. She hadn’t seen Larry in ages. There was no earthly reason for him to tell her who wrote Tattletale . . . was there? Nevertheless, Rannie wished he hadn’t lied so blatantly and so convincingly.

  “You okay? Whatcha doing out here?”

  Startled, Rannie turned. Tim was standing behind the couch. He was unshaven but already had on the khakis and polo shirt he’d worn last night. He leaned over and, clasping her around the shoulders, nuzzled the back of her neck.

  “Mmmm. You smell good.” Rannie, closing her eyes, was settling into his embrace when abruptly his hands pulled away.

  “Aw, come on!”

  Her eyes flew open. She turned and saw Tim pointing at Tattletale. “That’s what you’re reading first thing in the morning?”

  “I wasn’t. Scout’s honor. I was just sitting here wit
h my coffee and the cover caught my eye. C’mere. Look at the author’s name.” Rannie moved over and patted the sofa. Tim didn’t move.

  “Then look.” She proffered her sheet of yellow paper. “I thought there was something strange about the name. Lina Struvel.”

  Tim glanced at it. This was when Tim, dedicated fan of word scrambles, was supposed to marvel at her cleverness. Instead all he did was nod and say, “Yeah. I get it. So Ret Sullivan wrote her own biography.”

  “I know the editor. I saw him just yesterday. For freelance. We were talking about Ret. But he never said a word. He told me he hadn’t been in touch with Ret for years. The police have already questioned him.”

  “What’s the guy’s name?”

  “Larry Katz. Why?”

  “No reason. Don’t even know why I’m asking.”

  Tim was not a practiced fibber. Once again, the unnerving thought occurred to Rannie that Tim might be more looped into the investigation than he was letting on. But she didn’t press the issue. Instead, she offered breakfast, which he declined, claiming that a meat delivery truck was arriving at seven. He was gone five minutes later. No good-bye kiss.

  Chapter 13

  After one more cup of coffee, Rannie made the bed and then turned on the shower where—global warming be damned—she remained for a good fifteen minutes. As hot water drubbed down on her skull full blast, it seemed that all her brain could think about was murder. Tim was right. The urge was sick. It was like mental scab picking, but Rannie couldn’t help herself.

  Did the murders appear to be more alike than different? One was private, an at-home crime; the other, in Central Park, occurred in as public a place as was possible to find in New York; both were violent crimes but one was a strangling, the other a stabbing. One seemed planned, the other appeared random. The murders happened at different times of day, though only two days apart. Except for the author-editor connection, there would be little reason to link the crimes. Of course, that single word “except” deserved to be printed in fifty-point type and in boldface. All of which brought Rannie back to one conclusion: both women had been murdered by the same person. What bound Ellen and Ret together, like consecutive signatures in a side-sewn binding, was the Charlotte Cummings biography.

  Rannie was dressed and in the dining room with a bagel when Nate hove into view.

  “Want breakfast?”

  He shook his head. “I’m meeting Olivia at Dunkin’ Donuts.” Nate was trying to be subtle but Rannie saw him shifting his glance to the living room and then the kitchen.

  “Tim left already,” she told him.

  “Oh,” Nate said.

  She was all set to be parentally responsible and have a discussion on the matter of Tim staying over and how exactly Nate felt about it when he blurted out, “He’s a nice guy, Ma.” Then quickly he shouldered his backpack, a tennis racket sticking out of the top, and was already in the front hall before turning and in a rush adding, “You deserve somebody nice.”

  Rannie broke into a wide smile, one that Nate didn’t see. The door had already slammed behind him.

  A few minutes later Rannie heard the paper land with a thunk. Ellen’s murder qualified as not-quite-top news: the story—with Ellen’s name withheld—appeared below the fold on page one. Reading it, Rannie was able to piece together a rough time line of events. From eight fifteen to nine a group of dog walkers had been in the Pinetum, their dogs off leash. One man was quoted as saying, “Believe me, if there’d been a body around, the dogs would have found it. We were there until the rain started coming down really hard.” They’d left about nine thirty, nine forty. At ten thirty a bike rider discovered Ellen’s bloody, muddy body.

  Ellen was such a creature of habit that even Rannie knew her regular running route. She always jogged to Eighty-Fifth Street and Central Park West, entered the park, continued around the reservoir twice—what in Ellen’s mind counted merely as a “little fun run”—and started heading for home from the park exit at Ninety-Fifth Street. The Pinetum was no more than a hundred to two hundred yards from the Eighty-Fifth Street park entrance. So Ellen had just begun her run when the murderer waylaid her.

  There wasn’t a word for how unjust Ellen’s death was. It had been raining so hard: if only once, just once, Ellen had stayed home and let a little cellulite build up, she would have finished packing and boarded the plane to the Caribbean.

  By the time Rannie finished the paper, the little hand still hadn’t reached the eight. She was depressed and jumpy—a terrible combo. She thrummed her fingers on the dining table. Her brain was jazzed from all the caffeine. There were simply too many hours in the day looming emptily before her. Her good angel, perched primly on one shoulder, ordered her to work on the manuscript on the CEO mentality for Larry and then call Mary to meet for lunch and a movie. Her bad angel had other ideas, whispering tantalizingly in her ear, “Call Larry. Call Larry. He knows more than he’s telling.”

  So who would she listen to?

  “Hello, Larry. It’s Rannie.”

  “You heard about Ellen?”

  Okay, word was out. “Yes” was Rannie’s reply.

  “I can’t talk. The cops want me down at the precinct.”

  A second trip?

  As she hung up it crossed Rannie’s mind that Larry referring to “Ellen”—and not the more formal, acquaintance-worthy “Ellen Donahoe”—suggested Larry was on fairly familiar terms with Ellen in addition to Ret. Was he the Larry on the phone with Ellen’s assistant?

  Cutthroat was in full view on her desk, and partially to atone for listening to her bad angel before, Rannie worked her way through the first chapter and part of the second. Still, while trying her hardest to stay focused on the pages, Rannie kept thinking about Larry.

  Larry Katz, at least the Larry Katz Rannie had known, seemed constitutionally incapable of murder, not because he was such a paragon of humankind but because carrying out something premeditated required traits that weren’t in Larry’s genetic code. He was smart enough, for sure, but he wasn’t purposeful, aggressive, detail oriented, or remotely good at follow-through. Yet the cops clearly considered him a person of interest.

  Giving up on the manuscript, Rannie searched her desk drawers for her date book—a Sierra Club special with gorgeous photos of places she’d probably never get to visit—and opened to the current week, almost hoping to see in the Tuesday space “Annual checkup” or some other obligation that would take up a goodly chunk of time. Tomorrow Nate had his interview at Yale. That, however, didn’t solve the problem of today. Then Rannie’s eye traveled down to the December month-in-review box where she’d circled a date and written, “Mary’s birthday!!”

  Okay, now here was exactly the kind of good angel errand she’d been hoping for. She would find the absolutely perfect present and spend hours doing so.

  In the estimation of her former mother-in-law, Saks Fifth Avenue bore the closest approximation to the hallowed B. Altman’s department store, which had been closed since 1989 yet whose demise—there was that word again!—Mary had never ceased to lament.

  Saks opened at ten. Rannie watered Tim’s tulips, called and left a message saying how much it meant having him with her last night, then washed whatever dishes were in the sink; after dispensing with recyclables in the back hall, she made it to the bus shelter on Broadway and 108th Street by nine fifteen.

  Traveling aboveground in midtown Manhattan was an exercise in frustration unless you went on foot or took a cab between the hours of midnight and dawn. Today, however, time was not a consideration, so Rannie patiently waited for the 104 bus, which lumbered through traffic, wheezing to its assigned stops every two blocks along the avenue. At one point a lady of indeterminate age came on board carrying a copy of Tattletale, which kept her engrossed for the course of her ride. A pity, really, that Ret didn’t know what a hot topic she was once again.

  A crosstown bus ride later, Rannie arrived at Fifth Avenue and Fiftieth Street and at 10:01 began cruising the a
isles on the ground floor of Saks, already decked out as a silvery holiday wonderland. In one of the mahogany and glass display cases she spotted a pair of gray kid gloves. Before dwelling on the price Rannie whipped out her charge card and paid.

  The day was warmer than its predecessors by at least ten degrees, so Rannie headed one block east to Madison and then continued north on foot through the Fifties, which in recent decades had become a dispiriting stretch of banks, costume jewelry stores, and bland clothing boutiques. Rannie had reached the posher Sixties, where art gallery owners and fashion designers had set up shop when it hit her: she had given Mary gloves last Christmas, maybe even gray ones.

  Irritated with herself, Rannie waited for the light then crossed to the other side of Madison Avenue so that the return trip to Saks would at least offer different shop windows to inspect. She hadn’t walked more than a couple of blocks before she came upon a tiny gift shop sandwiched in between a Belgian chocolatier and a place that sold nothing but antique glass paperweights. Rannie stopped. The name of the boutique was Bibilots—it was the one owned by Barbara Gaines, the one Mary had described as “so darling.” And no wonder; it looked like Wasp retail heaven. In the front window were artfully arranged needlepoint pillows with clever sayings, shell-encrusted wall mirrors and picture frames, toile place mats and matching napkins, painted Italian pottery candlesticks, leather travel jewelry cases in fruit sorbet colors, and eyelet lace handkerchiefs, the kind that almost nobody except Mary still carried in their purses.

  Rannie buzzed and waited for the answering buzz to enter.

  Bibi glanced up from behind a pair of half-frame glasses perched on her nose. She’d been reading in a small armchair tucked in the far corner of the store, but at the prospect of a customer, she shut the book. “Hello. Please have a look around and—” A startled expression crossed Bibi’s face and stopped her well-modulated voice in midsentence. She rose. “Rannie?” She came forward to greet her. “Rannie Bookman, right?”