The next morning I overslept and woke up to find the television still blaring into the room. I didn’t get to the Old Stone Market till eight o’clock and Rufus was just leaving.
“What happened to you?” he called from his truck. “I can’t hang around now. I’m late for work. Call me later.”
“Wait!” I yelled at him and rushed over to tell him about the parked car.
“Kids probably,” he said, very matter of fact, “teenagers. Where else they got to go to make out?”
Then he was gone, leaving me feeling somewhat relieved. It was a perfectly reasonable explanation, after all. I just had this weird instinct that it wasn’t the right one.
Inside the store Jesus was serving breakfast to a couple of construction workers.
“Your pie was delicious,” I told him and he beamed.
“Franny, she in back.” He nodded his head toward the far room.
I found Franny wandering around the shelves with a clipboard in her hand.
“Hi,” she said, “you see Rufus? He waited forever for you.”
“I overslept,” I said.
“He asked me out on a date,” she said. Her head was down and she was studying the shelves so I couldn’t see her face.
Well, this was interesting. “Did you say yes?”
“He’s gotta be ten years younger than I am.”
“So you said no.”
“I said if he found me a babysitter, he could take me out for a drink tonight.” She looked at me sideways. “I told him you might be a good bet.”
“He didn’t say anything about it,” I said.
“Oh.” She sounded disappointed.
I felt a tiny bit of resentment that she should take it for granted that I would help her out but I decided to ignore it.
“I expect I could come over for an hour or two. What time?”
I was totally unprepared for her long arms reaching out to envelop me in a hug. My natural loner’s reserve kicked in and I backed away from her. I wasn’t the most tactile person until I’d had time to really get to know someone.
But she didn’t seem to notice my lack of response. “Thank you!” she said. “I really do need to get out. You have no idea. This place is beginning to get me down. See, I’m doing a stock check here and it depresses the hell out of me. It’s always the same old boring things that sell—candy, potato chips, cookies, sodas, and you know the only things most people come in for?”
I shook my head.
“Cigarettes and the newspaper. I make a dime on a newspaper if I’m lucky and maybe eighty cents on a pack of cigarettes after I pay all the taxes. How can I raise Eliza on that? And I had such high hopes when I first took this place over. I hired Jesus because he was able to bring in all the Hispanic clientele—the construction workers and their families. They know him and they trust him. He cooks them the Mexican food they like and that’s all fine, but the rest of the locals, they don’t seem to be comfortable with me trying to bring the place into the twenty-first century. They don’t like change, they want it the way my aunt used to have it when the most exciting thing you could buy was a bologna sandwich. Look at this”—she pointed to a row of packets in front of her—“sea salt from Brittany in France, sesame rice crackers, Thai noodles, anything out of the ordinary and it never moves off the shelves. Meanwhile I’ve got the New Yorkers coming in at weekends and turning up their noses because I don’t have enough of what they want.”
She kicked an apple on the floor.
“And that’s another problem. People pick up the produce and drop it on the floor so it’s bruised and then I can’t sell it. You would not believe the amount of stuff I have to throw away. You can only buy cheese by the case not by the piece. I got a case of Brie wholesale last week and so far I’ve only sold three pieces and it’ll only last two weeks.”
I was half listening to her. I was standing right by a notice board and I was intrigued by the ads for secondhand sewing machines, surfboards, garden equipment, and services as varied as psychic readings, house cleaning, and dog transportation to and from New York. There was one particular card that really caught my attention. It was turning brown with age and had clearly been hidden for some time by another card pinned over it. It was only because someone had torn a phone number off the card on top that two words could be read on the card underneath. WEDDING DRESSES. I lifted up the top card and read: SECONDHAND WEDDING DRESSES, ANTIQUE, DESIGNER, ALL SIZES, ALTERATIONS OFFERED. MARTHA FARRELL and then a phone number. An image of Sean Marriott’s body lying on the beach in drenched white tulle flashed before me and I shivered.
Before I could ask who Martha Farrell was, Franny said: “So I hear they arrested Shotgun Marriott.”
“News travels fast around here.”
“My son told me. He says you were over there yesterday.”
“I was,” I said. “And I met Dumpster—and Evan Morrison,” I added. “Why didn’t you tell me your shoplifter was a detective?”
Franny didn’t say anything so I persisted. “Why do you let him get away with it? You told me it wasn’t the first time he’d done it.”
Still she said nothing.
“Franny! Just because he’s a cop—”
“Exactly!” she said, suddenly turning on me. “It’s because he’s a cop.”
“I don’t get it,” I said.
She sighed and gestured for me to sit down with her on one of the benches at the long table in the back room. “I’ll tell you because you seem like a nice person and Lord knows I need to talk to someone. Plus Rufus says you’re okay. But I’d appreciate it if you’d keep what I’m about to tell you to yourself.”
“I won’t say a word,” I said, wondering what was coming.
“You met my son, Dumpster?” she said. “Well, it’s because of him that I go along with Evan Morrison. When I got together with Dumpster’s dad, I was just a kid and I thought living in the city was so exciting. But then when it came to raising Dumpster as a single parent, it became a little too exciting. I moved Dumpster back here because he had a problem. He was doing so many drugs, there was no way I could control him. There was a time when he could have had a real future in basketball but he got in with some delinquents at his school and he went downhill from there.”
“Wasn’t his father any help?”
She stared at me. “You have to be kidding. I don’t even know where he is anymore. Anyway, I don’t know why I thought it would be any better out here. We hadn’t been back five minutes before Dumpster started hanging out with some Colombians in Montauk. Evan Morrison busted them dealing cocaine in a parking lot—it was all tied in to a homicide investigation. He did a deal with me over Dumpster. In exchange for keeping Dumpster’s name out of it, Dumpster had to become his informant.”
Now it was my turn to stare. “What does that mean exactly?”
“He’s supposed to rat on his friends. Any drug action he sees, he’s supposed to tell Detective Morrison who passes it on to the narcs. Morrison’s after this dealer who allegedly killed one of his clients when he couldn’t pay for his supply and Morrison thinks Dumpster might get him a lead.”
“And Dumpster works for Shotgun.”
“And Shotgun’s been arrested,” said Franny. “I see where you’re going with this but there’s two things you should know. Dumpster worships Shotgun Marriott. There’s no way he’d sell him out even if he was standing right beside that woman when Shotgun killed her. And the second thing is that Dumpster was here with me both nights, when Sean was killed and that woman.”
“All night? Her name was Bettina Pleshette, by the way.”
“All night.” Franny tapped the table for emphasis. “He wasn’t working for Shotgun those nights.”
“Not at all?”
She shook her head.
Well, this didn’t match what Dumpster had told me about the night Sean was killed. I had distinctly heard him say he was putting up shelves for Shotgun that night and had overheard Shotgun canceling Bettina. A
nd what Shotgun had said later had confirmed this. So if Franny wasn’t telling the truth about that night—maybe she was lying about the next one, when Bettina was killed. She wanted to protect her son and that was perfectly understandable but it would only complicate matters if she lied.
“Well, if he wasn’t there,” I said, “how can he give Shotgun an alibi?”
She seemed thrown by that. “I guess he can’t,” she said slowly, “but I know he wouldn’t say anything about Shotgun that would get him in trouble. If they nail Shotgun Marriott for that woman’s murder, it’s not going to be on account of anything Dumpster said.”
Bettina was still that woman, I noticed. I wondered why.
“So what kind of stuff does Dumpster give Detective Morrison—as his informant?”
Franny grinned. “As little as possible. And never about anyone he likes. He has to be very careful because if those Colombians get to hear that he’s an informant, I dread to think what they might do to him. So you’ll keep quiet about it, right?”
I nodded.
She glanced at me. “What did you make of Shotgun?”
“I liked him,” I said. “So you told Detective Morrison that your son was here with you?”
“Of course,” she said, “because he was.”
“And that’s the story Dumpster gave to the detective about himself?”
She looked a little worried. “I wasn’t there when he spoke to him but that’s what he would have said, isn’t it? Because it’s the truth.”
I gave up. She was sticking to her story so I just shrugged and said, “Now what time do you want me here this evening—for when you go out with Rufus?”
“Around seven would be great,” said Franny, and as I went out the door she called after me, “I really appreciate you doing this for me, by the way. I mean really appreciate it.”
When I went back that evening Rufus was already there, lurking downstairs in the store.
“Thanks for this,” he said, giving a sheepish look. “Did you hear about Shotgun?”
“That he was arrested?” I asked. “I was there.”
“Well, he’ll be out on bail soon. It’ll be no sweat to him to post a million bucks bail.”
“Wow!” I was impressed. “By the way, thanks for those directions. You were right, I’d never have found the place without them.”
“Sure,” he said. “So, you’re finding your way around okay?”
“I am. Tell me, have you spoken to your dad?”
“He called last night. He told me you got the job of overseeing the construction. You must be a real saint. Vanessa asked me to take care of it a while back but I passed. The last thing I want is to be responsible for a bunch of construction guys who are never going to show up. Whatever made you agree to do it?”
“Because I’m an idiot,” I said. “I haven’t even been by the site. Maybe we could go over there together tomorrow?”
“And maybe we couldn’t.” He laughed. “What’s with the ‘we’? You’re not going to rope me in that easily.”
“Well then, maybe you won’t be able to rope me in for babysitting tonight.”
“What’s that?” Franny stood in the doorway at the bottom of the staircase. “Are you backing out already, Lee?”
I didn’t answer her because when I turned to look at her, I was too knocked out to speak. She looked stunning. She had on a simple black linen shift that must have cost real money. It was sleeveless and when she turned, I saw it plunged to a deep V in the back. The dress ended midthigh and she was wearing black rope sandals with a three-inch wedge. She towered above Rufus and for an instant he looked a little nervous.
“I’ve fed her and now she’s asleep,” Franny told me. “I’m going to close the store so you can go upstairs and make yourself at home. I’ve left you one of Jesus’s lasagnas to heat up in the microwave. You haven’t lived till you’ve tasted it, although of course I taught him everything he knows about cooking. She’s going to need feeding at around ten but I’ll be back way before then.” I saw Rufus frown a little. Was he hoping to score on the first date? “Here’s my cell phone number. Call me if you have a problem. So Roof, your truck or mine?”
I watched her hitch her dress up almost to her crotch as she hiked her long legs into Rufus’s passenger seat. It was only when they had been gone at least five minutes that I noticed she had left her cell phone sitting on the counter by the cash register.
I was slightly shocked that Franny hadn’t taken me upstairs and shown me what to do with Eliza. Presumably I was just meant to sit there while she slept and there would be nothing else to do until Franny came back. Feeling a little apprehensive, I turned the OPEN sign hanging on the door to CLOSED—she hadn’t even done that—and crept up the stairs to the apartment above.
It was tiny, only two rooms, and neither of them was particularly big. I saw that Franny and Eliza slept in the same room. Franny had a queen-size bed that took up most of the space. Crammed into the narrow channel between the bed and the wall, presumably so Franny could reach out to Eliza without getting out of bed, was Eliza’s cot, dwarfed by packets of diapers piled perilously high on a table beside it. I checked out the other room, which served as a kitchen/living room. It was marginally bigger than the bedroom with the sink and a giant fridge against the far wall. I looked around for a cooker but saw only a microwave standing on the counter. There was a small table with two chairs and a sofa in front of a stack of electronic equipment comprising TV, DVD player, and other oblong boxes I couldn’t immediately identify.
Two things were missing: a bathroom and Dumpster’s bedroom.
I found the bathroom soon enough by opening a door to what I had thought was a closet at the top of the stairs. Actually, it was a closet but instead of housing coats or clothes, it contained a shower, a toilet, and one of those minuscule half-circle basins in which you can only wash one hand at a time unless you have unusually tiny paws. I turned back to the living room and realized with a sinking feeling that it was in fact a sleep sofa in the middle of the room and that’s where Dumpster had to crash.
This was Franny’s life. No wonder she wanted to get out. I stood between the two rooms and tried to imagine what it must be like to have to cope with a screaming baby and a teenage son playing video games in this confined space. After you’d spent a day trying to run a store where nobody appreciated what you were trying to do, after you’d undertaken such physically backbreaking tasks as chopping wood and mowing lawns—not to have even a tub in which to soak your aching muscles. What did she do to escape? Not for the first time did I appreciate how incredibly lucky I was to enjoy such relatively spacious accommodations—there was only me, after all—both here at the Phillionaire’s cabin and especially in London where I had my parents’ five-bedroom house to myself. And it was free. But then presumably so was this apartment, left to Franny by her aunt along with the store.
I was confronted with the biggest jar of mayonnaise I’d ever seen when I opened the refrigerator. In fact everything was jumbo size, the ketchup, the milk, the mustard, the jam, and I had to take them all out before I could get to my lasagna. I found it strange that there was no other food in the refrigerator so I investigated the freezer and found it full of pizzas and frozen TV dinners. I was depressed by the volume of Lean Cuisine meals that must be Franny’s staple diet. She clearly only had time to cook fresh food for her customers. When she closed the store for the night, did she only have enough energy to haul herself up the stairs, put Eliza down, and throw a frozen dinner in the microwave before she fell asleep beside her baby?
And then, having opened the fridge and the freezer, it was as if I couldn’t stop and I felt compelled to look in every cabinet and closet to see what other insights I could glean into Franny’s world. But there was nothing out of the ordinary and most of the space in the kitchen was devoted to a mound of plastic bags containing Dumpster’s paraphernalia and a pine chest in which I found a pathetically small pile of baby clothes together with l
ittle jars of applesauce.
Seeing these made me wonder where Franny kept her clothes so I wandered back to the bedroom and opened the only door I could see. Franny’s wardrobe seemed to imply a split personality. At one end of the closet were jeans and cutoffs and plaid shirts and sweatpants, all evidence of her outdoor life in the country. But at the other end was a small but exquisitely formed collection of fashion items, flirty “date” wear—little black dresses, tiny pencil skirts, frothy chiffon skirts, plaid miniskirts, leather pants, white jeans, lacy blouses, silk shirts. The labels alone were enough to make me draw breath. Ralph Lauren, Calvin Klein, Michael Kors, Donna Karan, and, even more impressive, Prada, Gucci, Jil Sander, and Moschino. I was up on these names—I had once ghosted a Vogue editor’s fashion manual—and I knew what you had to pay for this kind of stuff. And underneath, row upon row of stilettos edged out the pathetic assortment of sneakers and work boots pushed to one side on the floor of the closet. Jimmy Choo, Manolo Blahnik, Chanel. Where had Franny got the money for high-end shoes like these?
Hidden in a corner was a square vanity case—Louis Vuitton, what else? I have worked hard to overcome my many vices but I don’t seem to have much luck giving up snooping. I tell myself it’s part and parcel of what I do, that I need to have an inquiring mind and anyway, is nosiness in fact a vice?
I flipped up the lid of the vanity case expecting to see expensive items of makeup but instead I found a pile of photographs. They were all of Franny, sometimes alone and sometimes with a well-groomed, wealthy-looking man, and not always the same one. In some of the pictures she appeared to be modeling, posing in front of a fancy car or a lake or some other exotic backdrop. Suddenly I understood that Franny had had another life in the recent past, before Eliza had been born, before she had decided to leave it all behind and move out here and try and turn a two-bit mom-and-pop convenience store into Dean & DeLuca. Had she in fact been a model? And who were her elegant escorts in the photographs?
I was so wrapped up in Franny’s past I forgot I was supposed to be quiet. I replaced the photos, pushed the case back to where I had found it, and closed the closet door. With a bang.
How to Marry a Ghost Page 9
