If Mrs. Vincent had realized where she’d be standing in thirty-six hours, I bet she would’ve been a lot nicer to her daughter. But the really big lessons are the ones you learn too late.
16
Some, roar, in pain and make their anguish known to the world. Some fall silent as they attempt to reconstruct the tortured path that brought them to this sorry moment. But when I’m hung-over, I curl up in a ball and pray for my brain to stop rubbing against the inside of my skull, especially that jagged spot right above my left eye. I want to shave that puppy off, even if it means not being able to do long division or waltz anymore. After all, how often do I use those skills these days?
We hadn’t started out drinking with the goal of overdoing it. Well, I hadn’t. Looking back, difficult as it was to do that with anything approaching clarity, Tricia probably had that in mind all along. Cassady and I went along for the ride.
The ride crash-landed in my apartment in the wee hours of the morning. Tricia had been all for painting the town red, but Cassady had gotten almost strident about her sworn duty to deliver me safely home and what Kyle was going to do to her if I got popped on her watch. Besides, the cocktails at my apartment were less expensive. So we finished off the Veuve Clicquot because it seemed a sin to waste it, piled into a cab, and went to my place.
Once we were inside, Tricia announced that she was sick of hypocrisy and wanted to drink to the truth. My response was to make a pitcher of martinis. A martini pitcher is the best lie detector there is; you see if the story you get when the pitcher’s full matches the story you get once it’s empty.
So the first pitcher we dedicated to truth. Tricia was bold enough to tell me, “Truth is, I’m still mad at you, but I’m madder at my mother, so you get a free pass for the evening.”
“I can handle that,” I promised.
The second pitcher was dedicated to our families and the insidious ways in which they mold us. The third pitcher went to the many ways love goes bad. I think. And the fourth pitcher went to … some worthy cause, I’m sure. It got pretty hazy by then.
In fact, my next semicoherent thought was, “Someone’s stealing my shoes.” It didn’t matter that I vaguely knew I was in my own apartment, my shoes—my beautiful Jimmy Choo shoes—were in danger and I had to act. But acting required sitting up and sitting up caused all sorts of unpleasant sensations like my stomach pitching and the room yawing and a hallucination of Kyle. Except it wasn’t a hallucination. Kyle was real. Beautiful, slightly out of focus, and real.
He shook my foot once more for emphasis and I realized I was stretched out on my couch, fully dressed, a half-filled martini glass still in my hand. “Neat trick,” he observed. He took the glass from me and set it on the coffee table. “C’mon. You’ll feel better after you have some breakfast.”
“What time is it?” I asked as he helped me to my feet. My mouth tasted like thawing Alaskan tundra and I could only imagine how bad my hair and face looked. I felt like I hadn’t moved in days. It had to be almost noon.
“Seven. Danny let me in.”
“Sadist!” I croaked.
“You gotta go to work.”
“I’m calling in sick.”
“Wimp.”
He walked over to the kitchen and my stuffy nose belatedly picked up on the smell of broiling meat. My stomach shuddered. “What’s that?”
Kyle checked the broiler. “Steak. How do you like your eggs? My dad always used to do a raw egg with a little hair of the dog, but that’d probably kill you.” He grinned, enjoying the image, and put a frying pan on the stove.
“I am not eating eggs.”
“You’ll feel better. Speak now or take ’em sunny side up.” He cracked two eggs into the pan without waiting for an answer.
“Have you come to torment me?” I tried to sound gruff, but I was actually delighted at this glimpse of him. The few nights he’d stayed over, we’d gone out to breakfast. When he hadn’t had to leave before breakfast for a call. But he seemed quite comfortable in the kitchen. My kitchen. I found that thrilling. It almost gave me my appetite back.
“I actually came to tell you that Jake Boone called the precinct to file a complaint against you.”
“What?”
“I took care of it, but it was all about you calling and threatening him.”
“I told you—I told him it wasn’t me. He’s cooking up some stupid story to make himself sound innocent while he’s threatening me.”
“But it’s a woman on your answering machine.”
“He has a girlfriend who would happily harass me for him. She knows I’m on to him, even though I told her she was wrong. I’ll bet you she was also the woman at the Algonquin last night.”
He poked at the egg. “How about Cassady and Tricia?”
“I’m sure they agree with me.”
“How do they like their eggs?” My confusion showed on my face because his grin got wider. “They’re in your room. If you can walk that far, go tell them breakfast is ready.”
There’s great comfort in knowing that while you look like hell, your friends look worse. By the time Cassady and Tricia had dragged themselves off my bed, where they had collapsed fully dressed but without martini glasses, I had managed a glass of cranberry juice and was beginning to think I’d live. Kyle had made steak and eggs for all of us and was having trouble chewing his, his grin kept getting so broad.
“Good thinking to stay here last night,” he commended Cassady and Tricia.
Tricia was holding her head up with both hands, acclimating to the aroma of her breakfast before daring to taste it. “It wasn’t a conscious decision. More like an unconscious decision.”
Cassady was tearing into her steak with relish. “This is delicious, Kyle. I may throw it all up in twenty minutes, but I’m enjoying it now.”
Tricia moaned, Kyle laughed, and I got the coffeepot. I had that awful nagging feeling that something had happened last night that shouldn’t have, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. And we were all fully clothed with no drug paraphernalia, sex toys, or Krispy Kreme boxes in evidence, so how sinful could it have been?
Tricia saw the look. “What is it?”
“Blank spot.”
“Only one? I have several and none of them in the right place. I still have to go home and have words with my mother.”
“Can I come watch?” Cassady asked.
“There’s no point, because I’ll lose my nerve by the time I get there.”
“Eat your steak and you’ll have the strength to whup her good,” Kyle suggested. He got up from the table and rinsed his plate in the sink.
Tricia looked at him, inspired, then picked up her knife and fork and started eating. The image of her in her deeply wrinkled Betsey Johnson and bedhead, munching happily on the steak while dreaming of confronting her mother, was heartening to us all.
Kyle had to leave, so he dispensed instructions for us to stay sober and for me to stay away from Jake Boone. I couldn’t believe that idiot had called the cops on me. I couldn’t wait to return the favor, but I didn’t have enough proof. Yet.
“I vaguely remember discussing Jake Boone last night,” Cassady said, holding her coffee mug to her forehead like a compress. “But other than agreeing that he was a murdering bastard, I can’t recall deciding on a course of action.”
“You really think Jake did it?” Tricia asked, actually picking up her steak and gnawing on the bone.
“He gave Lisbet an ultimatum about leaving your brother, which, despite the fact that he slept with Veronica—” An idea hit me and I had to pause a moment to marvel at its beauty. “I bet he sent Veronica to seduce David and then made sure Lisbet walked in on them.”
“Veronica would have done that for him?” Cassady asked.
“She wanted David. It served her agenda as well.” I drummed on the edge of the table as I saw the pieces coming together. “And even then, Lisbet wouldn’t leave David, which infuriated Jake, so they’re both mad at the party, which explains the floor sho
w. And afterward, Lisbet does fight with David, Jake thinks he’s home free, Lisbet even sleeps with him, but then she tells him she’s going back to David. So he freaks and kills her.”
Tricia and Cassady were engrossed, nodding supportively. I tried to imagine Detective Cook and Kyle sitting in their places, nodding just as supportively, and I couldn’t quite get there. But I was close.
“So where does Lara fit in all this?” Tricia asked.
“That’s it! Lara,” I said, drumming a little faster. “She thinks she’s helping Jake but he’s using her. And if she finds that out, she becomes the weak link.”
“So Lara’s the woman shadowing you.” Cassady leaned over and pressed her hand over mine to stop my drumming. Abashed, I slid my hands into my lap. It was true; the drumming wasn’t helping anyone’s headache. “Who’s the woman threatening Jake?”
“He’s probably making it up. Or maybe Veronica’s figured out he used her and she’s ready for her pound of flesh. She’s a wrathful sort of gal.”
“So what happens next?” Tricia asked, licking her fingers.
“I have to talk to Lara without Jake, see if I can shake her loose.”
“I really appreciate what you’re doing, Molly, the article aside. My family doesn’t deserve it, but …” A wave of pain that had nothing to do with our night’s debauchery swept over her and a memory unexpectedly swam to the surface. Tricia sitting on my couch, her martini glass balanced on her knees, proclaiming that Einstein had proved it was impossible to be truly happy.
Cassady was lying on the floor at that point, her ankles crossed and propped up on the edge of the coffee table, trying to balance her glass on her forehead. “Missed that science class.”
“Einstein said we could never travel at the speed of light because as a body approaches the speed of light, its mass increases to the point that it slows down and can’t achieve the necessary speed.”
“If you say so,” I encouraged from the armchair in which I sat sideways, my legs over one arm and my head on the other. Very comfortable, though it would make a chiropractor flee in horror.
“Same way with happiness. The closer you get to achieving that moment of transcendence, the greater mass you take on because you start thinking of all the things that can go wrong and whether you deserve happiness and other people pull back on you and you slow down and never get there.” She’d lifted her glass, “To Albert.”
Now, Cassady put her arm around Tricia’s shoulders and I took her hand in mine. I wanted to say something profound and comforting about how it was going to be all right, that we’d get through this, her family would recover. But I wondered if the Vincents didn’t have their own physics problems, with the force of the impact of Lisbet’s death having revealed stress fractures that undermined the stability of the whole structure. But we could help her through that, too. As long as the three of us stayed on the same side, we could work these things through.
The one thing we couldn’t get around in our friendship was that we’re not all the same size. Not being able to freely trade clothes cuts down on squabbling to a certain extent, but it also forced my cohorts to face the long trip home in yesterday’s clothes. As parting gifts, I gave them both Advil and hugs. The two of them left arm in bedraggled arm, a sight Mrs. Mayburn and my other neighbors were bound to whisper about for at least a month.
I went to stand in the shower until the hot water was gone. Even after two scrubbings with my vanilla aromatherapy bar, my body still shrank from anything but a sweater and jeans, but I forced it into my trusty Banana Republic brown flute skirt and white ballet neck sweater, subscribing to the theory that if you look good, you feel better. I’m not sure if Einstein came up with that one. Might’ve been Newton. Or Mizrahi.
Deciding that a massive infusion of espresso would put the finishing touch on my reconstruction, I slipped on my Kate Spade chocolate and lavender spectator pumps and headed out to Starbucks. The Starbucks across the street from Jake’s apartment building.
My first New York boss, Rob, taught me to always be friendly to doormen and assistants because they have more control and more information than anyone ever gives them credit for. On my previous forays to Jake’s, I’d been pleasant to the doorman and I hoped it was about to pay off.
I waited until I could feel my espresso double shot pulsing in my temples, then darted across the street. It was a decent May day, bright and warm. Under all the diesel fumes, the air still smelled lightly of the night’s dampness burning off. Steve, the doorman, looked quite comfortable in his epauleted overcoat, but he was a gaunt greyhound of a guy who seemed like he never broke a sweat, whatever the weather or situation.
This was crossing the line from flirting with danger to making a blatant pass at it, if my theory about Jake and Lara was right. Further, if Jake had been serious about trying to get me in trouble with the police, I wasn’t going to get very far with Steve. But since Kyle and Detective Cook hadn’t bought into the Jake theory yet, I had to see what I could do to make it more attractive for everyone.
Steve raised a gloved hand to the brim of his cap as I approached. Good start. “Good morning, ma’am.”
“Good morning, Steve. Is Mr. Boone home?” I asked cheerfully.
“Mr. Boone left two days ago,” he replied without hesitation. Another good sign.
“I didn’t realize.” I played along. “No wonder he’s been hard to get a hold of.”
“Ms. Del Guidice left last night.”
“Oh,” I said again, with genuine surprise this time. “Gone to meet him for a little lover’s getaway How nice for them.”
Steve shook his head. “It was less a getaway than a ‘get away from me,’ best I could tell,” he said, his voice dropping to a confidential volume. “She walked him out when he left and all but gave him the bum’s rush.”
“Wow. I saw them together Sunday morning and they seemed their usual happy selves,” I replied, leaving out a few small details like his pass at me, her stoned dancing in the living room, and then Lara giving me the bum’s rush while the other doorman was on duty
“You’re a new friend, right? ’Cause I haven’t seen you around here before this weekend.”
“We met in Southampton Friday,” I admitted. “But I thought they were charming.”
“They have their moments. You must’ve caught ’em in a good one.”
“When do you think they’ll be back?”
“He’ll come back eventually. We might’ve seen the last of her.” My expression must have been more alarmed than I’d intended, because he hurried to clarify. “She just had that look of a woman who was done, you know? And I’ve seen it a lot. On his women especially.”
So he was referring to Jake’s romantic track record, not any homicidal leanings. “Do you have any idea where they are? I need to talk to her. About a project I’m doing.”
“I’d say he’s crashing with a friend and she’s somewhere expensive with his credit card. But that’s just a guess,” Steve shrugged.
“Thank you.”
Steve touched his brim again. “I’ll tell him you came by whenever I see him. May I get you a cab?”
“No, thanks. I’m going to walk a little.”
I was only about ten blocks from the office and I thought the walk might help my hangover as well as my thought process. Besides, I love walking in the city, throwing myself into the river of people moving up and down the island all day and most of the night, and letting the current carry me along. It’s not good for the shoes, but it’s good for the soul. The pace and the size of the city make it easy to feel disconnected, but when you walk down the sidewalk and just spend a few minutes watching the huge spectrum of people rushing along right beside you, worrying about being disconnected, too, sometimes that’s a connection in itself and you feel part of something larger and more important than your own panics and problems. Maybe you’re just a fish swimming along with a school, maybe you’re a star in a constellation, maybe you’re part of the human
race. Whichever, you’re not alone.
I found myself humming “Takin’ It to the Streets” as I walked, watched faces, and thought. I’d come over to Jake and Lara’s on Sunday, he’d left Sunday night. Then I’d gone back yesterday and she’d gotten all freaked out about it “being me.” I’d thought she’d meant the one threatening Jake, but could she have meant the woman she thought Jake was cheating with? The idea was preposterous to me, but—not to pat myself on the back—I could see how Lara might construe events that way. Maybe she knew he’d been up to something when he was courting Lisbet and then I popped up. I almost felt bad for her. But then I thought of her stalking me to the Algonquin and I felt less bad.
But I felt worse again when I got to the office and saw Genevieve swooping to intercept me before I’d reached my desk. I had an absurd impulse to run to the desk, slap it, and yell “Safe!” but I was certain no one would find that nearly as amusing as I would. Eileen might have goosed the subscription numbers since she’d come, but she’d killed office morale. Everyone worked with the fear of the pink slip foremost in their minds. Being fearful for my mortality and my basic hatred of the woman pushed that one down a few notches for me.
“Late!” Genevieve proclaimed, tapping her watch.
“I’m been working,” I answered with a patience she didn’t deserve. “On the story. Not much I can do sitting here in the office,” I explained. “But you can tell Eileen that I think I’m very close.”
“Really,” she said doubtfully.
“Really,” I said cheerfully. Then Genevieve handed me a message slip. On it, Genevieve had taken a message for Eileen. From Veronica Innes. Re: The Article. Message: Why hasn’t anyone called me yet? Across the message slip, Eileen had scrawled, probably in Genevieve’s blood, Molly, Call her now!
I released the slip, letting it drift down on to my desk. The person I was least interested in talking to was the one most interested in talking to me. I was beginning to think I could divide the world into those who wanted to be in the article and those who didn’t. “I’m not sure she’s even part of the story. Why should I call her?”
Killer Cocktail Page 22
