by Cate Holahan
27
November 29
Ryan rang the doorbell, feeling underprepared to apply for a loan. The home’s architecture was to blame. Tom’s neighbor’s house reminded him of a bank with its large triangle third story, supported by ionic columns. Even the carport next to the home seemed to obscure a drive-through ATM.
A woman answered. Ryan relaxed as soon as he saw the homeowner’s surprised brows and done-up sapphire eyes: Botox Barb from the café. Only that wasn’t her real name. He was here to see Dina Marchese.
“Can I help you?”
“Yes.” He reintroduced himself. “I believe we met before, at the café in the center of town.”
“Oh, right.” She tapped her lower lip and then pointed at his chest. “You had recently moved into the neighborhood.”
Lies operate under karmic law. They always return in some form or another. “Actually, I came here to work a case. I’m an investigator looking into Ana Bacon’s fall off a cruise ship a few months ago. I was hoping to ask her neighbors some questions.”
Dina smiled in the way only someone without full use of her facial muscles could and welcomed him inside. She escorted him into a sitting room plastered in ornate molding. A shiny, mahogany piano served as the room’s centerpiece. French-styled chaises were positioned around it, upholstered in two-tone pinks and oranges. She sat on one and patted the cushion beside her.
A phone rang. Dina put up a finger and stood. “If you’ll excuse me for a minute.” She clacked from the room. In her tight black leggings and cropped black leather jacket, she looked like the tarted-up version of Sandra Dee.
Ryan unzipped his coat before sinking into the settee. The position, with his leg angled up, aggravated his injury. He extended his limb out in front of him, keeping the other one bent. The pose announced his discomfort.
Five minutes ticked away before Dina returned. She removed a Bluetooth ear bud as she reentered the room. The sight of him made her frown. “Do you want an ottoman for your leg? I can have one of the girls bring one.”
He wondered whom she meant. A vacuum cleaner buzzed in the background. Ryan smelled vinegar. People, undoubtedly female, were cleaning Dina’s house.
“No, I’m fine.” Ryan forced himself more upright, not wanting his injury to become a topic of conversation. “Did you know the Bacons well?”
“They came to a holiday party or two at the house,” Dina said. “So you’re investigating whether Ana’s death was an accident or . . .”
She trailed off, waiting for Ryan to fill in the details. He wished he could just ask the questions, but only police officers had the luxury of demanding answers without returning info. Private investigators had back-and-forth exchanges.
“I’m with the insurance company. Mrs. Bacon had a policy, and we are looking into the cause of death.”
Her voice dropped to an excited whisper. “You think Tom did it, don’t you?”
The sudden accusation surprised him. Did she know something about the Bacons’ marriage? Had Tom actually abused Ana, as her mother had claimed?
He tried to keep his face expressionless. “Why do you think that?”
Dina sat down beside him, close enough that her foot almost touched his leg. She flashed a coy, nearly flirty smile. “Isn’t it always the husband?”
Not informed then, just a watcher of too many investigation shows. “Well, it could be an accident or suicide or . . .” Ryan trailed off. He couldn’t mention Michael. “Did Ana seem depressed before she went away?”
Dina leaned in, as if sharing a secret. He could smell orange juice and alcohol on her breath. “Between you and me, I don’t see how she could not have been depressed. Husband out of work more than a year. She lost all her household staff. I’m sure she was doing all the cleaning, cooking, and childcare, even after she went back to work.” She rolled her eyes. “Believe me, men like Tom don’t lift a finger when it comes to the house.”
“Did Ana say anything?”
“Well, not to me, and probably not to anyone in the neighborhood. Ana didn’t really have local friends yet because her kid hadn’t started school. No one knew her. I tried with my parties but . . .” She sighed. “Ana was very reserved. Maybe the wives here intimidated her. You know, she wasn’t used to having money.”
“Did she and Tom fight about money?”
“What couple doesn’t?”
Ana’s mother’s voice shouted in Ryan’s mind. “Did Ana ever have bruises?”
Dina’s hand went to her heart in an overacted gesture of sympathy. “Oh. No. Well, not that I saw, but we didn’t interact regularly other than a passing wave as she walked the stroller down the street. I never heard them fight.” She gestured to her ceiling, indicating her large home. “People move here from the city for space, to get some distance from their neighbors. It helps keep arguments behind closed doors.”
Dina’s house was large, but it wasn’t far from the Bacons. She would have heard screaming matches. “So you don’t have any particular reason to think that they had marital problems?”
Dina’s eyebrows raised. Her forehead remained unmoved. “Other than the women?” She slipped the phone from her pocket. “I probably shouldn’t share this, but I took it about three weeks before Ana died. I’d planned to show her because I thought she should know. I’d want to know.” She pulled up an image and passed the phone to Ryan. “I never saw her at home without Tom, so I didn’t get the chance . . .”
The photo was grainy, but Ryan got the gist. Tom sat in his Maserati convertible with the top down, face turned toward the sidewalk. A woman with orangey-red hair and a long neck leaned into the driver’s seat. Dina hadn’t gotten a good angle on the woman’s face. But she appeared to be kissing him on the side of the mouth.
“That woman works in a wine shop one town over.” Dina’s painted lips squeezed together in an exaggerated pout. “When I saw him, I just thought his behavior was in poor taste. I mean, doing that where everyone could see him. At least try to be discrete. He didn’t have to embarrass Ana in front of every neighbor running errands that way in the middle of the day.”
Ryan considered the photo again. “Would you send that to me?”
“Sure, if it’s helpful. It’s not like I can show Ana now.”
He rattled off his number. She keyed it in and texted him the image.
Dina sat back into the couch. She looked pleased with herself. Her spy efforts had not gone unrecognized. “And now, of course, there’s that girl always coming by to help out.” Dina rolled her eyes and snorted. “The sitter.”
“Eve?”
“Is that her name?”
“Blond girl?”
Dina nodded. “Probably bottled, but yes. The young one with the BMW.”
Ryan linked the face from yesterday with Eve’s name. “You think there’s something between her and Tom?”
She shook her head as though disappointed with Tom, men in general, or perhaps just Ryan. He detected annoyance in her demeanor, as though Dina had expected more information or insights from an investigator, something juicy that she could tell her friends.
“Of course, I don’t know,” she said. “But that girl’s a bit young to be hanging out with a married man, let alone a single dad. And she’s there a lot. From what I hear, Tom can’t afford full-time help right now.”
Tom had insisted that Eve was just a family friend. Was Dina one of the people “misinterpreting” his relationship with the girl, or did he lie about sleeping with her? Had he slept with the redhead? More than a third of men cheated on their spouse, Ryan reminded himself. That still left roughly two-thirds who didn’t—assuming they weren’t lying on surveys.
Dina yawned audibly. “Excuse me, I must be more tired that I realized.” She clasped her palm over her mouth as if embarrassed. “Charity dinner last night.”
The statement sounded like a setup to end a conversation. Ryan had to reengage her interest, encourage her to wrack her brain for new details, things she might
not even realize that she’d noticed about her neighbors. “Do you think Ana suspected Tom of being unfaithful?”
A loud bang stopped Dina from answering the question. Ryan turned to see a young woman standing outside the sitting room. A bucket rolled on its side by her feet, spilling soapy water on the marble. She dropped to her knees to clean it up, keeping her face to the ground, a child prepared for a scolding.
“Honestly,” Dina muttered.
“Desculpe.” The maid mopped up the liquid with a large sponge. “Desculpe.”
The word got Ryan’s attention. Though he didn’t speak Spanish, he’d picked up enough living in the New York suburbs to know that lo siento was the way most people apologized. Desculpe was another Latin language—and not French. He’d taken that one in high school.
“You’ll have to follow that up with white vinegar and a mop,” Dina snapped. “Otherwise there’ll be spots. And you need to dry it with paper towel. Hold on a second.” She shouted the last part as though the woman were hard of hearing and then stormed from the room, presumably to get the proper materials.
Ryan watched the woman clean. Chivalry demanded that he should help, but he didn’t want to insult her by doing her job. She had a light-tan complexion and wavy, ash-blond hair, which hid most of her face. She wore thick plastic glasses that made her look like a nerdy high school student, the one that gets the makeover in the movie and ends up with the quarterback.
Dina cleared her throat as she reentered the room. The sound wrested his attention away from the woman kneeling on the floor. She dropped a paper towel roll beside the maid’s knees. “I got this service a few months ago at the suggestion of a friend.” Dina spoke only to Ryan. “My nanny decided the house was too big for just her.” She turned her nose up at the spot on the floor. “But I still don’t know about it.”
She returned to the couch. “So, we were talking about Tom’s philandering . . .”
“Did it seem like Ana might have suspected anything? Maybe she found out and became depressed . . .”
“The couple times I saw them socially, she seemed very much in love. Starry-eyed.” Dina sighed. “Poor thing. My guess? She was clueless.”
An angry splash punctuated Dina’s statement. The maid squeezed the sponge, wringing out a stream of grayish liquid.
“I’ll ask around, if that’s helpful. There must be someone who took a mommy and me class with her or something.” Dina rose from the couch. “Sorry I couldn’t be of more help. I do hope Sophia gets her mother’s death benefit. From what I hear, Tom’s unemployable.”
Ryan followed her lead, pushing off the edge of the seat to pull himself upright without transferring his weight to his bad leg. “I appreciate your time.”
Dina’s heels came dangerously close to the hand of the woman still scrubbing up her mistake. Ryan followed her back into the foyer, feeling more than a little guilty for failing to aid the contrite housecleaner.
The front door opened. He slipped a card from his wallet and held it out to Dina in lieu of a handshake. “If you do remember or hear anything . . .”
Dina gave another pained half-smile. “Of course. And you’ll let me know if I’m living next to a, well, you know.”
Ryan exited onto Dina’s circular driveway. The bumpy cobblestone unbalanced him, slowing his already sluggish gate. Footsteps rushed behind him. He turned to see the maid running from the house. “Wait,” she yelled.
Wind billowed in the woman’s oversized sweatpants and shirt. “I heard you say about Ana.” She spoke with a thick accent, straight off the boat from South America.
“Yes. Did you know the Bacons?”
“I cleaned for dem.” She turned the th into a strong d sound. “Dom is no good.”
“Dom?”
“Tom.” This time she pronounced it like a native speaker. “Meester Bacon.”
“Excuse me?” Dina shouted out of her front door.
“Desculpe,” the maid shouted behind her. She whispered to him. “My number.”
Ryan pulled out his cell from his jacket pocket. She rattled off ten digits as Dina stormed down the driveway. “What is going on?”
From behind her glasses, the woman’s blue eyes pleaded for him not to say anything. Ryan raised a hand in surrender. “My fault. I’d asked if she knew whether the Bacons had a cleaning service. It took a while for her to realize what I’d been talking about given the language barrier.”
Dina’s eyes narrowed as she tried to make sense of Ryan’s lie. After a beat, she shrugged, deciding either that what he’d said made sense or that she didn’t care either way. She turned to the housecleaner. “Finish taking care of that spill.” Dina moved her hand in a circle, miming the act of scrubbing. “Por favor,” she commanded.
“Look into that woman, Eve,” the maid whispered. Her accent wasn’t as strong when she spoke softly. “And call.”
Ryan saved her number on the walk back to his car. He put the contact as “maid.” He hadn’t gotten her name.
28
August 25
Sophia walked across the mall’s tile floor, halting after each step to lick an off-kilter scoop of strawberry ice cream. Shopping centers were the poor man’s amusement park. They had sweets, rides, video games, even cheap, overstuffed animals if the right vendor was around. Since arriving two hours earlier, we’d ice-skated in a minirink and rode the carousel, and now we topped it all off with Ben & Jerry’s. Cost of the day: forty dollars. Memories with my daughter before risking death: priceless.
I slurped a mint chocolate smoothie. For once, I didn’t worry about the calories. Swim practice was much better after loading up on sugar and carbohydrates. I’d train again tonight, even though I’d put in more than three hours in the pool yesterday. Seven miles, at least.
Sophia leaned into me as we walked. “Daddy doesn’t get ice cream.”
Tom was picking up Eve. He’d pitched his cousin last week on the idea of watching Sophia in exchange for a couple hundred bucks and an all-expenses-paid weekend in a quiet, suburban house. Tom had said she’d jumped at the chance to get away from her boy-crazed roommate. She would meet us here at the mall and then, if everything went well—which it had to—head back to the house with us for dinner.
“Daddy will be here soon,” I said.
Sophia licked her ice cream. The day had been better without him and she must have sensed it. If he’d come, she would have spent the whole time trying to show off for him while he half-ignored her, and I would have become frustrated by his lack of responsiveness, leading to an argument.
I knelt beside my daughter. Pink ice cream smeared across the tip of her nose and her top lip. I swiped it with my thumb. “You know how much I love you?”
Sophia giggled. “You would become the wind?”
“What?”
She swallowed the last of her ice cream as though she hadn’t heard the question. I knew her mind was working. Three-year-olds took time to translate their thoughts. “Like the mommy rabbit,” she said finally. “If I became a sailboat, you would become the wind and blow me home.”
The Runaway Bunny. I must have read that story to Sophia a hundred times. “You’re my home.”
She laughed. “Momma, I’m not a house.”
“Home is wherever you are, for me.”
She didn’t understand, but she hugged me anyway. “I so love you, Momma.”
We passed a trash bin. She dropped the cone inside, as she’d never liked the cracker texture. I tossed my shake, freeing my hands to pick her up beneath her armpits and swing her around. Her hair flew out behind her. She laughed. I wrapped her in a big bear hug as she came down from her flight. “I will love you forever. No matter what. I love you forever.”
Sophia’s legs enveloped my torso. “Me too, Momma. Like the wind.”
*
Sophia and I waited in the food court. Our chicken nuggets sat on the plastic table, soggy from abandonment in ketchup. The air was irritating my nose. It smelled like a fair on a s
weltering day: body odor and boiled hotdogs. In fact, everything was annoying me: the large screen behind Sophia’s head, blasting a music video for some teen pop star whose voice mimicked someone midcoitus. The crowds. The fact that my husband hadn’t accounted for traffic when telling me to meet him upstairs by the teriyaki chicken stand.
My daughter fidgeted in her chair. Napkin drawings and memorized bedtime stories could only amuse for so long. “I want to go,” she said for the zillionth time.
“If Daddy doesn’t come in the next five minutes, we’ll leave, okay?”
“He never comes.”
Though he’d only missed one pickup, the memory of waiting while all the other daycare kids had disappeared into the arms of their caregivers had stuck with Sophia. One mistake erased months of showing up.
“He just hit traffic, honey.”
“I want to go.” She kicked the table leg, sending the leftover lunch bouncing across the table.
“I know, but we have to wait for Daddy. Please don’t kick the table.”
Again, she slammed the toe of her foot into the plastic leg. “I want to go.”
Normally, I would have corrected the tantrum, but I didn’t want to be at war with my daughter right before she met her babysitter. I needed her to be happy, to remember the experience with Tom’s cousin as something wonderful so she wouldn’t be frightened to spend three full days with the woman.
Sophia drummed her feet into the table leg. Sugar highs always resulted in an angry crash.
“Sophia.” My voice contained a warning. “Please don’t.”
“I want to go now,” she whined.
“What else can we do while we wait for Daddy?”
She pouted as I recounted previously played games: find the letters on signs, again, count the straws, again, make funny faces, again. Nothing appealed. I considered taking her for another walk around the cafeteria in search of something that she shouldn’t have on top of ice cream. Bribes were bad but sometimes necessary.
Tom saved me from hating myself later. He exited the elevator and stood off to the side, searching for us. A very young blonde followed behind him. Her tousled California-girl locks swayed as she scanned the room. She was only about five foot three or so, tiny compared to Tom’s six foot two. She had a dainty, girlish face. Fine bones. The only feature she shared with my husband was eye color.
