Good Little Wives
Page 21
“What do you want?” he asked.
And suddenly she knew. “I think I really only want what I’ve always wanted. I want you to love me. To touch me, really touch me. To make love to me and have the feeling linger. To stop being such a driven, self-centered man and think about me as a woman. Who likes to be held. Who sometimes needs tenderness.”
He could have laughed at that, at Caroline Meacham wanting tenderness. He could have laughed, but he did not.
“I want us to try again. I want to forget about Elise. I want you to forget about her, too.” She hadn’t realized until then that was indeed what she wanted.
He looked at her a moment with bemused eyes. “You think it will be easy for this man to forget his wife has been with a woman?”
She smiled quietly. It was all she could do.
He smiled slowly back. Then he slid his other hand from beneath the comforter. She thought that he was going to pull her close, maybe make love to her. She thought she might like it. She was so busy thinking that she was surprised to hear such a thundering noise followed by a blast that ripped right through her head.
Thirty-nine
Dana couldn’t wait to tell Bridget about her father. Steven had gone on to Chicago from Indianapolis, so she’d flown back to New York alone, adrenaline pumping from takeoff to touchdown, despite that she’d talked half the night, telling Steven stories of her childhood, of her mother, of Daddy.
They’d driven her car to the airport so she only had to jump in and head north to New Falls. By the time she got to Bridget’s, it was after two o’clock in the afternoon.
“My, don’t you look perky,” Dana said as Bridget opened the door dressed in teal and sequins. She hadn’t yet told Bridget about her visit from Luc, about the wildflowers, about the fact he was sorry. There would be time for that later; for now, Dana wouldn’t disrupt Bridget’s newfound contentment.
“We had a family outing this morning at the chemo room,” Bridget said. “It wasn’t the same without you. Randall is trés terrible at pedicures.”
Bridget made tea and bemoaned the fact she’d lost her taste for wine. “I couldn’t even drink one tiny sip at the gala. Not that it mattered. Oh, what an awful night that was. All that business with Caroline and Yolanda and Elise.”
They settled at the table.
“I wonder what Caroline is going to do,” Dana said.
“Leave him, I expect. The way Lauren has left Bob.”
“Has she really left him?”
“She has.”
“Dear God.”
“Oui, oui.”
They sipped.
“Lauren called a little while ago,” Bridget continued. “She said she couldn’t get through to Caroline. And you didn’t answer your cell. Where have you been anyway? You look tired.”
“I’ll tell you later. First tell me about Lauren.” Once she started talking about her father, she knew she wouldn’t want to stop, not even for news of Lauren.
“Well, she’s on Nantucket! She really did it. Sold her Mikimotos and left that old geezer high and dry. She’s staying in an apartment above a scrimshaw store. Can you imagine? Lauren? Living above a shop?”
Could they imagine any of them doing such a thing?
“I’m happy for her,” Bridget went on. “She sounded really, really excited. She said in a while, she might look for a man. Someone down-to-earth.”
“A far cry from Bob.”
“Or Vincent. Mon dieu, every time when I think of those pink diamonds on Yolanda’s neck, I wonder if Vincent bought them with my two hundred thousand.”
“They are beautiful diamonds,” Dana said. Then something nagged a bit. “Seriously, though. When did he buy them for her? Before or after he blackmailed you?”
Bridget frowned. “After, I think. Yes, of course. The first time we saw them was only two weeks ago, at Caroline’s rite-of-spring luncheon.”
The day that Vincent had been shot. Kitty had mentioned that the money for the diamonds must have come from Vincent’s secret stash.
Suddenly the thing that had been nagging jerked Dana’s thoughts.
“Oh my God,” she shouted as she bounded off the couch. “Kitty did it, Bridget. Kitty killed Vincent after all!”
“What?”
“She did! She killed him! I knew something bothered me when my father said it. That he never bought my mother diamonds.”
“Your father? What father?”
“Get up,” she commanded. “We’re going to visit Detective Johnson.”
Bridget said Dana was insane but she stood up anyway.
Dana tugged her by the wrist. “Don’t you see?” she jabbered as she led Bridget toward the door and Bridget grabbed her raincoat on the way out. “Kitty knew about Yolanda’s new pink diamonds. But Vincent had just bought them for her. The first time she’d worn them was to Caroline’s luncheon.”
Bridget nodded as she buckled the seat belt around her teal satin middle.
“It’s true,” Dana kept sputtering as she turned on the ignition and backed out of the drive. “Kitty mentioned the diamonds the day Sam and I went to see her. When we asked if Vincent was broke, she said how could he have been when he’d bought those pink diamonds?”
Bridget held on to the door as Dana shoved the gearshift into drive and they sped off down the street.
“The only way Kitty could have seen them would be if she was near Caroline’s that day. But she wasn’t invited! She must have been outside the party, watching. She must have used the opportunity to dump Vincent’s gun into Caroline’s water garden.”
It all made sense to Dana. And Bridget could not disagree.
Detective Johnson said it would be highly irregular for Dana and Bridget to follow them to Kitty’s apartment in Tarrytown. He did not comment that on top of the irregularity, Bridget was wearing pajamas.
“Please, Detective,” Dana pleaded. “If I talk to her, she might admit it. It would save you lots of time, and the state a lot of money, if she just confesses.”
She suspected it was the part about saving him time that made him acquiesce.
They bullied their way into her apartment, Detective Johnson, his three officer-sidekicks, Dana and Bridget, plus a Tarrytown cop they’d picked up on the way, which had something to do with “jurisdiction.”
“We know you did it,” Dana said. “You wouldn’t have known about Yolanda’s pink diamonds unless you were watching Caroline’s house the day of the luncheon.”
Kitty clutched the robe more tightly to the breasts that Sam must have fondled. Dana pushed the thought from her mind.
Then Kitty shrugged. “I told Vincent to meet me at our old house. I said the buyers for the Oriental rugs would be there.”
Detective Johnson read her her rights the same way he’d read them the day they’d found Vincent.
But Kitty’s eyes had glazed over and she didn’t seem to hear.
“I brought the gun Vincent bought me. He was so paranoid about muggers. Anyway, I meant to kill him. But when he said I looked good, I saw the chance to really make him pay.” She rolled her eyes and smiled. “Vincent always was so easy when his penis was involved.”
At first no one seemed to know what she meant. Then she stepped toward Detective Johnson, placed her hands flat on his chest.
“I did this,” she said, moving her hands over his chest. Then her fingers darted inside the detective’s jacket. He grasped her wrist. She laughed.
“So you don’t carry a gun in the same place Vincent did. Well, as usual, his was there. I called him a bastard, then I shot him with his gun.” She pointed her finger at Detective Johnson’s left ear. “I guess the neighbors didn’t hear that shot.”
“Then what?” the detective asked.
“Then I left Vincent there. I went to Caroline’s—that was very smart of you to figure that out, Dana. You always were smarter than the rest of us.”
Dana chewed her lip.
Bridget slid one foot in and out of her silve
r sequin mules.
“I hid in those bushes by the water garden. Even from there, I could see Yolanda and the pink diamonds. Imagine that. They’re so big I didn’t need opera glasses.”
“But you went back to the house,” Johnson said.
“I tossed Vincent’s gun into the water. Then yes, of course I went back. Maybe I needed to be sure the bastard was dead. Or maybe I needed to see him one more time. Whatever. When I got there, I took out my gun in case he was still breathing. When I bent down to check him, my gun went off and shot the rug, and the police were there in a flash.”
That’s when Kitty laughed. “The worst part is, it really was worth it,” she said. “I’ve had more attention than when I was Vincent’s wife. Besides, it was fun, wasn’t it?”
The police officers handcuffed Kitty and led her from the place. Just before they filed down the stairs, Detective Johnson’s cell phone rang.
“Johnson,” he said. Then “Yes. I see. Good God. Okay, we’ll be right there.” For some reason he turned and looked at Dana and Bridget. He hesitated briefly, then motioned to his partner. “Let them take her in,” he said, pointing to the other cops. “We’ve got something more urgent.”
“Something more urgent? In New Falls?” Bridget laughed. “Mon dieu, not again.”
The detective paused, closed his eyes, took a breath. Then he rushed past them and raced down the stairs.
“Hey!” Bridget shouted over the railing. “You forgot to thank us for our help!”
The detective waved his hand. “I’ll come and talk to you both later,” he called back, which seemed rather foreboding, but then, life was like that sometimes.
Dana smiled and said, “Come on, you beauty queen. I’m going to take you to The Chocolate Flan for lunch. I have a lot to tell you, now that Vincent’s killer has been caught and we can get back to normal, whatever that is.”
Epilogue
It was the perfect spot for a hair salon, right in the center of New Falls, right on Main Street where she could keep an eye on everyone and everything. It even had a perfect apartment on the second floor, where she would raise her baby—a girl! she had learned.
Three months had passed since Vincent died. Yolanda wondered if she would ever stop missing him.
The baby, of course, was his. Kitty seemed to really believe he’d had a vasectomy; Yolanda was pretty sure it wasn’t the first or only time Vincent had lied to Kitty. He’d told her once how Kitty made him crazy with her nonstop nitpicking. In the end, even Paul Tobin didn’t want to handle Kitty’s case, which wasn’t really a case, because she’d confessed. “Shot her big mouth off,” Tobin had said, then disappeared, probably fearful that the others would come looking for him, would have him arrested for the way he had tried to cash in on Vincent’s misdeeds.
“Would you like to make an offer?” the real estate agent who stood beside her asked.
“Yes,” Yolanda said, “I’ll pay the asking price. It’s exactly what I want.” She had decided to stay in town. It was what Vincent would have wanted for her, and for their daughter.
Money would be easier now that Marvin and Elise had given her half of the two-million-dollar insurance, now that Kitty no longer “qualified” as the beneficiary. They said they still had plenty to keep their grandmother well-cared for upstate.
Of course, even with a million, Yolanda didn’t have a New Falls fortune left, now that she’d sold the house, paid the taxes, and returned the blackmail money:
Two hundred thousand dollars to Lauren Halliday, who was working in a flip-flop shop on Nantucket, dating a scallop fisherman, and planning to buy a cottage so Dory and Jeffrey and little Liam—and any of her stepchildren, if they so desired—could visit from time to time;
Two hundred thousand dollars to Bridget Haynes, whose hair had fallen out and now grown back, who said she’d use the money for something other than lunches and wine, that perhaps she’d do some good in the world, because, mon dieu, the world surely could use it;
And two hundred thousand to Caroline’s daughter, Chloe, who needed every cent she could get now that her mother was dead and her father, like Kitty, was going to prison for the rest of his life. The Meacham family assets had been frozen, like Chloe, pending settlements from attorneys and business partners and who knew who else. So Chloe had hawked the diamond Lee Sato had given her and had reclused herself somewhere in South Hadley, Massachusetts, where she’d gone to college and apparently felt safe.
Dana Fulton didn’t get any money because Vincent hadn’t blackmailed her, though the town was buzzing now that her long-lost father had moved into their house. Rumor had it that Dana and Steven paid for Caroline Meacham’s headstone and her funeral, though few people attended. If Dana or anyone else knew who brought the yellow tulips to the gravesite each week, no one was saying, no one was gossiping about that, at least not out loud.
Yolanda, of course, knew. Just as she knew that if she didn’t make trouble, the women in town would eventually come to her shop, would share their stories, would, in time, forget all that had happened.
It was funny, Yolanda thought, as she looked around at her new beginning, but aside from the jewels and the houses and the cars and the clothes and the silly facelifts, well, the wives of New Falls weren’t a whole lot different than those in the Bronx.
Mais oui, as Bridget would say.
About the Author
A graduate of Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York—two and a half hours due north of “New Falls”—ABBY DRAKE understands the social pecking order of Manhattan’s bedroom towns. Like many of the wives she portrays, she does not play golf but can drive a cart; unlike many, she owns no Mikimotos and has not had a face-lift. Yet. She currently lives in Amherst, Massachusetts, where she feels life is simply less stressful.
Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.
By Abby Drake
GOOD LITTLE WIVES
Credits
Cover design by Mary Schuck
Cover photograph by Image Source Pink/Getty Images and George Doyle/Getty Images
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
GOOD LITTLE WIVES. Copyright © 2007 by Abby Drake. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition © JULY 2007 ISBN: 9780061857102
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Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Epilogue
About the Author
By Abby Drake
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher