“He did?” Apparently their conversation had covered more ground than I’d imagined.
Peter leaned forward, resting his elbows on his legs. “He also mentioned he’s thinking of seeking joint-custody.”
“That may be what he said, but it’s not going to happen. I’m not allowing Davey to travel halfway across the country to be cared for by a father he’s never known, not to mention some child bride.”
“Good for you,” said Rose. “I never expected to hear any differently, but I just wanted to make sure. Have you spoken with a lawyer?”
I’d certainly thought about it, but it was a move I didn’t want to make quite yet. Lawyers solved some problems, but they also created others. They thrived in an atmosphere of adversity. So far, Bob and I were getting along, with Davey benefiting from our mutual good-will. For my son’s sake, I wanted to hold off any outside interference until I felt I had no choice.
“Not yet. At the moment, Bob’s plans seem to be pretty vague. As soon as I retain a lawyer, matters will begin to escalate. I’m hoping it won’t have to come to that, that I’ll be able to make Bob see reason by myself.”
“Just the same,” said Peter. “I’ll do some asking around and line up a few names. And if there’s anything else you need, you just let us know.”
“Thank you,” I said, feeling unexpectedly touched. “I appreciate that.”
“Do more than appreciate it. Use it, if you need to. You’ve got our number.”
Aunt Rose reached out and patted my hand. “God never asks more of us than we’re capable of handling. You do the best you can, dear, and everything will be all right.”
I wished I had her faith, but I didn’t. Even as a child, growing up in a strictly religious family, I never had. The most I could muster now toward the Catholic Church was ambivalence, which was why Davey had been baptized but mass wasn’t part of our weekly ritual.
“I’ll pray for you,” Rose promised. “We both will.”
Behind her, the kitchen door swung open. Davey threw himself into our midst. His hands and face were clean, but his breath smelled suspiciously like chocolate.
“Dinner’s ready!” he announced.
“Did you help?” asked Peter.
Davey nodded emphatically. “I helped a lot.”
“I’ll bet,” I muttered. Unpacking all those boxes must have been arduous work. Not to mention positioning the food on the serving plates so that it looked home made.
Frank pushed open the kitchen door until it stuck “Come on in and help yourselves. Everything’s all set.”
Davey led the way, with Rose and Peter following close behind. When Frank would have gone after them, I stopped him with a hand on his arm.
“Thanks,” I said softly, leaning up to kiss his cheek.
He colored slightly and looked away. I wondered when was the last time I’d expressed any spontaneous affection toward my brother. It was so long ago, I couldn’t remember.
“It was nothing,” said Frank.
“It was very nice of you.”
He smiled. “Then you’re welcome.”
He draped an arm around my shoulders—a gesture as unexpected as the kiss I’d given him—and we went in to dinner.
Maybe there was hope for this family yet.
Eighteen
When Aunt Peg is trying to poke her nose into my life, which she does with annoying regularity, her persistence can be a real pain. When applied in other directions, however, it’s actually quite a useful trait. Which is why I wasn’t terribly surprised to have her call on Friday and tell me we were due at the Rubicovs’ that evening at nine o’clock for dessert and coffee.
Of course she seemed to have forgotten that I have a five year old son.
“Bring him along,” said Aunt Peg.
“He’s supposed to be in bed by then.”
“So he’ll be a little tired tomorrow. It’s Saturday. He can sleep late.”
Another objection disposed of with Aunt Peg’s usual dispatch. Obviously she’d never dealt with a young child who’d been kept up past his bedtime. I supposed I could have called around and tried to find a sitter, but I really didn’t want to. Davey had spent so much time with his father lately that I welcomed the thought of having him with me, even if it wasn’t under the best of circumstances.
Since Cy and Barbara lived in Greenwich, Davey and I met Aunt Peg at her house and we all went over together. The Volvo was making noises that didn’t sound promising and the heater had recently given out, but application of foot to gas pedal was still producing forward motion. These days, that seemed to be about as much as I could hope for. I offered to drive and Aunt Peg accepted.
Davey was in the back seat bouncing up and down with excitement. He’d passed over-tired half an hour ago. Now he was getting his second wind. He was telling Aunt Peg dinosaur jokes, and she interspersed listening with giving me directions.
Cy and Barbara lived only minutes away in a development on North Street called Conyers Farm. Housing developments in back country Greenwich have little in common with those in other parts of the country. This one had been fashioned from the estate of a former business tycoon and consisted of thirteen hundred acres, much of it retained by the developer as open land. The minimum lot size was ten acres and the houses ranged from baronial manors to mini horse farms. There were wide streets, lots of trees, and an abundance of white fencing. Anywhere else, Conyers Farm would have been the pinnacle. In Greenwich it was just another good address.
The Rubicovs’ house was set high on a hill and surrounded by enough lawn to keep a crew of landscapers busy full-time. It was constructed of stone and looked as though it had been designed to withstand the advances of an invading army. The castle—that was the only word for it—was three stories high, with turrets at either end, leaded glass windows, and a massive oak front door. All that was missing was the moat.
It wasn’t the way I’d have chosen to spend my money, but it certainly was eye-catching.
I parked the battered Volvo in front of the stone steps. A pair of statues-snarling lions, only slightly under life size—guarded the wide oak door.
“Wow,” said Davey, climbing from the car. “A real castle. Does a king live here?”
“No, honey.” I looped a reassuring arm around his shoulders. If he tipped his head back any farther, he was going to fall over. “Just normal people, with lots of money.”
“Maybe they’ll give us some,” he said hopefully.
“I don’t think so.” I stooped low and whispered in his ear. “And don’t ask, okay?”
Aunt Peg had gone ahead up the steps. There was no need to knock; the door was already being drawn open by a middle-aged man in black pants and a crisp white shirt. “Good evening,” he said formally. “Mr. and Mrs. Rubicov are expecting you. May I take your coats?”
The front hall was as wide as my driveway, and softly lit by a cut glass chandelier. We unbundled ourselves in the shadow of a curving staircase. In keeping with the castle motif, tapestries hung on the walls. There was a thick Persian carpet beneath our feet. It was all very beautiful, and very quiet.
It took me a moment to figure out why that seemed odd. Then I realized that all the houses we’d been to had one thing in common—the noisy, joyous presence of dogs. We’d been greeted by oodles of Poodles, droves of Dachshunds, and bunches of Beagles. Here there was only silence, without so much as a muddy paw print or Milkbone out of place.
The houseman took our coats and led the way to a set of double doors on the right. He knocked, then opened them to reveal a spacious library. Books lined two walls, windows a third, and the fourth held a fireplace, where a blazing fire had been lit. Despite the grandeur of the house, this room had been decorated with comfort in mind. The overstuffed furniture was covered in chintz and scattered with pillows. Cy and Barbara were seated near the fireplace.
Cy rose as we entered. “Peg, Melanie, how nice of you to join us.” He walked toward us, arms extended in greeting. “An
d who’s this fine young man?”
“I’m Davey,” my son announced before I could introduce him. “You live in a castle.”
“Yes, I suppose I do.” Cy smiled.
“Do you have a dungeon?”
“No, but we have two towers. That’s almost as good.”
“No, it’s not—”
I poked my son, hard.
Davey quickly changed tacks. “Can I see them?”
“Maybe some other time,” I said, the classic mother’s response. I angled Davey until he was standing behind me. “Cy, it’s nice to see you again.”
“My pleasure,” said the gracious host. “Please, come in and make yourselves comfortable. Peg, how are things going these days in the world of Poodles?”
I’ve never been good at small talk. Luckily, Aunt Peg could chat the ears off a Basset Hound if she put her mind to it. She and Cy kept each other entertained while Barbara supervised the pouring of coffee and I kept an eye on my son. The next tray that appeared held a bowl of plump, red strawberries, another with real whipped cream, and a glass of milk for Davey.
I could get used to living like this.
As we helped ourselves to the strawberries, Aunt Peg steered the conversation around to the reason for our visit. When she mentioned Monica Freedman, Cy looked surprised. Barbara, on the other hand, seemed blandly disinterested. She sat back on the couch and stirred her coffee with a dainty silver spoon. There were only two strawberries in her bowl and no whipped cream. I supposed she believed that maxim about nobody being too rich or too thin.
“Monica?” said Cy. “What about her?”
“I’ve always had the impression that you’re the kind of man who appreciates honesty, so I’m going to lay this right on the line,” said Peg. “In all likelihood, Monica was murdered by a member of the Belle Haven Club. Melanie and I suspect that it had something to do with information she possessed about one of the members.”
Barbara Rubicov glanced at Davey. I did, too. Absorbed in piling whipped cream on his spoon, he didn’t seem to be paying any attention to the conversation.
“What does that have to do with us?” asked Cy.
“We’ve been to see Lydia,” I told him. “She recommended we talk to you.”
“She told you I had something to hide?” Cy sat up straight, his chest puffing out indignantly.
“You are a big-money player in the dog game,” Peg pointed out. “You might have more to lose than most if Monica knew something she shouldn’t.”
“Let me get this straight.” Cy’s thick, white eyebrows lowered over his eyes as he scowled. “Did you come here tonight to accuse me of murder?”
I looked over at Barbara. To my surprise, she seemed faintly amused. Nevertheless, I could see that the chances of our being invited back any time soon were growing more remote by the moment. Leaving Aunt Peg to fend for herself, I loaded up on another helping of strawberries.
“Of course not,” said Peg. “We just want to talk. Look around, Cy. Look at all you’ve accomplished. These are the achievements of a smart man, the type of man who might have noticed something that other people didn’t. What’s your take on this whole situation?”
Cy paused for a long sip of coffee before answering. “We’re in the dark, just like everybody else. We hardly knew Monica, did we, Babs?” He looked to his wife for confirmation.
“We only saw her at club functions,” said Barbara. “Even then, we really had nothing to talk about.”
Much as I’d hoped there was more to learn, it was easy to see how that would have been true. Financially, socially, Banksville was a long way from back country Greenwich.
“If Monica was digging around in other people’s private lives, I wouldn’t have known anything about it,” said Cy. “There certainly weren’t any secrets for her to discover around here.”
Barbara lifted her napkin and delicately patted her lips. “How interesting. You said Monica Freedman knew something dire about Lydia?”
“No.” Aunt Peg smiled, but her tone was frosty. “I don’t believe I said anything of the sort.”
The two women eyed each other, like terriers with a particularly juicy bone between them. It was Barbara who backed down first. “My mistake,” she murmured.
I turned back to Cy. “So you never received any messages from Monica?”
“Messages? Certainly not. As I just said, we barely knew the woman.”
That seemed to be the end of that. I took Davey’s empty bowl and set it on the tray.
Barbara reached over and patted my son’s knee. “Perhaps you’d like to go see the tower now?”
“Sure!” cried Davey, leaping up. Strawberries and whipped cream are fine, but adult conversation bores him silly. His gaze darted my way. “Can I?”
“I don’t see why not.”
“Why don’t you come, too?” said Barbara.
“Thanks, I’d like that.”
Besides, maybe Aunt Peg could get Cy to open up if the two of them were alone.
The towers were located at either end of the house and we started by walking up the grand stairway in the hallway outside.
“Cool,” said Davey, dashing on ahead. His hand slipped along the wide, polished banister. “I bet you could slide on this.”
“That’s what my boys used to do,” Barbara told him. “When they crash landed at the bottom, I thought they were going to kill themselves.”
“You have children?”
I probably shouldn’t have been so surprised. It was just that most of the mothers I knew were like me, going in eight directions at once and struggling to keep all the different facets of their lives integrated and running smoothly. Barbara looked much too polished, too pulled together, to be part of that sorority.
“Two sons,” she said. “Miles and Kevin. They’re all grown up now. Kevin’s working in Chicago and Miles is finishing his last year at Dartmouth.” Her eyes followed Davey as he scooted ahead of us down the wide, second floor hallway. “It’s nice to hear a child in the house again.”
I could see why she would think that. Her home was beautifully decorated but it lacked warmth. It was perfection carried to the point of sterility. Children would have made a big difference. So would a dog. Like any one of the half dozen that she and Cy campaigned. Those dogs were living with their handlers now, but I wondered what happened to them when they were finished being shown. Why didn’t they ever come home?
“It’s the last door on the end,” Barbara called ahead to Davey. “Go ahead and open it.”
He did, but he didn’t go in. The room was dark, and it wasn’t until we caught up and Barbara flipped on the light switch that he gasped with pleasure. The room wasn’t large but it was perfectly round, with a high ceiling and wide windows looking out into the inky night.
“Wow,” said Davey. “This is cool.”
“This was Kevin’s room,” Barbara told him. “We moved into this house when he was just about your age. He thought having a round bedroom was pretty special.”
Judging by the look on my son’s face, Davey agreed. Too bad the only way he was going to duplicate the experience was if I let him take his pillow and sleep in the clothes dryer.
Barbara crossed the room and stood in front of a door. “What do you think this is?”
“A closet?” Davey guessed.
“Even better. Look!” Clearly enjoying herself, she opened the door to reveal a steep, spiral staircase winding up to the floor above. “Kevin had his own private observatory. Do you want to go see?”
Davey scrambled up the stairway and disappeared. “Don’t worry,” said Barbara when I walked over to stand beside her. “There’s nothing up there that can hurt him.”
Either her children had been abnormally well behaved, or they’d been five years old so long ago that she’d forgotten what it was like. Usually I worried about things the other way around.
The sound of Davey’s delighted laughter floated down the stairwell. I was thinking of following him, when
Barbara said, “I’m glad we have a moment to chat. I didn’t want to say anything in front of Cy. He hates it when he thinks women are gossiping, but I was thinking about what Peg said downstairs, about somebody in the club having a secret. Have you spoken with Joanne Pinkus?”
“Not.”
“You might give it a try. I don’t know her well myself, but she called here once to get my input on some trophy decisions. In the course of the conversation, she told me about something she’d done. She was very righteous about it, but at the same time kind of defensive.”
“Did it have to do with the trophies?” I asked.
“No, it was something else entirely. I think she was looking for my support. Maybe she told Monica about it, hoping for the same thing and then came to regret it later.”
With a loud whoop, Davey came barreling down the spiral stairway. If I hadn’t held out my arms, he’d have gone flying at the bottom. As it was, we both staggered backward into the bedroom. Nothing like a five-year-old up past his bed time and cruising along on a sugar high.
“That was great!” he said. “Want to go up, Mom?”
“No, I think we’ve taken up enough of Mrs. Rubicov’s time. Will you say thank-you for showing you around?”
“Thanks!” Davey cried. “Can I have some more strawberries?”
I wanted to kick him, but Barbara only laughed. “I’m afraid the strawberries will be put away by the time we get back downstairs. Maybe another time.”
As we ascended the wide stairway—Davey walking, not sliding—the door to the library opened and Peg and Cy emerged. They were talking dogs and dog shows. That was certainly Aunt Peg’s favorite topic and Cy looked as though he was enjoying himself, too. Apparently we’d been forgiven for starting off the evening by accusing him of murder.
Back in the car, with Davey struggling to keep his eyes open, Aunt Peg admitted that she’d learned nothing further from Cy, if you didn’t count the fact that he considered his Dalmatian to be a prime contender for that year’s top ten. As Davey began to snore softly in the back seat, I told her what Barbara had had to say about Joanne.
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