Almost True Confessions

by Jane O'Connor

  Okay, Larry was spilling. And oh how Rannie longed to cry out, “I already know that! Your little word scramble didn’t fool me.” But she congratulated herself for pulling off a credible stammer.“Wh-what—what do you mean, Ret wrote it?”

  “Look.” Larry pulled a paper napkin from the dispenser and in a replay of what Rannie had demonstrated to both Tim and Grieg only a couple of hours earlier, Larry wrote out Ret’s name and the pseudonym, pointing out to Rannie how the letters matched up. “And by the way, last time I looked, Tattletale was seventeen on Amazon,” Larry informed her.

  How typical of editors. In front of a firing squad, they’d forgo a cigarette if they could check Amazon rankings one last time. “Okay, great. So why a word scramble?”

  “The pseudonym was Ret’s idea. Then I suggested a word scramble, like the ones in the Daily News you see morons doing on the subway.”

  Inwardly Rannie cringed. Tim liked word scrambles.

  “Ret didn’t want her own name on Tattletale. She said, ‘It’s better if readers think someone else is saying wonderful things about me.’ ”

  As she raked a french fry through ketchup, Rannie nodded. That definitely had the ring of Ret, the “raven-haired, sultry crusader who spoke truth to power.”

  “Another reason was she’d already started writing the big hush-hush book.” Larry made air quotes around “hush-hush.” “She didn’t want two books by Ret Sullivan in stores at the same time. She worried they’d eat into each other’s sales.”

  Rannie nodded. That too sounded like Ret. Shrewd and savvy.

  “Sure, you get it. But when I tried explaining about the pseudonym, showing the cop the whole word-scramble thing, I could tell he thought it was just weirdo games-playing.”

  Ah, so it seemed Rannie hadn’t revealed anything to Grieg that he didn’t already know.

  “Did Ret tell you who the hush-hush book was about?” Rannie asked.

  “No. But it wasn’t hard to guess. For all the Mata Hari drama and secrecy, she left a lot of stuff laying around about Charlotte Cummings, articles from Vogue, Vanity Fair. Clippings from the one-hundredth birthday.”

  Rannie managed to keep a poker face at the mention of Charlotte Cummings’s name; nor did she bring up her own visit to Ret Sullivan’s apartment. Instead she asked, “So you were over there, you actually saw Ret?”

  “Only with a ski mask on—like she was about to go schussing down Park Avenue—and not in the last month, not since Tattletale went to press. Her cleaning lady must do one shitty job because my fingerprints are still all over the place. Another reason why I’m a person of interest.” Larry pointed at the little white paper cup of coleslaw on Rannie’s plate.

  “Sure. Take it.” Now it came back to her, Larry’s annoying habit of underordering for himself and then mooching food.

  “Look. Ret craved company. Could you blame her? So we’d work on the book there. She used a tape recorder for a lot of Tattletale. Then I’d have the stuff typed at the office. Ret was crazy for corned beef. I’d bring over sandwiches from PJ Bernstein’s. She’d never eat in front of me, though—always waited till I left. She didn’t want me to see her with the mask off.”

  “Did Ret tell Ellen about writing Tattletale?” Rannie asked.

  Larry polished off the tangle of coleslaw in a single forkful. He swallowed and said, “No. I doubt it. Ret got off on that being our little secret, although I’m sure she leaked news of the book to Publishers Weekly. They ran something online about a book on Ret’s life coming out.” He snagged a couple of her french fries. “She kept calling Tattletale ‘our’ book . . . not that she offered any share of royalties.”

  “She was falling in love with you. She was, wasn’t she?” It was a question but not a question. Rannie was sure she was right. She remembered the first time she’d slept with Larry. They were at his apartment. “What’s someone like you doing with me? Frankly, you could do better,” he’d said while Rannie undressed. Self-deprecation, however, was just part of his shtick; most women found him appealing and he knew it. Ret had a guy who came and serviced her once a week—former Suspect #1—but sex with Larry would have been entirely different.

  “In love? Ret? Please.” Larry finished wiping his mouth with a napkin, the one he’d been writing on a minute ago. Then he caught Rannie’s expression. Suddenly he looked incredulous. “Jesus Christ, Rannie, you think I was fucking Ret!”

  “I didn’t say that,” Rannie replied lamely.

  “Oh no! Hold it right there. I’ll admit to a few pity fucks in my time. And I’m not saying Ret wouldn’t have been up for it. She’d call late at night, ask what I was doing. She sent presents, a cashmere robe, caviar from Petrossian. But it wasn’t going to happen. And not because of her face . . . or not just because of that. It was the extreme Catholic thing. Her apartment spooked me.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Crucifixes everywhere. The living room, the dining area. Even in the bathroom, there was Christ staring down every time I took a piss.”

  Rannie had seen the display crosses in the living room and the Madonna smiling down on Ret’s corpse.

  “It wouldn’t surprise me if Ret kept hair shirts in her closet and went in for a little nightly self-flagellation.” He shook his head. “I’ve never been turned on by Catholics. Unitarians are about as Christian as I can take.”

  “Ellen told me that at one point, right after Ret was disfigured, she considered taking vows.”

  Larry shrugged. “Maybe so. She grew up in an orphanage run by nuns. So she knew the drill. But there’s nothing in Tattletale about becoming a nun.” He went for another fry, but Rannie slapped his hand away and told him to order his own, which he did.

  “Okay, Larry, so you’re pretty sure that this hush-hush book is about Charlotte Cummings—”

  “And I bet I can guess who’s copyediting it.”

  “—so did Ret ever say who was doing the groundwork for her, finding sources, you know, doing the digging that Ret used to do herself?”

  Larry shook his head.

  “You think it could have been Ellen?” Rannie had to wait for an answer. Larry’s fries had arrived. He salted them sparingly, as if under doctor’s order to limit sodium. Then he studiously drizzled an abstract pattern of ketchup over them.

  “Ellen never said so.”

  “You two were in touch?” In his office Larry hadn’t lied outright about Ellen; still, he’d misled Rannie. And why had Ellen been secretive about Larry? Was Larry Mr. Insignificant Other?

  “Ellen called about Tattletale. She’d seen the mention in Publishers Weekly and was curious to read it. This was maybe, oh, a week or so before the book came out. So I went over to her apartment with a bound galley. I was going to leave it with the doorman. But he buzzed Ellen and she said to send me up. We had a little wine, caught up on life, and I left.”

  “Did the police find your fingerprints at Ellen’s?”

  “Oh, yes! I have this incredible talent for showing up at all the right places at the wrong time.” The fries seemed to have lost their allure: Larry hadn’t touched them. “And then there were a million questions about my whereabouts—Jesus, don’t you hate that word?—on Monday morning. I explained I got up, went to work, couldn’t find a cab, so I arrived late—even later than usual for me.”

  Yes, Larry had kept her waiting at the Dusk offices. “So you’re unaccounted for that morning.”

  He heard the “oy vey” sympathy in her voice. He nodded.

  Larry was in some pickle, as her corporate lawyer father used to say about clients who were on trial for forgetting to report a boatload of income to the IRS or sharing a little privileged info with investor “friends.” Only this was homicide. Double homicide. Pickles didn’t come big enough to describe the pickle Larry was in.

  “Rannie, I look suspicious even to myself. . . . It’s all so crazy. Why would I possibly want to kill either of them? And murder? I’m not physically capable of it. I get light-headed fro
m razor cuts.” He pointed to his chin as evidence.

  That was true. Once Larry had cut his hand slicing tomatoes while helping Rannie make dinner. It wasn’t a bad cut but oh! how he had carried on, insisting on going to the Lenox Hill emergency room.

  Rannie remembered the trip vividly, not solely because Larry, his hand in a kitchen towel tourniquet, kept moaning about nerve damage and dangerous loss of blood in the cab, but also because, by strange coincidence, it was Rannie’s second trip to an emergency room that week.

  Nate had fallen off the top of a jungle gym in a Riverside Park playground and torn his frenum, which Rannie learned from the ER doctor was the term for the bridge of skin connecting the upper lip to the upper gum. Nate, with blood-smeared mouth and cheeks, looked like something out of a Grade Z horror movie; still, her son had been more stoic than Larry about getting stitches. “The police now think the same guy killed Ret and Ellen?” she asked.

  “Seems so. And they’d like it to be me.” Larry caught Rannie looking at the clock, so he signaled for a check and as soon as it came handed the waiter a twenty.

  “Thanks, Larry.”

  “Tell me the long arm of the law will reach out and haul in the right guy.”

  “You’re innocent. The police will find who did it.”

  Larry smiled. At first she read the smile as a sign that her words had offered Larry reassurance, but then he said, “You still remind me of Leslie Caron.”

  “It’s the overbite,” Rannie said, attempting to dismiss the compliment. She did not want to rekindle any old sparks. So why then was her hand, as if it had a life of its own, suddenly extended across the table, giving Larry’s hand a squeeze? The sensation of holding Larry’s hand triggered another memory: Rannie was in her office at S&S, rolling and unrolling her shoulders, stiff from a day at the computer that had been interrupted only for a stressful lunchtime appointment with her lawyer, signing divorce papers. Larry had passed by in the hallway, saw her, and said, “Stiff neck? I can fix that.” He came in, closed the door, and gave her the best back rub of her life. “Magic fingers,” he had bragged, waggling them as he left her office. Less than a week later she’d ended up in bed with Larry.

  They both got up at the same time, Larry a step ahead of her. She noticed that his trench coat, so mud spattered yesterday, had taken a quick trip to the cleaners. Maybe Larry was becoming more fastidious in older age.

  However, as he held the door open for her, Rannie noticed something else and stifled a giggle. The blue cleaner’s tag was still stapled to the belt. Once a nerd, always a nerd!

  Chapter 16

  You did what?” Rannie shrieked.

  Nate was at his desk, a biology textbook open. A gauze pad held in place by adhesive strips bisected his left arm a third of the way between his wrist and elbow.

  “Don’t hemorrhage. It’s just a tattoo.” He shut the book. His calmness was infuriating.

  “You’re a minor. It’s—it’s illegal!” Rannie sputtered.

  Nate didn’t respond. It wasn’t necessary. He knew that she knew about the fake ID with his photo on it. Rannie had stumbled upon it months ago when she was doing laundry. Stupidly, Nate had left it in a pocket of his jeans. And instead of destroying it right then and there as she should have, Rannie stupidly believed her son when he swore up and down that its only use was gaining entry into bars where, at most, he’d have one beer. End result: Nate Lorimer hadn’t gotten inked; the fictitious Darryl Schmidt had, Darryl who was twenty-five according to his birth date and a student at Queens Community College.

  College! A thudding realization.

  “Your interview at Yale is tomorrow! Oh, Jesus! It looks like you tried slitting your wrist only you aimed too high!”

  “So that’s what this is about, whether I get into Yale or not?”

  “Oh, no, mister, don’t try switching the subject on me!”

  Rannie felt like she should yell and carry on some more; the situation required it. Yet all at once every bone in her body felt like lead. She crumpled on Nate’s bed. It was too much. Hadn’t Nate ever heard about dirty needles and HIV? She cradled her head in her hands and thought, No, no, no. Or maybe she actually uttered the words because all at once Nate was sitting beside her. “Come on, Ma. Don’t get so worked up.” He sounded, well, not contrite exactly but at least concerned. “The bandage can come off in an hour.”

  Rannie looked up. She could feel that her eyes were wet. It wasn’t simply because of the tattoo, although she had no intention of telling him that. She was crying from exhaustion, from being at the morgue, being at the precinct, being at Mary’s, being with Larry. . . . And not being with Tim. Why no call from him?

  She sniffled. “So what am I going to see?” A topless hula girl? A bleeding crucifix? Maybe “Mom” written in scrolling letters? No, definitely not Mom.

  “Here. Look.” Carefully Nate lifted off two of the adhesive strips. Rannie took note that he winced and didn’t feel at all sorry for him. The patch of skin underneath was angry looking, swollen.

  “Is that a lightning bolt?”

  “Yeah, and below it says ‘TCB.’ That stands for ‘Taking—’ ”

  “I know what it stands for. Taking Care of Business. I don’t get it. What possessed you to do this? You’re not even an Elvis fan.”

  She managed to stand up, and because nothing came to mind as far as what additional statement she might make, she made do with “This conversation is not over, Nate. And there will be consequences.”

  As she walked down the hall to her bedroom, Rannie realized what she wanted was someone to commiserate with. Who else had a teenager with raging testosterone and no common sense? Her ex-husband of course. But Peter at forty-five had recently begun sporting an earring. So his response might be “A tat? Cool!” In fact, it wasn’t totally beyond the realm of possibility that the tattooing was some nutty father/son bonding experience, with Peter in California also nursing a swollen arm right now.

  She tried Tim again and left a message. Was he incommunicado because (A) he didn’t want to speak to her. Or (B) he didn’t want to speak to her.

  There was Joan, the mother of Nate’s best friend, Ben. As acting head of Chapel for the current year, Joan was far less accessible than in the past, her days spent handling faculty concerns and budgets, her nights taken up with fund-raising events and mandatory socializing with parents at Chapel functions. Rannie and Joan had met in the Riverside Park playground when Nate and Ben were toddlers and they, like their sons, had grown up together, celebrating good times and offering solace during bad stretches. Joan was a sensible parent, whose inclination was to look on the bright side.

  Rannie dialed. “Hi, Joanie,” she said.

  Immediately on hearing Rannie’s voice, Joan let out a shriek, a shriek nearly identical in length and pitch to the piercing one that Rannie had let out only a few minutes earlier.

  “Ben got inked too?”

  “What a fucking moron!” Joan yelled. “Japanese pictograms on the inside of his arm. Ben doesn’t even eat sushi!”

  Joan supplied some details. After school, the boys had gone down to the East Village near St. Mark’s Place. “Some place that does piercing, tattoos, and—oh, I almost forgot!” Joan paused for effect. “They also sell used shoes. Ben let that slip.”

  Joan was not making Rannie feel better. Used shoes? Did that mean it wasn’t even a successful tattoo parlor but one with old rusting needles, a place that needed to branch out into other equally unhygienic businesses in order to stay afloat? Rannie knew that particular stretch of the East Village from years past when she’d escort Nate, usually Ben, too, to their favorite comic book store on St. Mark’s. Back then the raunchy tattoo parlors and stores with sex toys had intimidated the boys: they’d walk fast, heads down, as if wearing blinders, until they were through the front door of Comicazi. Oh, how times had changed.

  “Ben’s got his interview at Wesleyan tomorrow. For all I know the tattoo says, ‘Wanna fuck?’. . . . Oh,
God! What if his interviewer is Japanese!”

  It turned out that Ben’s interview was at two. Joan’s husband had planned on taking half a day off to drive Ben to Middletown, Connecticut; however, since Nate’s noon interview in New Haven would certainly be over by one o’clock latest, Rannie offered her services.

  “Really? Howard’s not eager to take the time off. And I have a board of trustees meeting.”

  “Then it’s settled.”

  Joan was still hesitating—“I feel like I’m imposing”—and mentioned that Ben knew somebody else from Chaps was also having an interview at Wesleyan tomorrow. “I could find out who it is and give a call.”

  “I like it that you’re imposing. You’ll be indebted to me. Okay?”

  “Since you put it that way.” Then right before they hung up, Joan said, “Is it really true that you let Olivia Werner sleep over the other night?”

  “Um, am I speaking to my old friend or to the acting head of Chapel School?”

  “Both, I guess.”

  “In that case, tell Ben to be at our house at eight thirty.”

  The next morning, when Rannie pulled up in front of the Dolores Court in a red Honda, rented from Avis on Seventy-Fifth Street, Ben was there as promised. She buzzed 6B on the intercom. Nate didn’t answer but a minute later he emerged from the building. He looked tired and grumpy.

  Well, that makes two of us, thought Rannie, who had not slept well. Another phone call to Tim last night had produced nothing except his voice message.

  Ben and Nate greeted each other with a nod; both slid into the backseat, earbuds attached to separate iPods, and were asleep in five minutes.

  The drive to New Haven normally took an hour and a half unless there was traffic. Then all bets were off. “Leave at eight thirty! That’s nuts,” Nate had muttered last night. “The interview’s at noon. What? Are you gonna drive like ten miles an hour?”

  “Departure time is not up for discussion.” On Rannie’s last trip in September to drop off Alice and all her paraphernalia, road work on the Merritt and an accident near Milford had resulted in a three-hour ordeal.