Camilla T. Crespi - The Breakfast Club Murder (6 page)

“I guess she didn’t invite you to the wedding,” Beth said. “That is ungrateful, after all the business you sent her way.”

Margot squeezed Lori’s arm. “Darling, you don’t know how sorry I am about her. And I would never have gone to the wedding.”

“I know. You’re a pal.”

“I’m sorry,” Janet said, still blushing. “Seth must have told me.” She twisted her paper napkin, then smoothed it out with the palm of her hand.

Had Janet and Seth gone to Rob’s wedding? Is that why Janet was so nervous? She felt disloyal? Lori squeezed Janet’s hand and said, “I’m glad they’ve made up.” Seth and Rob had been good friends until two years ago. If Janet had gone to the wedding, Lori knew it was only because Seth had dragged her there. “You can be Rob’s friend, too, you know. That takes nothing away from our friendship.” Well, it did take something away, but Lori wasn’t going to show that it did. To feel that way was petty and ungenerous.

Margot leaned her head toward Lori and asked in a throaty whisper. “So did someone try to kill him?”

Lori put her fork down. “He was probably jaywalking and the car got within two feet of him. Rob tends to exaggerate.” Someone trying to kill him was too preposterous.

“He knows he’s been a rat,” Margot said, “and now he’s begging for sympathy.”

Lori thought back to the look she had caught on Rob’s face in the car. That he was feeling guilty was something she had wanted to believe. What if her first instinct had been right? That Rob was scared?

“The whole thing is ridiculous,” Beth said, as she took money out of her wallet. “Janet and Margot, you each owe me four and a quarter. Callie’s treating Lori.”

Lori walked down to the end of the counter and reached over to give Callie a hug. “Thanks. You’re a sweetheart.”

“Trust me.” Callie said. “You’ll get over him.”

When Lori joined the other women outside the coffee shop, Beth was telling Margot and Janet about the time Lori had called her because Rob thought he’d been poisoned. “He insisted she take him to the emergency room in the middle of the night. All he had was the twenty-four hour stomach flu. You remember, Lori?”

“God, yes,” she said, even though she was too tired to remember that she’d called Beth about it. Rob was always sounding the alarm for every little cold or indigestion. A self-absorbed wimp, terrified of dying, that’s who she had married. Not a man whose life was in danger.

Jessica was staring at her mother from the bathroom door with disbelief clinging to her face.

Lori’s stomach turned over, as it always did whenever Jessica looked unhappy or angry. Well, really anything potentially painful. An unhappy Jessica, any good memory of Rob, her empty king-size bed, the remembered sight of Valerie with a drill in her hand, smiling down at her gaping mouth. The list was endless. Maybe she should ask her doctor for tranquilizers. Lori turned off the hair dryer. “What is it, honey? What’s wrong?”

“Flowers,” Jessica sputtered. She pointed to the stairway behind her. “There’s got to be at least a thousand flowers downstairs.”

“Flowers, how nice,” Lori said, registering only the fact that a tragedy had not occurred. She smiled at Jessica and turned the hair dryer back on. Her mind went back to rehearsing what she was going to say once she got to Valerie’s office. “Ruth”—that was Valerie’s office manager—“Ruth, my teeth are bleeding.” Or “I left my umbrella last time I was here. I know, eighteen months ago, but it’s going to rain any day now. I’ll just check all the rooms.” Ruth, big, slow, and stuck behind a desk, would never catch her.

And then the big moment—Valerie standing in front of her. Without the drill, Lori hoped. Calmly, she would tell her husband’s new wife, her ex-husband’s new wife—

“Mom! Someone sent you flowers!”

Lori spun around to face her daughter. “Flowers? Why?”

“How should I know?” Jessica’s expression was belligerent.

“I’m sorry, Jess. I’m running late for an important meeting in NewYork this afternoon and I was distracted. Flowers are always wonderful, unless it’s a funeral. Let’s see them.” Halfway down the stairs she could smell them.

“You’re not going to see Dad, are you?” Jessica asked in a wary voice.

“No, sweetie, I’m meeting with the accountant over taxes.” Little white lies to your child were necessary sometimes. Lori stopped short at the sight of the enormous bouquet of white roses, Casablanca lilies, and pink peonies that now crowded the entrance table. “Holy sky!” Lori said, an expression her mother used for the unexpected. At least fifty flowers bulged out of a round, blue-patterned ceramic pot. They took her breath away.

“This has Margot’s signature on it, for sure,” she said, picking up the note pinned to the satin bow.

Dear Ms. Corvino,

Again I apologize for ruining your evening in Rome. I could not help but overhear you asking Maurizio, the waiter, for the recipe of
gnocchi della regina.
I have sent it along. If you have not received it yet, it should arrive shortly. Flowers and a recipe cannot replace the beautiful dress you were wearing and which I’m afraid I have ruined, but I did want you to know how sorry I am.

With best wishes,
Alec Winters

P.S. I have many mended bones to prove how hopelessly clumsy I have always been.

“Who sent them?” Jessica asked, leaning sideways to read the note.

Lori slipped the note in her bathrobe before Jessica could read it. “A man,” she said and dropped down on a stair. This was too much. Even patronizing. Did she care about his mended bones? Really! And why hadn’t he left a return address? Was she expected to accept and forget?

“Mom, do you have a boyfriend?” Jessica asked.

Lori looked at the flowers again and breathed in their perfume. God, they were so beautiful, and if she didn’t watch it she would shrivel into a complaining bitter woman. How sweet Mr. Alec Winters was. How sincerely sorry. And the recipe. How had he gotten the recipe? For that matter, how had he gotten her name and address?

“Mom, if you have a boyfriend I think I should know about it. No more surprises, okay?” Jessica shook her mother’s shoulder. “Mom?”

Lori looked up. “Oh, honey, how could I possibly have a boyfriend? No, this is just a man I met in Rome.” From where she sat, Lori could see the kitchen wall clock. One forty p.m. The train to Grand Central left at two twenty. She started running up the stairs. “I’ll tell you what happened when I come back, okay?”

“Whatever. I’m always the last to know anything,” Jessica yelled up at her mother.

“Jess, be fair,” Lori yelled back. “We’ll talk tonight. Okay?” There was silence from downstairs. A boyfriend. How could Jess even think that? Lori stepped into a pair of beige cotton slacks, topped them with a white short-sleeved jersey. She’d show Jess the ruined dress. That should erase any doubts. The gray linen jacket she’d bought in Florence was wrinkled, but the saleswoman had insisted that linen wrinkles were chic. Lori slipped on the jacket. The wrinkles matched her face. She put on another layer of foundation, a pale lipstick, and let thoughts of Alec Winters float back into her mind. How did he know her name and her address? And how did he get that recipe? She tried to remember what he looked like and couldn’t. She’d been terribly rude to him, that she knew. She fluffed up her hair and smiled at her reflection. Damn! Those flowers were softening her resolve to faceValerie. That would never do. She straightened her spine and frowned in the mirror. No jewelry. She wanted to appear severe, strong.

Lori grabbed her handbag.

The front door slammed.

Lori peered down from the upstairs landing. “Jess?” No answer. She skipped down the stairs and checked the kitchen. Jessica had left a note on the kitchen table, held down by the now-empty Coke bottle. “I’m staying over at Angie’s tonight. I only told you three times!!!” The yellow rose, Lori noticed, was sticking out of the garbage where she was sure to notice it.

Lori walked back to the hallway and pushed her nose against a Casablanca lily. She inhaled deeply and told herself—
we’ll be fine. One day. Soon.

“The doctor’s with a patient. You can’t see her,” Ruth said.

Lori strode past the desk.

Ruth half-sat up. “Wait, Mrs. Staunton, I mean, Lori! Stop!”

Valerie, in a white coat, three-inch heels, and swaying blond hair, sashayed down the corridor. She stopped at the sight of Lori and smiled, showing off her perfect caps, blue-white to match her husband’s. “There’s no point to this,” she said in a soft voice only Lori could hear. “I’m Rob’s wife now. You can’t get him back.”

Valerie’s words were hot lava pouring down Lori’s throat. For a moment she couldn’t speak. She looked at Valerie’s skinny frame and remembered why she was here. “Stop undermining my daughter. There’s nothing wrong with her weight.”

Valerie’s eyes traveled down Lori’s body, the smile still hovering on her lips. “Jess has some bad genes to contend with. She needs to watch it. One thing you have to remember now is that Jess may be your daughter, but she’s also Rob’s daughter. And now mine. I can tell her whatever—”

Lori stepped closer. “She’ll never be your daughter,” she said quietly, then slapped Valerie hard across her smirk.

“You didn’t.”

“I did. And she almost toppled over on her three-inch heels.” Lori had called Beth on the train coming home and now they were sitting in her kitchen, half a bottle of Falanghina sloshing in their empty stomachs. “Who can stand all day in three-inch heels?”

“What did she do after you slapped her?” Beth asked.

“She said, ‘You’re pitiful.’ ”

“Nasty.”

“I wanted to hit her again but the bulldog nurse was heading straight for me and I got out before I got hauled out.” Lori refilled the wine glasses, took another fortifying gulp, and leaned back in her chair. “Now I’m furious at myself for losing control, for giving her so much power over me.”

What Lori really wanted to do was sleep and forget the whole episode. She was ashamed of what she’d done. “It felt great for about three seconds.”

“Let’s think happy thoughts,” Beth said.

“Great idea.” Valerie was Jessica’s stepmother now. Both she and Jess would have to learn to live with that. “How about food as a happy thought? You hungry? Let me try out one of my new recipes on you. Risotto with baby peas and shrimp. That would be nice for the dinner party on Saturday. Thanks again for that job, by the way. I can do it. Jess is going to a party that night. I’m thrilled to have the distraction. How did you get me the job on such short notice?”

“Her regular caterer had to cancel. I know her son, who’s a client of mine. He asked me if I knew of anyone. Hey, you might know him. Jonathan Ashe. You probably fed him at one of Rob’s business dinners. He was on the fast track in Rob’s law firm. Curly blond hair, blue eyes, six feet or so, with a great dimple on one cheek? Once you saw him you wouldn’t forget him. He’s cute.”

Lori shook her head. “I was so busy worrying that the dinner went perfectly I barely looked up at the guests.”

“He’s on his own now, doing real estate and handling Mama’s money. Over the years Jonathan’s managed to convince her that buying art is a good investment.” When Beth’s husband, Larry, died, she had stopped being a social worker to run his art gallery.

“What about veal
rollatini
with a pancetta and porcini mushroom stuffing, or scaloppine with lemon and capers?”

“Stop, I’m gaining weight just listening to you.” Beth turned her chair so that she was facing the hallway. “When I said ‘let’s think happy thoughts’ I was referring to that humongous mass of flowers from Mr. Alec Winters. It’s a great mood enhancer. Does he live near here?”

“There was no address.”

“Call the florist and tell them you’ve got something of his you need to return. If they still won’t give you his address, mail them your thank-you note and ask them to forward it.”

“If he wanted to let me know how to find him, he would have, right?”

“Stop being passive. You’re divorced now. Life’s in your hands.”

“Well, he’s supposedly sending me a recipe. Maybe it will come with a return address.”

Beth got out of her chair. “Where’s your laptop?”

“Next to the microwave. Why?”

Beth walked over to the kitchen counter and opened up the laptop. “I’m going to Google Mr. Alec Winters. You don’t give up on someone who sends you that kind of bouquet. Not only can he afford those flowers, he’s sensitive, sweet, romantic, and he knows recipes. He’s ideal, Lori. Get it? Ideal!”

“I don’t even remember what he looks like.”

“Ugly you’d remember.”

“He probably lives in Alaska. And anyway, I’m not interested in men right now.”

“You don’t have to marry him, Lori. Just think of him as another great distraction. If he’s in Alaska you can e-mail each other, talk about food, Italy, anything. Communicate.” Beth turned around and looked fiercely at Lori. “Living alone sucks, so whatever you can do—”

“I’ve got Jessica.”

“And I’ve had the twins all these years, but children don’t replace a man. It’s not just sex. It’s having an adult companion, someone to share adult thoughts with, someone who can take over if you lose it. You and Janet and Margot have been great, but it’s not enough. I don’t mean to scare you, Lori, but it’s been godawful since Larry died.” Beth burst into tears. “Just hell.”

Lori was taken aback. She’d always thought of Beth as a pillar of strength. Margot even called her Concrete Beth, both because she was the realist among the three friends and because of her strength. Beth had faced her husband’s slow death from leukemia without a tear or complaint. At Larry’s funeral and in the months afterward she had concentrated on helping her children and Larry’s friends deal with their grief. Now here was Concrete Beth crying like a child. Lori hugged her. “I’m so sorry. I had no idea. You never said anything.”

“I tried dating, but no one measured up to Larry, and when it came to having sex, I just couldn’t. I felt like meat for sale. I guess I just want him back.”

Why hadn’t Beth shared her unhappiness with her friends? Was it pride? Shame? Had she, Margot and Janet stopped paying attention because they were each too busy with their own lives? She considered Beth her oldest, her best friend, and yet here she was suddenly discovering she didn’t truly know her, as she had discovered she didn’t truly know her husband. As she might not know Jessica. Maybe Donne was wrong.
We are all islands, destined to be lonel
y. No! The thought was too awful.