Camilla T. Crespi - The Breakfast Club Murder

by Camilla T. Crespi

  “It’s important,” Lori said.

  Margot stood up and walked over to the counter, her pink mules flipping against her bare heels. Cy held out a mug full of coffee. She blew him a kiss and drank half of it on the way back to the booth. “I remember now,” Margot said, sliding back in. “Your cell. You didn’t answer your home phone. Why is it important?”

  “Now I’ve got no alibi for that night. I must have unplugged the phone in my sleep. The funny thing is, I don’t remember plugging it back in either.”

  “You’re turning into a sleepwalker? Stress can do that to you. You better lock your front door. You don’t want to wander through the streets at night in your nightgown.”

  “I wear pajamas.”

  Margot smoothed Lori’s forehead with a finger. “Please stop worrying. Alibi or no alibi, the police can’t possibly think you killed anyone. They’re taking your car because they have to show they’re on the case. Have to keep the boss happy.”

  “I hope you’re right, but just in case you’re not, did you see anyone lurking around your house when Valerie drove the girls home?”

  “No, I was in my bedroom, which you know faces the water.”

  “Can you ask your neighbors?”

  “They won’t have seen anything. I’ll walk into a hornet’s nest if I start asking around. The cul-de-sac is dark because of all the trees, and just two weeks ago, some of the old biddies insisted on calling a meeting to discuss safety issues. I invited them all to my house for cocktails, thinking that getting them drunk would make it all go away. I couldn’t have been more wrong. They want to cut down most of the old trees, can you believe that? Those trees are legendary!”

  Lori put her hand over Margot’s. “Please? If some of them are so worried about safety, they might have looked out of their window when Valerie drove by. They could have seen another car, taken down a license number. Start with the older owners.”

  “Oh, all right. Maybe I’ll invite them over again and make it a game. Like Clue. Whoever saw something gets a bottle of Kettle One for a prize.”

  “Margot, this is serious.”

  “Of course it is. I just hate it, that’s all. Valerie might have been a bitch, but I knew her from forever, and to think she got shot down like a deer and stuffed into the trunk of a car.” Her eyes showed a mixture of fear and genuine sorrow. “How do you cope with that?”

  “By trying to find out who killed her,” Lori said.

  “Sure,” Margot said. “I’ll work on one of those gorgeous CSI guys, and while he’s in mid-moan, I’ll clamp my legs together and get him to tell me all about the incriminating fibers he found on Valerie’s body. Come on, Lori, we can’t compete with the police.”

  “I know we can’t, but we can try to make sense of it. I can’t just sit back and let the police stick their noses in my life and in Jessica’s. I want some control. I need it.”

  “And I bet you’re itching with curiosity, just like I am.”

  Lori found herself smiling. “It’s given me a rash.”

  “Where do we start?”

  “Tell me everything you know about Valerie.”

  Margot pursed her lips to indicate she was thinking. “Well, what is there to say? She wasn’t popular at boarding school. You know, one of those all-A students who liked to rub it in how clever, rich, skinny, and gorgeous she was. And very ambitious, which is more than I can say for myself. No one could believe she wanted to become a dentist. We all thought it was grubby work, staring at decayed teeth and wet tongues all day long, but she said holding a drill to someone’s mouth was sexy and empowering.”

  “Why didn’t she marry before?” The NewYork Times wedding announcement that Ellie had left lying on the kitchen table hadn’t mentioned a previous husband.

  “I know she had some serious relationships along the way. I remember Dad once asking Valerie why she’d broken up with some perfectly nice guy who’d proposed to her, and she said that since she had money of her own and she didn’t want to have kids, she saw no point to locking her door.”

  Lori wondered which of Rob’s qualities had bowled over marriage-phobic Valerie. Was it the droop of his ass? The mushrooming paunch? His snoring? His lying tongue? God, what if Valerie had wanted a child? “Do you have any idea why she changed her mind?”

  “I stopped talking to her when you told me she’d snared Rob. Look, I was as surprised as you were, you know that.”

  Callie’s insidious words, “Be careful of friends,” curled themselves in Lori’s ear. “Yes, I do know that,” she said finally, believing it. Margot was too straightforward, too self-centered, to lie. She wouldn’t understand the point of it.

  “Look, I didn’t like her a lot,” Margot said, “but she’d been in and out of my life since I was a kid, and she could be fun when she felt like it. You have to admit she was a great dentist. Warren had extensive work done and was very pleased, and you know my ex-husband and still dear friend is very stingy with compliments—one of the many reasons I left him. He used to date her, you know. Before me. In fact, I met Warren through Valerie. Stole him right from under her upturned nose.”

  “Sorry I’m late,” Beth said, suddenly appearing dressed in a gray linen pantsuit. “Janet will be here in a sec. I saw her parking the car. Hi, Margot.” Margot waved fingers. Beth leaned over to hug Lori. “How are you? God, what an awful thing to happen. Are you okay? Have you heard from Rob? Do the police have any idea yet?”

  “I’m a little shaky and no word from Jessica or Rob.”

  Beth slipped into the booth next to Lori. “Call now,” she suggested, always ready for instant action.

  “Later.” During the night, Lori had also realized that she was scared of facing Rob. How would she feel seeing him suffering over Valerie’s death? Would she start hoping again? Out of loneliness? The need for sex? Or simply because she wanted to make Jessica happy? “I didn’t know Warren dated Valerie,” she said, to stop the questions whirling in her head.

  “Not for long, but she wasn’t a bit pleased when I stole him, which I confess gave me no end of pleasure. What about you, Lori? Aren’t you just a little bit glad she’s dead?”

  “Margot!” Beth said, in the command voice she used to rein in the twins.

  Margot tossed her hair. “Come on, girls, let’s get real here. That woman was bad news and it’s only natural—”

  Beth interrupted her. “Could you please swallow the exquisitely pedicured foot that’s in your mouth, sweetheart?”

  Margot looked at Lori’s tired face. “I’m sorry. I was being bitchy. I didn’t mean anything by it. Look, I did one good thing. I called Warren before coming here and told him he had to do something about the police annoying you. He wants you to call him.”

  Callie slid a mug of hot lemonade and honey toward Lori, then swayed away on her slippered feet before Lori finished her thank you and Beth said hello.

  “Could we please order?” Margot called out after her.

  “She’ll be back,” Beth said and turned to Lori. “Are you sick?”

  “Callie thinks so. I’m just beat.” She took a sip. And scared. Maybe depressed. She had to get herself together for Saturday’s dinner. In a fit of early morning optimism, which had lasted about ten minutes, she’d called Jonathan and told him her arrest was not imminent, her daughter didn’t want her around, and she was going to go ahead with the dinner.

  “Thanks, Margot,” Lori said. “I will call Warren. I don’t mind having a lawyer on my side even if he isn’t into criminal law.” Warren had negotiated her divorce. He’d been kind in his gruff way, and told her she was a horse’s ass not to ask for alimony. Maybe he knew something useful. Warren and Rob had been friendly until Rob dumped her. Warren had taken their divorce very badly, saying it brought back the time Margot left him. He claimed he was still in love with her.

  “What’s the plan for us?” Beth asked.

  “To find out as much as we can about Valerie.” Lori filled her in about the phone being o
ff the hook, then turned back to Margot. “Do you know any of Valerie’s friends? People I could talk to?”

  “I don’t think she had any, but let me think about it, go through my old address book. Her office manager, Ruth what’s-her-name. She was a friend from way back. High school, I think. Valerie dragged her over to my house a couple of times. A sad girl. Never opened her mouth.”

  Lori’s hand flew to her mouth. “Oh, Lord, I forgot about Ruth. She must be devastated, poor woman. I have to write her a note.”

  “You should grill her on Valerie,” Margot said. “I bet she knows a few unsavory things about our dearly departed.”

  “God, Margot,” Beth said. “You are heartless.”

  “Maybe, but also realistic.”

  “I doubt she’ll talk to me after my physical outburst in Valerie’s office,” Lori said.

  “Let me, then,” Margot offered.

  “Thanks, but be kind, tactful, compassionate. Promise?”

  Margot crossed her heart with a finger. Beth chortled.

  “Hi everyone, sorry, but the camp bus was late.” Janet, in a lace-edged white blouse and jeans, slipped into the booth just as Callie came back with a tray holding a slice of apple pie for Lori, a toasted whole wheat unbuttered English muffin and no jam for Margot, a large orange juice and a fruit salad for Janet, and English Breakfast tea and a cheese Danish for Beth. Lori and Beth thanked her.

  Callie fixed Margot with her Greek warrior look while Janet gave Lori a hug. “Why waste your breath and my time with an order when all of you have the same stuff every morning you’re in here?”

  “One day we might surprise you,” Margot said, managing a tiny frown on her smoothed forehead.

  Callie grunted and left.

  “It’s such a terrible thing to happen,” Janet said in a whisper. Her face was craggy with worry. “I’m so sorry for you and Jess and Rob.”

  “Thanks,” Lori said, kissing her cheek. “Jess thinks she now has to give up having fun and take care of her dad.”

  “I know,” Margot said. “She told Angie she can’t go to Cape Cod and now Angie told Warren she won’t go, either, which means he’s upset and I’m stuck with a moping daughter and twelve bottles of Skin So Smooth.”

  “I hope Rob will convince Jess otherwise,” Lori said.

  “Hey, gals,” Beth said, ready to fit the conversation into a brighter groove. “Our Lori here made quite an impression on Mama Ashe, and from what Jonathan tells me, that’s like getting an abortionist to win over the pope. Good for you.” She gave Lori a high five, which Lori returned half-heartedly. “All right,” Beth sighed. “Here’s what I can do for the cause. Jonathan Ashe knows half of Manhattan, probably the same half that Valerie knew. If you want, I’ll ask him to see what information he can ferret out about her. Unless you want to ask him yourself?”

  Lori noticed a hint of a smile in Beth’s eyes. The woman was relentless. “Jonathan is all yours.” She had enough on her plate without having sex take over her thoughts.

  “What can I do?” Janet asked.

  Margot leaned over her coffee mug before Lori could answer. “How well do you know Jonathan?” she asked Beth.

  “He’s bought a lot of art from me.”

  “You know him?” Lori asked.

  “His father and mine were best friends.” Margot leaned closer to the group and almost purred, she was so pleased with her piece of gossip. “I hope he’s paid you for all that art because I heard he just got burned in some real estate deal.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Warren told me,” Margot said. “Which reminds me, thanks to my dear ex, I lost out on a lot of money with a real estate deal. I was going to invest in Waterside Properties, which is in the Bronx of all places. Lots of land and abandoned buildings along the water. Now it’s been sold for oodles of money to some big German developer. There was a big article about it in the Times yesterday. Rob’s in on it, lucky bastard.”

  Lori put her fork down. “Rob? Are you sure?”

  “Well, he’s the one who asked me to go in on the deal with him a couple of months ago,” Margot said, “but Warren advised me not to, so I didn’t. Whatever other faults he has, my ex has never made a mistake about money.” Margot jangled a bracelet. “I guess there’s always a first time.”

  Janet shook her head, as if ridding herself of a bad thought, and speared a pineapple chunk. “I don’t understand why you left Warren.” She looked at Margot with wide, questioning eyes. “You’re such good friends. Isn’t that enough to keep a marriage together?”

  “Maybe.” Margot retreated into a crunchy silence by nibbling her toasted English muffin.

  Janet turned her attention to Lori and asked once again, “How can I help?”

  Lori hesitated. She was reluctant to involve her. Janet had been through enough with her mother’s death and Seth being out of a job for so long. Which reminded Lori. Had Seth given Janet his good news? She didn’t look in the least relieved.

  “I’ll ask Seth to talk to Rob,” Janet offered, a smile coming to her face at last. “Rob must know everything there is to know about Valerie. Maybe he even has some suspicions as to who did it.”

  Aside from me, Lori thought. “Great idea,” she said. She planned to pigeonhole Rob herself, but there was no guarantee that his answers to her, if any, would be honest. “Okay, we’re set. Margot, you’re going to talk to the neighbors about whether anyone saw a strange car that night and you’ll talk to Ruth. Beth, you’re going to convince Jonathan to go snooping among his Manhattan friends, and Janet is going to ask Seth to help with Rob. And I, to start with, am going to talk to my mother whose friend, Joey Pellegrino, a retired police captain, supposedly can get the scoop on what the Hawthorne Park detectives are up to. Then I’ll call Warren and see what he says. Okay, girls, thanks for coming. What would I do without you?” Lori stood up. She had to get back home to deliver her car to the police.

  “If you don’t eat your pie,” Beth said, getting her wallet out, “Callie will never give you another one.”

  “No one knows what Callie will do,” Callie said, appearing behind Beth. “Not even Callie.” She handed Lori a plastic bag holding two apple pies. “If you want to share with your girlfriends, that’s your business, but don’t microwave. Turns the dough into a wet towel.” She started gathering the half-eaten plates and mugs and putting them on a tray. “Out, gals, people are waiting.” A line had formed outside. “You’ll pay next time.”

  “Thanks for the pies.” Lori planted a kiss on the back of Callie’s neck. “I’m going to eat one all by myself and save the other one for Jess.” Then she whispered so the women wouldn’t hear. “I want to talk to you about what you said.” Lori trusted her girlfriends completely, but she did want to understand why Callie had made that comment.

  “Can’t.” Callie fussed with the plates and flatware and did not turn around. “Too busy.”

  “I’ll come back after the lunch hour, then.”

  “This is a bad day. Forget what I said.” Callie, her face averted, waved her hand behind her. “Go. Go. Please.”

  Lori stepped back. “See you next Monday.” Outside, the women were waiting. Lori joined them. Margot slipped her the car keys to the Mercedes. They all kissed goodbye and went their ways.

  As Lori reached her car, a man popped out of a store doorway, pen and notebook in hand. He blocked her way. “Mrs. Staunton, is it true you socked your ex-husband’s wife in the face hours before she was murdered and you have no alibi for that night?”

  Lori took a quick look at him. Young, eager, trying to do his job for some paper. But not on her back.

  “Your fly is open,” she said, pointing.

  He looked down long enough for her to slip past him and get in her car.

  “Hey, wait a minute!” he yelled as she drove away.

  CHAPTER 15

  * * *

  Lori was staring out the kitchen window at the dandelions growing in the cracks of the walkway
. She could always get on her knees and start weeding. The police had come and driven her to Margot’s where she’d picked up the Mercedes. Back home she changed into shorts and a T-shirt and made her phone calls. Ellie was too busy booking a group tour of Britain’s Lake District for forty-two retired English high school teachers to talk for more than two minutes, and her police captain, Joey Pellegrino, hadn’t called. Warren was out of the office. Jessica’s cell phone was off and no one answered at Rob’s apartment. When she called his office, Katie, Rob’s secretary, informed her that he had taken the week off.

  It was too hot for weeding.

  Across the street, Nancy Fisher waved at her. Nancy had probably seen the police take her car away, Lori decided, and was dying to find out more. Nancy had once been a casual friend, coming over for coffee and harmless gossip a couple of times a month. Once Rob left, she suddenly claimed she was too busy to stop over. Lori had noticed that other married women she had been friendly with avoided her now. “Do they think divorce is catching?” she had asked Beth. “More likely, they see you as potential bed fodder for their husbands” had been Beth’s answer. Lori walked away from the window now, without waving back.

  She had let the police have her car without a warrant, happy to know the judge had refused to issue one, which meant the police didn’t really have a case against her. Lori felt she had relinquished the car with great flair, hoping the policeman who came to pick it up would refer back to Scardini how cooperative she’d been, how innocent she obviously was. Besides, she liked the idea of driving Margot’s obscenely expensive and beautiful Mercedes sports car for a few days. Let the mean-spirited of Hawthorne Park—Nancy Fisher included—think she’d splurged on a new car to celebrate Valerie’s death; she didn’t care.

  She glanced at Alec Winters’s flowers. They needed a change of water. And a thank-you note was due. That would keep her distracted for another twenty minutes. Then, Jonathan’s cabbage roses needed a makeshift vase. Ellie had insisted on floating them in a bathtub full of cold water to stop them from drooping. The narrow asparagus steamer would be perfect, a wedding gift she’d never used but couldn’t bring herself to throw out because it seemed so elegant and posh to own one. Lori ran upstairs, gathered the roses, dripped water all the way down the stairs, cut the ends of the stems on a bias, filled the poacher with warm water, and arranged the flowers inside. She changed the water in Alec’s vase, removed a few yellowing petals, and placed both bouquets on the kitchen table. She stepped back to survey the effect. So many flowers together was overkill, maybe, but why not feel like a star on opening night, surrounded by gestures of devotion from two admirers? Lori waited for the flowers to work their magic. They didn’t. She felt more like a corpse in a funeral parlor waiting to get the burial over with. Why wasn’t anyone getting back to her? Why was Valerie dead? Why was she alone?