Divas

by Rebecca Chance

  Trying various doors, Lawrence found the largest and most lavish bathroom he had ever seen in his life; a walk-in closet as large as the bathroom, with lights that clicked on the moment he entered and a wall of shoe racks at the far end like a museum installation; and finally, thank God, a private office. Like the rest of Carin’s suite, the office had the same spotless white carpet and built-in, pale wood Nordic furniture – even the swivel chair was pale pine, upholstered in white leather.

  On the desk was a day planner, bound in snakeskin bleached to ivory. It contained detailed notations of all her appointments: hairdressers, manicurists, masseuses, spas, personal trainers, dieticians crammed the daytime hours full. In the evenings were parties and dinners, an equally endless social round. But, scanning back a couple of weeks, Lawrence hit pay dirt, in a scrawled name and address in a notes section. Who else could Joe in Italy be but Joe Scutellaro, the nurse who had looked after Ben Fitzgerald ever since his diagnosis with Type II diabetes, and the man who had sworn falsely on oath, in front of the grand jury, that Lola Fitzgerald had injected her comatose father with enough insulin to kill him?

  Quickly, Lawrence scrawled down Scutellaro’s address, closed the day planner and slid it back into place on the desk. As he left the office, he stopped for a second, turning his head. Ever since he had entered Ben Fitzgerald’s office, he had the strangest sensation of being watched. But there was no one around, he was sure of it . . .

  He looked up into the corner of Carin’s bedroom. There was a motion sensor screwed high up on the wall, glowing red, part of an elaborate and no doubt hugely expensive alarm system. That must be it, he thought. And anyway, I’ve got to get going. They could be back from the funeral any time.

  Reaching the hallway, he stopped dead. The caterers were coming up from the kitchen. A whole stream of people was passing below him in the hall: the Mexican guys, carrying stacks of the small gilt-framed chairs common to all upmarket party planning companies. In addition, the actual wait staff were arriving, handsome young white boys, part-time actors and models, hired mainly for their looks. It was always the same setup: small dark Mexicans (or Guatemalans, or Salvadoreans) were hidden away behind the scenes, doing 90 per cent of the work, while the taller, whiter Americans tended bar, carried drinks trays, flirted with the older, richer clientele, and made small fortunes in tips.

  Lawrence waited in the upstairs hallway, watching the scene below, waiting for the right moment, as still as a statue from years of yoga training, not making a single movement that might draw a glance upstairs. Panio nipped out of the drawing-room and into the hall, complaining loudly about the positioning of the bar, and then ducked down the kitchen stairs. Some glass broke in the reception room; people rushed in to clear it up; and with Panio downstairs, that was as good a cue to Lawrence as any.

  He walked down the staircase quickly but confidently, as if he belonged there, not giving any indication by an over-hasty pace that he might not have had perfectly legitimate business on the upper floors of the town house. Weaving round some chair legs, he slipped past and out of the front door, checking instinctively in his pocket to make sure that he had his notebook. No one gave him a second glance; they were much too busy racing against the clock to get everything set up before Carin returned from the funeral.

  Heading back down 53rd Street, Lawrence pulled his phone out and texted Evie with the news. Mission accomplished, he tapped out, grinning despite himself.

  He wondered if she’d managed to make her way into the funeral. It would be tough, but he wouldn’t put anything past Evie.

  Evie felt the phone buzz in her pocket, two short buzzes that told her a message had come in. But she was too caught up in the drama before her to check it straight away.

  Because the funeral party had arrived at the grave by now, and Carin Fitzgerald was throwing a huge scene. Towering over everyone else, her height accentuated by the black velvet fedora she was wearing, her fuchsia-painted lips had set into a thin hard line the moment she had caught sight of Lola and Suzanne standing by the grave, waiting to see Ben laid to rest.

  ‘No!’ she had snapped at the minister when he opened his prayer book and tried to start the service. ‘Not while those – people – are still here! I want them gone!’

  ‘Mrs Fitzgerald, ’ the minister protested, ‘this is a public place! If other mourners have gathered here, we have no right to remove them—’

  But Carin talked right over him, pointing a black-gloved finger across the bulk of her husband’s coffin at his daughter and his ex-wife.

  ‘They were not invited to the service, ’ she said icily, ‘and they won’t be present at his burial either.’

  The minister looked appalled. He started to murmur something which mainly featured the words ‘proper Christian attitude’, ‘turning the other cheek’, and ‘time of uniquely shared grief’, but Carin rode roughshod over him.

  ‘That one, ’ she said with contempt, indicating Suzanne, ‘is nothing but his ex-wife, who he divorced years ago. His ex-wife and his ex-lawyer. Has-beens. And she’ – Carin swivelled to point fully at Lola – ‘killed the man who’s lying in that coffin. My husband. If anyone’s not welcome here, it’s her.’

  Evie watched, eyes wide, as the small crowd of mourners drew in their breat. Everyone knew, of course, who Lola and Suzanne were; but no one had expected Carin to go this far. It was, after all, a funeral, and as the minister was desperately trying to observe to Carin, they were standing on consecrated ground.

  ‘It is for God to judge, not us, ’ Evie heard him say, before Carin overrode him ruthlessly with:

  ‘God? God won’t find her guilty! A jury will!’

  ‘How dare you!’ Suzanne said furiously, taking a couple of paces forward.

  And Carin, never one to turn down a challenge, strode towards Suzanne, till the two women stood facing each other across the oversized grave waiting for the man they both had married.

  ‘How dare I? How dare you show your face here!’ Carin retorted.

  The minister hadn’t been able to silence Carin, but, to Evie’s great surprise, Suzanne managed what he could not.

  ‘Look at that grave!’ she cried, pointing down to the gaping hole at her feet. ‘See how large it is? That’s what you did to him! Ben wasn’t a freak show when I was with him! I took care of him! He knew he had to watch his weight and take exercise, and God knows he wasn’t happy about it, but as long as I was with him he never got huge. Now – my God, he must have been obese! Look at that coffin! Aren’t you ashamed of what you’ve done?’

  Suzanne’s fists were clenched, her eyes flashing with fury.

  ‘You turned him into a joke!’ she accused Carin. ‘Something you’d see at a county fair! Aren’t you ashamed of letting your husband degenerate like that, before your eyes? No, of course you’re not! Because you did it deliberately – you must have fed him up like a prize pig! You knew he was greedy, and you fed his disease. You fed him up so much he became diabetic, for God’s sake! What kind of wife stands by and does nothing when her husband gets into that state?’

  Carin was gaping, her lipsticked mouth hanging open: she looked as amazed as if an animal she’d had every reason to assume was tame – a sheep, maybe, or a rabbit – had suddenly reared up and gashed its claws into her face.

  ‘You killed him!’ Suzanne screamed at her. ‘You! You let him get so overweight that his heart couldn’t take it – you made him diabetic – you killed him! You took him away from me, and then you killed him!’

  She crumpled, suddenly, her whole body folding up on itself. Suzanne didn’t even put out her hands to save herself. She was no longer in control of her own body. Grief had crumpled her completely.

  Lola screamed. The lawyer jumped forward. But it was the skinny white boy with the goatee, who didn’t look strong enough to Evie to carry his own minimal weight, let alone someone else’s, who reached Suzanne in time. Just as she was toppling forward, the momentum of her fall carrying her over the gaping m
aw of her ex-husband’s grave, the kid grabbed her from behind and dragged her back, her heels skidding over the grass.

  Suzanne hung there in his arms, limp as a rag doll, but safe, at least. On solid ground. And the minister, not too cowed by Carin to avoid seizing this excellent opportunity, stepped up to the head of the grave, gesturing to the pallbearers to take up their work of lowering Ben Fitzgerald’s outsize coffin, finally, into the Manhattan soil where he had wanted so badly to be buried that he had paid a small fortune for the privilege.

  ‘Ashes to ashes, ’ intoned the minister, opening his prayer book. ‘Dust to dust . . .’

  Tears prickled at Evie’s eyes as she watched Benny’s body lowered to its final resting place.

  Lola’s mom was right, she thought, lifting her eyes to the immobile figure of Carin Fitzgerald. You did kill him. And you picked the wrong girl to mess with, bitch. I’m going to make sure you pay for what you did.

  Chapter 31

  Joe in Italy

  Barbiano 45

  San Vincenzo

  51048 Roma

  Lola folded up the piece of paper and pushed it into her jeans pocket. She knew the address off by heart by now, but, like a talisman, she pulled it out every now and then, reading the four lines over and over. To remind her that she was on a quest, and how much depended on her being successful.

  The couple in front of her were being summoned up to the check-in desk, and now a smartly dressed woman behind another desk, her pillbox hat at a jaunty angle, was beckoning her over.

  ‘Evie Lopez, Rome, business class, ’ the woman said efficiently, scanning the passport and tapping the name into the computer. She looked at the screen. ‘We’ve assigned you a window seat, Ms Lopez, is that OK?’

  ‘Fine, thanks.’

  ‘Just carry-on luggage?’

  Lola nodded, hefting up her Louis Vuitton shoulder bag so the check-in official could see it.

  ‘Travelling very light!’ the woman smiled. ‘Are you planning to do a lot of shopping while you’re there?’

  ‘Not really. It’s just a flying visit.’

  ‘Flying visit, very good . . . Well, you have an open return. Just call in when you’re ready to use it. Or simply turn up at the airport. The flight’s on time, boarding starts in an hour twenty, Gate 35, I’ve marked it on your boarding pass.’

  She smiled again.

  ‘Enjoy your flight with us, Ms Lopez.’

  There was no way Lola could leave the country. The DA’s office had confiscated both her British and her American passports. And even if she had had access to a Van der Veer jet, you still needed a passport, no way round it. Things were a lot stricter nowadays, post 9–11, than they used to be. Everyone had been so caught up in the excitement of Lawrence’s discovery that they hadn’t factored in that crucial piece of information: it had taken George Goldman to remind them that Lola was officially under arrest, out on $5 million bail, and strictly forbidden from leaving the country.

  And then Evie, looking at Lola, had said:

  ‘She can’t go. But I can.’

  Evie had never left the States; like 75 per cent of her compatriots, she didn’t have a passport. It had taken five agonising days, with George Goldman and Simon Poluck pulling every string they could, to secure her an emergency passport. Simon had high-placed connections in the office of one of the New York senators, who had finally made the all-important call to expedite the process. It had arrived by FedEx, brand new, shiny dark blue, covers stiff, and the photograph of Evie inside very serious, her hair pulled back, staring directly at the camera. Not exactly flattering.

  But it looked enough like Lola for her to run the risk of using it to travel to Italy.

  Sliding the passport and the boarding pass into the outside pocket of the Louis Vuitton shoulder bag, she turned away from the desk, towards the big Departures sign. There was a small queue for business class; she wondered whether it would be full or not, whether she’d have someone sitting beside her who wanted to talk. Business travellers with briefcases clipped to their carry-on suitcases, going to meetings in Italy. A couple in casual lounging clothes, smiling at each other, holding hands; their big suitcases and happy smiles indicating that they were going on holiday. And a woman at the back of the queue in a kaftan draped over her substantial bulk, bent forward over a trolley on which a single small piece of luggage was propped, wheezing, clearly only using the trolley to take some of the weight off her trainer-shod feet.

  Probably travelling business class because she won’t fit into an economy seat, poor thing, she thought. And then, rather meanly: I hope she isn’t sitting next to me . . .

  But the flight was quiet, and as it turned out there was no one occupying the sleep capsule beside her. She was small enough to be able to curl up in it comfortably, and there was a little fixed side table for drinks where the steward promptly placed a mimosa cocktail. Orange juice to hydrate you, cheap champagne to relax you. By the time the glass was cleared away as they got ready for take-off, she had swallowed its contents, together with a sleeping pill, and was curled up in a nest of pillows. And as the plane levelled out, she extended her bed as the steward had shown her, covered herself with her pashmina and then the airline blankets, strapped the seat belt over the entire bundle, and lay down to sleep, doing her absolute best not to think about what the next day held.

  They landed on time, at nine a.m. Italian time. Day flights were better for jet-lag, but the passport had come through yesterday at four in the afternoon, and they had immediately made a booking on the first flight to Rome that she could possibly manage, paying with India’s credit card to avoid leaving any kind of electronic trail. The rest of the trip Lola would pay with cash or traveller’s cheques, and the amount of both she was carrying was enough to send waves of panic through her every time she thought about it.

  After the first-class passengers had left, she was the first off the plane. She’d have loved to be in first-class too, but it might have raised too many flags if Evie Lopez had been travelling in that kind of style. Behind her, she could hear the fat woman in the kaftan wheezing as she wheeled her bag down the walkway. Nerves caught at her stomach, twisting it tight, as she slid her passport underneath the small slot at the base of the perspex to the uniformed man sitting behind the counter. They were very careful in Italy, Lola noticed; in New York the passport officials, stone-faced and imposing though they could be, didn’t feel the need to put a whole panel of clear perspex between them and the people they were intimidating.

  The man was running her passport over a reader, checking something on his computer screen. His eyes lifted to hers, professional and cold, comparing her face to the one on the passport: blonde hair, pulled back in the identical style to the passport photograph. Brown eyes. Small, pretty features. Even the silver earrings from the photograph. A match, surely.

  Stay calm, she told herself. No one knows you’re here. No one could possibly have put a block on this passport. Stay calm.

  And, sure enough, the man nodded, sliding the passport back to her through the gap at the bottom of the perspex, and his expression cracked into a distinctly non-professional smile, the smile of appreciation that Italian men reserved for pretty blondes.

  ‘Benvenuta in Italia, Signorina Lopez, ’ he said.

  She had done it. She was in. Through the green channel, round a corner, down a corridor, glass doors sliding open, the roar and bustle of the arrivals hall. She paused for a moment, reading the various signs carried by the throng of men in cheap suits, surnames marker-penned on sheets of paper. She was searching for her own.

  A woman pushed past her, very Italian-looking: hair piled up on top of her head, dangling gold hoop earrings, enormous bosoms that she carried in front of her like inflated airbags. Packed into tight jeans, she was unusually tall, obscuring the view for a few moments as she sashayed down the aisle between the barriers, the high, obviously fake shelf of her breasts drawing glances from every single man she passed. She followed slow
ly in the woman’s wake, her own chest drawing considerably less attention, still checking out every sign. And at last, she saw ‘LOPEZ’ on a piece of paper, and above it, a round, balding head with dark eyes behind rimless glasses. Late forties, early fifties, in a rather better-quality suit than most of the drivers here. Tubby, but he carried himself well. And his smile was friendly.

  He darted forward, pulling at the strap of her Vuitton bag, indicating he would carry it for her, but there was no way she was letting anyone else take control of that bag, with all its precious contents. She shook her head, clinging tightly to the strap, and he danced back immediately, lifting his hands in apology.

  ‘Excuse me, I only try to help! Evie, yes? Miss Evie Lopez? I am Mario, Mario Piciacchi. A distant, very distant cousin of George Goldman. By marriage only, but still, a relative. He is very important in New York, George, they tell me? Big lawyer. It’s good to have a big lawyer in the family, even if you never meet him. And now he sends me you, to look after. I am a guide, you see.’ He puffed up his chest. ‘The best in Rome, I assure you.’

  ‘Hi, Mr Pi—’

  Her tongue twisted over the hard, unfamiliar consonants of his surname.

  ‘No, no, Mario! You call me Mario!’ he insisted. ‘Is much more easy for the Americans! Always, call me Mario. Is much more easy.’

  He looked at her, taking in her appearance, the dark circles under her eyes that she had tried to camouflage with Touche Eclat on the plane.

  ‘You are tired, it’s clear. I take you to a hotel now, so you can rest. A nice place, I make a reservation already.’

  ‘No, ’ she said, shaking her head. ‘I need to go here.’

  She produced the piece of paper, crumpled now from the journey, handing it to Mario. And she watched in consternation as his expression changed in a split-second from benevolent to deeply concerned.