Foxy Roxy

by Nancy Martin

  Roxy said, “Damn, Loretta, I just saw the billboard on the corner. You look like a porn star.”

  “I thought the eyeglasses might help, but, no.” Loretta looked up at Roxy. “Where’s your truck? Did you trade it for that cute car? It’s adorable.”

  “The car’s borrowed.”

  “You should consider making it permanent. Red is the color that most catches a man’s eye, did you know that?”

  The other thing she claimed would attract a suitable husband for Roxy was the ability to make pasta. Despite her law degree, Loretta still had the mentality of a Bloomfield housewife, circa 1953. But Roxy would rather stick a fork in her eye than learn to roll her own ravioli.

  “Who’s car is it?” Loretta asked.

  “One of Nooch’s cousins’.”

  “It’s got holes in it.”

  “I got stuck behind a truck in traffic. It kicked up a bunch of gravel.”

  Loretta looked unconvinced.

  Roxy went on the offensive. “I just heard about Phil Tolucca.”

  Loretta’s whole face turned a rosy pink. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “How come you didn’t mention it before?”

  “I don’t want to discuss that man or anything else associated with him.” Loretta’s blush spread southward down her neck and into the foothills of her cleavage. “We were barely acquainted. We simply nodded in church a few times, that’s all. Nothing more.”

  “Right. Sure.” Roxy decided not to mention the dinner dates at a neighborhood restaurant known for its private alcoves and gossipy waiters. “But, wow, embarrassing, huh? Was he really exposing himself?”

  “Certainly not to me,” Loretta said. “I’m putting that whole sordid chapter out of my life.”

  “I don’t blame you.” Dying to learn more, Roxy figured now wasn’t the time—particularly within earshot of Loretta’s in-laws. So she said, “Why aren’t you at work?”

  “I had the mother of all hot flashes in the office this morning. Soaked clear through my blue blouse.”

  “Wow.”

  “All the men in the firm avoid me now, for fear I’ll start gushing sweat. Or they’re afraid I’m going to snap their heads off and prop their dead bodies in a room with the air-conditioning turned so low they’d never decompose. Anyway, I was on my way home to change my clothes when I got an emergency phone call from Abby Ricci. Can you deliver a covered dish for me to St. Dom’s? It’s Abby’s night to supply the soup kitchen, but she’s having a gallbladder attack.”

  All of Loretta’s neighborhood friends were twenty years older than she was and had lives that revolved around St. Dom’s, the Catholic church behind the hardware store. These days, they were coaching Loretta through The Change. Thanks to her friends, Loretta now carried little Ziploc bags of edamame in her purse the way other women carried Tic Tacs.

  Roxy said, “Abby still uses that government cheese in her lasagna?”

  Loretta shuddered. “Yes. Nobody will miss that at the soup kitchen. My rigatoni’s thawing on the counter. You could take it to the church, or you could drop it at Abby’s house. Her nephew Richie is in town, back from Miami. The handsome one.”

  “The handsome gay nephew?”

  Loretta’s mouth popped open. “He’s gay?”

  “He dropped out of seminary and started calling himself Richie Ricci. Of course he’s gay.”

  “I’m stunned. Abby has no idea. She thought you’d hit if off.” Loretta looked shaken at the thought of an Italian gay man. “Well, I’d take the rigatoni over myself, but believe it or not there’s a cancellation at Valentino’s. I can have a nail appointment if I go over there right now.”

  The only event that took precedence over everything except mass and gallbladder attacks was an appointment at Bloomfield’s premier salon. Roxy said, “I’ll deliver. Can it wait an hour?”

  “The rigatoni can, but my appointment can’t.”

  “Memorize the gossip for me, will you?”

  Loretta narrowed her eyes. “Anything in particular?”

  For a moment, Roxy considered how much of a pain in her ass Loretta could be if she thought Roxy was bending the law. But she decided to risk it. “Ask around about the Hyde family. I seem to remember Valentino’s grandmother took in laundry for rich people. And isn’t one of her sons a chauffeur now?”

  “Sewing. Not laundry. She still alters fancy dresses for brides and debutantes. In her younger days, she spent quite a bit of time upstairs in those houses. Rumor has it, her youngest son wasn’t her husband’s child. Yes, I think Valentino’s uncle is a chauffeur or mechanic or something. He learned auto mechanics in reform school. Whatever happened to reform schools? Boys used to learn useful skills in places like that. What do you want to know?”

  “Maybe one of the family has some good gossip about the Hyde murder.”

  Loretta continued to look suspicious. “That’s all?”

  “I knew Julius a little bit,” Roxy admitted. “I liked him. I’d like to hear who killed him.”

  Already in a rush to get her nails done, Loretta said, “All right, I’ll see what I can find out.” She leaned close, smelling of White Rain, and gave Roxy a kiss on the cheek. “I told your uncle Carmine that you’d take him to his bowling league tonight, too. Buy him a hamburger on the way. He’s not eating enough these days.”

  Aha. Loretta was playing go-between. But Roxy needed to think through what she wanted to tell Carmine when he offered her a job in his organization.

  “I can’t. Appointment with Nooch’s probation officer.” Carmine’s “bowling league” didn’t involve rolling anything down an alley, unless it was the bruised body of somebody who owed him money. Roxy frequently used nonexistent probation appointments. It was an excuse nobody doubted, not even Loretta, who usually had good instincts for lies.

  Loretta shook her head. “Nooch is seriously cramping your social life. It’s time he went back to his own people.”

  “He’s harmless.”

  “As long as he’s your constant companion, you’ll never date anybody nice. Who would want to share you with a caveman?”

  “After the hearing, things will change. His uncle Stosh thinks he can get Nooch into the union.”

  “The steamfitters? Well, that’s something. I just wish there weren’t so many steps to get him out of your life.”

  “It’s his life, too.”

  Loretta gave up trying to influence her. She reached out and tousled Roxy’s hair. “We miss you. Come back and stay here for a while. You need to be with your daughter.”

  Roxy shrugged. “She’s better off under your watchful eye.”

  “Yes, but only you can help with her calculus homework. That boyfriend of hers just got here, so go inside and make sure they’re not up to something.” Loretta went down the steps, putting up a bright umbrella and shouldering her briefcase and purse. “Nooch, keep your feet off my coffee table.”

  “Boyfriend?” Roxy said. “What boyfriend?”

  Next door, two faces appeared at the window to watch Loretta leave the house in her short skirt and low-cut jacket. Chances were good she’d cause a fender bender or two on her way to the salon.

  With Loretta safely gone, Nooch came up the short sidewalk to the porch. He had the squashed pizza box in his hands. “The two of you are just the same. Never anything nice to say. Why does she think I’d put my feet on her old coffee table?”

  “Just remember, or she’ll tear your head off when she gets back.”

  “Don’t I know it,” Nooch muttered. “Look, the dog got into the pizza. He ate half of it, and the rest of it probably’s got his drool all over it.”

  Lunch hardly looked appetizing anymore. “Leave it in the car. Loretta’s got rigatoni thawing on the counter.”

  The soup kitchen always had too much food anyway.

  10

  Arden ended up at her father’s house—a drafty, rambling place in a woodsy suburb. Mummy had never quite finished decorating, so the house ha
d a flaky ambience. Fragile French furniture in the living room. Horsey prints in the study. Chinese wallpaper here. A refectory table there, purchased after seeing a movie with Diane Keaton. But Arden’s bedroom was still girly with a canopy bed and dotted Swiss curtains.

  She rolled up the shades around noon and peered outside.

  Beyond the trees, the neighborhood was full of executives and doctors. Their tiny wives drove the winding roads in gigantic SUVs. In the autumn, they hauled home cornstalks, bales of straw, and pumpkins and built displays beside their front doors. Someone down the road had a scarecrow lounging against her mailbox like a drunken Dean Martin.

  Arden intended to do a little jogging along the nearby walking trails. It would be good to get in shape again—strengthen her core, build her endurance. But she flinched back from the window, remembering how the trails attracted whole herds of deer and some aggressive kind of wild turkey. Plus inquisitive white-haired ladies with Labrador retrievers that tended to shove their noses in a girl’s crotch—the dogs, not the ladies.

  So Arden went back to bed.

  Ambien at night for the jet lag. Some diet tabs to wake up in the morning. A little Xanax to ease the heart palpitations. Coke in the afternoon for a zing. Under control, though. Totally under control.

  One morning, Daddy knocked on her door with a partial inventory and a long lecture about preserving family assets. When he left, Arden dropped the papers on the bedroom floor and tried to think about Dorothy Hyde’s art collection.

  The sculpture in the garden, for one thing. It niggled in the back of her mind.

  “What became of it?” she said aloud. Only her Malibu Barbie doll—still dressed in her original bikini—stood at the top of a bookshelf and listened with sloe-eyed attention.

  So far, Arden hadn’t seen the sculpture listed on any family paperwork.

  “Did Monica sell it?”

  Or was it floating around one of the many Hyde family homes, Barbie seemed to suggest. If so, which one?

  So far, Arden hadn’t mentioned the statue to anyone else. For one very big reason.

  If she could find it without alerting everyone in the family, she intended to give the statue back. Somebody needed to make a statement in the art world—set a precedent for other collectors to give their antiquities back to the country of origin.

  “That’s what I’m going to do,” she said to Barbie.

  If she could just concentrate, Barbie almost said.

  “Shut up,” Arden replied.

  She fell asleep again, and when she woke in the afternoon, Barbie was still looking at her. So she dragged herself downstairs and found the house bustling with people she didn’t know. She poured herself a glass of wine and sneaked into the study. Snuggled down in a club chair, she telephoned Hadrian Sloan-Whitaker at his gallery in New York. He was surprisingly frosty on the phone.

  “I’ll mail a check for the balance of your salary,” he said. “I don’t want any trouble. Where shall I send it?”

  “Just hang on to it, Hadrian. I’ll stop by next time I’m in New York.”

  He didn’t seem to hear. “I put up with you long enough, Arden. Nobody could fault me for how patient I’ve been. The erratic behavior. The opinions that come out of nowhere. I can’t risk my reputation on you anymore.”

  Apparently, he took the whole firing thing seriously. Arden popped a Xanax and said, “I understand.”

  She could picture Hadrian standing in his shop, surrounded by a collection of heavy-framed pictures hanging on the ecru walls and a few gewgaws sitting under lights waiting for the last of the hedge fund wives to come looking for ways to decorate their Hamptons homes. They wanted to do business with an Art Dealer, not just a decorator. He would be standing at his desk, perfect posture, of course. Wearing one of his Hong Kong suits. Pastel tie, matching pocket square. Shiny shoes with a subtle amount of heel. But those awful British teeth. He was just old enough to not care about his teeth. You’d think a finicky guy like Hadrian would get himself some decent veneers, but no.

  Before he could berate her again, Arden said, “Listen, Hadrian, my grandmother’s art collection seems to be in play right now. Some of the pieces were in my uncle’s keeping, but there was a fire, you know, so we’re—well, sorting out what to do about everything.”

  He must have smelled a lucrative role for himself, because suddenly he wasn’t quite so rude. “Does the family envision a way my firm could be useful?”

  His firm included Hadrian himself, now that Arden had been cut loose, plus a grad student from the Art Institute who answered the phone while the boss traveled. Otherwise, his “firm,” as he put it, was a fax machine and the smelly Persian cat that slept in the window. But Arden decided she could be magnanimous.

  She said, “We’re wondering if a few things might have gotten away from us.”

  Hadrian didn’t respond, but Arden could almost hear the gears whirring in his mind. Although euphemisms abounded in his network of contacts, Arden knew he dealt in more stolen art than he cared to admit.

  Hadrian said, “Should I put my ear to the ground for anything in particular?”

  “Have you heard anything about Greek or Roman antiquities?”

  An intake of breath indicated how much the goods might be worth. “There was a sale at Sotheby’s two months ago. Some helmets, I believe. And a very fine Hellenic sculpture purchased by a Japanese corporation for the CEO’s office.”

  “Anything more recent than that?”

  “Nothing that I’ve heard about. Oh, except a chariot they say was dug up last summer. I think the Greeks are taking the archaeologist to court, though, so it won’t be on the market.” Coolly, he added, “Quite your thing, I suppose.”

  “No, this would be something that’s been out of sight for a while.”

  “Sounds clandestine.” He paused. “I can ask around. Discreetly, of course.”

  “Thank you.”

  “It could be the Russians, you know. They’re always the first to spark a trend these days. The first to spend big money. And unlike almost everyone else who collects, they hate advertising their latest acquisitions. I’ll see what I can learn.”

  Arden sighed. If there was any villainy going on in the art world, rumor had it that unnamed Russians were always behind it. They supplied a convenient smoke screen for dealers who wanted to keep things on the downlow.

  Arden felt her enthusiasm slipping. The Xanax and wine mixture had kicked in, too hard. Time for another bump, maybe. Preparing to hang up, she said, “Thank you, Hadrian. I knew you were the one to ask. And we’ll keep it between the two of us for now, all right?”

  “Of course,” he said. “Arden?”

  “Yes?”

  “I may have been hasty in Florence.”

  Arden thought longingly of a nap. “Don’t think twice, Hadrian.”

  “No, seriously,” he began.

  He talked. He made a pitch. A very flattering one.

  Then he said, “If you think your grandmother is interested, I have access to some terra-cotta figures from China. Nothing I can talk about on the phone, of course. But very valuable. I could cut you in as a partner on this, Arden, if your grandmother wants to add to her collection.”

  Arden’s attention drifted. She sipped her wine and stopped listening to Hadrian and his Chinese warriors.

  Then a door banged somewhere in the house and woke her. She realized she hadn’t hung up the phone. Thank heaven Hadrian had stopped talking about terra-cotta.

  A giant spotted dog suddenly barged into the study. Her first hallucination. A black and white beast with a head the size of a mailbox. Arden screamed.

  Then Uncle Trey burst into the room, not a hallucination at all. He looked surprised to see her.

  “Arden! Did we wake you up?”

  Arden realized she had somehow climbed up onto the top of the wing chair. Balancing there, she pointed a shaky finger at the dog. “Is that—? Is it vicious?”

  “Hell, no, it’s Monica�
�s dog, Samson. He’s harmless, see?” Uncle Trey wrestled the Great Dane down onto the carpet. The dog chewed on Trey’s arm. His tail, as big as a buggy whip, wagged happily. His huge blotches of black and white made him look like the Hound of the Baskervilles crossed with a Holstein cow.

  From the floor, Trey said, “Julius’s chauffeur wanted rid of him. Apparently, he’s not entirely housebroken. But we’re supposed to keep him out of Monica’s clutches. Boy, those two must have had a hell of a feud.”

  Arden cautiously climbed down from her perch on the chair. “Uncle Trey, you scared the daylights out of me. My heart’s beating like crazy.” She clutched her chest and sank onto the seat cushion again.

  “Sorry, Ardy. I thought I could put the dog in here during our dinner. I didn’t know you were snoozing.”

  “I’m jet-lagged, that’s all.”

  From beneath the gigantic dog, Uncle Trey smiled up at her. “You look a little jagged, all right, Ardy. You spilled your drink.”

  “Did I?”

  “Carpet’s all wet.” Trey climbed out from under the dog and picked up her wineglass. He set it on the table by the phone, but remained crouched beside her.

  In his younger days, Trey had a feckless streak—perhaps the curse of being the baby of the family. He used to instigate games with his nieces and nephews, like how to taste the difference between scotch and bourbon. How to make a peanut butter and banana sandwich. Water balloons, though, were his specialty. Now, however, he looked too old for water balloons. Too old for his youthful clothes. Too old for his salon haircut. He was turning into Julius—a dissipated playboy.

  “You okay, Ardy?”

  “Yes. No thanks to you.”

  He smiled. “Where’s your dad? He’s here, right? Or did the big man go to the office? Quenty calls a family powwow, and then he leaves?”

  “He’ll be back.” The Great Dane came over and sniffed Arden’s shirt. With ineffectual hands, she tried to push the dog away, but he snuffled her with a wet nose and gave her arm a tentative lick.