Mystery Writers of America Presents the Rich and the Dead

by Inc. Mystery Writers of America

  The first time it happened, my cheek swelled up but my thoughts flattened out to a mild What the hell just happened? curiosity. It was so odd being struck, so without precedent in my life that I considered it a freak accident, like when a tornado sends a tree through a house. Nobody’s fault.

  The second time it happened, I experienced no curiosity, only the calm certainty that there would be no third time. I left Stephen standing in the backyard. I walked inside, upstairs, and packed a suitcase for me and another for Jillie, who was at school. Through the open window came the sound of the blender making margaritas on the deck below, which was already becoming, in my mind, Stephen’s deck rather than our deck.

  I drove to the police station, told the desk sergeant what had happened, and asked him to photograph my face. I did not press charges, but I filed a report. Five days later I filed for divorce.

  What died in me that month wasn’t my faith in men—Stephen Hochstetter hardly represented half the human race—but my faith in me. If my own judgment was so wretched that I could love and procreate with a man like that, what else in life might I be screwing up?

  Not that I said any of this to Tracy Donaldson. Not that I needed to. I followed her down hallways and up stairs as she did a commentary on her house that required no more response than does the audio headset tour at the Getty Museum. Wood beams salvaged from a château in Provence. Marble from Siena. Tile by local artisans. Furnishings: Pierre Deux, Henredon, Silk Trading Company. She had a proprietary way of speaking about “the work” that evoked images of Tracy herself upholstering love seats, wielding pickaxes, climbing ladders in France to liberate wood from ceilings. Perhaps she did. Her calf muscles were well developed. Her whole body was taut and toned and tanned and her clothes so tight it was hard not to stare. I wondered if she would, upon request, do a commentary on herself. Lasered skin by Arnie Klein. Nose by Alfred Blalock. Triceps by Billy Blanks.

  “And the game room,” she said, interrupting these charitable thoughts, “had to be done over four times before they got it right.”

  “How great to have a room for the kids,” I said. “Keeps that Toys ‘R’ Us plastic out of the living room.”

  “It’s not for kids. It’s my husband’s.” Tracy opened massive double doors.

  The skylit ceiling was twenty-four feet, high enough to accommodate the airplane in the middle of the room. It wasn’t a big airplane, but still. Halfway up the walls, a walkway encircled the room, like in an English gentleman’s library, giving access to bookshelves. The shelves held collections: cars, trains, swords, guns. One of the room’s walls was made from the side of a caboose, yellow and red, from the Union Pacific Railroad.

  Tracy looked around, then yelled, “Junior?”

  “What?” a voice yelled back. I followed Tracy around the airplane to an alcove, where two taxidermy victims, a lion and a bear, stood poised to attack. Mounted on the wall between them was a flat-screen TV, showing a video game in progress.

  Two men sat on an orange sofa, engaged in heated battle, holding steering wheels. I recognized one as a soccer dad. The other would be Junior Donaldson.

  “Junior.” Tracy’s voice held no hint of conjugal affection.

  “Son of a bitch!” Junior cried. “No! No! No!” He cranked his wheel to the right, and I watched the TV screen, which showed a simulated driving game.

  “You’re toast, Donaldson,” the other guy said, then glanced at us. “Hey, Trace.”

  “Toast?” Junior rose from the sofa, college basketball tall. “Toast, motherfucker?” He aimed the racing wheel belligerently at the screen.

  Tracy walked over, pressed a button, and the screen went black.

  “What the hell?” Junior yelled.

  “We are having a party,” Tracy said. “You are the host.”

  “So? People can’t find the bar on their own?”

  The soccer dad stood. “I’ll go give ’em directions.” He lumbered past me and winked. “Don’t get caught in the cross fire.”

  The maid appeared in the doorway and glanced from Tracy to me, then back again. “Miss Tracy? The lifeguards, they need to know, yes or no on diving boards?”

  “God. Can no one make an executive decision? I’m coming.” Tracy got right in her husband’s face. “Junior, I put a lot of work into this party. The least you can do is put in an appearance. Sarah, escort him downstairs. Do not let him turn on that TV. No games.”

  And then she was gone, leaving me alone with her husband.

  Junior hung the racing wheels on a wall tenderly, lining them up just so amid the electronic tennis rackets, golf clubs, and fishing rods. I wanted to leave—why was I stuck with the party pooper?—but my inner social director demanded I attempt conversation.

  “You have Wii Boxing?” I asked. “How is it?”

  Junior’s face lit up. “You’re gonna love this.” He handed me a pair of boxing gloves fitted with remote controls.

  I handed them back. “Tracy might yell at me,” I said. “And I cry easily. Ix-nay on the video games.”

  “C’mere, then,” he said and led the way across the game room, around a corner to a home gym better equipped than the one I paid a monthly fee for. Its centerpiece was a mannequin made of black leather, bulky and ugly, a human-shaped punching bag. “Ever work out with a dummy?” Junior asked.

  I resisted a wiseass response. “Nope. Just heavy bags.”

  “I call him Pete. Go ahead. Hit him with your best shot.”

  I took a stance, then gave Pete a friendly left jab, then another, then a quick combination, three jabs and a right cross.

  “Harder,” Junior said, handing me a pair of real boxing gloves. “Pete can take it. Let loose.”

  It seemed impolite to refuse, so I slipped off my sandals and slipped on the gloves and went at Pete as Junior egged me on with “Drop your shoulders” and “Faster recoil” and “Swivel your hips.”… I went from straight punches to hooks and uppercuts to Pete’s leather jaw and then finished with a sloppy groin kick. Junior hit Pete, too, demonstrating the concept of upper body rotation on the hook.

  “Better,” he said as I tried it again. “You’re a fast learner.”

  “This is a fun party,” I said, breathing hard.

  “I like you,” Junior said. “What’s your name?”

  AFTER JUNIOR AND I rejoined the others, the ice stayed broken. Leighton, the birthday girl, led her guests from the indoor bowling alley to the outdoor lagoon to the putting green while a professional videographer captured it for posterity—until one of the moms complained. “A security breach supposedly,” Tracy told me. “Ha. Like her kid’s going to be kidnapped. Her husband wins two lousy Oscars, and suddenly they need bodyguards? Please. He’s an actor.” Tracy grabbed the hand of a passing guest, then snaked her arm around his waist. “Hi, Guy. Do you love my party? Tell me you love my party.”

  Tracy’s tone was intimate, and Tracy’s Guy was my guy, the one from the gala, and I felt a flicker of jealousy that was both surprising and unpleasant.

  “Yours? I thought it was Leighton’s party,” he said, smiling.

  “No, you didn’t.” Tracy smiled back, her face close to his.

  “No,” he said. “I didn’t.”

  I wandered off across the perfect green grass to stare into the canyon, which is where Guy found me, minutes later.

  “Like the view?”

  “Except for that.” I pointed to a neighboring estate on a hill. “Mausoleum? State penitentiary?”

  “That’s the Zoltan Pali–designed mansion of a renowned producer.”

  “What’s he produce? Concrete?”

  “Porn. Did you meet your Lamborghini?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “It’s very… yellow. So. Do you have a fourth-grader, too?”

  “No, I have a fourteenth-grader. At UCLA. I’m not here as a guest.”

  “What are you here as?”

  “I’m working.”

  “Are you a gigolo?”

  “A
re you in the market for one?”

  “No, I’m on a budget,” I said. “What are you really?”

  But he wouldn’t tell me, so we played What’s My Line? and it took him twelve guesses to peg me as a singer doing mostly weddings and commercial jingles, whereas I still hadn’t guessed him when the maid I’d seen earlier came to say Miss Tracy wanted him.

  “Thanks, Maria,” he said, and then to me, “We’ll continue this next party.”

  “What if I’m not invited to the next party?” I asked.

  “I know people.”

  I was hoping he’d kiss me again, but he just smiled and walked away.

  Jillie, meanwhile, was in heaven. Leighton took her to the stables and lent her riding gear and afternoon turned to evening as four of the girls rode into the hills—with a servant, a certified EMT, Tracy assured me. My daughter was horse obsessed as only the preadolescent female can be, and when she was invited back the following weekend for a two-day riding clinic with Leighton’s instructor, it was hard to say no.

  “You’d be doing us a favor,” Tracy said as the servant handed Jillie her party favor, a personalized bowling ball and matching shoes. “There’s an extra horse I’m thinking of buying, and we’re short a rider.”

  “Please, Mommy?” Jillie said. “Please, please, please, please, please, please? Say yes.”

  I did.

  AND JUST LIKE that, we were part of the inner circle. The riding clinic led to twice-weekly lessons, because Leighton’s instructor felt a partner would force her to focus.

  “He said Jillie’s a better rider, which will make Leighton competitive,” Tracy explained. “I need to improve her dressage skills. She doesn’t show well.”

  So Jillie and I spent two afternoons a week at the Donaldsons’. Tracy was rarely around, but Junior would inevitably pull me into the game room to box.

  “If I could get you to stop apologizing every time you throw a punch,” he said, “you could be a contender.” Junior struck me as lonely. He didn’t need to work, owned a house he had no reason to leave, and thus was socially malnourished.

  “He’s also a cretin,” Bunny said, serving hot lunch with me one Tuesday. White Alder discouraged parental visits, so moms fought for the honor of spooning catered lasagna onto Styrofoam trays to spy on their offspring’s educational experience. “Junior Donaldson,” Bunny added, “has always had more bucks than brains.”

  I was cutting brownies into two-inch squares. “Why’d Tracy marry him?”

  “Are you listening? More bucks than brains.” Bunny squirted ranch dressing on a vat of iceberg lettuce. She spoke softly since we shared the lunch bungalow with three other moms and a dad. “Tracy comes from old money, which, after the market crash of 1987, became no money. She investigated the Donaldson automotive empire and decided Junior looked kinda cute. She needed an underwriter for her social life.”

  “But why am I her new best friend? I don’t have breeding, bucks, connections—”

  “—or a husband she can sleep with.” Bunny nodded toward Fairuza Damadian, stacking napkins across from us. “Maybe it’s your ex-grandmother. I saw them together at the Founder’s Day Breakfast. Tracy’s running for Volunteer Association president, so she’s courting Hochstetter Grandmère.”

  “Yes, but Hochstetter Grandmère doesn’t like me.”

  “She likes Jillie, Sarah. These people worship blood. Especially their own.”

  It was true. Helene Hochstetter considered my lineage pathetic, but offset, in Jillie, by Stephen’s genetic contribution. “A great sire can overcome a mediocre dam,” Helene said, “but nothing can overcome bad training.” Which was why she’d lobbied for Jillie’s transfer to White Alder—she didn’t want her growing “marish,” which I assumed was code for “like you, Sarah.” And while I didn’t love the horse analogy, my foal was getting a great education, so I sucked it up.

  “Look.” Bunny pointed out the bungalow window. “Our esteemed headmaster. Forced to court the nouveau riche to keep the school up and running, but he, too, longs for the old days when only The Best People’s children were admitted, however dim-witted.”

  I stared, feeling my heartbeat quicken. “Bunny, who’s that man he’s with?”

  Bunny squinted. “That’s Guy Lasseter.”

  “What’s he do?”

  “Security consultant to the stars. He’s installed half the surveillance cameras and bodyguards in the valley. Everyone uses him.” Bunny tossed her vat of salad like it was an upper arm workout. “Hey, why’d Tracy change her hair?”

  I dragged my gaze from Guy. “What?”

  “A white blonde pixie. Very Annie Lennox. Is she going into the witness protection program?”

  “She doesn’t look like me anymore?”

  Bunny took a brownie from my tray, looked around the bungalow, then ate it. “Sweetie, she never looked like you. I mean, height, weight, coloring. But no one who really knows you two would think so.”

  ONE WEEK LATER, I saw it myself. Not just Tracy’s hair, which so altered her appearance that she hardly looked like either of us, but her pursuit of my erstwhile grandmother-in-law. They were lunching at the Four Seasons. The Hochstetter matriarch glanced my way, then pretended not to see me, and so of course, I made a beeline for their table.

  “Hello, Helene,” I said. “Tracy.”

  Tracy looked up, but Helene studied her place setting, her jewel-encrusted blue-veined hands caressing the flatware.

  “Hello, Sarah,” Tracy said. She was wearing a Chanel suit. “I’ve never seen you here before.”

  I held up sheet music. “Meeting a new bride.”

  “Yes, Sarah works,” Helene said, making works sound like turns tricks. “By the way,” she said, facing me. “You’ll be interested to know that Stephen is seeing Isabel Taittinger. Excellent family. I’ve spoken with Isabel about Jillian, and she and Stephen are anxious to spend far more time with the child than the current arrangement allows. My lawyer tells me it’s a simple matter of—”

  “Over my dead body,” I said pleasantly.

  She raised an eyebrow. “I beg your pardon?”

  “Over my dead fucking body.”

  TWO HOURS LATER, I dropped Jillie at the stable, then went for a run along the back trails of the Donaldson estate. I needed wilderness. And solitude. I told myself that my kind, ethical lawyer was a match for whatever shark Helene could hire in a custody dispute, but I felt panicky.

  It wasn’t that Stephen didn’t love our daughter, only that anything that didn’t involve drinking bored him stupid. And the less time he spent with her, the less they had to say to one another. He didn’t want joint custody—this was all Helene and her obsession with bloodlines and legacies. And she wouldn’t stop here. She’d go for full custody. She’d claim I was somehow unfit, drag me into court, and outspend me. No one who left the Hochstetters kept the silver, the real estate, or the kids, a onetime sister-in-law had warned me. I’d thought she was kidding.

  I jogged distractedly until the scenery overtook me, the beauty of the canyon, stark, massive, pristine—

  Except for the yellow Lamborghini parked a mile below me. What was it doing there, so far from the Donaldson garage? I could see a fire road nearby, which explained how it got there but not why. Maybe Tracy, like me, needed solitude. Bunny knew people with so much domestic staff they rented apartments just to be alone.

  Or maybe Tracy was having afternoon sex in the Lamborghini.

  I thought of witnessing that, then turned and headed back to the stables.

  As I neared the estate, my cell phone picked up a signal and came to life with a message from Maria, saying Mr. Junior had something to show me. I was calmer now, fit for human company, so I jogged to the house and met Junior. “Come see what Tracy gave me today,” he said, pulling me into the gym. “I call him Repeat.”

  Repeat, a new dummy, stood alongside Pete, enabling one to simultaneously fight two assailants.

  “See?” I said, putting on gloves. “
Tracy does love you. Surrounding you with dummies.”

  Junior laughed. “Save your breath. You’ll need it.” He had me do a long combination, over and over, until I was breathing hard and sweating harder. “What we really need,” he said, “is a dummy who fights back. Work on your weak point.”

  “Which is?” I gave Repeat a last roundhouse kick. “Sorry, Repeat.”

  “Dropping your guard. Every punch you throw, your face is wide open.”

  “Huh,” I said. “Do I have a strong point?”

  “Yeah. You fight like you got something to lose.”

  It was the last thing Junior Donaldson said to me.

  I HEARD THE news from Bunny the next morning as I drove Jillie to school.

  “Not just dead,” Bunny said. “Shot. Blood everywhere. Maria, the Donaldsons’ housekeeper, told Celia, whose husband is our gardener Alfonso, that it happened in the airplane. Junior had an airplane?”

  “Yes, yes, in the game room.” I pulled off the road, shaking. “But it doesn’t work anymore, it’s just for show….”

  “Like Junior,” Bunny said. “RIP, of course.”

  “Mommy, why are we stopping?” Jillie asked from the backseat. “What happened?”

  “Something bad,” I said. “Leighton’s daddy died yesterday.”

  “Gosh,” Jillie said. “Like an accident?”

  “It must have been an accident,” I said.

  “Mommy, are you crying?”

  “It wasn’t an accident,” Bunny said on the phone. “It’s on the surveillance cameras. Someone murdered Junior. And Celia says that Maria says there was so much blood they have to redo the wood floors.”

  THE COPS CAME to my house.

  I figured they’d interview me since I’d seen Junior just before he died, but I didn’t know they’d come that afternoon. To my house. And ask such creepy questions.

  Like what I’d worn the day before. And whether I’d had sex with Junior.