Good Little Wives

by Abby Drake

  One after another said they would not go to New York, it was out of their territory, as if they were pretzel cart vendors in Manhattan and were not allowed to encroach on someone else’s corner.

  Bangs and Holfield was different.

  “Yes, we have several clients in New York,” a pleasant woman said.

  Dana held her breath. “I live in New Falls,” she said. “In fact, you were recommended by my friend Kitty DeLano. I believe she’s been trying to sell you a number of carpets.” She waited for a reply.

  “I’m sorry,” the woman said, “I’m not familiar with that name.”

  Dana hung up, tried a few more.

  “We can’t go to New York.”

  “Can you drive to Boston?”

  And then, “Oh yes, Mrs. DeLano. How is she doing? We went there last week, but something terrible had happened. Police cars were everywhere. I phoned to reschedule, but she said she’d have to get back to us. Perhaps we could take care of your business at the same time…”

  Dana said, “Thanks. I’ll let you know.” She hung up the phone with verification that Kitty had been telling the truth.

  Twenty-eight

  She didn’t care what Steven said.

  Whether it was out of guilt because Kitty had once saved her life (would she really have “come to” on her own?), growing doubts about Bridget (of all of them Bridget was her best friend, wasn’t she?), or just because Dana was angry that Steven had grown up in a functional house and didn’t know what real suffering, real anguish were, Dana decided to hire an attorney for Kitty—one who might at least determine who had pulled the trigger.

  The rug story had solidified Dana’s resolve.

  Dana, however, had never gone against Steven’s wishes. Well, there was the time when she’d talked Michael into Northwestern for grad school when Steven was insisting that he go to Wharton, Steven’s blessed alma mater.

  But Michael had already gone to Choate and Yale, and Dana had wanted him to get out of New England. She’d wanted him to experience life in the Midwest, close to where she had been raised, close to things that had mattered when she’d been young, museums, music, theater—not that Michael was like her.

  She’d claimed victory over Steven. It cost her three weeks of cold shoulder and two years of occasional glib remarks that were out of character for him.

  And now, in addition to the dollars and cents, she had no idea what this would cost her. Bridget might suggest that Dana offer a little extra sex. But she would not tell Bridget, because whom could she trust?

  “Sam,” she prodded the next morning after Steven left for his office and not the airport for a change. “Wake up. I need your help.”

  A shower and two Starbucks later Sam drove his Wrangler into the parking garage adjacent to the Wall Street building where Michael worked.

  “I can’t believe you just didn’t call him, Mom,” he said as they crossed from the garage into the building. “If he remembers the guy’s name, he could have told you on the phone.”

  “I’m hoping the lawyer might see us if he knows we’re in the city, if he knows this is important.”

  “If there’s a fat chance he’s available,” Sam said with a wry smile.

  The office was black and white, pewter and glass. Dana felt a swell of pride that Michael—her son!—had already achieved so much. And then he came into the reception area wearing the Armani they’d given him last Christmas. He looked so handsome! So successful!

  “Mom?” he asked. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing,” Dana said, toning down her smile. “Everything is fine. But I need the name of an attorney for Kitty DeLano. I was thinking about the man whose son you were in school with.”

  Michael folded his arms and looked at Sam, who shrugged. “You drove into Manhattan to ask me someone’s name?”

  “Well. Yes. Or rather, Samuel drove.”

  He eyed them both. “I’m really busy, Mom. Besides, do you think it’s a good idea to get involved?”

  She’d forgotten he was Steven’s son as well as hers.

  “Name, please.”

  He sighed an old man’s sigh. “Mom,” he said again. “I can’t.”

  “All I need is for you to call him for me. Set the stage. You know?”

  “No,” he said too quickly.

  She blinked. “No?”

  “The truth is, Dad already called this morning. He warned me you might try to do this.”

  Someone must have turned the heat up in the room. Dana brushed the slow burn on her cheeks and leveled her sights on her eldest son. “You’re telling me your father told you not to help me?” Steven, her perfect husband? Father of her perfect children?

  Michael laughed with hesitation.

  Sam laughed with nervousness.

  Dana was so angry, she didn’t say good-bye. She spun around and stomped back to the elevator. Sam caught up with her just as she stepped inside.

  “Mom…” he tried with an effort to appease.

  But Dana shook her head. She didn’t want to talk to him, to any of them. For the first time in forever, Dana felt like an unappreciated, unimportant, uneverything-ed wife.

  “We could stop for lunch somewhere if you want,” Sam said as Dana marched toward the garage. He was such a sweet boy, Sam. If he had known the name, he would have shared it with her.

  She shook her head again, stepped off the curb, and waited for a limousine to pass. As it did, she did a double-take. “That looks like the Meachams’ car,” she said, forgetting she didn’t want to talk to anyone.

  “Yeah,” Sam said. “Maybe Mr. Meacham came downtown to plead with Lee Sato. The Sato offices are right up the street.”

  They crossed and went into the garage. Dana might have suggested that perhaps it was not Jack, but Caroline. Then she decided that Caroline was a lot of things, but she was above stooping that low.

  Caroline couldn’t believe she was stooping so low.

  She’d stayed awake most of the night thinking about Elise, thinking about Chloe, and cursing Lee, because he was a man and most things wound up being their fault. She also was worried that Dana’s son might try to insinuate himself onto her rebounding daughter. Sam was nice enough, like all the Fulton boys, but he wouldn’t amount to anything out of the ordinary. He’d be rich, but not rich enough; he’d be connected, but not connected enough. He’d be just another New Falls kid.

  He wouldn’t be a global player.

  Which brought her back to the cursed Lee and the need to patch things up. Because at least one thing in her life simply had to go right.

  Jack had been useless. Of course, his idea of trying hard was to leave Lee a couple of voice mail messages. He hadn’t called his driver and hotfooted it into the city for a face-to-face showdown for which Caroline was now prepared to stoop so low.

  They made it downtown in record time despite the morning rush. Gerald knew not to pussyfoot around when Caroline was perched on the backseat.

  He curbed the car at the World Financial Center where the Sato family business held court.

  She told him not to move in case her party was unavailable. Then, her pale aqua cape stating her presence, she clipped across the esplanade, paraded past the imposing palm trees in the vaulted Winter Garden, flashed her ID at security, and headed toward the bank of elevators as if she did this every day.

  He was in the office, but tied up in a meeting, the attractive, young woman at the front desk said. Caroline wondered if Lee was banging her in addition to the Russian.

  She checked her watch: “I’ll wait,” she said and took a seat in the reception area, where she looked out at the thirty-story view.

  And wait she did.

  One hour, then two, then three, Caroline waited. She sucked in her fury and her pride. She resisted tap-tapping the toes of her caramel calfskin Torrini pumps, or sliding out of her cape in an effort to get comfortable. She sat and waited while one suit after another strode past her. The men nodded, the women didn’t. They all w
ere young. They all acted as if they were important.

  At one-twenty-three Lee emerged from wherever he’d been hiding.

  “You’re still here,” he said.

  She did not stand as he approached. “I won’t go home without an explanation.”

  “Your daughter has my explanation. Other than that, it’s not your business, Caroline.”

  From the beginning he had called her that, before she’d had the chance to say, “Oh, don’t call me Mrs. Meacham. Please, it’s Caroline.” Lee had been rude that way. Entitled via his money.

  “You dated my daughter a long time. She is crushed beyond belief.”

  A young man armed with a BlackBerry passed. Caroline supposed she might have—maybe should have—been embarrassed to be sitting in the reception area having a private conversation, but Lee did not seem inclined to invite her to his office, and for once her mission was more important than her shame.

  He sat down in the steel suede chair beside her. “Chloe is not crushed. She’s pissed. She’s strong, though, like her mother. And she will go on.”

  Caroline stared at the marble floor. “Can’t we work something out?”

  “Well,” he said, “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “I mean what if I convinced Chloe it was all right for you to have other women, that it might even be good for your business, but that she is the only one you really love.”

  “Caroline,” Lee said, “don’t do this.”

  “She’d listen to me, Lee. She always does.”

  “No, Caroline.”

  “What if my husband’s business could help you some way? He often learns things through his associates…”

  Lee held up his hand. “If you’re talking insider trading, Jack Meacham is the last person I would count on. After all, he is married to you.”

  She snapped her face around until it met his. “How dare you,” she hissed.

  He laughed.

  He laughed!

  “Caroline,” he said again, this time standing up, “Nice try. But please go. Before you embarrass us both by offering your body as a last-ditch attempt to drag me back into your wretched fold.” He turned on his well-polished heel (three inches—he was short, though that was hardly adequate consolation) and swaggered away, leaving a trail of chuckles in his wake.

  “Well let me tell you one thing, Lee Sato.” Caroline leaped from the chair and shook her fist at the air. “I wouldn’t fuck you if you were the last peon on the planet! You were never good enough for Chloe. Never!” A spray of spit spewed from her mouth. She quickly dabbed it away, then cupped her hand and shouted, “And another thing, you jerk! She’s going to keep the fucking ring!!!”

  He waved his hand without a simple glance back at Caroline. Then he turned a corner and disappeared from the lives of the Meachams of New Falls.

  Twenty-nine

  The worst part was, of course, that Steven had second-guessed her, that he’d known Dana would go to Michael even after he’d said no.

  How should she, could she, would she deal with that? They fought so rarely, this was foreign turf.

  But he hadn’t trusted her! He’d gone ahead and expected she’d defy him. How dare he!

  Well, of course, she had defied him.

  So…

  So she fixed some tea and resigned herself to remain perplexed just as the phone rang.

  Kitty.

  Oh, great.

  “I won’t need that lawyer after all,” she said.

  What?

  “They’ve dropped the charges, Dana. They know I didn’t kill him.”

  Was this all a dream? Was it still last night and was Dana still asleep and had this morning never happened? It would explain a lot.

  But Kitty was saying something about ballistics, and how they didn’t match her gun and that things were finally going to go her way.

  “Now they can’t deny me the insurance settlement. Now my mother will be fine.”

  Dana knew that last part would be a stretch.

  The second thing she knew was that she had ignited a major upset in her marriage for no good reason after all.

  “Yes, my wife and I were friends with Kitty and Vincent DeLano. But that has nothing to do with who killed him.”

  Lauren stood in the hallway outside the hospital room. She couldn’t breathe again. She held her hand to her throat, wishing she had on her pearls, wishing she had something to toy with while her husband and the detective (him again!) conversed.

  She supposed she should be grateful that the nurse had tipped her off by saying the cops were there.

  “We’ll decide what does or doesn’t have to do with murder,” the detective said to Bob.

  She wondered if the detective had made a special trip to see Bob, and if so, dear God, why. She leaned against the wall. She would have run to the stairway but didn’t think her legs could carry her that far.

  “And I’m telling you,” Bob said with insistence, “we don’t know anything about it.” His mouth must be stretched white and terse, his glare arrogant and condescending.

  “Do you know where your wife was from eleven in the morning until one o’clock the day DeLano was shot?”

  “Why do you ask? DeLano’s ex-wife killed him, didn’t she?”

  “As it turns out, he wasn’t shot with her gun. So the playing field’s wide open.”

  “Well, you’re wasting your time here, Detective. My wife is as timid as a bird.”

  “Humor me.”

  “Okay. Well, I don’t know where she was at eleven-thirty, because I was on the golf course. Where I usually am.”

  “And she wasn’t with you?”

  “My wife never got the hang of holding a club. No, I was with Jack Meacham. And Randall Haynes. Oh no, that’s not right. We were going to be a foursome with Steven Fulton, but Fulton had to go out of town and Haynes canceled but I don’t know why. So I was with Meacham and Lauren was not. Now, if you’ll excuse me, Detective, I’d like to get dressed. My wife will be here any minute and I’m going home. Unless, of course, you bring on another anxiety attack.”

  Lauren could feel Bob’s blood pressure rise, visualize his face, his neck grow pink then red, his one large purple vein begin to throb from his temple to his forehead. It was what happened whenever he was challenged, or when someone challenged one of his own. He might be a control freak, but at least he was loyal.

  The cop let out a sigh. “Mr. Halliday, did you know your wife had an affair with DeLano?”

  She didn’t gasp, not really. She drew in a tiny whoosh of air that got stuck halfway down to her lungs.

  Bob laughed. “You are out of bounds, Detective. If I were you, I’d be careful whose wife I accused of doing what. Aside from the fact it isn’t nice, it also can be dangerous.”

  “Is that a threat?”

  In the hall, Lauren slowly pressed her fingers to her lips to prevent herself from crying out.

  “Call it advice. Financial advice, actually. Something to do with your pension. Did you know that my firm handles the pension fund of the New Falls Police Department? And those of many towns between here and Manhattan? You wouldn’t believe how vulnerable those accounts are. Even in this day and age.”

  She knew she should stop them. She should stop Bob and she should stop the detective and she should stop everything right then and there, but she couldn’t stop anything if she couldn’t move.

  “So I was right. It was a threat. Well, Mr. Halliday, if I were you, I’d be careful whom I accused of what. In the meantime, you might like to know that your wife admitted they had the affair.”

  The corridor warmed, the lights dimmed. Then Lauren’s head started to swirl and she dropped to the floor.

  Bridget had spent the whole morning in bed and well into the afternoon. Randall thought she was sick from the chemo. He’d offered to stay home from the office, but she’d said no, she had Aimée if she needed anything and it was Thursday so Lorraine would be there.

  At two o’clock she wa
s still staring at the ceiling, wondering what she should do next. Randall had been so kind last night, so worried about her cancer, so forgiving that she hadn’t told him.

  No, it wasn’t the chemo that had made her sick, but the toxins of her guilt.

  Suddenly there was a gentle knock on the door. “Bridget? Are you asleep? It’s Dana.”

  Dana. Oh, mon dieu, could there be a better friend?

  “Entrez, s’il vous plait,” Bridget said. “Please, please come in.” She pulled herself up, leaned back on the white satin-tufted headboard, then plumped the pillows around her as if she were lying in.

  “Bridget,” Dana said as she entrez-ed. “Are you all right? Lorraine said it was okay to come up.”

  “Oui, oui, I am fine. Really I am. But these are arduous days, are they not?”

  Dana sat in the boudoir chair next to the bed. “Arduous, yes, that’s a good word. You’re not sick from the chemo?”

  Bridget shook her head. “Only tired. Is that why you’ve come? To check in on me?”

  “Yes, in part.”

  It was the term “in part,” that made Bridget bristle, made her brace herself for what might be coming next.

  “That and some news.”

  “Good news, I hope, for a change.”

  Dana shrugged. “Good news for Kitty. The ballistics report has come back from the lab. It wasn’t her gun that killed Vincent.”

  Bridget sat up even straighter. “Chouette! So she didn’t kill him!”

  “Apparently not. The police are dropping the charges. She’ll get the insurance money.”

  “Two million dollars. Whether her children like it or not.”

  “For her mother’s care,” Dana said, then went on to tell her about Mrs. Dalton and the nursing home and the piano.

  “Maybe Kitty’s kids will be nicer to her now. Or maybe she’ll move to Poughkeepsie.”

  “Well, it still isn’t over. I had hoped we could get her another lawyer, one who might find out who really killed Vincent.”

  “Oh,” Bridget said. “Mon dieu. If I am sick about anything it is about hearing of that.”