Good Little Wives

by Abby Drake

  She fingered her glass again, ignored the remark. “Do any of you remember Mike Dawson, the pro?”

  He’d been the good-looking golf pro who’d given them a few hopeless lessons then one day disappeared, the way golf pros often do.

  “He’d been hitting on me, and I let him. But I told him the only way he’d have a chance was if Jack was out of the picture. I’d been kidding, well, mostly, but Mike gave me a name and phone number. I kept it because I figured someday…”

  The steward uncorked a second bottle of wine. Caroline’s voice drifted away on its bouquet.

  “I don’t believe you,” Lauren said.

  Caroline laughed. “Well, it’s true. It’s also why Mike disappeared. After consideration, and reconsideration, I changed my mind. The thought of starting over alone, or worse, with someone else, simply seemed too tiring. But after that, Mike’s presence made me nervous. I decided his association with the underworld was inappropriate for New Falls. So I told Jack he’d propositioned me. The next day, Mike and his Big Berthas were gone.”

  They mused, they sipped, they ordered salads niçoise. Then Dana said, “I thought you knew someone in jail.”

  Caroline blanched. “In jail? Me?”

  “You knew it was cold when Kitty was there.”

  She smiled a smile that seemed to be private. Then she said, “Sorry. The only one I’ve ever known in the pokey was my dear mother. Every so often she’d wind up in the drunk tank and I’d bail her out. My father wouldn’t do it because he wanted her to stay there and learn a lesson. He figured that way she might get sober. He figured wrong.”

  “Oh, Caroline,” Lauren said.

  “Oy vey,” Bridget said.

  “So you’re saying you didn’t kill Vincent,” Dana said.

  “Scout’s honor,” Caroline replied. “Though I might as well tell you I had a good motive.”

  Lauren’s lips puckered. “Why? What did my Vincent ever do to you?”

  No one commented that he hadn’t been her Vincent.

  “Well, for one thing, he was blackmailing me,” Caroline replied. “I’d already paid him two hundred thousand dollars and I knew he’d be back for more.”

  Bridget gripped the enamel sink in the ladies’ room where she had fled after feigning nausea from the chemo, and who could argue? Apparently Dana could, because she blew through the door right behind Bridget and asked what was really going on.

  “I’m sick,” Bridget said. “I don’t think I’m supposed to have wine.”

  “Wine runs through your French veins,” Dana said. “Besides, I might believe you except I saw your jaw drop when Caroline mentioned blackmail.”

  Just then the door opened again, and in came Lauren followed by Caroline.

  “Are you all right, Bridget?” Lauren asked while Caroline took a seat on the stiff brocade sofa parked in front of a gilt-framed mirror.

  “I’m terrific,” Bridget said. “Trés terrific.”

  “You don’t have to be sarcastic,” Lauren said.

  “I have cancer,” she replied. “I have a right to get sick. Or sarcastic.”

  None of them challenged that.

  Then Bridget said she was sorry. “It’s not the cancer,” she confessed. “The son of a beetch Vincent was blackmailing me, too.”

  Lauren’s hands flew to her ears. “Stop it! Stop saying bad things about him!”

  Dana’s eyes flicked from Caroline to Bridget, back to Caroline again. “Why would he blackmail either of you?”

  There was a fat, pregnant pause. Who would go first?

  Eenie.

  Meenie.

  Miney.

  Bridget wound up being Mo.

  “Merde,” she said, just as someone flushed, exited a stall, washed her hands too quickly, and departed the ladies’ room. Bridget shrugged as if secrets no longer mattered. “Vincent found out I’d been married before. He learned I had a son who drowned in the marshes. He knew I never told Randall.”

  It grew quiet again.

  “You had a son?” Lauren whispered. “But you didn’t tell Randall?”

  Bridget lowered her voice. “It would have upset him because I’d never been truthful. When I first met him, Randall thought I was a virgin. He is so Catholic, even back then. Randall is a good man, but sometimes he is naïve.”

  “How much did you pay Vincent?” Caroline asked.

  “Same as you. Two hundred thousand.”

  Caroline stood up and said, “I need more wine.”

  They reassembled their postures, their napkins, their platitudinal smiles.

  Then Bridget said, “So Vincent blackmailed us both, Caroline. I have revealed my deepest, most painful secret. What did Vincent learn about you? Was it motive enough for you to kill him? Because believe it or not, I did not.”

  In their absence, the salads had arrived. Caroline picked up her fork now, tined bits of olives as if they were delicate diamonds, plinked them one by one onto her bread and butter plate. “Perhaps none of you know this, but I am a lesbian.”

  If someone had dropped a proverbial pin, it would have echoed from New Falls to New Delhi to New Guinea then back to New York.

  “Excuse me?” Dana asked as another piece of black fruit dotted the white china plate.

  Caroline sighed. “So shoot me, I’m gay. Don’t worry, though. I never eyed any of you in the locker room. In fact, I’ve only really had one female lover.”

  No one spoke; no one could.

  Then Bridget said, “Well, I guess that tops my cancer. So Vincent found out you liked women and you paid him to be quiet.”

  “He found out because he had a private investigator doing his dirty work. Not an investigator, really. More like a greedy attorney.”

  “Paul Tobin?” Dana said, as some pieces fell together.

  “When Kitty was arrested that lowlife called me,” Caroline continued. “He said he needed a big case, and that he wanted hers.”

  “Or he would take over blackmailing you where Vincent had left off?” Bridget said.

  “Worse. He’d tell the world the rest. That not only am I a lesbian, but that my lover was Vincent’s daughter.”

  Vincent’s daughter?

  Vincent’s daughter?

  “Elise?” asked Dana, Bridget, Lauren, all at the same time.

  Caroline nodded. “I sold my mother’s sapphires to keep them quiet.”

  “And now a gun shows up mysteriously in your water garden,” Dana said.

  “A gun that, chances are, is connected to Vincent’s death,” Bridget added.

  Lauren jumped up, flung her napkin on the salad niçoise.

  “I’m tired of you! I’m tired of all of you! You are turning my Vincent into some sort of…of…”

  “Rogue?” Caroline asked, then said, “Sorry, my dear. But I believe your Vincent did that to himself.”

  Tears jumped from Lauren’s eyes, landing on the napkin that had landed on the salad.

  Dana stood up and took Lauren’s arm. “Please, honey, sit down. No one’s trying to trash Vincent. We’re just telling the truth.”

  “But I can’t believe it…”

  “Can’t,” Caroline said. “Won’t.”

  “Caroline, please shut up,” Dana said for the second time during the lunch. She turned back to Lauren. “We don’t always know people the way that we think. It happens to all of us, Lauren.”

  “You don’t understand,” Lauren wept. “I gave him two hundred thousand dollars, too. But I thought he loved me…” Then she looked at Dana. “Did he blackmail you, too?”

  Before Dana could answer, Bridget said, “Ha. Dana has no secrets,” and, well, except for her father, that was pretty much true.

  “So,” Dana said, wondering what Sam was going to say about all this, “the bottom line is, Vincent blackmailed all three of you, but you say you didn’t kill him.”

  “Not me.”

  “Not I.”

  “Not moi.”

  “And there’s a gun now that’
s no doubt connected.”

  “No doubt.”

  “No doubt.”

  “No doubt.”

  “Okay,” Dana said, folding her hands in her lap. “Then I have a question, and please don’t get angry. If none of us did it, what about our husbands? Is it possible one of them found out about the blackmail…that one of them is Vincent’s killer…and that he threw the gun in the water garden on a whim?”

  Thirty-three

  Upon leaving the restaurant, Dana decided that as soon as she arrived home she’d go directly into the family room and remove each giant Post-it that covered the walls. She would stack them in a pile, gently fold them over. If Sam wanted to refer to them for his research paper, that would be fine. But the public exhibition was going to be closed.

  Soon this whole mess might be over.

  But first Dana was going to Kitty’s. Maybe Kitty knew how long Vincent had been replacing an income in futures trading with tax-free blackmail. Maybe Kitty knew more than she’d revealed.

  Dana passed through the same traffic light on the road to Tarrytown where she’d seen Vincent’s Jaguar and Yolanda’s custom paint job. Dana didn’t doubt that the young woman had loved him. As a bona fide salesman at some point in his life, Vincent could be persuasive.

  In the end, maybe he’d chosen the wrong man instead of woman to try to persuade.

  Over crème brûlée (one serving, four forks), the women had decided to confront their husbands.

  Then they promised they’d be honest with one another about it, no matter if Jack or Bob or Randall did the deed. (No matter that Bridget’s “confession” had not included anything about Aimée belonging to Luc, not to Randall, but Dana was willing to allow that sin of omission, because at least she’d admitted she’d been being blackmailed.)

  Steven, of course, was off the ladies’ hook, because Dana had no secrets, or none that Vincent had apparently known. So while the other women grilled their husbands, Dana would grill Kitty. Between them, they might cook up the answer to who had murdered Vincent. Which would be pretty ironic for women who preferred not to spend much time in their kitchens.

  Half an hour later, pulling into Kitty’s less than humble apartment complex, Dana wondered how Sam could have known she’d go there straight from lunch. It sure looked like his Wrangler in the lot.

  “Admit it,” Lauren said as she sat on the edge of the bed, Bob bleary from an after-golf, after-lunch nap, Lauren terse and resigned and determined. “You had Vincent killed, didn’t you?”

  Bob rubbed his eyes. “Use your head, Lauren. Why would I have him killed? The more he banged you, the more you’d stay off my back.”

  It had been months since she’d suggested Viagra. It had been months (years?) since Lauren had tried talking to Bob about his wilted penis and their displaced sex life. Displaced. Misplaced. Waylaid.

  Leave it to a man to make this about sex and not about the fact he had failed as a spouse.

  She jumped up from the bed because she couldn’t stand being so close to him. “He was blackmailing me,” she said.

  “For chrissakes, Lauren, I knew that. I knew about the two of you from day one, not to mention that when you withdrew two hundred thousand dollars from your trust fund, your attorney was on me like DeLano on your tits.”

  He’d set up the trust fund supposedly as hers; she hadn’t known it was being monitored.

  Her eyes stung. She stood at the window seat, too angry to sit. “I’m going to Nantucket for a while.”

  “After the gala, I presume. You can’t expect me to attend that alone.” His words carried an air of deservedness.

  “I can’t imagine why you want to go,” Lauren said. “Everyone in town now knows I loved Vincent.”

  Bob laughed.

  He rolled out of bed, straightened his boxers, and shambled over to her. He quickly grasped her wrist. “You loved Vincent?” he asked with a sarcastic whine. “How about this? You used to love this.” He shoved her hand down to his crotch, to a small bulge that had formed at the fly. Then he grabbed her thin shoulders, pushed her against the window seat, ripped off her skirt and panties, and crammed his fingers into her.

  “Did DeLano do this? Did DeLano like to play rough?”

  His hot breath was on her. She tried to scream, but she was too stunned by this sudden monster and by the penis that was somehow erect, straight-standing, angry.

  “Stop!” she cried. “You’re hurting me.”

  He didn’t stop. Then, just as he tried to shove himself inside her, he let out a mournful wail. His milky white nothing trickled onto her thigh.

  He panted, spent. She pushed him away.

  “You disgust me,” she said, her hands quivering, her heart racing. “You disgust me like no other person has ever disgusted me.” She ran from the room and down the hall, grabbing her new spring handbag on the way out.

  Sam must have had a brilliant idea and couldn’t wait for Dana to come home before he shared it with Kitty.

  Dana knocked on Kitty’s door, wishing he hadn’t come there without her. Not while Kitty was still under suspicion. Then she smiled. Sam was a big boy, he’d reminded her. He could take care of himself.

  The door didn’t open. She must have been too quiet.

  She knocked again. “Kitty,” she called. “It’s Dana.”

  There was no reply.

  Dana frowned. She looked back to the Jeep, then back to the front door, then back to the Jeep.

  “Good grief,” she muttered with a scowl. It must not be Sam’s Wrangler after all. And Kitty must be out.

  Slipping her hands into her jacket pockets, Dana went down the stairs and headed toward her car. She might have gotten into her Volvo and driven away if a car hadn’t pulled into the lot at that moment. As she turned to see if Kitty might be in it, which she was not, the Jeep caught Dana’s eye again. That’s when she noticed the small sticker attached to the back bumper.

  Dana crept toward it. As she feared, the sticker read, Dartmouth.

  Oh my God, she thought. Her heart started to pound. If this was Sam’s Jeep, where the heck was he? Where was her son?

  She twirled around and looked up at Kitty’s door.

  Had Kitty hurt him?

  Kicking off her heels, Dana sprinted forward, raced toward the building, zoomed up the stairs.

  Bang! Bang! Bang! She two-fisted the door.

  “Kitty! Open up! Open up or I’ll call the police!”

  Three seconds elapsed. Then four. Then five.

  Dana yanked open her purse, fumbled for her cell phone.

  Then she heard “Don’t,” from the other side of the door. Suddenly it opened and there stood Sam. “Don’t call the cops, Mom. Everything is okay.”

  Clearly, however, that wasn’t the case, because Sam’s hair was tousled and he did not have on a shirt, and Kitty sauntered up behind him, tying the tie of her old, threadbare robe.

  When Caroline arrived home after lunch, Jack wasn’t there. She couldn’t recall if he’d mentioned any meetings in the city, she paid so little attention to him these days.

  She ignored the yellow POLICE DO NOT CROSS tape visible from the front windows and went into the study. There, the velveteen-covered plywood sheets waited in repose, the template of tables neatly arranged on the top, the miniature name cards precariously placed like mah-jongg tiles at a championship match.

  Even if her husband had been there, she had no intention of interrogating him as to whether he’d killed Vincent.

  What would be the point?

  She doubted he would have gone to such lengths if he’d learned her secret. Besides, so what? Whoever killed Vincent deserved a big thank-you. Their worlds were safer now, their secrets were protected, with him dead and gone. She wished she’d realized that before giving Paul Tobin the retainer to handle Kitty’s case. On his own, Tobin had little-to-no power.

  Leafing through the phone messages that sat on her desk, Caroline knew none would be important. Anyone who mattered would ha
ve called her cell.

  Still, there was a noteworthy collection: the caterer, the florist, the linen supplier. She’d ordered light yellow linens this year and giant yellow tulips in crystal-clear vases. Even the china would be the palest butter color. Yellow was Elise’s favorite color. When it came to anything “Elise,” Caroline had been a weakling.

  She began to turn away from the desk and the messages when one caught her eye: Yolanda DeLano.

  Caroline snatched up the paper, checked the message: Please be sure her tickets are waiting at the reception desk at the gala.

  With a grim smile, Caroline thought, So Yolanda will be coming after all. She wondered what the other women would think about that.

  Thirty-four

  “Mom, please. I knew you’d overreact.” “Overreact? Why would I overreact when my son is sleeping with one of my friends who might have murdered her husband? Why would I do that, Samuel? Answer me!” She thought she was doing well not to shout, Wait till your father gets home! which wouldn’t have worked anyway, because his mother was barely speaking to his father. She rubbed her fingers up and down her seat belt. When reality had registered, she’d run back to her car and Sam had run after her and Kitty, for all Dana knew, was still standing in the doorway, laughing at her.

  God, she thought. Elise with Caroline. Sam with Kitty. Was none of the children safe anymore?

  “I didn’t expect this of you, Sam,” she said, her voice dropping a level because the pain of shouting was too great. She did not add that she might have expected it of his twin brother, Ben.

  He sat in the passenger seat, drumming his fingers on the dashboard, staring out the window. She wished he’d put his shirt back on.

  “It’s no big deal, Mom. It’s only happened a few times.”

  “A few times? You haven’t been home a week…” He was so vulnerable. So caring and so damn vulnerable.

  He shook his head. “Over Christmas. Remember when I went to pick up coleslaw for your party?”

  She didn’t remember, not exactly. But she did remember the Christmas Eve open house that she and Steven threw each year. And she knew the New Falls Deli made the best, to-die-for coleslaw. “What about it?” Dana asked.