Chapter 22
So that must be Godelieve, patron saint of sore throats,” Rannie said, bearing forth a tray with the requested tumbler of gin and plate of buttered saltines on it. The painting, positioned between two windows in Daisy’s bedroom, was much smaller than Rannie had expected, not all that much bigger than a cereal box, and judging from the deep crack that ran through Godelieve’s blue gown, it had never been subjected to the TLC of F. Anthony Weld. F. Anthony? How many people used a first initial when introducing themselves?
Daisy motioned impatiently for the gin. “Ghastly painting. But there’s no way I’ll part with it.” She was reclining on a chaise lounge covered in faded chintz, the back of her free hand pressed against her forehead, very southern Gothic, very late Tennessee Williams.
Rannie set down the tray and went over to inspect Daisy’s miracle worker. Godelieve was no beauty but who looked their best hanging from a tree? Besides bulging eyes and death’s head grin, Godelieve had wispy hair and an unnaturally broad expanse of forehead, as if she was suffering from the early onset of female pattern baldness. Rannie had once read somewhere that in the 1400s, upper-class ladies plucked their hairline way back for a noble-looking brow. Oh, the vagaries of fashion!
“All the poor thing wanted was to become a nun. Prayed day and night. But she got married off when she was still a child and had a mother-in-law from hell. She tried to behead Godelieve. Then tried drowning her. Finally hanging did the trick. Do you see the mother-in-law peeking from behind a tree?”
Rannie squinted. “No . . . Oh, maybe.”
“The painting’s a wreck. It’s my fault. For years I kept it right over my bed in direct sunlight. Then when it cracked, I moved Godelieve. She and my grandmother traded places.”
That accounted for the frame of brighter floral wallpaper around the actual frame, evidence that a larger painting had once occupied this spot. Suddenly Rannie experienced a disorienting flash of déjà vu, then it fled, and she turned to look at the painting over Daisy’s four-poster, a sizable portrait of a jowly dowager, circa 1920, in a lavender dress and formidable pearls.
Rannie was about to comment on the startling resemblance Daisy bore to her grandmother when Daisy said, “I don’t care what happens to that painting. My grandmother was dreadful. She terrified me. When I was small, if I misbehaved, she’d rap my knuckles with her cane.”
Moments later, Mary arrived with lunch for everyone in Tupperware containers.
“Earla’s cod balls?”
Mary nodded.
“Oh, Mims, how you spoil me!” Daisy exclaimed.
They repaired to the lugubrious elegance of the dining room (dining “ruhm” in these ladies’ boarding school parlance) where more portraits of Daisy’s ancestors surrounded them and watched disapprovingly as they ate. More gin for Daisy and a “well, if you insist” drink for Mary.
“I’ll tell you this, I have simply had it with funerals,” Daisy declared. “The next one I attend will be my own. That’s a promise.”
“Poor Rannie. Daisy must have given you quite a scare.”
Rannie was eyeing her cod ball. She doused it with ketchup and tried holding her breath while swallowing the first bite.
“Oh, pssh. I faint all the time,” Daisy said dismissively. “Last month it was at the Food Emporium, in the frozen food aisle.”
“Was it a beautiful service?” Mary inquired brightly. “I love it when the boys’ choir sings, but they never do funerals. Too upsetting for the little fellows, I suppose.”
“I didn’t see a soul I knew, Mims. I looked for Helen Dunham.”
“Dear, Helen’s been hooked up to a feeding tube at NewYork-Presbyterian for months. You know that.”
From there the conversation turned to Charlotte Cummings, Mary exclaiming over the length of the obituary in the New York Times. “A full page! Can you imagine!”
“Did you know I was interviewed for Charlotte’s obituary?” Daisy said.
“No, really?”
“This was”—Daisy paused with a forkful of cod ball in midair—“oh, many months ago. A reporter from the Times called and came up to the apartment. For important people, their obituary is written beforehand and updated from time to time. Well, we chatted for a good long while but nothing I told him ended up in the paper.” Daisy smiled, almost coyly. “It’s just as well. Somehow he got me on the subject of Silas and I’m afraid I wasn’t very discreet. I said some awful things.”
“I don’t know why everyone was always so hard on Silas. He was always very pleasant to me.” Mary dabbed her lips with a napkin.
“That’s your problem, Mims. You think the best of everyone!”
“I do not!” Mary defended herself staunchly.
“Silas was dreadful.” Daisy was addressing Rannie now. “Gas attacks that could wake the dead. And I never saw a hairier man in my life. At the club all the little children used to race out of the pool whenever Silas took a swim. He looked like a gorilla.”
A bit of cod ball stuck in Rannie’s throat. Daisy’s descriptions of Silas had appeared almost verbatim in Portrait of a Lady, except in the book, “gas attacks” had been changed to the more vernacular “farts” and the “gorilla” had grown to “King Kong.” Ret Sullivan taking literary license.
“Honestly, Daisy, how you love to exaggerate.”
“Well, Mims, you won’t deny that Silas’s first wife palmed him off on Charlotte.” Daisy launched into a long anecdote, one that Rannie already knew from having copyedited it only days ago. “Silas’s first wife felt guilty leaving him—Lord knows why—and wouldn’t start divorce proceedings until she’d lined up a replacement wife.”
Mary was draining her gin, then said, “I never heard that.”
“It wasn’t common knowledge, Mims,” Daisy said tersely. “Silas knew he was no picnic in the park. So he came to Charlotte with doctors’ letters outlining all his medical problems. Swore he’d be dead within five years and his estate would be hers. Then they get married and Silas lives for eons! When it came to dying, Silas was almost as stubborn as Charlotte.”
Rannie was ready with a plausible-sounding fib. “A friend of mine dates a guy at the Times who writes some of the big obituaries. Do you happen to remember who interviewed you?”
Daisy didn’t, but her description nailed Larry. Tall, gray-haired, and “disheveled. He looked as if he’d slept in his clothes.”
Surprise, surprise. Daisy Satterthwaite, unwittingly, had been one of Audeo’s sources, a big, loose-lipped one! Rannie bet Larry had come with phony credentials that Daisy never thought to question. After all, Bibi Gaines had bought Larry’s masquerading as an art scholar and Bibi seemed far less gullible than Daisy.
“I showed the reporter the album from Charlotte’s one-hundredth birthday. What a party that was!”
Rannie didn’t have to ask to see the album; Mary beat her to it.
Back in the bedroom, cursing how she had no memory left, Daisy finally unearthed the album and they all sat on the chaise, Daisy in the middle. The album was covered in sunburst yellow needlepoint. Charlotte Cummings’s initials and the date were stitched in dark blue in the lower right corner. As they flipped through the pages that documented the gala held in the New York Public Library at Forty-Second Street, photos of Charlotte Cummings—looking pretty hale for a woman who had hit triple digits—showed her in a canary yellow evening gown. She had been decked out in yellow the other night, lying comatose in bed.
“Oh!” Rannie exclaimed. “Bibi Gaines wore yellow to the funeral, because it was her grandmother’s favorite color. And the ushers. They had yellow freesia in their lapels.”
From Mary: “Isn’t that a lovely gesture.”
From Daisy, grudgingly: “I suppose. She still looked like a stick of margarine. . . . I couldn’t tell whether Barbara was”—Daisy hesitated, searching for the appropriate word—“all right, if you know what I mean. I only caught a glimpse of her.”
“That’s all ancient history,
” Mary replied. “Whenever I run into her, she seems absolutely fine. Has for years.”
Were they referring to Bibi’s alcoholism? If so, that was surprising given that Mary seemed to consider heavy drinking a birthright of the wellborn. Everyone she knew drank too much, so you couldn’t call it a problem.
“Mims, you don’t know the half of it.” Daisy shut the album and addressed Rannie. “Did you notice there were no pictures of Barbara at the birthday party? That was because she came high as a kite. Kept trying to dance with a waiter, and she interrupted all the toasts.” Turning back to Mary. “You’ll notice she still always wears long sleeves. Even if it’s ninety degrees out.”
Hold on a second! Was this about drugs? Something administered with a needle and that left track marks . . . as in heroin or—even more unimaginable—crack? Bibi Gaines, an alcoholic. Okay. Understood. But jonesing, a monkey on her back? She was so not the type. But then, Rannie reminded herself, neither was Olivia’s brother, Grant, equally fair-haired, equally privileged. And hadn’t Tim told her that often people in AA had struggled with a double addiction—booze and drugs.
“You never liked Barbara. That’s all there is to it,” Mary stated with finality.
“How could I like her when she caused her mother—my best friend!—so much pain? If melanoma hadn’t killed poor Madeline, worrying over Barbara would have. In and out of Silver Hill—”
Daisy didn’t get the chance to finish her sentence.
“Daisy! Really!” Mary was aghast. “Why are you going on about this?” Mary rose and held on to the back of the chaise to steady herself. She was tipsy. “I think perhaps Rannie and I should be going.” Her voice quavered. It was testament to Mary’s good breeding that she didn’t like to dish, but dammit, couldn’t she let Daisy spill a little more?
Mary was gathering up her purse and muttering, “None of this is anything Rannie wants to hear.”
Au contraire! Rannie definitely wanted to hear more. And Daisy could tell. Nevertheless, when Mary said stiffly, “Don’t bother seeing us out, dear,” Rannie had no choice but to follow. At the door to the bedroom, Rannie turned to wave good-bye. Daisy remained on the chaise, sulking, like a child whose party had ended too early.
Chapter 23
Rannie ruminated over a PB&J sandwich in the sanctity of her empty apartment. Had Daisy “chatted” about Barbara Gaines to Larry/Audeo/phony New York Times obit writer? Most likely. Then Rannie changed her mind. Almost certainly. Yet there hadn’t been one disparaging word about Bibi in Portrait of a Lady. She took another contemplative bite. Would there be any harm in calling Larry and pumping him about Bibi Gaines?
Do it! Her bad angel, appearing out of nowhere, started egging Rannie on. Don’t you want to hear everything Daisy told him? You know you do!
Don’t listen to her! She doesn’t have your best interests at heart. Her good angel had arrived on the scene now. Remember Larry Katz was hitting on you and Ellen barely dead. Stay away from him!
Rannie wanted to listen to the counsel of her good angel. She really did. The trouble was she now pictured her good angel as looking a lot like Godelieve, or the way Godelieve would have looked before being strung up—the eyes not so bulging, but still a prissy goody-goody. A party pooper. Then, suddenly Rannie stopped with the good angel/bad angel nonsense and fixated on standing in Daisy’s bedroom, encountering Godelieve, noticing the extra “frame” of brighter wallpaper around the painting. It wasn’t a wave of déjà vu that had washed over Rannie: coming face-to-face with Godelieve had jogged a memory, Rannie now realized, a fleeting memory of entering Ret Sullivan’s bedroom and noticing the painting of a sweet Madonna on the wall just an instant before absorbing the horrific sight of Ret murdered.
The Madonna in Ret’s bedroom had been set against a frame of brighter wall paint, what, to Rannie, had appeared almost like a rectangular halo. According to Sister Dorothy, greeting card Madonnas were not to Ret’s taste even when she was a child. Another painting had previously hung in the same spot in Ret’s bedroom. Maybe that meant something.
Larry claimed never to have entered the inner sanctum. Whether that was true or not, Ret’s steady Saturday afternoon date, the gym instructor with the police record, must have. Many times.
A quick online search of the first erroneous news reports about Ret’s murder brought up the guy’s name—Gerald Steele—and where he worked—the Equinox Club on Broadway and Fiftieth Street. What better time than the present to begin a new regime of physical fitness! Rannie called Equinox inquiring about membership and whether she might try out the facilities.
Of course she could, an eager receptionist told her. “I don’t know if you’re aware but, for a limited time only, an individual training session comes free for new members.”
Oh, the stars were aligning! “That’s wonderful. That’s perfect. . . . Friends have raved about a particular trainer. Gerald Steele.”
“Gerry. He’s great. The best!”
“I know this is awfully last minute. But might he have something at around three o’clock today?” Rannie inquired. He no longer had a standing appointment with Ret, so there was a fair chance the time slot was open.
The receptionist suddenly sounded suspicious. “You have to sign a membership contract before you get the free session. And if you cancel after signing up, you owe us for the training session.” She told Rannie the amount.
A hundred dollars. Gulp . . . “No problem.”
Rannie was put on hold while the receptionist checked the schedule sheet.
“How does four o’clock sound?” It sounded perfect.
Rannie stripped off her navy suit and arrived ten minutes ahead of time, clad in Yale track pants that belonged to Alice and a pair of her high-topped sneakers. Once the paperwork was signed and her credit card cleared, she entered the vast expanse of machines—rows of people on treadmills and StairMasters and stationary bikes, everyone expending tremendous amounts of energy to get absolutely nowhere. In an adjacent room a group of old ladies in leotards were waving their arms over their head to the music of Donna Summer. “And again, ladies! To the count of ten!” a peppy instructor shouted.
At one point during her ten-year stint at S&S, Rannie had taken advantage of a greatly discounted yearlong membership at a sports club near the office, persuaded by Ellen that somehow it would be fun to sweat together at lunchtime. Rannie had gone exactly once, the inaugural week of her membership, managing to fall off an exercise bike during a spinning class. After that, she rationalized the money blown by viewing the yearly fee as something akin to vaccination: you paid and you were inoculated, the very fact of belonging to a gym being nearly as beneficial as actually using its facilities.
“Are you Rainy?” A stocky bowlegged guy in his midthirties carrying a clipboard was approaching her. He had either missed a spot shaving, right under his chin, or else sported the world’s teensiest soul patch.
“Rannie. Rhymes with Annie.”
“Gerry.” He held out a hand. He wore a silver thumb ring. “So first why don’t you tell me why you’re here, what you want to work on?” Taking a step back, he gave her a quick head-to-toe assessment. “You don’t look like there’s an ounce of fat on you. That’s good. Maybe for this session we do a general evaluation?”
Rannie had only an hour. She cut to the chase. “I don’t want to work out.”
He blew through his lips. “How many times have I heard that? Nobody does, not at first.” He smiled. White even teeth that looked natural, not capped. “You haven’t worked out in years, am I right? But now you’ve decided to do something good for yourself . . .”
“No. I mean it. I didn’t come here to work out. I came here to talk to you. Look. I knew Ret Sullivan. I was who found her body.”
The nice smile vanished.
“Are you shitting me? What the hell is this about?”
“Please! I just blew a hundred bucks. I figured if I called asking to talk about Ret, you’d hang up.”
“You got that one right. I told everything I knew to the cops, who, you probably know, led me out of here in handcuffs.”
“I paid for an hour of your time.”
“An hour of my professional time,” he countered. “And by the way, you have lousy muscle tone. Want to start with some upper-body strengthening exercises?”
“Please. I wouldn’t be doing this except I’m scared. Another friend of mine was murdered. Just this past Monday. She knew Ret too.”
He was shaking his head. “There’s been nothing about anybody connected to Ret Sullivan getting killed.” He tucked his clipboard under his arm and started walking away. Rannie kept pace with him and in a low voice said, “The runner who was attacked in the park. The police are keeping her connection to Ret quiet.”
He stopped in his tracks. “For real?”
From her tote, Rannie produced her credit card holder, which still contained some S&S business cards. She handed him one. “All of Ret’s books were published by Simon & Schuster. A new one will be out very shortly. I think the murders are somehow related to the book. . . . The woman killed in Central Park was Ret’s editor and I was her copy editor.”
“Copy editor?”
“Checking grammar, spelling, correcting dates.”
He didn’t look impressed; no one ever was.
“Listen. I’m scared I’m in danger, and the cops aren’t doing squat to protect me.” Exaggerating her fear factor and disparaging the NYPD seemed to be working.
He exhaled in a slow, resigned way. “I’m telling you, I know nothing. She and I weren’t exactly close friends.”
“Just a few questions.”
At a table in the health bar up front, while sipping a smoothie the color of baby poo, Gerald Steele explained that before her disfigurement Ret had been a longtime member of the club. “She took personal training sessions with me twice a week, oh, for maybe three or four years. I’ve got autographed copies of all her books, not that I read any of them; a couple of times she took me to movie screenings. In fact, she took me to the screening of Mike Bellettra’s last movie, the astronaut one.”
Almost True Confessions Page 21