Camilla T. Crespi - The Breakfast Club Murder (4 page)

“Sure.” Lori smiled at her daughter’s shift from woman to teenager. “I’m sure you looked gorgeous in it. How was the wedding? Did you have fun? Were there kids your age to dance with?”

Jessica had the good taste to turn red. “Mom!”

“You don’t have to answer,” Lori said, “but I can ask.” It killed her to admit it, but she was curious. How fancy a wedding was it? Did they have a band? What food was served? Oysters, caviar, rare filet mignon covered in a cream-laced shiitake and shallot sauce—foods Rob loved—or half a chicken breast and no carbs, a dish she imagined skinny Valerie would favor. Who was the caterer? How much money did they spend? Did Rob make Valerie sign a prenuptial agreement? Well, she would never know, which maybe was for the best. Lori linked her arm with her daughter’s. “Come on, let’s go see this smashing dress.”

Outside, someone honked. Jessica pulled back. “Later.” She maneuvered Lori into a chair by the table. “Stay here, in your favorite room.”

It had been her favorite. The best, biggest room in the house, where, as a family, the Stauntons had spent countless hours eating and talking at the old round oak table in the center of the room, reading or watching television from the denim-covered sofa at one end. The tapping of Rob’s laptop, Jessica’s sighs and mutterings as she worked on her homework had kept Lori company on many a night while she cooked, ironed, sewed, did her old-fashioned wifely, motherly duties, enjoying almost every minute of it. Before Jessica reached puberty and preferred her cell phone and the privacy of her room. Before Rob got bored and preferred his dentist. She was going to be spending days in this room, testing out recipes. Lori looked forward to the hard work, the sense of achievement a successful dish was going to give her. Maybe then she wouldn’t miss what had been.

Jessica pushed the tray of fudge in front of her mother. “Eat more,” she said. “You’re going to need the boost.”

“Why?” Lori asked, puzzled, although the spark in Jessica’s eyes told her nothing terrible was about to happen.

“Grammy is descending on us.”

Not terrible. Not good, either. Not that Lori didn’t love her mother, but distance certainly made the heart grow fonder when it came to Ellie Corvino, the only grandparent Jessica had. “Now?”

“She’s bringing dinner!” Jessica rolled her eyes as she crammed two fudge squares in her mouth. One of Jessica’s traits Lori was most grateful for was her appetite. She ate like a sumo wrestler and looked like a gazelle—a gene gift from her father. The Corvino women ate a carrot and another lump mushroomed on their hips. While Lori exercised four days a week and used portion control to stay a size twelve, her mother, a sixty-seven-year-old widow who owned and still ran the Bella Vista Travel Agency in Mamaroneck, New York, had become a vegan and let weight come and go as it pleased.

Jessica picked up the tray. “I’m hiding the fudge in my room.”

“Good move. It’ll spare us a lecture.” The front door opened.

“Hi, Mom,” Lori said as her mother tried to balance a large pan while extracting the key from the front door. It seemed to have gotten stuck. Lori went over to help. “How’s everything?” She removed the key and gave her mother pecks on both cheeks.

Ellie Corvino, red-dyed short hair in a bristle brush cut, wearing a blue Hawaiian shirt to which she’d added shoulder pads, purple Bermudas, and clunky sandals on her feet, placed the plastic-wrapped roasting pan on the floor and eyed her daughter. “You look terrible. You need some good face cream. Face cream and lots of makeup will make you feel like a million dollars. A billion, I guess. A million dates me. I’ll get you some cream tomorrow.” She held out her hand. “The key.”

“I don’t remember giving you a key to my house.”

Ellie took the key from Lori’s hand, dropped it in the handbag dangling from her shoulder. “The hardware store did a lousy copying job.” She picked up the pan with a loud moan and limped past Lori into the kitchen.

Lori was well aware that her mother was not beyond faking things to divert attention from her misdeeds, a trait she shared with Rob. She didn’t want to ask, wasn’t going to ask, but when she saw Ellie grab the table with both hands to lower herself into a chair, she couldn’t stop herself. “Are you in pain?”

“My sciatica is killing me. Where’s Jess?”

“Upstairs, taking a shower.” Eating the rest of the fudge, more likely. “What are you taking for it?”

“Aspirin colors me black and blue. Ibuprofen eats out my stomach. I take nothing. ‘Grin and bear it’ is my motto.”

So it wasn’t too bad, Lori decided. “About the key?”

Ellie waved at the tray. “Heat up the oven to four hundred degrees, wait ten minutes, pop this in,
without
the plastic, mind you, for twenty minutes.”

“Look, Mom, I just got home from a nine-hour flight. In Italy’s it’s one o’clock in the morning and I’m beat.”

“Lasagna direct from the Corvino kitchen. Delish. Figured you need some healthy cooking after all those restaurant meals. Which reminds me,” Ellie slapped her hand on the table. “I don’t know why I’m speaking to you, Loretta Corvino, going off to Italy without using the Bella Vista agency. What kind of daughter are you, you don’t support the family business?”

Lori sat down with a defeated sigh. “I didn’t want you on my back.”

Ellie shrugged her padded shoulders. “Suit yourself. I could have got you a big discount at the best hotels. I bet you stayed in rat holes.”

“I was having a tough time. I wasn’t thinking clearly. What’s in the lasagna?”

“You’re the caterer. You figure it out.”

She didn’t want to figure it out, much less taste the stuff. Her mother had always been a bad cook, but since she’d gone vegan—“Pasta, tomatoes, and gobs of tofu.”

“And broccoli rabe plus a secret ingredient. You’ll have to guess after you taste it.”

“I love a mystery.” Lori got up to turn on the oven and set the table. “Now tell me how you got a key to my house.”

Ellie looked over her shoulder at the back door, then at the stairs in the hall. “Is Jess going to be a while?”

“She’ll come down when I call her.”

“The wedding was lousy.”

Lori’s throat tightened. “What wedding?”

“Your husband’s.”

“My ex, Mom. Ex! I can’t believe you went. Talk about family support!”

“Who else is going to tell you what it was like? Jess wasn’t going to snitch on her dad. And don’t tell me you aren’t ready to eat all of my tofu lasagna, lousy as you think it is, to find out all about how Mr. Robert Staunton and Valerie Fenwick DDS got hitched. They made the
Times
today. I cut out the clipping. It’s here in my purse.” Ellie swung a large cotton satchel onto the table and started rummaging.

“I don’t want to hear about it, Mom, and I don’t want to read anything. I can’t believe he invited you.” Rob had thought Ellie was fun the first years of their marriage. He couldn’t understand why Lori complained about her unwanted intrusions into their life. But once the law firm made him partner, he’d distanced himself, disappearing whenever she showed up, making sure they were never seen together. Lori guessed Ellie had become too low-class for Rob’s newly acquired status in a white-shoe firm. Maybe that’s what he’d ended up thinking about his wife—not polished enough. Valerie’s parents had both been surgeons; Valerie had gone to Harvard; Valerie was skinny and as smooth as a capped tooth. Rumor had it she was also very rich.

“I crashed,” Ellie said. “Got a great kick out of the look on his face when I waltzed in. You’d have thought he was looking at a backpack full of explosives. But what could he do with all his fancy Park Avenue friends there, throw me out? I’m getting thirsty. Do I deserve a beer or what?”

“No, you don’t, but I’ll get you one out of the goodness of my heart.”

“Now, mind you,” Ellie said, after ignoring the glass Lori had put on the table and swigging directly from the beer bottle. “I did dress great, didn’t want to shame Jess. I wore a Loehman’s designer room outfit. Green, with sequins. Pricey, but I can always wear it when you get married again.”

“Never!”

Ellie tapped her watch. “Oven time. Don’t drop the lasagna, okay? And make sure the oven door is shut tight or else it doesn’t heat good. Got the plastic bags off?”

Lori slipped the lasagna into the oven. Ellie needed to hear the sound of her own voice to make sure she was still going strong.

“Twenty minutes now, no more.” Ellie twisted around to watch Lori. “So I’ll wear the outfit at Jessica’s wedding. Anyway, Jess said I looked like a queen.”

Lori threw the oven mitts on the kitchen counter. She turned to face her mother. “Go on.”

Ellie filled her in with great gusto. “The wedding and reception were at the Central Park Boathouse. Flowers to make a funeral home proud. And they had the gall to serve the bloated livers of I don’t know how many poor tortured geese and so much bloody meat I thought I’d walked onto the set of
Pulp Fiction.
There was enough champagne to fill the lake. They’re all going to get cancer or end up in AA. I was too disgusted to stay for dinner. Valerie wore a strapless Vera Wang and her shoulder blades stuck out like chicken wings and you’ll be happy to know her French twist collapsed in the middle of the ceremony. A hairpin got stuck to her veil. Now, our Jessie,” Ellie lifted her hefty chest with pride. “She looked like a movie star in her Vera Wang. Just gorgeous. You’re going to have to peel the boys off her in a year or two. Rob looked like he hadn’t slept in weeks. I’m telling you, Loretta, he’s regretting it. I know he’s going to come crawling back in six months.”

“You don’t expect me to take him back?”

“He’s Jessica’s father. He’s a good provider and you’re not getting any younger. In my day, just one of those would be enough to make a wife swallow her pride and let the man into her bed again.”

“A hell of a lot more than my pride is involved here.”

Ellie shrugged. “Maybe.”

“Rob thinks someone tried to kill him two nights ago.” Lori didn’t know why she was telling her mother this.

“Did you?”

“Mom!”

“You could have hired someone.” Ellie thought for a moment, then shook her head. “Naw, never believe a lawyer. He’s coming back. Mark my words.”

When Lori saw Rob at the airport, there had been a fleeting moment when she thought:
he’s back, he didn’t marry the dentist.
She had denied that thought until now. Could she take him back for Jessica’s sake? Love him? It had to be too late for that. No, if she still dreamed of getting him back, it was probably for the satisfaction of turning him away.

“Mom, I’ve heard enough. Thanks. Now tell me about the house key.”

Ellie looked at her wristwatch, a man’s Timex that had miraculously stayed intact when her husband fell off the roof of their house while replacing some shingles, dying on impact. Lori had been eight at the time. “Ten more minutes for the lasagna.” She looked up at her daughter. “Yes, I have a key to your house. I snitched Rob’s when you told me he was divorcing you. They were lying on the front table for anybody to take. I said I had to go to the drugstore and quick as a wink I got a copy made. What if you fall down the stairs or slip in the bathtub and lie there comatose? Jess is a teenager, she’s going to be off with her friends. You want some stranger to break down the door, smash the windows? You call me and I come help you.”

“I’ll call if I’m comatose?”

Ellie shook her hands in Lori’s direction. “If you’re comatose, I’ll know. I’m your mother. Now get Jess down here and let’s eat.”

Lori opened one eye and looked at the window. It was pitch black outside. Her stomach growled. It was probably somewhere between three and four in the morning—if she turned on the light to find out, goodbye sleep. She turned over and let her mind travel back to Italy. It was breakfast time there now. She always sat at an outside table, overlooking a canal or a sun-drenched piazza. The
International Herald Tribune—
which she dutifully bought to keep up with the world and which she never read—was folded in her lap. Every morning she ordered a chocolate-sprinkled cappuccino with foam that tasted of coffee and milk, instead of the air you got at Starbucks. After scraping the last of the foam from her cup with a spoon, she ate a toasted slice of focaccia with prosciutto.

She could do that at home. Buy an espresso machine, prosciutto, maybe bake her own focaccia. She could even subscribe to the
Herald Tribune.
There was nothing to stop her. And she’d get that golden retriever she’d always wanted. Why not? She was a free woman.

Lori groaned and reached for Rob’s pillow, which she had washed countless times to rid it of his scent. The clean smell of soap reached her nostrils. It made her want to cry. Lori was used to spooning herself against Rob’s back in order to fall asleep again. The warmth of his body against hers had made her feel safe. Now she buried her face in the pillow she still thought of as his and rocked herself.
Toss out the empty king-size bed,
she told herself.
Get a queen.
Maybe she’d feel like one.

Lori threw the pillow on the floor and turned on the light. Food. Food solved all problems. She slid out of bed, threw on her bathrobe, and tiptoed to the hallway. To her surprise, Jessica’s door was open. Lori peeked into the room to listen for the steady rhythm of her daughter’s sleeping breath, a sound that always filled her with the sense that all was right in the world.

“Mom?”

“Oh, Jess, I’m sorry.” Lori stepped into the room. “Did I wake you?”

“If you’re going downstairs to eat, there’s nothing in the fridge. You made me dump Grammy’s leftovers and the fudge is gone. I was awake already.”

“Dumping was your idea, sweetie.” Lori sat down on Jessica’s bed and stroked her daughter’s hair. “Why aren’t you sleeping? Did you have a bad dream?”

“I’m not six, Mom!” Jessica protested, referring to the time her father had gone away for two weeks to argue a case in San Francisco. Every night that he was away she had woken up howling from the same bad dream. Daddy wasn’t going to come back.

“I worry about you, honey. You’ve been through a lot.”