At Sally’s Blooms, they told her Janet was delivering flowers. She called her cell. No answer. This wasn’t her day for phone calls. Lori got in her car and decided she might as well take advantage of the Stop and Shop and buy some groceries. Then she was going to swing by Whole Foods and see what they offered for Saturday’s dinner. She might have to go to Little Italy in Manhattan to get the imported buffalo milk mozzarella and the Parma prosciutto, but that wouldn’t be until Saturday morning. Maybe Jess would go with her. Everything had to be as fresh as possible.
As Lori turned to enter the Stop and Shop garage she saw Janet standing at the car wash talking to a man in tennis shorts. She parked the car and walked over. She had seen the man before—blond, medium height, with smooth good looks and great legs—but she couldn’t place him.
“Hi, Janet, I just called you at the shop.”
Janet looked startled for a moment. “Oh, I had to wash the car.” She swung her arm toward the man. “You two know each other, I think.”
The man turned to Lori with a smile and extended his hand. “Of course we know each other. Twice I’ve had the pleasure of her company and her superb cooking. How did it go with my mother?”
So this was Jonathan Ashe, who had been at Rob’s law firm. How could she not remember him? His smile was so genuine and heart-warming. Maybe it was because her heart didn’t need warming back then.
“I have the job.”
“Good. Mother can be difficult at times. She’s taken her widowhood very hard.”
Janet waved her hand at them. “Listen, I better get back to work. The car is ready.”
“Excuse me,” Lori said to Jonathan, and hurried after her friend. “Janet, can you do the flowers for Mrs. Ashe on Saturday night? She wants me to take care of everything. I can barely get the food together at such short notice, and your arrangements are always great.”
“Okay.” There was no enthusiasm in Janet’s voice. Without looking at Lori, she slipped into the driver’s seat. “Give me the details tonight when I get home from work.” She started the car and slammed the door. A bad mood day. Lori decided she’d better wait until tonight to ask if Janet would help her serve. With what Mrs. Ashe was paying for the dinner, she could afford to pay her well. Janet and Seth did need the money. At forty-six, it was impossible for Seth, a computer programmer, to compete with kids barely out of their acne-spotted teens, and Janet’s mother’s small inheritance wasn’t going to last forever.
“Is Janet a good friend?” Jonathan asked as he sauntered over, hands in pockets, to where Lori was standing watching Janet’s car speed away.
“Yes. Seth and Rob were college roommates at Brown. How do you know her?”
“Rob introduced me. I forget where or how. Quite a while ago. And I see her a lot at Sally’s Blooms.”
Flowers probably sent to a girlfriend or girlfriends. There hadn’t been any flowers in his apartment that she could see. She really had to get going. Find out where Jess was, do some food shopping, plan out her time. Instead she stood still and let the sun and Jonathan’s presence warm her.
“I knew my mother would take to you,” he said.
“She wouldn’t have hired me if I was still married. What does she have against Rob?”
“She’s convinced he was responsible for my leaving the law firm. It’s not true, of course. In fact, Rob was my stalwart supporter. I left because I wasn’t cut out to write the fine print. Mother can’t accept that. You see, my father was a famous trial lawyer, the kind people ‘oh’ and ‘ah’ about. Impossible shoes to fill. Besides, law is abstract. I prefer playing with real estate, which is something I can put my foot on. Pun intended.”
Lori laughed politely. So his humor wasn’t great. How much younger did Beth say he was? God, what was she thinking? It had to be the heat, which always made her feel languid and sexual. The heat and the fact that a male hand hadn’t touched her body in over ten months.
A Honda Accord slid into view behind Jonathan. Gunmetal gray, with droplets of water gleaming in sun. A car wash attendant quickly wiped it dry. “Ready, sir.”
Jonathan beamed a smile at Lori and opened the car door. “It’s time I left, too, but it was great seeing you again.” He shook Lori’s hand. She was surprised at how cool his touch was. “Thanks for taking on the job at such short notice.”
“Thank you.”
He waved. She waved back and he was off. Too bad, Lori thought as she walked back to her car. She slid into the driver’s seat and leaned her head back. Too bad for what? Too bad Jonathan Ashe left so quickly? Too bad he wasn’t going to run his hands over her naked body? Too bad she even had to think about another man? What did it matter? It was a glorious day and she was on her way to a great new career.
CHAPTER 11
* * *
Ellie Corvino was sitting on the front steps when Lori came home, her cotton satchel draped over her head to keep out the sun. She was wearing her favorite work outfit—pink Juicy Couture sweats that held her in a death grip, shoulder pads to minimize her large breasts, and silver sneakers she’d bought on her last trip to Florida.
“Hi, Mom, what brings you here?” Lori was relieved to see Ellie’s lap wasn’t holding a pan of tofu lasagna. “Is the travel business slow today?” She lowered the grocery bags to the steps and unlocked the door, briefly wondering where Jessica was. She hadn’t been able to get hold of Margot. Angie’s cell number was what she needed. “Do you want lunch? I have salad, carrots, radishes. Even hummus, which I know you love.”
“I didn’t come here for food.” Ellie lifted herself up cautiously, refusing Lori’s help with a shrug of her shoulder. Another woman in a bad mood.
“Isn’t it a glorious day?” Lori nudged the door open with her knee. “I just got my first catering job.” She was about to pick up the groceries when her cell phone rang. She checked the number in case it was Rob again. It was Janet.
“Don’t tell Seth you saw me with Jonathan this morning.”
“Okay,” Lori said. “You all right?” Janet sounded rattled.
“It’s just that Seth doesn’t like him. I don’t know why, but he just doesn’t.”
“I’m not going to say a word, Janet.” Lori had never thought of Seth as the possessive, authoritarian type. He came across as mild-mannered, even weak, but you never knew what went on behind the closed doors of a marriage. “By the way, can you help me Saturday night?” Lori told Janet about flowers for the dinner party, asked her to be her wait staff.
“I’ll have to check with Seth. I’ll let you know tonight.” Janet hung up.
“She say anything to you?” Ellie asked.
“Nothing of importance, why?”
“If you’d let me keep the house key, I could have gone inside instead of frying out here.” Ellie never did like to answer questions.
“You could have sat in the car with the air-conditioning on.”
“Not with the price of gas gone to Mars. You should answer your phone and listen to the radio.”
Lori picked up the groceries and stepped aside to let her mother enter the house first. “I was at a job interview, which I got, so you should be proud of me and you know I prefer tapes. James Taylor. Phil Collins. Remember ‘You Can’t Hurry Love’? I used to listen to it over and over again.” The perfume of Alec Winters’s flowers engulfed Lori the minute she stepped into the front hall. She wondered if Jonathan Ashe sent such wonderful bouquets to his girlfriend. Maybe they were even more beautiful. Then Lori realized her mother, who never missed a detail— and the flowers were a detail that hit you smack in the eyes and nose—was trudging up the stairs without paying the blooms the slightest attention.
“Where are you going?”
“The bathroom.”
“There’s one down here.”
Ellie stopped on the last step to catch her breath. “I’m not a guest. I’m your mother.”
A small knot of worry slid into its usual place in the middle of Lori’s chest. Ellie had used the downstairs bathroom
countless times. She debated following her mother upstairs, but decided against it. Ellie would only resent it. Lori hurried into the kitchen, put the groceries away, and waited.
When Ellie walked into the kitchen, her face was red and she looked twenty years older. The knot in Lori’s chest swelled into a fist. “Has something happened to Jessica?”
“Jess is okay. She’s with her father.”
“Again? Why?”
“Lori, sit, listen, and don’t interrupt.”
Lori sensed that what she was about to hear was going to be unpleasant at best, and after many years of not obeying her mother’s commands, did as she was told.
“Sometime last night, during the storm, an oak tree fell across Caldwell Street where it intersects with Foster Lane and blocked all traffic, so no one noticed the car at the bottom of the ravine until the road was cleared. That was around ten o’clock this morning. When the police finally pulled the car up, the trunk popped open.” Ellie wiped her mouth with her hand. “Valerie was inside. Shot to death. The car was Rob’s BMW.”
Lori sat without moving. Her brain couldn’t grasp her mother’s words, make sense of them. She didn’t immediately know what to think or feel except that she was cold. “Dead?”
“Murdered.”
Slowly Rob’s enraged words came back to Lori: “What have you done with Valerie?”
She had only slapped her. Nothing more. Just one slap. Oh Lord, how she had hated her, even wished her dead. And now. “It makes no sense,” she said. “Who would want to kill her? Why?”
“Jessica told me this morning that Rob got sick and Valerie ended up driving them back in Rob’s car.”
Lori jumped up. “I have to call Jess. Rob. I’ll go into the city. They need me.”
“Wait.” Ellie grabbed Lori’s arm and pulled her back down into the chair. The phone rang. “Don’t answer that. It’s just going to be friends or the newspapers. It can wait. Now take a deep breath.” Ellie rummaged in her satchel and brought out a tarnished silver flask the family called la Croce Rossa, the Red Cross. It had first belonged to Lori’s Abruzzesi grandfather. “Here. Take some grappa. It gets the brain cells going again.”
“My brain cells are fine.” Lori took a swig anyway.
“You’re not going into the city.”
“Yes, I am.”
“He doesn’t want to see you.”
“What do you know about it?”
“The first time he called me was at six this morning. I was in the middle of my calisthenics. I nearly spit out my heart when I heard the phone. Thought something had happened to you or Jessica. After six or seven phone calls with the man, I know what I know. I hear you gave her a good whack.”
“She was still standing when I left.” Lori tilted the flask into her mouth, hoping the grappa would burn her back to normal, with Valerie alive and Jess having a great time upstairs on her cell or computer.
“Standing is good. You got an alibi for last night?”
Lori stared at the wall. She was sure her breath could set the house on fire. “An alibi? What for?”
“Rob thinks you killed Valerie. He’s telling the police right now, so I think you should stay right here and get your story straight.”
Lori walked to the wall phone by the refrigerator and dialed. Jessica answered after the first ring.
“Honey, are you okay? I’m coming into the city to be with you and Dad. I’ll leave right now and bring clothes, toiletries. Food, too.”
“You can’t come, Mom. Dad just wants me.”
“But this is so awful. I want to help, be with you.” Don’t you want to be with me? Wouldn’t any other thirteen-year-old want their mother at a time like this?
“Mom, please! Don’t come.”
“I didn’t hurt her, Jess.”
“You slapped her.”
“I didn’t kill her.”
“I know that, but you shouldn’t have hit her. The police know.”
“I was trying to protect you. Where are you?”
“At the police station. I gotta go now. I’ll call you later. Love you.”
“Which police sta—” Too late. Jessica had hung up. Lori spun around to face her mother with a little laugh to cover up the sting of the rejection. “She couldn’t talk. Someone walked into the room. She’s calling me later.”
Ellie sat back in her chair. “She’s going to keep choosing sides for a while. Better get used to it. It’s part of the Divorce Reality Show.”
Lori shook her head. What was Jessica thinking now? Was she hurting? Scared? Had she liked Valerie? Loved her, even? Poor, sweet girl. The divorce had been bad enough for her. Now this. “Rob doesn’t really think I killed her, does he?”
“It’s what the police are going to think that I’m worried about. I called up Joey Pellegrino. He’s going to look into this for me.”
“Mom! I can deal with this myself!” Even if she couldn’t, Lori didn’t want her mother taking over with her worries, with her need to always be central in any situation. “And who the heck is Joey Pellegrino?”
“A retired police captain in Mamaroneck, that’s who, and he owes me because I get him real good prices to Naples for his really big family—six kids, four grandkids, brothers, sisters, enough to make me go bankrupt, but you never know when you’re going to need the police on your side.”
The phone rang. Lori let the machine upstairs pick up. She wanted time, space to herself. If only her mother would leave. She felt guilty for having slapped Valerie just hours before the woman died, for having hated her. The worst feeling of guilt and shame came from the tiny spark of satisfaction she had felt when Ellie gave her the news. Valerie and Rob both punished. Good, had been her first thought before the enormity of what had happened hit her. “The police are always supposed to be on your side.”
“Not if they think you killed Valerie. Do you have an alibi?”
“I was here by myself. Jessica called me when she got to Margot’s.” Beethoven’s Fifth rang out from the depths of Lori’s handbag. She reached in and turned her cell off. A vague memory stirred but stayed hidden.
“Valerie was killed after she dropped off Jessica,” Ellie said.
“But I would have had to know Valerie was bringing the girls home.”
“What if the police think Jessica told you. What if they—”
“Stop it with the cop stuff. I’m getting a headache.” Woozy from the grappa, Lori pulled open the refrigerator door, unwrapped the chunk of Parmesan cheese, and broke off the tip. She leaned against the freezer door. Ellie’s “Go Vegan” magnet fell to the floor. “I don’t have a gun.” Lori bit into the Parmesan. It was way past her lunchtime.
“Guns you can buy off the street for two hundred bucks. And eating cheese is going to give you gas and maybe stomach cancer. And please pick up my magnet from the floor. I’d do it myself, but I’d stay bent for life.”
Lori picked up the magnet and put it back on the freezer door. She would have preferred dumping it into the trash, but accepting “Go Vegan” on her refrigerator had been Lori’s peacekeeping gesture.
“By the way, this was in your mailbox.” Ellie dropped an envelope on the table.
Lori picked it up and squinted to read the return address. “Taking mail from a mailbox that is not your own is illegal. I might tell Joey Pellegrino on you.”
Ellie let out a snort, her way of laughing. “I got bored waiting and was hoping for a magazine. Who’s this Alec Winters who lives in Bedford and writes on expensive stationery? He addressed it to Mrs. Lori Corvino. Not telling him about the divorce is good strategy, Loretta. Doesn’t scare him off. Is he the guy who sent the flowers?”
Lori slipped the envelope into her pocket. “I’d rather talk about murder. Here’s the truth. I didn’t kill Valerie and once the police hear me out, they’ll move on to someone else. I’m a good mother, an upright citizen. I have no terrorist ties. I give money to charities. And now, dear mother, you’ll have to excuse me.” Lori stood up and
went back to the refrigerator to take out eggs, carrots, celery, an onion, parsley, the paper bag with the Parmesan, a tube of tomato paste, a package of ground chuck, and a head of escarole. From the cupboard she took out four cans of chicken broth and a package of orzo, then stuffed everything in a large cloth shopping bag to which she added a loaf of Italian bread. Valerie had struck Lori as a woman who ate out or ordered in, if she ate at all. On second thought, she had better bring along an unopened bottle of olive oil just in case.
As Ellie helped herself to grappa from the Red Cross flask, she watched her daughter bent on her mission to erase all misery with food. “You’re going to New York whether those two want you or not and you’re going to feed them.”
“Right on. Papa’s cure-all. Escarole soup with meatballs.” The doorbell rang.
CHAPTER 12
* * *
“Is there anything I can do?” Jonathan Ashe said when Lori opened the door. He held out a bouquet of yellow cabbage roses. “I thought these might cheer you up. Thirteen, one extra for good luck. I hope you’re not superstitious. I heard the news on the radio.”
“That’s very thoughtful,” Lori said, burying her face in the flowers. She felt suddenly awkward, embarrassed by Jonathan’s kindness. “We hardly know each other,” she said quietly. She could hear her mother’s halting footsteps coming nearer.
Jonathan leaned in closer. The perfume of roses mixed with the lemony scent of his aftershave. “You cooked for me, remember? Twice. And on Saturday you’re cooking for my mother. That makes us fast friends in my book.”
“Aren’t you going to invite the man in?”
Lori jumped back at Ellie’s words. “Of course. I’m sorry. I—”
As Jonathan stepped in the front hall, Ellie gave Jonathan the once-over. She was obviously pleased by the sight of his well-cut navy blue suit, the yellow silk tie, the smile that could melt chocolate. “Who are you?”
With a quick glance toward Alec Winters’s large display of flowers on the corner table, Jonathan introduced himself with a handshake. “I used to work with Rob at the law firm.”
Camilla T. Crespi - The Breakfast Club Murder Page 7
