Patty must have been lying the evening Lainie, Angie, and Sheila had gone to her house to inform her about Arthur’s dalliance with the blond woman at Olde Towne Olé. She must have already known he was screwing around. Women didn’t hire Jackson Bray to investigate murders. They hired him to investigate straying husbands, and that was what Patty had done.
Why, though? Why lie about Arthur’s bad behavior to Lainie and the others? They’d already known he was a piece of two-timing scum. Why had Patty pretended ignorance of his scumminess?
And why had Stavik sworn that Arthur would never cheat on Patty?
Maybe Stavik had been lying, too. If he was capable of firing nails into a guy’s skull, he was certainly capable of lying about a guy’s extracurricular activities.
But he’d been happy to report on Arthur’s deficient character in other areas of his life: his treatment of his employees, his disrespect for Mother Nature, his abrasive personality. Stavik had done nothing to hide his contempt for Arthur. Yet he’d been adamant about Arthur’s honor when it came to his marriage vows. He’d sworn Arthur would never cheat on Patty.
Even so, Patty must have believed Arthur was cheating on her. That was why she’d hired Jackson Bray.
Lainie dipped the rounded tip of her biscotti into her coffee to soften the pastry. Biscotti were typically hard enough to crack a person’s teeth, and the cookie the barista had given her was harder than usual. It had the consistency of concrete—flavorful concrete, at least, not too sweet, and with a decadent touch of chocolate. Much tastier than the food she’d be eating if she wound up getting sent up the river.
Okay, she reasoned. Arthur had been cheating on Patty. Or at least Patty had suspected him of cheating on her. Lainie, Angie, and Sheila had observed him cheating on her. Yet when they’d told her what they’d seen at Olde Towne Olé, she’d acted stunned by the news.
Think, Lainie.
Maybe Patty had been embarrassed. A wronged wife didn’t necessarily want her friends to know her husband had stepped out on her. Maybe Patty thought Arthur’s behavior reflected badly on her.
Of course it didn’t. He was the schmuck. She was just the schmuck’s unlucky wife.
Whatever her reason, though, Patty had chosen not to share with Lainie, Angie, and Sheila that she’d been aware of Arthur’s possible infidelity. Meanwhile, she’d hired a private investigator whose specialty was catching straying spouses in compromising positions. If he’d gotten the goods on Arthur, what had Patty planned to do? Divorce him?
Or murder him? She had sworn, that night last summer in the sports bar on Route Nine, that if she ever found out her husband was unfaithful, she’d kill him. Surely she’d just been shooting off her mouth with all the other Colonielles that night. She couldn’t have meant she would actually murder her husband for straying.
Lainie sipped her latté and tried to convince herself that Patty Cavanagh was incapable of such an act. Patty was pretty, she was poised, she was a mother who volunteered at the schools her son attended. She wore a monstrously expensive eternity ring, a symbol of her love for her husband, or at least her love for her husband’s wealth.
Murder, though? Lainie couldn’t see it. Divorce, sure, but not murder.
And meanwhile, Bill Stavik had insisted Arthur would never, ever engage in extramarital sex. How had he put it? That Arthur wouldn’t wag his tail at any bitch other than his wife. Why, when Stavik so obviously loathed Arthur, would he defend the man’s integrity so fiercely?
None of it made sense.
But at least her stomach had stopped growling.
Chapter Seventeen
KAREN OFFERED TO cook dinner that night. She came home from the bank armed with a fresh salmon fillet. One of the other tellers had mentioned that wild sockeye salmon was on sale at the supermarket in the strip mall where the bank was located, and she’d also explained to Karen how to broil salmon. “Basically, you put it in the oven and turn the dial to broil,” Karen informed Lainie.
“Are you sure you want to cook?” Lainie asked. She felt a little guilty about letting Karen prepare their meal, since Karen had worked all day and Lainie, through no fault of her own, hadn’t. True, driving into Boston, sitting in an office, perusing celebrity magazines for a few tedious hours, spending ten minutes with Jackson Bray, and then thinking so hard her head hurt had probably left Lainie as fatigued as Karen. But Karen hated her job. Lainie only hated the current state of her existence. She could cook if Karen wanted to relax.
Karen didn’t want to relax. “I’m in a bad mood,” she announced. “I need to do something.”
“All right.” Lainie settled at the kitchen table, out of Karen’s way, and watched her daughter storm around the room, scrubbing potatoes, shaking various spices onto the salmon filet, slicing a lemon, and tearing a head of romaine into shreds. “Why are you in a bad mood?”
“Brad,” Karen said curtly.
“Did you two have a fight?”
“Oh, you could say that.”
Judging by the violence with which Karen punched holes in the potatoes with the tines of a fork, Lainie probably could have also said Karen and Brad had launched World War III. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“Not really,” Karen said, then proceeded to talk about it. “It’s not him, he said. It’s not his fault. It’s just, his parents think that he shouldn’t be hanging around our house, because you’re a criminal.”
Lainie’s jaw fell so fast, her teeth nearly got the bends. “I’m not—”
“Mom, you don’t have to tell me.” Karen glided from the sink to the oven, lissome even in anger. As a child, she’d taken two years of ballet lessons before deciding she’d rather be an astronaut than a ballerina when she grew up. Whether she had learned anything in those dance classes or was simply naturally graceful, Lainie took great pleasure in watching her daughter’s elegant motions. Of course, watching anyone prepare dinner for her would be a pleasure. But Karen was a particularly lovely sight, her posture regal, her brown hair glowing with reddish highlights, and her eyes bright with indignation.
She turned on the oven, then returned to the sink and lifted a knife. Instead of using it on the tomato she’d pulled from the produce drawer in the refrigerator, she waved it at Lainie. “The thing is, who gives a shit what his parents think? He’s a grown man, for God’s sake. He ought to be able to choose his own friends and tell his parents to bug off. If the guy had any balls, that’s what he’d do.”
“I’m in no position to comment on Brad’s balls,” Lainie said.
Karen’s indignation dissolved into a girlish giggle. “Okay, let’s not go there.” She turned back to the counter and cut the tomato into chunks. “I mean really, though. You don’t choose my friends for me. And you certainly don’t judge my friends based on who their parents are.”
“I’m sorry my situation is rubbing off on you.”
“That’s not what I meant.” Karen put down the tomato and rushed over to the table. She leaned over and wrapped her arms around Lainie, wiping moisture from her fingers onto Lainie’s sleeves. “I am so proud you’re my mother. If anyone judged me based on you, I’d be honored.”
Lainie’s tear reflex kicked in again, but she bravely fought it. “I’m proud of you, too, sweetie. But this is bound to get ugly. It already is ugly.”
“What’s ugly is when a dickhead like Brad makes it ugly.” Karen straightened and shimmied her shoulders, as if shaking him off her back. “You’re going to fight this thing and get your name cleared, and then Brad is going to come back and expect us to pick up where we left off, and I’m going to tell him to fuck himself.”
Lainie cringed at Karen’s language. As delicate as a ballet dancer, yet with a mouth like a gangsta rapper. “Please, honey. The English language has better words.”
“Okay. I’ll tell him to punch out all his teeth
and stick his tiny little weenie into his gummy little mouth.”
Lainie wasn’t sure whether to scold Karen or laugh. She was spared that decision by the ringing of the doorbell. Karen signaled her to remain seated and hustled out of the kitchen to answer the door.
Lainie ordered her nerves to stop twitching. Just because the front door had come to represent trouble in her mind didn’t mean more trouble was about to enter her house. She breathed deeply, stood, and checked out the salmon, a bright pink slab sprawled across the broiler pan. After placing a few strategic wedges of lemon around the fish, she carried the pan to the oven and slid it in.
Voices bubbled into the kitchen from the front hall, and then Karen led Angie and Sheila into the room. They both wore warm-up suits and sneakers, leading Lainie to conclude that they’d come here straight from soccer practice.
But it was too early for practice to be over.
“Hey,” she greeted them.
“Lainie!” Angie zoomed over and wrapped her in a hug, which Lainie accepted stoically.
Standing behind Angie, Sheila caught Lainie’s eye and smiled sheepishly. “We wanted to check in on you and see how things were going.”
“Things are going,” Lainie said with a slight shrug, the only movement she could manage as long as Angie’s arms were tethering her. “Why aren’t you at practice?”
Sheila made a face. Angie released her and said, “Practice ended early.”
“Why?”
Angie and Sheila exchanged a glance. “It’s weird,” Sheila said, then fell silent.
Life is weird, Lainie thought. The universe was weird. Right now, Sheila and Angie were weird. “Would you like something to drink?” she offered. “I don’t know how to make margaritas, but I’ve got some beer. Or soft drinks.”
“I’ll take a beer, thanks,” Sheila said.
“Me, too,” said Angie.
Lainie crossed to the fridge and pulled four beers from the door’s shelf. Karen’s falling out with Brad qualified her for a beer, too. She smiled her thanks as Lainie handed her an icy bottle, then fished the church-key opener from a drawer and popped the caps off all four bottles.
Lainie gestured toward the table, and Angie and Sheila took seats. Karen remained at the counter, filling a bowl with salad fixings, her beer within easy reach.
“Tell me what’s weird,” Lainie asked as she settled back into her chair.
They exchanged another look. “Well, first of all, ending practice early was weird,” Angie began. “Is it raining? No. Did the sprinklers come on? No. You know how Coach Thomaston feels about practice. Ending a practice while we still have daylight and access to a field is like walking out in the middle of a movie when Brad Pitt is the star.”
“Not Brad Pitt,” Sheila corrected her. “Liam Neeson.”
“Liam Neeson’s nose is too big,” Angie argued.
“Brad Pitt’s cheeks are too bony.”
“Okay.” Lainie held up her hands to halt the debate. “I get the idea. So why did Coach Thomaston end practice early?”
“The vibes were bad,” Sheila said.
“It’s hard to explain,” Angie elaborated, “other than everyone on the team was acting tense and bitchy. Everyone was bickering—and I mean, these were just our usual drills. Pass and run, shots on goal, the stuff we do every practice. And suddenly, everyone was snapping at everyone else, complaining, insulting each other. It was awful.”
“Except for Patty,” Sheila said.
Lainie labored to maintain a neutral expression. She wasn’t ready to tell Angie and Sheila what she’d figured out after her meeting with Jackson Bray that afternoon. For all she knew, her theory might be utterly wrong. Her judgment hadn’t been so hot lately. “How is Patty doing?” she asked blandly.
“Very well,” Sheila said.
“Excellent,” Angie said simultaneously.
“For someone who’s just lost her husband?” Lainie suggested.
“For anyone anytime,” Angie said.
Sheila sipped from her bottle, then lowered it and leaned toward Lainie. “Patty was the only person not sniping at everyone else today. She was cool and calm, every frosted hair in place, her big fat ring glittering on her finger. She just kept dribbling the damned ball up and down the field as if she didn’t have a care in the world.”
Lainie digested this. “She was probably glad I wasn’t there.”
“Screw that,” Angie retorted. “The whole team needed you there. I think the reason everyone was acting so badly was because you weren’t there.”
“I’m hardly the glue that holds the Colonielles together,” Lainie protested.
“I think you are.” Sheila leaned forward again. “Or maybe it’s just that everyone on the team thinks you got a raw deal. They think you’re innocent, and they’re furious with the coach for telling you not to play until this legal thing gets straightened out.”
“It just doesn’t seem right,” Angie added, “that Patty is the one who lost her husband, and she’s doing better than you. What’s wrong with this picture?”
Lainie smiled wryly. “Something sure is. I’ve lost a husband and I’ve been arrested. Losing a husband is worse.”
“Getting arrested isn’t exactly a laugh-riot, though,” Karen called from the sink.
“I can’t believe how mature she is,” Angie said in a stage whisper. “I remember when she was just graduating from high school.”
“I’m not so mature,” Karen said.
Angie and Sheila laughed. Lainie just smiled. That Karen would have defended her mother’s reputation at the cost of her romance with Big Brad struck her as incredibly mature. And very loving, although Lainie hated to think she had contributed in any way to the breakup. She already felt responsible for Hayden Blumenthal’s difficulties with the substitute teacher and Margaret’s outlay of bail money. Marrying Roger should have immunized her against her native Jewish guilt, but it hadn’t. Her genes were programmed.
She tried to wash away her guilt with a large gulp of beer. Savoring the cold, sour foam on her tongue, she imagined going to prison and being deprived of beer for years and years. The thought was too depressing, so she drank some more beer.
“We’ve got a game scheduled in Natick for tomorrow night,” Angie said, “and we barely even warmed up tonight. You know how Thomaston gets before a game. She should have been running us into the ground.”
“It’s like she doesn’t even care if we win,” Sheila said.
Lainie couldn’t believe that. “I’m sure she cares. This is Coach Tommie Thomaston you’re talking about. Winning is her raison d’ être.”
“Don’t talk to me about raisins,” Angie muttered. “We’re going to stink up the joint tomorrow because we didn’t practice today and because you won’t be there. The last few games, you played like Beckham. Tomorrow’s going to be a disaster.”
“Evening games always are,” Sheila noted. “Especially away games. We have to leave Minuteman Field at five forty-five—”
“Which is next to impossible for those of us who have outside jobs,” Angie interjected.
“And drive through rush hour—”
“Which is a pain in the butt,” Angie said.
“And then we’ll barely have time to warm up before the game starts.”
“And Lainie won’t be there,” Angie concluded. “It’s got disaster written all over it.”
“There’s nothing I can do,” Lainie said, regret adding an unwelcome whine to her voice. “My boss won’t let me work. My coach won’t let me play. You guys will just have to make do without me.”
“If it’s anything like tonight,” Sheila warned, “we won’t make do.”
“We’ll make don’t,” Angie grumbled.
Lainie knew the Colonielles’ odds of winn
ing tomorrow night’s game would increase greatly if she were allowed to play. Believing this wasn’t a matter of egotism. She might be the oldest player on the team, but she was also one of the strongest.
However, the decision was out of her hands. “Play your best,” she urged her friends. “I’ll be there in spirit.”
“Do us a favor,” Angie requested. “Tell your spirit to score a few goals for us.”
Chapter Eighteen
AT FIVE THIRTY the next evening, when Colonielles all over Rockford were leaving their houses, climbing into their cars, and driving to Minuteman Field, Lainie found herself crouching behind some rhododendrons on the edge of Patty Cavanagh’s two-acre lot. She was dressed in black—black sweatpants, black zippered sweat jacket, and a black barrette holding her hair off her face. She supposed she could have added a black knit cap to the costume, black gloves, even black face paint. But the early evening sky still held a lot of light, and dressing all in black actually made her more visible, as if she were a three-dimensional shadow.
Every movie she’d ever seen about cat burglars had the burglars clad in black. Not that Lainie intended to burgle anything, but she was on a stealth mission and chose to dress correctly for the occasion, even though dressing correctly for occasions was not her forte. She hadn’t worn black to Arthur’s funeral, and left to her own devices she would never have bought herself that gorgeous silk dress for Henry’s birthday party.
All right, so she’d dressed wrong for this mission. At least in her sweats she looked like someone who might be heading to a soccer game.
She’d parked her Volvo around the corner and down the block and traveled to Patty’s house on foot, skulking along the hedges that separated one estate-sized lot from the next. Rockford had minimum one-acre zoning, but the really big mansions, like Patty’s, sat on larger parcels. Lainie was grateful for the size of Patty’s property tonight; it enabled her to watch Patty’s front door from a distance.
The air smelled of springtime: cut grass, forsythia, warm earth. A few yellow jackets hovered above the budding pink rhododendron blossoms, but Lainie held still and they ignored her. A convention of sparrows occupied the hedge of arborvitae marking the edge of Patty’s property. The birds were invisible within the dense branches of the evergreens, but the branches trembled and a loud chorus of chirping emanated from the shrubbery. Lainie appreciated the noise. It drowned out the thumping of her heart.
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