Camilla T. Crespi - The Breakfast Club Murder

by Camilla T. Crespi

  “They used to date,” Mitchell said, which brought a nasty look from Scardini. Lori had no way of knowing if it was an act or not.

  “That was a long time ago,” Lori said.

  “You lunched with Mr. Dixon last Thursday at his club,” Scardini said.

  Lori was aghast. “Are you following me?”

  “This is outrageous!” Ellie said. “I’m going to call my senator.”

  “No one’s following your daughter, ma’am,” Mitchell said. “Mr. Dixon told us about the lunch.”

  “You questioned him?” Lori asked. What was going on?

  Mitchell leaned forward. “Just bear with us.”

  Ellie raised her hands to the sky, which now showed a small patch of optimistic blue. “Now why in heaven’s name would Warren Dixon kill Valerie Fenwick?”

  Lori pulled at her mother’s sleeve. “Mom.”

  Ellie pulled her arm away. “Well, there’s got to be a reason they suspect him and I want to know why.”

  Scardini shook his head. “We’re just asking questions, lady, and we’re not about to tell you anything.”

  Mitchell stepped forward, blocking his partner from view. “You’re both nice women, I’m sure, and we’re sorry you got caught in the middle of this, but you got to appreciate that a woman is dead and we got to find the killer.”

  Lori felt somewhat mollified. “I do appreciate it.”

  Scardini started jiggling the car keys. “Stick around, will you?”

  Lori nodded and closed her umbrella.

  “I tried your meatball and escarole soup on my wife and kids,” Scardini said, his stony face softening for a moment. “They loved it.”

  Lori nodded again. She couldn’t quite bring herself to be polite to him.

  “That’s her father’s recipe,” Ellie said as the two men got in their car.

  As Lori and Ellie stood together watching the car drive off, Ellie said, “This is going to keep Mrs. DeRosa happy for a month.”

  Lori glanced up at the window with the lace curtain. No one was standing behind it. “I don’t think she’s home, Mom.”

  Ellie shrugged and ambled up to her front door with Lori. “Well, then I’ll just have to tell her all about it. Poor woman, she’s got nothing else to keep her going.” At the top of the steps, Ellie offered her face to her daughter.

  Lori leaned down to kiss both cheeks. “Thanks, Mom. You were super.”

  “Nothing to it.” Ellie slipped inside.

  “The only explanation I can think of is that Warren recently made a lot of phone calls to Rob,” Beth said. After having left Margot’s car in her driveway and polished off Callie’s quiches and a salad, she and Lori were now stretched out on lounge chairs on Beth’s deck overlooking a mass of boulders a long-ago glacier had left as a memento. Thick stands of pines, oaks, and maples crowned the rocks and fanned out into the distance, hiding the other homes in the area.

  “You said the police were looking into who called whom.”

  “According to Margot and Joey Pellegrino, they are. Let’s assume you’re right and Warren’s been calling Rob and maybe Valerie, what’s the connection between them? Warren doesn’t even like Rob.”

  “Knowing Warren, I’d say business.” Beth poured herself another glass of white wine. As she raised it to her lips, the sun shone through the wine. In Lori’s eyes, the golden glint took on the form of an earring or a bracelet Beth might have dropped in the glass for safekeeping. Lori said no to more wine.

  “I need to make sense of Valerie’s death.” She stood up and dragged her chaise longue into the shade of an elder tree’s overhanging branches. Maybe she would be able to think more clearly.

  “You must be feeling so vulnerable.” Beth’s voice was low and caring. “I don’t know how to help. We don’t have that much information. This isn’t something we can Google.”

  “Let’s go over what information we do have. At Pastis, with Angie and Jess as witnesses, Rob gets an angry phone call. The girls think it’s a man. We don’t know what it was about.”

  “The caller could have been Warren,” Beth said.

  “Or it could have been a client, a friend, anyone pissed off at Rob. What’s important is that right after that call, Rob says he’s not feeling well and gets Valerie to drive the girls home. The killer would have had to know that, and he could have known it in two ways. Rob told him or Valerie did.”

  “Or the girls.”

  “Who are they going to call besides me and Margot? Some school friend? No, the killer found out from Rob or Valerie.”

  “Can’t Ellie persuade Joey Pellegrino to cough up some real information?” Beth asked, raising her face to soak up the afternoon sun.

  “Ellie is cooking him dinner tonight.”

  “God, he’ll clam up for good.”

  Lori laughed. Beth was the only person, besides Jessica, who was allowed to diss her mother. “Maybe not. She’s making him my father’s old signature dish, rigatoni with meat sauce. It’s yummy.”

  “Now we’re getting somewhere.”

  “Then there’s Seth, who lied about being at Rob’s wedding. Why did he do that?”

  “Probably because he wanted to be there badly enough to lie about it to you and maybe even to himself. I saw that with a lot of kids when I was still a high school counselor. Adults are no different.”

  “He knew or assumed that Rob and Valerie had already changed their wills.”

  “A good guess.” Beth reached over to the bowl of fruit on a low table and picked a tangerine.

  “An off-the-wall guess,” Lori said. “How many people change their wills the day after they get married?”

  Beth sat up. “Rob thought someone wanted to kill him, that’s why he changed the will so quickly.”

  “That’s what I thought, but Rob now says no one was trying to kill him. He claims he exaggerated because he had wedding jitters, and that they had already made the appointment with Valerie’s lawyer. I called Kate, Rob’s secretary, and she only found out about the lawyer appointment that Monday morning. Did someone try to kill him or was it just an accident that almost happened?”

  “I can’t help you there,” Beth said, “but maybe it was Valerie who wanted him to make a will. Rob did go on and on about almost getting killed, and from what Margot says about Valerie, she was a greedy woman.”

  “That would explain why Rob’s secretary didn’t know anything about it, but it doesn’t get us anywhere.”

  Beth threw the tangerine peels onto the greenery below the deck. “The Hefferfields love fruit peelings.”

  Lori leaned over the deck railing, half-expecting to see a couple munching on tangerine peels. “Who are the Hefferfields?”

  “A family of raccoons that Mike and Tommy discovered. I keep feeding them.”

  All Lori could see was pachysandra. “What I want to know is if Rob was lying about someone wanting to kill him.”

  Beth sat back in her chaise longue and started eating her tangerine. “Let’s pretend Rob wasn’t lying. Someone wants to kill him. We already know someone was very angry with him—”

  “Whoever the caller was,” Lori interrupted, “he had enough power over Rob to make him change his plans and send the girls off with Valerie, which, according to Jessica, Valerie didn’t appreciate one bit, something that Rob must have already known about his bride. That phone call has to be important.”

  “Do you know if Valerie received or made a phone call to anyone while she was driving the girls home?”

  “No. Let me call Jess.” Lori dug into her purse for her cell phone and punched in Jessica’s number. “She’s not picking up.” She left a message asking to be called back. “I don’t believe for a moment that Rob was the intended victim. The killer would have to be blind to do that.”

  “It was raining hard. And it was dark.”

  “Valerie’s lights must have been on.” Lori took a large, plump apricot and tossed it from hand to hand. Talking about Valerie’s murder had wiped out
her appetite. So had the quiches. Did the Hefferfields like apricots? “Don’t raccoons often have rabies?”

  “So do dogs,” Beth answered.

  Lori let the apricot fall into the pachysandra below. “I can’t get rid of the feeling that Rob is somehow mixed up with Valerie’s death. That maybe something he did, or didn’t do, got her killed.”

  “What, for instance?” Beth asked.

  “He tried to raise five million dollars to buy a share of West-side Properties. He asked Jonathan and Margot. Warren thought it was bad idea so Margot didn’t participate and Jonathan didn’t have enough money, but I’m sure he asked others. Rob has had a lot of wealthy clients who he has gotten out of a lot of tight corners. And then there was his bride-to-be with all her millions. How come he wasn’t able to raise the money? It wasn’t an exorbitant sum in today’s real estate market.”

  “Valerie’s greed might explain her not participating, and it must have seemed a shaky deal if Warren thought it a bad bet.”

  “Warren made a big mistake. According to Margot, Jonathan, and the NewYork Times, Westside Properties is raking it in.”

  “Warren doesn’t make mistakes.” Beth moved her chair to follow the sun. “Let’s talk about Jonathan.”

  “Everyone makes mistakes.”

  “Warren didn’t get from a New Jersey chicken farm to having his own extremely successful law firm by making mistakes. Where’s Jonathan taking you to dinner tonight?”

  Lori ignored her. “Then there’s Ruth, Valerie’s office manager and cousin. She inherits money and Mrs. Ashe claims she was involved in some scandal way back, although she doesn’t remember what it was.”

  “Don’t go to bed with him on the first date.”

  “You sound like my mother, except then it was, ‘Don’t let him kiss you before the third date.’ Tomorrow I’m taking Ruth out for lunch and maybe she’ll help with the Valerie enigma.”

  “Since when is Valerie an enigma? She was rich New York— beautiful, successful, steely, and nasty.”

  “She may have been all those things, but why did she get killed? And why, after years of being single, did she marry Rob?”

  “I had sex on one of my first dates after Larry died. Afterward I felt like I’d had a junk meal, a McDonald’s burger and fries, scarfed down just to get rid of the craving. I must have taken five showers that night. I don’t advise it, even if you think you’re falling in love.”

  Lori had no plans to jump into bed with Jonathan tonight, even though her body would have liked it very much. “You were used to making love with your husband. It had to be difficult at first, but didn’t it get better?” Lori didn’t think she would feel cheap afterward, if the sex was both exciting and lovely. For the lovely part she would need to know Jonathan better, to feel him as a friend besides a lover.

  “Men wanted sex from me,” Beth said. “Not love.”

  Lori watched Beth as she peeled an apple and fed it to the hidden raccoons below with the determined look of a mother worried about her children’s health. Lori understood now the need to adopt the raccoons. The twins were at camp for most of the summer and in the fall they would go off to boarding school.

  “Do you miss the boys?” Lori asked.

  “Not every minute. I enjoy the quiet. And don’t change the subject. I know I’m sounding negative, but I want life to be beautiful for you again.”

  “Thanks, I appreciate that, but what about you?”

  Beth waved the question away. “I had Larry. Anyone else would be second best.”

  Lori didn’t want to argue that a “second best” man could be seen instead as a “different” man with his own special values and endearing tics. She knew she would have lost the argument. Holding on to Larry’s memory for dear life was Beth’s survival tactic.

  To steer the conversation to a different place, Lori started telling Beth about Mrs. Ashe’s birthday dinner, how Alec Winters had appeared at the last minute. She told her about the death of a man called Chris, who she thought was his partner. What a nice and at the same time sad face Alec had. How he had flustered her.

  Beth wiped her hands on her jeans. The Hefferfield feeding was over. The shadows of the trees had gotten long. “Did you find out why Janet was upset?”

  “No, I didn’t.” Lori got up. It was time to go home. “I asked her if she wanted to talk. Her answer was that the killer had to be someone Valerie trusted. She said that really worried her. Maybe something’s going on between Janet and Seth. I meant to talk to her some more after we finished cleaning up, but then with Alec Winters showing up and Jonathan asking me out, I forgot. Maybe she’ll open up tomorrow at breakfast.”

  Beth got up and hugged Lori. “Don’t listen to me. I’ve become the crotchety old spinster of Hawthorne Park. Follow the throb between your legs and have a great time.”

  CHAPTER 23

  * * *

  Sam’s Fish was small, an upscale shack really, with cedar shingles weathered to a warm rusty brown. Next to it was the fish shop, whose success had allowed the owners to open the restaurant. The shop was closed on a Sunday night, and the fish smell was diluted by the tangy smell of salt water and the profusion of herbs growing in wooden vats below the deck. Jonathan and Lori sat outside, at a corner table facing the Long Island Sound awash with orange and pink from the setting sun. Streaky clouds echoed the colors across the sky.

  Jonathan raised his wine glass. “To a new friendship.”

  “I like that,” Lori said, clicking her glass against his. They both sipped. She thought Jonathan looked very good in a white and blue wide-striped shirt and white slacks. The fact that he was wearing socks with his loafers gave him extra points. Women’s heads had turned as they walked in, which had made her feel awkward rather than proud. She knew she didn’t measure up to his looks, although, in front of her closet mirror, she had approved of her outfit: white slacks topped by a matching camisole and a sheer white blouse with billowing sleeves. That’s how she wanted to feel on this first date after her divorce. Light and billowing. Now she was nervous, not quite sure how to act or what was expected of her.

  “To be friends, we have to know more about each other,” she said.

  He put his glass down and studied her face intently. She could almost hear Beth saying, “Watch it, honey. He’s one sexy dude.”

  “You start,” she said.

  He shook his head slowly, the smile still on his face. “Ladies first.”

  To get away from his gaze, Lori looked out at the line of sailboats gliding home. Slowly she filled him in on her father, how his parents, expecting him, had come from a small town in the Abruzzi mountains. How he had been a tailor for a fancy cleaner in Old Greenwich, how he had died young. She talked about Ellie, how her teenage wanderlust had turned her into a travel agent, how widowhood and Papa’s life insurance had given her the push to open up her own successful agency. She didn’t talk about Rob or their marriage. Jonathan knew him, Lori wasn’t sure how well, but she didn’t want any comment of hers to get back to Rob.

  “You have a great group of friends,” Jonathan said. “The breakfast club, right? Margot, Beth, Janet. That must have been a great help.”

  “Yes, they are. You seem to know them all.”

  “Not well. Janet I know from the flower shop. Margot’s dad and my dad did business together so we’d run into each other when we were kids. Now I bump into her at dinners. You know what that’s like. ‘Hi, what’s up? Things good for you? That’s great. Yeah, me, too. Couldn’t be better.’ You gulp down a few hors d’oeuvres and you move on to the next person.”

  “I thought you know each other better than that.”

  Jonathan shook his head slowly, a thin smile sliding across his mouth. God, was she sounding jealous? Lori filled her mouth with rosemary-crusted focaccia and chewed. “This is great food,” she said, not waiting to swallow.

  With his napkin Jonathan wiped a crumb off her chin. “I know Beth better. I’ve bought a lot of art from her.” He
was still smiling, damn him!

  Their entrées arrived just in time. For Lori, tuna tartare, diced and mounded, crowned by two large ridged potato chips and a chive flower. The seafood salad of calamari, mussels, and shrimp that Jonathan had ordered was also piled in a neat mound, surrounded by a circle of small black niçoise olives and halved cherry tomatoes. She watched as Jonathan took a bite.

  “Great,” he said, “but I’m going to reek of garlic.” Jonathan speared a few rings of calamari and offered them to her. “For self-protection.”

  “Thanks, but I don’t need to do that.”

  “I hope you do.”

  Lori felt herself blush as she clasped his hand and bit into the morsel on his fork. The salad was delicious, with just the right amount of dressing. And it wasn’t that garlicky. “Now it’s your turn for story time,” she said as soon as she had swallowed.

  Jonathan leaned back in his chair. “The Ashe saga is boring. The family’s been here long enough to have washed out whatever interesting characteristics they might have had originally back in England and Germany. The women have distinguished themselves, as was the custom, by bearing children, some of them dying in the process along with the children. The men, as far back as I know, have been lawyers.”

  Lori thought there was a note of disdain in Jonathan’s voice. She dipped a forkful of tuna tartare in the creamy wasabi sauce on the side. “There’s nothing wrong with being a lawyer.” The wasabi sauce was so strong it made her tear.

  “That’s right, you married one. The law is too rigid for me. Always having to look up precedents. And why does my family have an entire genealogical chart filled with lawyers? The only explanation I can think of is that when the nurse weighed an Ashe male newborn, something in his genes made him instantly relish the power of being able to tip the scales. As for the female babies, maybe listening to all those other sniffling, mewling newborns in the warmth of the nursery left them with a lifelong need to keep coming back to take care of them.”

  Lori laughed. “You became a lawyer.”