by Abby Drake
Dana held the tea mug to her lips and stared at her son as if he’d just asked if she’d walked on the moon. “Yolanda?”
“Well,” he said, “she’s probably the one who gets the life insurance, or at least a bunch of money from his estate. Like everyone in New Falls, Vincent’s probably loaded, so it makes sense, doesn’t it?”
“Detective Johnson from the New Falls Police Department. Are you Lauren Halliday?”
Luckily Lauren had seen the cruiser pull into the driveway. She’d ducked behind the six-panel, early nineteenth-century Chinese screen with the soapstone inlaid artwork of cranes and pine trees and other images that symbolized long life in the Asian culture. Her husband had shipped it home from Canton as part of his efforts to deny his oncoming mortality.
“Mrs. Halliday is not available.” Florence had been around since before Bob’s first wife died. When it came to protecting the family, she was tougher than a pair of big-toothed sentry dogs.
“We’ll wait,” the detective said.
Silence followed. She pictured Florence, hands on square hips, eyes narrowed and glaring.
More silence.
Could they hear Lauren breathing?
Perspiration rose on her forehead. She remembered the time when she’d been a kid, trapped in the closet of her aunt’s bedroom at the house on Nantucket. She’d been hunting for her sandals; she’d thought her cousin Gracie had borrowed them. (Stolen was more like it.) But when she’d heard voices Lauren had closed the door. How was she supposed to know Uncle Raymond and Aunt Clara would choose that very moment in the middle of the day to have sex on the four-poster bed? Or that Uncle Raymond really did have sex on the brain the way she’d overheard Aunt Jane say to her mother?
“Maybe she’d rather come to the station,” the detective said now, and Lauren blinked back to the present and the Chinese screen and the bleak situation at hand.
She would not go to the station because that was where Kitty had gone and look where that had gotten her.
“Gentlemen,” she said, propelling herself from behind the screen, the courage to do so greater than the fear of ending up in a cell. “You must excuse my housekeeper. We’ve had some problems with men snooping because of my husband’s business. He deals with investors who are out of the country.” She knew it made no sense, but it was the best she could do. “Florence was merely doing her job.”
“If you have problems,” the detective said, “you should call the police.”
She smiled, but did not say she’d call. “How may I help you?” she asked, her Boston–Palm Beach–Nantucket upbringing usurping her terrified self.
“We’d like to know where you were at eleven-thirty in the morning the day Vincent DeLano was murdered.”
She tipped her head to one side as if she’d heard incorrectly.
Eleven-thirty.
Vincent.
Murdered.
The tiny squirt glands in the back of her throat suddenly spurted and she knew the next thing that would happen was that she would throw up.
“She was here,” Florence said. “Having a bath.”
Lauren turned to Florence. “Was I?” she asked, because she didn’t want to remember that day and because of course Florence would lie; she already had.
“Were you?” the detective asked.
“She was,” Florence added. “You were getting ready for Mrs. Meacham’s luncheon. I remember because I was laying out your ensemble. You wore your Mikimotos.”
Lauren’s hand went to her throat. “Yes,” she said. “I believe that’s correct.”
The phone rang. The little group paused. Eyes ping-ponged around.
“It’s okay, Florence,” Lauren said. “Answer the phone.”
The woman hesitated, then left the foyer with several looks over her shoulder.
“Is there anything else?” Lauren asked as if fully cooperating.
“Just one thing,” the detective said. “How well did you know Mr. DeLano?”
Lauren’s private school posture faltered only a second. Then Florence called out, “Mrs. Halliday!” and waddled back to the foyer carrying the cordless. “It’s for you. I believe it’s Shanghai.”
It wasn’t Shanghai; it was Dana.
“This is the first chance I’ve had to warn you,” Dana said in a rush. “The police might show up. Don’t tell them anything.”
“Yes,” Lauren said, “that’s wonderful news. Thank you so much for calling.” She clicked off the phone and asked the detective if they were finished. He repeated the question about Vincent, and Lauren simply said, “Well, he was Kitty’s husband, if that’s what you mean.”
Twelve
Dana decided Sam had a point—had anyone thought of Yolanda? Greed could be as much of a motive as a woman being scorned, couldn’t it?
The questions had kept her awake most of the night—that and the fact that Bridget had cancer.
All things considered, Dana would rather not be reminded about her mother.
In the morning she took one more trip to LaGuardia, this time with Ben, who was overloaded with sunscreen and jibes for his brother who would “rather hang out with old people.”
Sam told him to shut up and Ben told him to make him and Dana tuned them out, an art she’d perfected.
Sam had wanted to go with her to see Kitty, but Dana had said no, she didn’t think Kitty would be comfortable with that.
He’d argued that Kitty had two kids of her own, even though he thought both of them were kind of fucked up.
Dana had thrown him a look.
“Screwed up,” he said, amending his words. “Marvin and Elise. Marvin’s the biggest nerd on the planet; Elise is so hot she’s got her own calendar. Boob shots and everything.”
Dana didn’t need a translator to know what “everything” meant. “Do you have one?” she asked because of the small smile that turned up Sam’s mouth.
“One what?”
“One of her calendars?”
He hesitated long enough for a blush. “A couple of guys have them at school.”
So it was hot Elise, not a sociology paper, that was the real motivation behind Sam’s interest in the case: If he helped out the mother, he might wind up with the daughter.
How could Dana say no to her little boy who always had stood in the shadow of his more outgoing, get-all-the-girls brothers? How could she tell him that Elise, hot or not, would probably not be around?
She decided not to burst his testosterone bubble, so they now trekked to Tarrytown to the two-bedroom apartment without having called first because Sam said it would be best not to tip Kitty off that they were coming.
Dana didn’t know whether he was right, but she’d always been proud that her sons were smarter than she was.
Kitty was home.
“Come in,” she said, then quickly closed the door from the daylight that had leaked in with them.
“Kitty,” Dana said, “you remember my son Sam? One of my twins?”
Sam said, “Hello, Mrs. DeLano,” and Kitty blanched and told him to please call her Kitty.
Dana explained that Sam wanted to be a lawyer and would like to help out if he could.
Kitty said she didn’t care, which, by the looks of her place and herself, pretty much now covered everything in her life.
“Have a seat,” she said.
They cleared magazines off the couch and sat down. Sam’s knee landed too close to Kitty’s; he squirmed.
“Kitty,” Dana said, “there’s been some good news.”
“Yolanda’s dead, too?”
“Not that I know of. But according to the medical examiner’s report, the time of death was long before you were found at the scene.” It was hard to understand how Kitty could be wearing a bathrobe that was so old and threadbare. Dana averted her eyes.
“How early?”
She told her.
“Well,” Kitty said, “doesn’t that beat all.”
“Do you have an alibi for eleven-thirty
?” Sam piped up.
Dana cringed.
Kitty laughed. “My only plan for the day was to meet Vincent at the house with the rug dealer. Other than that, I was home. Alone. That’s a good alibi, isn’t it?”
Dana cleared her throat. “Well, the time difference means the police will investigate others. For instance, everyone at Caroline’s party who might have had…” She stammered there, and wished that she hadn’t. “Who might have known Vincent.”
“Yolanda included,” Sam said. “She should be a prime suspect.”
“Yolanda,” Kitty said again, as if it were a name she could never get used to.
“She could have done it for the money,” Sam said.
“What money?”
“His investment portfolio. Life insurance. The value of their house.”
Kitty laughed. “According to my divorce lawyer, Vincent didn’t have any money.”
She could have said the sky was green or the lawn was blue or her shabby apartment was going to be featured in Architectural Digest and it would have been more believable.
“But he bought her a house…”
“That wasn’t decorated yet.”
“And they planned to go to the gala. He’d bring a check…”
Kitty shrugged. “It hadn’t happened yet.”
“So?” Dana asked. “Is that proof he was broke?”
“No, but it explains why I’m living like this,” Kitty continued, sweeping her arm around someone’s idea of a home. “It is proof that my lawyer couldn’t find Vincent’s stash.”
“But do you believe it?” Sam asked.
Kitty sighed. “Vincent lost a few clients. But he knew how to make money. Besides. Look how Yolanda dresses. And pink diamonds? Pretty pricey, even for Vincent.”
The dim light settled in, cloaking the tale with a more dismal shroud.
“So it’s probably true,” Sam said. “Yolanda could have killed him for the money.” Then he hemmed and hawed, the same way Steven did when he was thinking. “Yolanda might know where Vincent hid his fortune. She could have known he was going to meet you. She could have shot him. She could have set you up, Mrs. DeLano.”
“Yes,” Kitty said, “I’ve wondered about that.”
Dana closed her eyes.
Once, she had hoped they’d accept her as Mrs. Vincent DeLano. They’d liked her, hadn’t they? Back when she’d scissored their hair and got rid of their gray and listened to their troubles, which, compared with hers, were a teeny piss hole in the snow?
She’d been good enough for that, but not for the rest.
Yolanda wiped a tear with her left hand as her right hand kept busy with a small can of spray paint.
She sniffed as she worked. She missed him, her Vincent. It hadn’t been her fault that he’d loved her more than he’d loved his wife, Kitty.
Kitty had been mean to him, or so he’d said. She’d hated sex: She said it was dirty. She hated that their son and their daughter were so successful, while she had no job or career because she’d gone to college only with the intent to find a rich guy, which she’d done.
Ha! Yolanda thought as she swirled a daisylike flower around the letters she had written. College won’t help Kitty now. Yolanda, of course, never had gone. She’d been raised in the Bronx, on the wrong side of most things, and had been lucky, real lucky, that her brother joined the army and sent money home for her to enroll in beauty school, the Big Apple School of Esthetology.
Her mother had gasped when she’d heard that word. “Well, aren’t you something?” she said when Yolanda got her letter of acceptance, which pretty much only meant the school had received her tuition deposit.
They never dreamed that ten years later, Yolanda would do a wash and set on a woman who lived in New Falls and was in the city for somebody’s funeral. It turned out that the woman (who’d been cursed with coarse hair) was so impressed with Yolanda’s work that she found her a job in the classy-ass town.
So, like the famous TV family George and Louise Jefferson, Yolanda Valdes moved on up.
The wives of New Falls didn’t know if she was black or white or Hispanic. Vincent once told her if they knew her real history—that her father had come from Cuba on a raft—an honest-to-God, freaking raft—they would take pity and stop giving her crap with their tips. He said they would love her like he did.
But she’d been too embarrassed to tell them.
Then Yolanda got pregnant.
She figured he’d offer to pay for an abortion though she wouldn’t have one. She was thirty by then, and most men around there didn’t want a woman whose skin was darker than theirs and whose family had lived in a ghetto.
Besides, Yolanda had always wanted a baby.
The best she hoped for was that Vincent would pay her rent until she could go back to work.
She never, ever imagined he’d leave Kitty and ask her to marry him.
But he went to Vegas, and six weeks later they married, and three weeks after that, Yolanda miscarried.
Vincent said they could try again. He really did love her, she guessed.
She dabbed a big dot in the center of the flower, then wiped another tear because no matter how hard she’d tried the women laughed at her, had wanted to laugh right out loud when Kitty showed up at the funeral and made a fool out of her.
Loosening the wide, sparkly belt on her shocking pink minidress that, as Vincent once said, “leaves nothing to nobody’s imagination,” Yolanda studied her artwork on the back window of the dark green Jaguar that, like everything else, had once been his but now was hers.
R.I.P. Vincent DeLano, the artwork read. It was tacky and tasteless and would make the women all loco as she drove through their town, taunting them as they’d taunted her, taunting them, as they deserved.
And if that didn’t work, she thought, hands on her hips, one foot skating in and out of its high-heeled sandal, she would tell the whole world all the secrets she knew, and watch the wives of New Falls come undone.
Thirteen
Michael came home for dinner, and though the head count was three, not five, enough of her family had gathered together to make Dana feel whole and alive. She supposed that was part of her recent dis-ease, that her role as the cog in the wheel of her family was not as vital as it once was, which certainly sucked, to borrow a word from her boys.
She plunked a bowl of rice pilaf on the table.
“Wine?” Michael asked, but she shook her head.
Sam held out his glass while Michael poured, and Sam said, “Maybe she didn’t know.”
“Maybe who didn’t know what?” Michael asked.
“Maybe the new Mrs. DeLano didn’t know that her husband was broke.”
“He was broke?” Michael said as he sat at Dana’s left, “his seat” at the table. It didn’t matter how many of them were or weren’t home, they always sat at the places they’d sat most of their lives, as if changing chairs would give them bad karma.
“We don’t know if that’s true,” Dana said. “It’s what Kitty was told during the divorce.”
“Then maybe no one shot him after all,” Michael said. “Maybe Vincent DeLano killed himself.”
“No,” Dana said. “The trajectory of the bullet would have been different if it were self-inflicted.” The boys looked at her blankly. “The police told me that,” she added.
“Well, if it’s true he’d been sleeping around,” Sam continued, “it could have been somebody’s husband.”
“Absolutely,” Dana agreed. “Except your father. It couldn’t have been your father, because I was not involved with Vincent DeLano.”
“Thank God for that,” Michael said, raising his glass in his left hand and crossing himself with his right.
Dana suppressed a small grin.
“I think we should see Mrs. Meacham,” Sam said, lifting the platter of salmon and helping himself to a good-size fillet. “She knows everything and everyone in this town.”
“The Mrs. Meacham?” Michael asked
. “Don’t you need an invitation for that? Like having an audience with the queen? Or getting blessed by the pope?”
“Michael,” Dana said, “that’s enough.”
“Well, she’s pompous, Mom. I never understood why you and Dad hung around with them. The pompous Meachams. It’s not as if his fund is even doing that well.”
“He sold it,” she said.
“Well, I know that.” And of course he did, because Michael had been at Pearce, Daniels three years now and was doing quite well for himself, with a bonus this year of six figures.
“Let’s go tomorrow,” Sam said.
Dana smiled. “Tomorrow is Sunday.” Sunday was family day in New Falls, when most folks stayed close to home, reaping and sowing quality time with their own, unless something more interesting came up. Caroline and Jack would no doubt be with Chloe and Lee, perhaps planning the grand and glorious wedding, scheduled for next year, wedged between Caroline’s other high-profile commitments. A visit from Dana and Sam would not be considered more interesting.
“See?” Michael remarked, “I knew you’d need an invitation.”
“Well,” Sam said, “we’ll go Monday then.”
“Monday I’m going with Kitty to meet her attorney.” She did not tell him the retainer had been paid by Caroline.
“I need to go with you,” Sam said.” Well, I’d like to anyway. You might need a male’s perspective.”
“No,” Dana said firmly. “It will be too difficult for Kitty. She will not need an audience.”
“But Mom…”
“But nothing,” she said, hating to daunt his spirits, but knowing this time she was right. “Of course,” she added, “there’s no reason you can’t go to Caroline’s without me.”
“To the Meachams? Alone?”
“You’ve known them all your life, Samuel. They don’t bite, no matter what your brother says. Besides, you could practice your interviewing techniques on Caroline.”
“Yeah,” Michael added. “Like, ‘Gee, Mrs. Meacham, is your daughter really as uptight as you are?’ And ‘Gee, Mrs. Meacham, do you think Vincent DeLano was boffing half of New Falls?’”