“Hey, lady, where are you going?” some guy yelled. “You’re hurt!”
Keeping her head down, Charlotte moved at a funereal pace. The impulse to run was almost irresistible. Tensed and waiting for that sickening lurch when the cop would grab her shoulder and stop her, she started to hum.
Sticking close to the side of buildings, she walked along Carmine Street and took a right on Downing. The cop and cabbies were now out of sight. Shivering, she broke into a jog. Fifteen minutes later, Charlotte was so hot, she’d pulled off her sweater and tied it around her waist. Taking a fast right, she hurried down North Moore towards the safety of home.
John was heading straight for her.
God! Not now, John! Not now! she muttered as he blocked her way. “I’m in a rush, John. I’ll give you something, later, I promise,” she said, pushing to get past him.
“Charlotte! Charlotte!” He whispered. “Police. Police!”
She stopped, nailed to the spot, as he shuffled around on his feet, his eyes flitting up and down the block.
“Calm down, John,” she said, soothingly. “What do you mean, police?”
“Don’t know. Don’t know. They’re in your building. They’re after me.”
Charlotte forced herself to breathe. “How long have they been there, John?”
He was rifling through his shopping bag.
“How many of them?” Charlotte asked, gently resting her hand on his arm.
“A few, Charlotte. A few …”
“Well, I’m sure they’re not after you. But I’ll talk to them, okay? I’ll tell them we’re friends.
He nodded.
“Here,” Charlotte said, pulling out a twenty dollar bill. “Buy yourself some cigarettes. It’s going to be okay, I swear.”
“Thanks, Charlotte. Thanks!”
Watching him head towards the Korean market, Charlotte turned around and began to walk towards SoHo. She thought about the fantasies she’d had after seeing Pavel, about his tattoo of the sailing ship and his talk of freedom. She also thought about how tired she had grown of her tiny, incestuous world in New York. She longed for the terror and the challenge of new beginnings. Thinking of Pavel and his banya, she imagined plunging into a river of cool rushing water. A burst of adrenaline surged through her veins as she stepped up her pace and looked up at a sapphire-blue sky. For the first time in years, Charlotte felt almost light on her feet—untethered. Like one of those big bright-striped hot air balloons that, once freed of the weights and the ropes that lash them to the ground, drift ever so slowly, up and into the air.
CRAIGSLIST MURDERER ELUDES COPS!
By Ben Volpone
In a story that only grows stranger and more complicated over time, police informed the media this morning that they have identified a “person of interest” in the attack on Gina Craven. “We would like to talk with her, ask a few questions, is all,” said the spokesperson. Although sources refused to cite her as a probable suspect, her name is Charlotte Wolfe.
Admired for her interior design work by the wives of the city’s richest, most powerful financial wizards, Ms. Wolfe lives in a downtown Tribeca loft where police were waiting to question her yesterday evening after receiving a call from her Greenwich Village psychiatrist. Unfortunately, Wolfe has yet to show up and police now fear that she may have been warned and left the city.
Reluctant to disclose the exact nature of the psychiatrist’s concern, sources close to the investigation did reveal that it involved a recorded cell phone conversation and the possibility of bodily assault. “It seems this person accidentally speed-dialed her doctor. And an emergency exception allowed police to enter the premises of the phone registered to the patient in question.” The source also disclosed that it was only after police had entered the premises that a possible connection was made between Wolfe and the Craigslist murders. “A detective on the case recognized several pieces of evidence, including a monogrammed silver spoon, at which point a search warrant was issued. It appears that there is other evidence also links Wolfe to the killings of Amy Webb and Christina Johnson.”
Described by Rita Brickman, a shocked longtime friend and client, as “both lovely and immensely talented,” Wolfe began her career working as an assistant to the celebrated late designer Harold Beamish. When asked to comment on the news about Wolfe, Beamish’s partner, Miles van den Broek, hardly minced words. “We called her the ‘halo from hell,’ ” he said. “Nothing about her would surprise me.”
In an exclusive interview, Philip Daft, a client of Wolfe’s and one of New York’s most respected philanthropists, mentioned that he had actually seen the suspect wearing what is now suspected to be a piece of evidence. “It was a gold charm bracelet,” he said, speaking from the street on his way into the Union Club. “I noticed it right away, because my wife wanted one. I remember Charlotte told me she’d bought it on Craigslist. I was shocked. It’s not the sort of thing you hear from our people.” As he approached the door of the club, Mr. Daft turned around. “Of course, Charlotte was never really our people.” Follow-up calls to his wife, a close friend of the suspect, were not returned.
The daughter of Millicent Connors and Benjamin Wolfe, Charlotte Wolfe was brought up on in one of New York’s most exclusive Fifth Avenue buildings. She attended the elite Chapin School and Sarah Lawrence College. Police request anyone with information about her whereabouts to contact 1-800-577-TIPS immediately.
46
EIGHTEEN MONTHS LATER
Entering the trustees’ dining room at the Cincinnati Museum of Art, she was greeted by the sound of muted but heartfelt applause. Lowering her emerald green eyes, she smiled, and gave her husband’s arm a gentle squeeze. Everyone affectionately called her Bet. With her champagne-streaked blonde hair pulled back in a sleek, tight chignon, her statuesque build, sun-kissed skin, and ruby red lips, people said she looked a lot like an older version of Carolyn Bessette. Had she lived, of course. The poor thing.
Yes, the women in town all agreed that she’d had some work done: the forehead, the creases between her nose and mouth, maybe even a discreet lift to the eyes. But it was so subtle, it only added to her allure. This was just one of the extraordinary things about Bet. Women envied her, but they also loved being near her. Every charity event in town that she sponsored was wildly oversubscribed. And no one ever turned down an invitation to one of her marvelous dinners at home or a weekend in the country.
The other extraordinary thing about Bet was her marriage to George. George’s mother had been a gorgon—an absolute harridan. When Bet arrived in town out of nowhere, with no credentials to speak of, no background, no real money, everyone at the club had given her relationship with George a month, two at the most. After all, they’d witnessed the social demise of so many other younger, wealthier, more suitable women.
But Bet had not only succeeded in defanging George’s mother, she’d befriended her, too. In fact, Bet’s friends were convinced that it was her tireless nursing and infinite patience before the old woman’s unexpected but merciful demise that cinched the couple’s marriage. She and George had been virtually inseparable ever since.
Last but far from least, was Bet’s style. You could forgive a woman almost anything, including a somewhat dubious past, when she had style like Bet. It wasn’t just the way she dressed or what she’d done with the house. It was how modest and generous she was with other women. Everybody had called her in at one point or another for advice. Whether it involved a decision as mundane as choosing a color for the new maid’s room or as important as decorating a nursery for the baby, or buying some hugely expensive piece of French furniture at auction, Bet just knew.
What was it she had given all the girls at Christmas? Fabulous eighteen-karat gold straight pins in velvet boxes? “So you can tell the fake from the real thing,” she’d said in her notes, after thanking them for making her feel at home in Cincinnati.
The party at the museum had gone on till two a.m. After making love to his wife, George
fell asleep. She had waited until she heard the sound of his snoring before creeping into her dressing room and locking the door behind her. She was exhausted, wrung out. Eight hours of vapid, small talk with such boring, tedious women. One more story about an adorable eight-year-old Mozart prodigy and she thought was going to puke. Did they ever talk about anything but their children? Stripping down to her $1,000 Nina Ricci bra and thong, she smoothed the creases out of the Dior dress and carefully hung it up in its proper place.
At first, her husband had objected to the idea of seven custom-made closets. “Dear God, darling,” he’d stammered over his second bourbon old-fashioned. “This is a recession, we’re in! No woman in Cincinnati needs seven closets!” But just like his objections to the Toto toilet (which he now admitted was a pretty “neat” invention), he had eventually surrendered.
She was working on the jet now. She’d launched her campaign during their honeymoon in Europe. George had fumed at every airport as they trekked through endless lines and waited to board delayed flights. (He had insisted on flying American carriers only. “It’s patriotic, darling,” he’d said.
“The least we can do, you know?”) But American flights were notoriously late. Seated in their first class seats, he’d also complained about the service. “What the hell happened to those young, smiling stewardesses?” he’d blustered.
“It’s worse than fucking Aeroflot.” George never swore.
He was the only child of one of Ohio’s richest families, old-fashioned American industrialists. Unlike Vicky and Phil Phil whose fortune had dwindled and shrunk to next to nothing during the cataclysmic ups and downs of the real estate market (and how Charlotte had gloated over that delicious bit of news in the New York Times), George had always been cautious with his money. He was so cautious he had modestly confided that his own portfolio was down a mere 15% percent. Nevertheless, even when they’d been bumped off a flight from Paris to Rome, he’d said that a jet was simply out of the question.
“It’s so showy, darling. So conspicuous. And the fuel costs! Good lord! We’d be busted.”
She’d had wanted to kill Laurie and Ned when they’d come over for dinner and tittered about last summer’s $12,000 NetJets fare from New York to Nantucket. She, of course, had no interest in NetJets.
What was it Vicky had said to her after she and Philip had flown to Paris for the first time on the G-5? “Listen, darling. I don’t mind sharing my feelings. But I’m sure as hell not going to share my jet!” Charlotte giggled at the memory. Their jet was probably gathering dust in some hangar at Teterboro with a for sale sign plastered on the cockpit window. George could pick it up for a song. And wouldn’t that just be perfect poetic justice? she thought. Zipping around the skies in Vicky’s favorite travel toy?
Last week, she’d surprised George at breakfast with the catalogue from Gulfstream instead. “It’s just for fun, darling,” she’d said. “To see how the other half of one percent lives.” She then began to skim through the Styles section in the Sunday Times.
Actually, she called it the smiles section. On one exceedingly boring Sunday morning, she’d counted the number of smiles per page. When she got to 74 and realized she was only on page eight, she’d quit. That was when she’d also seen the photo of Anna and Pavel, holding hands at a benefit for the Costume Institute. The taste of bile rose in her throat as she crumpled up the newspaper.
Unlike others who subscribed to the Times in far-flung cities, she knew that the socialites pictured had nothing to smile about. They were all either discreetly addicted to antidepressants and painkillers and locking themselves into panic rooms to scream and cry or flat broke.
Stranded here in Cinci and seeing that photo of Rita hiding under a baseball cap and visiting Abe down at the Tombs had her laughing so hard, George had come galloping in from the library to thump her on the back. My God! Genial, affable Abe. The biggest swindler of all time. The kind of sweet old Jewish man everybody wished was their grandfather. It was unbelievable.
Standing sideways in front of the mirror, she grinned at her reflection and ran her hands over the small bump in her belly. She tried to forget the slobbering wet kiss that she’d had to endure when she gave George the news. The pregnancy had been his biggest birthday surprise. When the cramps had started again, she’d seen a local gynecologist. The sonogram of her abdomen had been quite a revelation. Not only did she have gallstones (“You’ve probably had them for years,” the doctor had told her) and two large cysts on her right ovary (one of which had resolved itself), she was also three months pregnant.
Sighing, she dumped her underwear in the hamper, spritzed her blonde hair with a mist of Joy (That’s right, Joy, she thought. Her mother’s own signature scent.) and played her old “what if” game. What if she hadn’t left her coat and cell phone in the hospital? What if she hadn’t run into John on the street? What if Abe hadn’t opened that small starter fund for her in the Caymans? Five grand wasn’t much but it had been just enough to cover her getaway. She remembered how her shrink used to laugh at her for reading the Post, too. Poor Dr. Greene. She wondered if he’d ever forgive himself for turning her in after overhearing her confession on the cellphone. Anyway, after reading that piece in the Post about the business of identity theft in the Baja, it had cost her a measly $2,000 to become Elizabeth Gordon. Bet, for short. The rest: the work on her face in L.A., the hair, even the switch involved in becoming a perfect trophy wife, had been easy.
There were moments, in fact, when it was so easy, when the role felt so remarkably natural, she caught herself wondering who she really was. A week ago, she’d started trawling through the List, again. Just for fun, of course. But still … It was amazing. The kind of stuff women were selling off during the recession! And they were the lucky ones. George had caught Charlotte chortling in bed one morning. She had been reading Page Six, a paragraph about men trudging into Madison Avenue boutiques with shopping bags. It seems they were returning everything their wives had bought that still had a price tag on it and pocketing the cash. Tough times, Charlotte thought, as she smiled and slipped into a peach silk dressing gown.
THANKS
To the seventy-eight editors/publishers who turned this novel down. Without them, I might never have found such a happy home at Melville House. Thanks also to the believers, to those whose faith (blind as it might have seemed) kept me hoping … To the Almighty Wolcott (a/k/a James) and Laura Jacobs, writer and friend extraordinaire. To the agent, Yfat Reiss Gendell, who took this book on as her very first project at Foundry Media and whose phenomenal success since has had nothing to do with me. To Brendan Bernhard who opened the door at Melville and my sister, Rachel, and reader Akiko Busch, both of whom loved Charlotte even in her fetal stages. Last but hardly least … Huge thanks to my husband, Richard, and to Jack and Nora who lived with a murderous mother for as long as it took to get Charlotte, her fire poker, and her yoga mat out there.
The Craigslist Murders Page 18
