Until Death

by Alicia Rasley

  I peered at him. He’d replied with the right sarcasm, but with no attitude. “What’s wrong?”

  His shoulders hunched under his Kevin Garnett jersey. “It’s just Friday night. You know. Every other Friday night.”

  That’s when his dad used to pick him up for visitation.” Oh, honey, I’m sorry.” It seemed like months since Don last drove up to the house to take Tommy away for the weekend. “Do you want—” I struggled with my own needs. I couldn’t stay. I’d spent all that money. I had to investigate. And yet—I grabbed the portable phone from the hall table and tossed it to him. “Invite Jamie over. You can order a pizza. There’s money in the coffee mug.”

  Vince blasted his horn (my mother would be appalled), and with a last look at Tommy, I went out the door. But when we were halfway downtown, I called and was relieved to hear loud music and laughter. “How many kids do you have there?”

  “Just Jamie and Lily and Bose. And Trey. And Ronnie.”

  “All right. But I don’t want a lot of loud partying when I’m not there.”

  As I hung up, Vince said, “Hal will be home by nine. If they get wild, he’ll take care of it.”

  Hal was someone who, as soon as he turned twenty-one, forgot he’d ever been young and wild himself. “Oh, right. He’ll probably call the police on them.”

  Sunset was a half hour away, and the western sky above the theater was just tingeing pink as we joined the well-dressed torrent squeezing through the wide gilt doors. Inside, the heat of so many bodies was overriding the air conditioning, and the stuffiness wasn’t helped by the competing clouds of perfume rising from the ladies. With the aplomb of a man who owns four tuxes, Vince pulled me through the lobby, under the crystal chandelier, to the great curving staircase. There by the grated wall vent, we could survey the whole lobby in greater comfort.

  “Hmmm, lots of money out tonight,” Vince remarked. By virtue of his position, he knew, at least by sight, most of the important business people in town. “Mostly old money, though. The techies go to the Tibetan museum benefits, you know—younger group, more fun. They had a Buddhist gospel quartet at the last one, called the Lalai Dama.”

  “There’s a trio here and a torch singer for dancing afterwards.”

  “You’ll have to count me out. The orthopedist told me no dancing, or I’d wreck all his work.”

  Oh, great. Just like junior high. The other girls would dance, and I’d be the wallflower, and those ballroom dance lessons I took after the divorce would go to waste. Then I brightened. Brad would dance with me. And maybe Will. I couldn’t remember seeing him dance, but he always swore he was the little kid cavorting in the back of the famous Woodstock bare-boob scene, so he must be capable of rhythmic motion. And maybe his date wasn’t the possessive type.

  I reminded myself sternly that I didn’t come here to dance. I climbed up the carpeted first step and started looking for Wanda’s slightly too-bright hair among the crowns arrayed before me. Alas, hers must be a popular color in the hairdressers’ repertoire; half the feminine heads bobbing there in the lobby were just that shade of champagne gold. Frustrated, I took Vince’s arm and urged him towards the group in front of the cash bar. (Two hundred dollars a plate and a cash bar? I’d have to tell Brad that was tacky.) There, halfway to the drinks, was a knot of people, and in the middle I could see the top of Will Bowie’s sandy head.

  I refused to be embarrassed as we approached. Will and I were friends, and we happened to be at the same social event with different people. Besides, I needed a second dance partner. So I strode confidently—well, squeezed through the crowd confidently—up to the knot. “Hi, Will.”

  He looked up, startled. “Uh, hi.” He wore some geek form of a tux—an Armani jacket over a Gap t-shirt—and on his arm was his date. Wanda.

  Will was clearly embarrassed. Wanda was not. Her gaze passed over me with an impersonal frigidity she must have learned watching Martha Stewart on TV. I didn’t exist. Vince, however, in his second-best tux, existed. Wanda looked him up one side and down the other, and back again.

  Vince, used to being admired, ignored her. He said into my ear, “Come on, let me get us a drink.” He took my arm, and we dodged through the crowd to the bar. Vince got us a couple of glasses of wine, and I narrowed my vision so I wouldn’t have to see Will with Wanda. I felt betrayed. Oh, not romantically betrayed. Will and I weren’t even dating. But betrayed still. He was my friend. Or he was supposed to be. And here he was with my worst enemy. And I’d confided enough in him that he knew she was my worst enemy.

  I could figure out how it happened. Will had called Wanda to discuss their mutual litigation. She’d realized she had an actual for-real multi-millionaire on the line, and wasted no time reeling him in. As soon as she aimed her simper at him, Will forgot all about the mature attractions of women of a certain age and let the old sociobiological imperative take over.

  The hell with him. He was welcome to follow his sociobiological imperative wherever it led. I wondered if he’d consider Wanda the perfect date when he had to pick her up from Cell-block C.

  Just then, Brad broke away from his old ladies, and I introduced him to Vince, who wasted no time getting right into the chamber’s focus on the symbiosis between business and art. After an exchange of cards, Vince drifted off. He knew I was up to something, and he was going to help me. He stayed close, talking to some businessman and watching for my signal.

  I plunged right in. “Thanks for warning me about Wanda, Brad. It wasn’t such a shock to see her.” A shock to see who was escorting her, but that wasn’t Brad’s fault.

  Brad smiled. “I made sure you were seated on the other side of the banquet room.”

  “Good. I want to steer clear of her.” Even as I said this, I was surreptitiously edging close enough to eavesdrop on her. I was turning into quite the accomplished liar lately. I saw the commissioner of roads near the bar, only a yard from Wanda’s gold-silk back. I said to Brad, “Would you introduce me to the commissioner? I’ve got business with his office.”

  Brad made the introduction before slipping away to greet Wanda, who had been deserted by Will. Deftly, taking her hand, Brad turned her so she became part of the group of grande dames who ran the symphony guild, and, coincidentally, so that I was out of her sight-lines.

  I nodded as the commissioner explained the bureaucratic corners I’d have to turn to get the farmhouse moved, but all the while my ears were pricked forward, listening hard for Wanda’s voice. And there it was, Wanda’s affected drawl, as she said something banal about loving music. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw that she was reading from the program of the pieces the chamber orchestra was going to play during dinner. “Especially this Saint Say-ens.”

  I heard her careful phonetic pronunciation of Saint-Saëns, and my instinctive cringe was intensified by Mrs. Lukens’s knowing heh-heh. “You must mean San-Sahn, my dear,” she said, with that perfectly Gallic nasal tone and condescension. “It’s French, you know.”

  “Oh, yes,” Wanda blurted, and I felt a sudden urge to put my hand over her mouth before she said anything else. “That’s who I meant. Camille San-Sahn. She is one of my favorites.”

  I didn’t want the empathy that flooded through me, that almost physical memory of similar mistakes my first few months at Brown. But Mrs. Lukens was laughing again, if you could call that half-strangle a laugh. “Such a funny girl you are, Mrs. Ross. She is one of your favorites. Of course. you know that Camille is a man’s name, in France. And that the composer was male.”

  This time, thank goodness, Wanda had the wit to say nothing, and Brad, with his usual grace, quickly turned the subject to the renovations that had to be made to the stage before the next season began. “Mrs. Ross said she would help out with that project, perhaps even fund it.”

  Mrs. Lukens had already had her laugh, and besides, there was no percentage in outright hum
iliating a prospective donor, so she made reassuring noises to indicate that even the money of a musical illiterate was welcomed by the symphony guild.

  Then a sharp-nailed hand clamped on my shoulder. “Meggie. So good to see you.” It was Piper Terrell, dean of theater at Ovid. She was one of those wildly dramatic women who in the Midwest are allowed only at colleges. We exchanged exclamations of praise, and then she reached behind her and pulled out a young woman and pushed her forward. “This is one of my seniors. And Sarah, this is Meggie Ross. She’s involved in theater management.”

  I started to protest that doing the books for a community theater hardly constituted theater management, but my words died out. The student was quite pretty, her hair a pale shade of red even Wanda’s hairdresser couldn’t invent, her skin translucent under a spray of freckles. But it wasn’t Piper’s student who struck me dumb. It was the man behind her with the possessive hand on her arm. Dr. Warren.

  I’d never pegged him for a cradle-robber. Not that I thought the sociobiological imperative was absent in him, but he seemed so . . . grownup. This young woman couldn’t be much more than twenty. And his wife was hardly cold in her grave.

  “This is Sarah Warren,” Piper was saying. “And her father, Dr. Warren.”

  Oh. Suddenly, Sarah was adorable again, and I thought maybe even Dr. Warren looked pretty sweet too, escorting his daughter to this sort of event. He and I admitted that we were acquainted, and Sarah said shyly that she was glad to meet me, and Piper beamed as if she had scripted all of us. “Sarah is in the music department. A fine violist,” she said, and departed abruptly, sailing off to bring drama to someone else.

  “A violist?” I asked, focusing on the daughter and not the father. If he didn’t yet know why I was here, he would as soon as he caught sight of Wanda. And then I’d hear from him, and I didn’t want to hear from him.

  “Yes, but not a fine one. Dr. Terrell was just being nice.”

  Dr. Warren was conspicuously looking at his daughter and not me. I was reminded of the leftover moments of a marital battle, when both adults speak only through the child. “Sarah’s very good. Just not very good at taking bows.”

  “Oh, Dad.” Sarah made a face. “He always says things like that. He’s a shrink, you know.”

  “Is he?” What the hell. He was thinking the worst about me anyway. So I added, “Do you pretend to have low self-esteem, so that he can have something to worry about?”

  She smiled and ducked her head. “I guess it does yank his chain. Right, Dad? Anyway, I’m not going to major in viola anymore. I want to get into orchestra management instead.”

  “She’s up for a major internship here at the symphony. For the entire fall semester, if they choose her.”

  “Is that so?” I said distractedly. Brad’s little group was breaking up, Brad heading east, and Wanda heading west, right at us. Mike Warren was still looking at me, and so hadn’t yet seen the Official Widow, but that encounter, and the lecture that would ensue, were but instants away. I grabbed Sarah’s hand. “I’ve got a friend on the board. Brad . . . “Obligingly, he turned, and as we headed towards him, Wanda passed directly behind us. Her perfume—Poison, I think—slithered up my nostrils.

  Brad pronounced himself charmed to meet Sarah. He held her hand long after another might have let it go, and asked would she and her father like to sit with us. I glanced up at Mike Warren, dreading his scrutiny all dinner long, but he was regarding Brad, his eyes narrowing, male hostility crackling from him. He thought Brad was after his little girl, and he didn’t like it.

  Quickly, before he said anything, I interposed myself. “Oh, good idea. Sarah, you can sit next to me, and I’ll tell you all I know about embezzling stage managers, evil landlords, and the rebellious stagehand unions.” I sensed Mike relaxing. I couldn’t fault his protectiveness. My own daddy, I recalled sentimentally, was just the same, which is why I made sure to go to college five hundred miles from home.

  With the seating settled, Brad headed back to his elderly donors, and I breathed a sigh of relief. But it was a short one. Mike was staring over my shoulder. I glanced back to see Wanda doing her Lauren Bacall walk, all hip and gold-sizzle fabric. I hoped Mike was just admiring the view, as most men would, but his gaze lingered only a few seconds on her rear before turning to me. “Isn’t that—”

  “Yes . . .” I gestured in the direction of a man in a frayed dinner jacket and cried, “That is the conductor, Sir Henry Mathis himself. I wonder if he’s selling any CDs tonight.” I sped off, as if I were hoping to find some symphony recordings hidden in the conductor’s pocket. But I stopped off at the bar. All this subterfuge was exhausting. I needed a drink.

  I ordered, and the bartender shoved a drink at me. I put a dollar in his tip glass, took a sip, and realized he’d given me white wine. “Excuse me, but I asked for red.”

  “Yeah, yeah, right.”

  That growly voice. I’d heard it before.

  He took my glass, poured most of the white into the sink, and dumped some red in, all the while looking towards the staircase. I sighed and accepted the strange mixture, only briefly considering taking back my dollar tip. Then I saw where he was looking—at Wanda, doing her adoring gaze thing up at Will again—and abruptly turned back.

  I knew I’d seen him before—a big man, his chest straining at the pleated white shirt, his neck bulging over the black bow-tie. A bodybuilder. A gym rat. The gym-rat at the funeral who’d stuck close by Wanda, as if protecting his investment.

  The bartender was glaring now, too distracted to notice that he’d set the wine bottle down into the plate of lemon twists. And his voice. That was the man who had answered the phone. The man whose number Wanda had called twenty times. The man whose number was on the bill Don had so carefully preserved.

  Chapter Twelve

  THE BARTENDER didn’t recognize me. Heck, he didn’t even notice me. Before I could follow up, I got caught in the general sweep towards the stairs. Dinner was in the rooftop ballroom, the tables arranged in a tight circle around a parquet dance floor. As I entered, searching for Vince, Mike Warren appeared at my side. “I thought I’d gotten away from you,” I said.

  “You invited us to sit at your table, remember?”

  I would have taken it back, but Sarah was approaching. Not quick enough, however. Mike said, “You’re here to make trouble for the second Mrs. Ross, aren’t you?”

  The disapproval and dread in his voice made it sound like my planning ability was a force to be feared. I smiled mysteriously. “I’m just keeping my eyes and ears open.”

  He looked as if he wanted to dispute this, but Sarah was with us now. By the time we got to our table, I’d figured out the seating arrangements, Vince on one side of me, Sarah on the other, so that Mike would have to lean over her to argue with me. Besides, as soon as Brad sat down, the defensive dad was on alert, and the annoyance with me faded into a minor problem.

  By the time coffee was served, I was breathing easier, keeping an eye on the table where Wanda held court—and Will’s hand.

  Maybe that’s what set Bruiser the bartender off. He walked up to the table and bent to say something in Wanda’s ear. A casual observer would have assumed that he was just passing on a phone message. But I noticed how abruptly Wanda rose, tossed her linen napkin onto her plate, and followed Bruiser out into the hall near the restrooms and kitchen.

  I rose, making a short excuse to Sarah, and threaded through the tables. A billow of curtains served as my beacon, and I followed it through the hall and just outside the cloakroom where Bruiser and Wanda were arguing in furious whispers.

  “I got hired on because I wanted to see you! But you’re here to get him, aren’t you? One old rich guy wasn’t enough for you?” Oh, wow. I wish I’d brought a tape-recorder. “But that first one only worked because I helped, and I ain’t going to help this time!”

&n
bsp; What did that mean? But Bruiser was still going on. “What did I get in return? The shaft, that’s what.” Now his voice became plaintive. “Last week you told me this would be our time.”

  “That was last week.” Wanda sounded hard. But then she thawed. “This week I’ve got all sorts of problems. There’s the probate shit, and the attorney, and that bitch—did you see her?”

  Just goes to show perspective is all, as I’d been assuming Wanda was the bitch. But Wanda had dismissed me and gone to her next problem. “And this goddamned lawsuit. That’s why I’m here with this guy. He’s rich enough to buy off twenty plaintiffs, if I just play him right.”

  “So that means now that you got five or ten mil, you’re aiming at the real money?”

  An exasperated sound. “If we settle the lawsuit cheap, I might have something left afterwards. And I need to spend some time with him to get him to the same conclusion.”

  “So when are you going to spend time with me? You only find time with me when you want to ride the old Maypole.”

  Maypole? “I’m trying to get ahead, you stupid bastard. And all you do is hold me back.”

  “Just remember when you met me, babe. Ask yourself if that rich dude would be hanging around if he knew about your ex’s current residence, in maximum security. Ask him if he’d like to hang with Wade.”

  Wanda’s reply was in a low whisper. “If you say a word, you—”

  Then a hand seized my arm. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Mike Warren demanded, yanking me into the ballroom, where everyone was heading out to the dance floor.

  “Damn it, let go of me. I’m trying to—”

  “You’re trying to get yourself into serious trouble. Half the wait staff was wondering if you had an Uzi in that bag. You looked ready to avenge some insult and mow everyone down.”

  Just then Wanda came storming out. She made a visible effort to compose herself and walked more sedately towards her table. “I told you I was going to check up on her.”