I unstraightened the tie and kissed her back, not so lightly. Until she lunged for her grandmother’s white silk shawl and escaped for the kitchen, swaying on her three-inch heels in a most beguiling manner.
Pam was rolling out dough for our breakfast scones, all cheerful and pink-cheeked, Tracy watching her solemnly from her bassinet. Lulu was waiting for us anxiously in the doorway wearing the black silk top hat Merilee had had made for her that year she did the Cole Porter musical. A chin strap holds it in place.
“I understand he’s given you our numbers,” Merilee said to Pam dubiously.
“Yes, yes,” Pam reassured her. “Now please do relax and enjoy yourself. I have minded dozens of babies and I haven’t lost one yet. Several, in fact, have gone on to serve in high government positions.
Merilee and I exchanged a look.
I said, “I’m really sorry you said that, Pam.”
Merilee said, “Now you have me truly frightened.”
“Don’t be,” Pam commanded her.
Merilee bent down and kissed Tracy, lingering over her tearfully. Until finally she gathered herself and exclaimed, “I can’t believe we’re actually going out on a date.”
“Believe it.”
She hesitated, glancing at the sheet I’d left by the phone for Pam. “Perhaps I’d better just have one quick little look at the phone numbers where we’ll—”
“Let’s go, Merilee,” I growled, grabbing her by the arm.
“Yes, dear. Gosh, you’re a brute.”
Our limousine was waiting for us downstairs at the awning, turning some heads. It was a spotless 1933 Rolls Phantom II, black and yellow. The uniformed driver, Jimmy Piper, was a retired Scottish race car driver who operated three such vintage limos around town. And had himself a soft spot for Pam’s hot cross buns, as it were. A tub of caviar, toast points and a chilled bottle of Dom Perignon awaited us in the backseat.
The champagne was gone by the time we finished crossing Central Park.
Lulu ate most of the caviar.
First stop was the Post House on East Sixty-third Street, a rousing and boisterous chophouse that served the finest—not to mention largest—cuts of meat in New York City. Chalkboards announced the daily specials, few if any of them recommended as a regular part of one’s daily food pyramid. Not the most romantic dining spot in town, I’ll grant you. But Merilee Nash, in case you didn’t know it, happens to be one of Gotham’s preeminent carnivores. When Rusty’s held a celebrity rib-eating fund-raiser for the Special Olympics she put away more baby back ribs than four out of the five Knick starters. Only Charles Oakley could outeat her.
When Merilee eats out she eats meat. Period.
She turned more than a few heads when we came down the steps from the bar and crossed the dining room to our table. She generally does. Another bottle of Dom Perignon, properly chilled, awaited us. We drank it while we ordered. Caesar salads for starters, mammoth grilled veal chops, blood rare, and nothing but sin on the side—double orders of onion rings, hashed browns and creamed spinach. Merilee tore into her food like a starved, feral animal, pausing only occasionally to wash it down with the not terrible Cotes du Rhone I’d found on the wine list. Lulu went for the pan-fried trout, her tail thumping while she ate. It was the happiest I’d seen her in months. Six months and eleven days, to be exact.
Rob Reiner and Bill Goldman were there polishing off steaks at Goldman’s usual table. Merilee did that thriller with them a few years back, the one she was nominated for, and the three of them have remained friends. Highly unusual in that business. They sent us over another bottle of the wine. We raised our glasses to them and sent them back two slabs of chocolate cake, though in Rob’s case the fresh melon in season might have been a kinder selection.
After Merilee had cleaned her plate she dabbed genteelly at her mouth with her napkin and sat back, green eyes gleaming. “It feels so good to be out and about again, darling,” she purred. “Doesn’t it?”
“It does.”
She gazed across the table at me. “I just have one word for you, mister.”
“What is it?” I asked, gazing back at her.
“Cheesecake.”
“And a lovely word it is, Merilee. Only—”
She stiffened. “Only what?”
“We’re not having dessert here. The evening is young and so are we. Or at least we were at some vague point in the not too distant past.”
She reached across the table and took my hand, her grip steely. She’d ingested a lot of protein. “Where to, darling?”
Where to was the Hotel Carlyle. Not the Cafe, where Bobby Short held court. To the penthouse, where one of the apartments was undergoing renovation that season. I had rented its rooftop terrace for the evening, complete with its view of most of the East Side. A uniformed waiter met us at the elevator with more chilled Dom Perignon. And out on the terrace, in the cool of a sparkling autumn night, the Brad Kerr Trio was playing Don’t Get Around Much Anymore. Brad was a young piano player from East St. Louis, half black, half Asian and all blind. No one who liked Harry Connick, Jr., had the slightest idea who he was. And that was how he liked it. He was a true keeper of the flame. Two ancient Ellington sidemen backed him on bass and drums. They knew he was the real thing.
Merilee let out a small gasp of glee when they segued into Georgia on My Mind. Because this was our song, the one we danced to that first night in the Polish seamen’s club on First Avenue and Ninth Street, when we drank up peppery vodka and each other. When we knew. Just as we still knew.
She slipped into my arms. We danced.
“Darling,” she said huskily, “you very seldom disappoint me.”
“Name one time I have.”
“That opening night party for the Albee play, when I caught you and those other men laughing heartily at Sharon Stone’s jokes.”
“Sharon happens to be a very amusing woman.”
“I see. And what else does she happen to be?”
“Ssh.”
We danced, the city at our feet, the waiter refilling our glasses. Lulu curled up on a cushioned wicker settee and watched us, drowsing contentedly under her top hat. We danced.
“About your brother Philip …” I said, after a while.
“Did you say Philip?” She was somewhat startled. I seldom mentioned him. She seldom mentioned him. Merilee’s brother was a lazy, useless sort of person. Had something to do with operating ski lodges somewhere out in Colorado or Utah. “What about him?”
“Did you two ever play doctor when you were growing up?”
“Naturally.” She drew herself up a bit. “It’s normal and healthy for children to be curious about each other’s bodies.”
“How old were you when you stopped playing?”
“Merciful heavens, Hoagy, I don’t remember. I was five or six, I suppose. He was perhaps eight. Why on earth are you—?”
“And is that normal as well?”
“Darling, I really wouldn’t know. And if this is your idea of romantic patter I’m sorry to inform you that you’ve slipped rather dramatically.”
“Clethra and Arvin continued playing it well on into their teens. They slept in the same bed. They even gave each other pleasure.”
“Reeeeally?!” She coughed, then lowered her voice discreetly. “Honestly, that’s quite … Well, we’re approaching the ‘I’ word, are we not?”
“He loves her, Merilee. Truly and completely loves her.”
“Does she feel the same way?”
“She’s moved on.”
Merilee shook her head. “Poor little Arvin.”
“He’s fourteen.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning he’s not so little.”
“You don’t think that boy could have killed his own father, do you?”
“People kill their own fathers all the time,” I replied, with perhaps just a bit too much personal conviction.
She raised an eyebrow at me. “But how could he have gotten to the
farm from Debbie’s Diner? He can’t drive.”
“Clethra can.”
“You’re suggesting the two of them together killed Thor?”
“You have to consider all the possibilities. Speaking of my father …”
“We weren’t, actually,” she pointed out tactfully. “But if you’d care to …”
“I believe I’ve figured out why his … condition has been so hard for me to deal with.”
“Yes, dear?” she said encouragingly.
“For a man,” I began, “your father is your very first hero. He’s your idol, your Errol Flynn. And you never outgrow worshiping him—even though you want to, even though you think you have. So when it’s his time to go, you want him to go out like a hero. Shoulders back, head high, laughing in the face of death. You don’t want him to be weak and frightened. You don’t want him to be needy. Because that shatters him in your eyes. And because … it makes you wonder if the same goddamned thing is going to happen to you when it’s your turn to go.”
Merilee’s brow creased, which is what it does when she’s trying not to cry. “Darling, what is it you want from that man?”
“I don’t want anything from him.”
“Horseradish. You want him to admit he was wrong about you.”
“I don’t want anything from him,” I insisted. “It would be nice if he read one of my novels before he died, but I’ve pretty much given up hope of that.”
“He’s not going to admit he was wrong, Hoagy. Just as he’s not going to admit he needs your help now. Don’t you know why?”
“Of course I do. Because he’s a mean, stubborn son of a bitch.”
Angrily, she shook her head at me. “Because he doesn’t want to admit to you that he’s not your Errol Flynn. That he is scared and confused and can’t handle things anymore. He can’t admit it, Hoagy. He won’t admit it. So it’s up to you to take control. You’re in charge now.”
“You seem to be confusing me with Speaker Newt.”
“You have to, darling. Whether you like it or not. Whether you like him or not. You’re the grown-up now. He’s the child. That’s the way it happens. It’s all a part of nature.”
“Nature sucks.”
“You’ve been hanging around with Clethra too much,” she observed, her eyes twinkling at me.
“I’m not happy about this, Merilee.”
“What’s to be happy about? We’re getting old.”
“I’m starting to figure that out, too.”
“What are you going to do about it?”
“I was thinking about having my teeth bleached.”
“What about your father?”
“You’re absolutely right. His teeth could use a bleaching, too.”
“Hoagy …”
“And he and I need to have a talk.”
She took my face in her hands. “I’m terribly proud of you, mister.”
I kissed her. “I’d go right down the drain without you, Merilee.”
She nodded. “It’s true, you would.”
“You weren’t supposed to agree with me.”
“I wasn’t supposed to get my mother’s thighs either.” She stifled a weary yawn. “Thank you for tonight, darling. I needed it so.”
She put her head on my shoulder and we danced, swaying gently to Stardust there on the roof of the Carlyle in the New York City night, hardly moving at all. In fact, by the time the band took a short break, Merilee wasn’t moving, period. She’d fallen fast asleep right there in my arms. The poor woman was so exhausted she’d actually fallen asleep standing up.
Which made it official. Merilee Nash, international star of stage and screen and the one great love of my life, had become a farm animal.
“I’m so embarrassed.”
“Don’t be.”
“But it was our big night out and I fell asleep. You must hate me.”
“Forget about it, Merilee. I’ve done it myself.”
“And I’ve hated you for it.”
It was four in the morning and she was seated at the kitchen table with Tracy, who had just finished an early breakfast and was now giving grave consideration to a burp. Merilee was raiding Pam’s scones and looking ultra-sheepish.
I reached for a scone myself and sat, munching on it. Pam’s scones were superior. The currants made all the difference. “Besides, it was quite late.”
“Hoagy, it was a quarter to eleven.”
“Was it? Well, in the country that’s late.”
“I’m so embarrassed.”
“You shouldn’t be, Merilee. You’ve never looked or sounded lovelier.”
She stared at me in horror. “I snored?”
“Not to worry. I don’t believe the musicians noticed. It was so soft and gentle. More like a purr, really. And my shoulder muffled quite a bit of it. Of course, they did notice when I carried you to the elevator …”
“Why, what did I—?”
“Your mouth, after all, was agape.”
“My mouth was what?”
“And then there was the matter of that drool on your chin. But that was, you know, cute.”
“Cute, Hoagy? Cute?” She sighed grandly, tragically. “Oh, God, what’s happening to us? Are we turning into a boring, old married couple?”
“We can’t possibly be. We’re not married, remember?”
“That’s right, we’re not. Whew, that’s a relief.”
“I’ll say.”
Tracy was nodding off now—like mother, like daughter. Merilee carried her into the nursery and put her down. I poured myself a glass of milk and washed down another scone with it.
Merilee returned, running her fingers through my hair. “I’m sorry, darling. I was just so sleepy.”
I took her in my arms and kissed her. “Are you sleepy now?”
She gave me her up-from-under look. “As it happens, I’m not.”
“Good, neither am I.” I smiled at her. “Let’s go to bed.”
Nine
TYLER KAMPMANN’S DEATH MADE page one of all three New York City newspapers next morning. Not because they tied it in to Thor’s murder. They still didn’t have it that Tyler used to date the girl who ran off with Thor Gibbs. No, it was front-page news simply because it’s still front-page news when a student at a prestigious Ivy League university is found murdered in his dorm room. I can’t speak for the future.
Actually, I can. But I’d rather not.
Not that it was going to take the press long to connect Tyler. The folks at Hard Copy had to know he was Clethra’s ex-boyfriend—they’d bought the videotape from him. They’d break it on that evening’s broadcast, no question. The so-called legitimate press would then pick it up from them. People keep wondering how come the cash press keeps outscooping the competition. It’s simple—they get what they pay for. Good, dishonest American value. Nothing more or less.
Robbery, according to Detective Lieutenant Romaine Very of the NYPD, had been ruled out. He had told them about the cash found on Tyler’s body. He had not mentioned the hefty bank deposit slip or the tall, dashing, bogus uncle who’d found the body. They had it that Tyler’s neighbor, Ian Gardner, found him. Very didn’t believe in being straight with the press. Very hated the press. After numerous celebrity blowouts of my own, I couldn’t blame him. That’s not to say I hate the press. I just wish they’d go after real news with the same lunatic zeal they go after Julia Roberts.
We slept late that morning. Or at least we stayed in bed together an awfully long time. I’ll let you use your imagination here. I’m sure it will be far more feverish and lurid than the reality of what goes on between two middle-aged white people who have been having sex together off and on since the days when Mickey Rourke was considered a promising young acting talent.
Merilee luxuriated there under the covers while I showered and dressed. She was still there when I left, looking slightly debauched and more than slightly pleased with herself.
I got back out to the country about one, top up, Lulu napping
in the seat next to me. It was a brisk, slate-gray day with a gusty wind that buffeted the Jag like a tall-masted schooner at sea and made little maelstroms of the downed leaves, its cold bite hinting at November and the long, cold winter that waited on the other side of it. Lulu stirred when we got off the highway and started our way up narrow Route 156 for home. The cows were grazing alongside the road at Tiffany Farms near Reynolds’ general store. She barked at them gleefully. That’s another one of her biggest thrills in life—barking at cows.
The press vans still lined Joshua Town Road. One of our besieged neighbors went hurtling past them, looking like he was on his way out to buy sandbags and razor wire. Me he glowered at—I had caused an invasion of noisy outsiders. You don’t do that in Lyme. It’s the worst offense there is, worse than selling out to a developer. The trooper at the foot of our drive let me in.
The ducks were back, the natural spring slowly filling their pond back up again. And Dwayne was back, too, hard at work on the foundation of the carriage barn. Had himself a helper now. Clethra, a red bandanna tied over her head, was sighting through his transit and calling out elevations to him as he moved his tape measure from spot to spot. Death metal thumped on the stereo of his pickup. Both of them waved when I pulled up.
Dwayne went and turned down the music. “Borrowed your house guest, Mr. H. Hope ya don’t mind.”
“Not as long as you’re paying her out of your own pocket.”
“I got, like, bored watching television,” Clethra explained.
“I can’t tell you how glad I am to hear that.”
“Um, my mom called a little while ago,” she mentioned, glancing uneasily over in Dwayne’s direction.
He got busy in the barn, discreetly out of earshot.
She lit a cigarette and drew on it, poking at the gravel with her steel-toed boot. “They’re coming back out to Barry’s place sometime later today. Like, to talk to the police and take care of Thor’s body and stuff.”
“I can run over there with you. If you want to see her, I mean.”
“I don’t,” she declared, her chin stuck out defiantly.
“What about Arvin?”
“What about him?”
“Don’t you want to see him?”
The Girl Who Ran Off With Daddy Page 20
