Almost True Confessions

by Jane O'Connor

  Of course. Ret’s book was dedicated to her. Sister Dorothy Cusack.

  “Larry, do you happen to know who Gery Antioch is? Gery with a ‘g’ and just one ‘r.’ He’s in the acknowledgments, too.”

  “Nope. She never mentioned that name. I know the nun is up in Westchester. Sisters of the Traveling Pants? Ret drove up regularly to see her. The funeral is tomorrow, by the way, at the nunnery—is that what you call it?

  “Convent, more likely,” Rannie replied. She was attempting to work her way through the first quarter of the Rodney Dangerfield.

  “They’re getting the entire estate. Every nickel. I said to Ret, ‘What on earth do nuns need with a Rolls? Leave it to me.’ Maybe if I’d shtooped her, she would have.”

  A grim flashback—Ret, half naked and tied to her bed—suddenly assaulted Rannie. Ret’s tongue lolling from a hole that bore no resemblance to a mouth. Rannie put down her sandwich—suddenly the sight of all the sliced, fleshy-pink meat, not to mention the oozing coleslaw, was revolting. Larry, however, was eyeing the Rodney Dangerfield hungrily. She was not feeling generous toward him, yet there was no possible way to finish this behemoth, so she sighed with irritation and pushed the plate toward him.

  Once he finished it, his expression turned contemplative. “Listen. I’m sorry I didn’t catch all of what you said about Ellen before. What I heard was nice, from the heart.”

  “I came right after the CEO. All she talked about was the end-of-year forecast for Ellen’s books, how this was her best year ever for the company. She actually quoted gross versus net revenue.”

  “I don’t understand why Ellen didn’t leave Simon. They never even made her a VP.”

  “I know Penguin made her a good offer not long ago.” Then Rannie waited a beat and said, “I also know you two were seeing each other. You never said.”

  “No, I didn’t.” Larry licked a shred of mustard-infused coleslaw off his pinkie finger. “And really, is it any of your business?”

  “Fair enough, Larry, but then don’t act as though it’s crazy for me to be suspicious of you. You’ve been keeping a lot of secrets.”

  “Okay. I’ll tell you this. It was Ellen who didn’t want to go public. Initially, we got back in touch because of Ret’s book . . . then, well, it kind of went from there. Ellen was up front about that dick Wall Street trader, how she wasn’t over him. So I guess you could say she was using me. Fine. I didn’t mind.”

  Larry, arms crossed, gazed hard at Rannie and said, “You know what I always liked about you? You have a gleam in your eye as if you’re about to get in trouble. A born cutie pie.”

  The compliment came out of left field and made her squirm. “I’m forty-three. Way too old for cute.”

  “I’ll rephrase—I still find you very appealing and I’d jump into bed with you again in a heartbeat. But I don’t need to prove my innocence to you. The only people who need convincing are the police.”

  “When did you last see Ellen?”

  “Sunday for a late lunch. She was freaked out about Ret and scared for herself. I thought she was being overly neurotic. I tried to talk her into staying at my place for a few nights, rather than running off to the Caribbean. If she’d listened to me, maybe she’d still be alive.”

  The waiter passed by and Rannie asked for the check, waving away Larry’s offer to pay. She didn’t want to be indebted in any way, shape, or form. It was queasy-making to hear him talk about still being attracted to her, right after leaving a memorial get-together for Ellen. As she grabbed her coat from the wall rack, she turned businesslike, assuring him the freelance work he’d assigned would be done by Friday, Monday latest.

  Larry squeezed out of the booth and glanced at his watch. “I didn’t realize how late it was. . . . I guess I should head back to the office. Or I suppose I could just go home.” He smiled a languid smile at Rannie, letting the last sentence hang.

  Was this an indirect invitation to his apartment? If so, Rannie chose not to get the hint and instead suggested a different destination. “Maybe now’s the time, Larry, to pop by the Twenty-Fourth Precinct. Take the lie detector test or do whatever to clear your name once and for all.” Then with a “see ya” wave, Rannie strode to the corner of Fifty-Fifth Street in the direction of the Broadway subway entrance at Columbus Circle.

  Rannie beat her mother home. She changed out of her suit and after dropping it off at the dry cleaners, picked up a bottle of the merlot that, in recent years, her once-abstemious mother had come to favor. Rannie put it in the fridge. “So what if it’s gauche,” Harriet would always declare. “I happen to like red wine cold.”

  The message light, which had not been blinking on her earlier return to the apartment, now was.

  It was Tim!

  Rannie was initially thrilled and then not so thrilled. She listened to the message several times to parse its meaning.

  “Rannie, listen, I need to talk. Don’t bother trying me. I’ll call again, probably sometime tonight.”

  Needing to talk had to be construed as a good thing, right? It meant he wasn’t done with her completely. Yet there was a businesslike brusqueness to his words that didn’t sound like he wanted to kiss and make up. If Tim had kept lots of stuff at her house, she might have interpreted the call as figuring out when he could come by to retrieve it. However, except for a paperback thriller he’d finished on a recent Sunday and maybe a ratty running shirt or two, there was nada belonging to him.

  Also, why call on her landline? His modus operandi was to call her cell, usually several times on the fly, until the game of phone tag ended and they’d finally connect in real time. This landline message seemed so purposeful, like setting up an appointment.

  If only she could call Ellen to help dissect every single syllable of Tim’s message. This was exactly the kind of situation—romantic upheaval—that Ellen relished. She could almost hear Ellen giggling and saying how they were still seventh-grade girls at heart. At Simon this afternoon, Rannie had mentioned how much she would miss Ellen; yet right now was the first real instance of that. Up till this very moment, the horror of Ellen’s death had blotted out any normal feelings of loss.

  By four thirty, Nate—along with Olivia—arrived. “She’s gonna stay for dinner,” he said.

  “I better call Grandma. She’s going to cook—”

  Nate cut Rannie off. “No need. We texted. She knows and it’s fine.”

  Harriet texting. Okay, add texting to the “most unlikely to” list that already included JDating and ménage à trois.

  Soon the intercom buzzer rang. It was Harriet.

  “I’m downstairs and need help with the groceries.”

  “Grandma, you way overtipped the cabdriver,” Nate was saying a moment later as he, Olivia, and Harriet, all toting bags from Fairway, came through the door and proceeded to the kitchen. Harriet also was holding a drum-shaped Saks hatbox, circa 1961, which she handed to Rannie. “From Mary,” she said. “You never mentioned you were going to Charlotte Cummings’s funeral Saturday. How la di da! Imagine who you’ll see.”

  “Wish I could sneak you in,” Rannie replied. Harriet was a devotee of Vanity Fair and the upscale boldface names covered in its pages. “The only reason I’m—”

  “Oh, I heard why you’re going and ‘what a darling you are,’ ‘what an absolute angel’ to take Mary’s friend.” Harriet had always been a pretty good mimic and now managed to capture the cadence of Mary’s speech, the way Mary underlined certain words. “The friend—Daisy, is it?—arrived for dinner just as I was leaving; it wasn’t even four thirty and she was half crocked!” Harriet harrumphed softly while unpacking grocery bags. “Maybe she’d be steadier on her feet if she drank less.”

  As Rannie retrieved cutting boards, mixing bowls, and the spices needed for the chicken dish that Harriet was preparing—within the family known as “Poule à la Harriet”—Rannie wondered whether she hadn’t caught wind of something else, jealousy maybe over the relationship Rannie shared with her fo
rmer mother-in-law.

  “Nate and I try to have dinner with her once a week. Mary’s been so lonely since Walter died,” Rannie said, hoping to imply that duty trumped enjoyment. “It hasn’t even been a year and a half.”

  Harriet nodded and seemed mollified. “I know. We had lunch in the museum cafeteria after the Degas exhibit and all we discussed was being widows. I said, ‘I wish I could tell you it gets better. It doesn’t, but it does get easier.’ She’s such a lovely woman. I mentioned that travel helps. Maybe if she learned mah-jongg, she’d like to come on a cruise with the girls and me.”

  Rannie looked up from the garlic she was mincing. Yes. Her mother, although never known for a sense of humor, had been kidding.

  All during dinner Rannie kept an ear cocked for Tim’s call. It didn’t come until an hour later when all the dishes were done, casserole dish soaking in the sink, and Harriet, Olivia, and Nate were deep into Settlers of Catan, a board game that had utterly confounded Rannie the couple of times she’d tried to play, but that Harriet seemed to pick up with no problem.

  “Sweet move, Grandma!” she heard Nate cry.

  Rannie was in her bedroom trying on the loaner funeral hats, trying to decide which of the three looked least ridiculous on her. Definitely not the teensy navy velvet beanie with a veil. Maybe a tall svelte type could pull it off. It made Rannie look eerily like Mamie Eisenhower.

  The phone rang and Rannie lunged for it, then forced herself to wait until the middle of the second ring to pick up.

  “Hello,” she said, her voice distinctly aquiver, but when Tim said, “It’s me, Rannie,” he sounded nervous too, so they were even.

  “Now a good time?”

  She really did love the sound of his voice, Boston Irish accent and all.

  “Now’s fine. I’m glad you called. I’ve been wanting to call you. The only reason I didn’t . . . was, well, I was scared you didn’t want me to, after what you said in the car.”

  “I appreciate that.” Tim cleared his throat. “Look, this is important. I wouldn’t have gotten in touch otherwise.”

  Her stomach took a dive. He wasn’t calling because of a change of heart.

  “Okay, there’s no easy way to say this, so I’m just gonna spit it out. For your own good, you should stay away from Larry Katz. Don’t get involved with him.”

  Rannie’s brain went into hyperdrive. Was Larry under surveillance? Was she? Had a cop been watching them today? What about the other night at the Acropolis coffee shop? And Tim. His claims to being totally in the dark about the murders, was that bullshit? If so, why share now?

  “I’m, I’m not involved with him!” Rannie finally said. “He used to work at S&S ages ago. I told you about him—I know I did. We had a brief—I don’t know what to call it! A brief fling. It was right after Peter and I split up. Larry made me feel like I wasn’t a total loser. I think the police have got it all wrong, suspecting him of anything.” That last sentence was spoken with more certainty than she felt.

  “You know he was involved with your friend Ellen?”

  “As a matter of fact, I do.”

  “And his marriage? You know about that too?”

  “I know it didn’t last long.”

  “He married a woman with a seventeen-year-old daughter. His wife threw him out of the house and took out an order of protection. Rannie, she said he was hitting on the kid.”

  Poule à la Harriet lurched in her stomach. “I don’t believe it.”

  “It’s a matter of public record.” Tim paused. “Also, he was at Ret Sullivan’s apartment the day she was killed. That morning.”

  Larry had told her he hadn’t seen Ret in a month. Another lie.

  “Everything I’m telling you I heard just this afternoon. No more than a few hours ago.”

  “Someone saw me with Larry today, right? Someone who knows me from the bar.”

  “Yeah. The cops are keeping an eye on him.”

  After they hung up, Rannie went straight to the bathroom and threw up every bit of poule.

  “Rannie, are you sick?” Harriet was suddenly shouting from the other side of the door.

  Jesus Christ! With her mother here, it was impossible even to vomit in peace. “I’ll be all right. Just give me a minute.”

  “Can I get you some ginger ale, some tea maybe? I’m sure it wasn’t the chicken. Everybody else is fine. Listen, let me check my purse. I always carry Alka-Seltzer.”

  Rannie splashed water on her face and sat on the rim of the tub, taking deep slow breaths to calm herself while trying to block out everything Tim had told her. “Take care.” Those had been his parting words on the phone. He might as well have said, “Have a nice life.” But that was Tim. Once he made a decision, he stuck with it. Like quitting drinking or training for a marathon. His inflexibility often worked in his favor; in this particular situation, it worked against hers. Tim would not see her again. Of that she was sure.

  A moment later Rannie forced down the glass of Alka-Seltzer that Harriet appeared with. Easier than arguing with her mother, and oddly enough it did help settle her stomach.

  Ushered into bed, Rannie allowed her mother to feel her forehead with the back of her hand. “Cool as a cucumber,” pronounced Harriet. “Probably one of those twenty-four-hour things. Get a good night’s sleep. You know where to find me, if you need anything.”

  Harriet blew Rannie a kiss and turned off the overhead light as she left. Then, just as she’d done on umpteen million nights as a kid when she wanted to stay up late reading, Rannie counted to fifty, turned on her bedside lamp, and reached for her copy of Tattletale. She remembered a long chapter on the convent where Ret had grown up and where now she would be buried. Rannie was interested in the convent’s exact location.

  Previously Rannie had skimmed the chapters on Ret’s childhood; now she read them with greater attention. It was a dispiriting story. Ret had never known her father. She was an infant when he went out to buy the proverbial pack of cigarettes and split for good. At age five, upon the death of her mother, Ret was sent to live at the Sisters of Mercy orphanage in Pound Ridge, New York, which was only about an hour or so from Manhattan.

  By Lina/Ret’s account, the orphanage was a caring place, a safe haven with bucolic grounds. And yes indeed, Sister Dorothy Cusack had played a major role in young Ret’s life. Rannie immediately grasped what had first drawn Ret to her. Sister Dorothy was a celebrity nun. Before taking vows, she’d enjoyed a brief career as a movie star, costarring in two Elvis movies. The nun came across as smart, warm, and energetic. Ret saw her first Broadway musical courtesy of Sister Dorothy; Sister Dorothy encouraged Ret’s interest in writing; Sister Dorothy told the children, “This world is yours. Get involved!,” and proudly wore JFK buttons on her habit throughout the 1960 campaign. And far from doing a hard sell on the joys of becoming a nun, Sister Dorothy had convinced Ret that “a different path awaited her.”

  As Lina Struvel, Ret quoted herself as saying, “Sister Dorothy is a beautiful human being. No one knows me better than she does. No one. She is the only person who truly loves me and though that may sound sad, I feel incredibly fortunate. Her love is so great that it equals the love of hundreds of lesser people.”

  In spite of herself, Rannie started wondering exactly when tomorrow Ret’s funeral was, whether it was open to outsiders, and how long it took to get to the convent by train. Was there even a remote possibility that Sister Dorothy would speak to her afterward?

  Of course, there was Harriet to take into consideration. That stopped Rannie cold. Maybe she wasn’t the world’s most dutiful daughter. Still, in good conscience she couldn’t see herself ditching her mother to go on some cockamamy sleuthing expedition. Tomorrow they’d spend time together, whatever Harriet wanted to do.

  With that she turned off the light, and when sleep refused to come, an Ativan did the trick. . . . Out went the lights.

  Chapter 19

  It turned out that Harriet was ditching Rannie.

  T
he next morning over coffee when Rannie said brightly, “Mother, I am at your disposal. Whatever you’d like to do today, just name it.”

  “Ooh. I’m so sorry. I made plans last night with Olivia.”

  “Olivia? As in Nate’s Olivia?”

  “We’re spending the day shopping. She can get into all the wholesale places. Designer stuff at a fraction of the price. And we’ll have a car and driver at our disposal.”

  “But it’s a school day.”

  “She told me all seniors have a certain number of personal days.”

  True, but they were meant for traveling to college interviews, not for chauffeured shopping sprees.

  “You’re welcome to join us if you’d like.”

  Rannie loathed shopping, as her mother well knew. Everything about it was anathema to her, prying apart hangers in jam-packed racks of clothes, waiting in line for a hot, claustrophobic dressing room with harsh lighting, getting in and out of dresses or trousers that were always the wrong size, the wrong color, the wrong price.

  “One place sells perfect knockoffs of St. John suits.”

  St. John suits were, in her mother’s eyes, the ne plus ultra, the last word in elegance. That St. John suits were themselves basically knockoffs of Chanel designs was never an issue.

  “You two go. You’ll have more fun without me.”

  At ten o’clock Olivia buzzed up for Harriet. Across the street, Rannie spotted a silver Jag, double parked, Olivia in the backseat, taking a final drag of a cigarette before chucking it out the window. A minute later Harriet came scurrying out to the car, casting furtive glances left and right, on the lookout for early-rising hoodlums. The chauffeur jumped out and escorted her into the safety of the Jaguar.

  Door closed, they were off!

  Alone at last. Rannie looked up the phone number of the convent and called. “My name is Miranda Bookman. I’m calling about the funeral for Ret Sullivan. I used to work at Simon & Schuster, that’s how I knew Ms. Sullivan. Could you tell me, please, is the funeral open to—” What was the appropriate term here? Non-nuns? Unbelievers? Outsiders?