I hadn’t noticed anyone following me. Then again, I often don’t check my rearview mirror unless it’s to apply makeup. Old habits die hard.
“What couldn’t I resist? Mr. Bender, why were you following me? I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Let’s quit with the games. What is it you want, money? ’Cause I know the people who will pay for it and pay handsomely if that’s what you’re after. Name the price.”
Okay. This was really getting frustrating. Stiletto gave me a quizzical look. I shrugged. “I swear to God, Mr. Bender. I am totally clueless.”
“Oh, you’re tough. You think you can drive a hard bargain. Well, let me give you a heads-up, hairdresser. The people who killed Debbie don’t bargain. They made her an offer, and when Debbie held out, she ended up dead within twenty-four hours. Isn’t that warning enough?”
A dull headache was spreading across my brow as though a steel band were being tightened above my ears.
“Please, I’m begging you. Give me a word, a clue, anything. Because right now I am being totally honest. I have no idea what the hell you’re talking about.”
“The star file. There’s one more copy. You came looking for it from me yesterday, but I didn’t have it. By now I know you do. You went right to Debbie’s hiding place.”
“What do you mean the star file? And who wants it?”
“The people whose names are in it. They have a right to it. It was their information, not Debbie’s.”
“And they are . . .?”
“The same people who are coming after you if you don’t wise up. Stay tuned, hairdresser. We’ll be in touch.”
He hung up.
Stiletto gently replaced the receiver. “This dude for real?”
“I think he is.”
“Then you’ve got a problem.”
“Or a great story.” I tried to hang up, too, but my hand kept insisting on shaking uncontrollably.
Stiletto came over and covered mine with his. His felt solid and warm. Secure. My hand stopped shaking.
“You want me to stick around?”
“Just long enough to do me a favor, if that’s okay.”
Stiletto smiled. “It’s more than okay.”
“You say that now because you haven’t heard the favor. Once I ask, you may never be willing to speak to me again.”
Chapter Twenty
I
waited downstairs in advertising with the lights off for Dan to pick me up so we could get our marriage license. I hated to admit it to myself, but after my conversation with Ern Bender, I was scared. I didn’t dare stand outside on the corner of Fourth Street in the dark alone. Plus, it was snowing pretty hard and I’d run out of Final Net. Hair today, alive tomorrow, I always say.
With Stiletto’s back turned, I had changed into my regular clothes so Mama could return my dress to Loehmann’s before the store detectives caught up with her. She was none too pleased to see Stiletto in the library with me and let me know as much by making weird eye movements supposed to convey her displeasure, though, frankly, they came off more as muscle spasms.
It was good to get it off my chest. I mean, the story about Debbie’s murder, my suspicions and witnessing Phil Shatsky in a Full Sweeney. As an experienced photojournalist with an ear for news and lips for more than gabbing, Stiletto knew better than to talk.
He sat on the library floor, his arms resting on his bent knees, and listened closely while I rambled about Sandy likely being sent to prison and Detective Burge’s wife accusing me and how Jane was absolutely not getting better.
“I don’t know, Stiletto,” I told him. “I don’t know what I’m doing wrong. I mean, I raised Jane to be independent. I had no choice, what with going to night school and working a full-time job. Now she’s more clingy and scared than when she was a little girl in kindergarten.”
“Yeah, well, getting kidnapped will do that to you. Give her time, Bubbles. One day she’ll surprise you. She’ll wake up and do something to show that the real Jane is still there.” He fetched a tissue from Doris’s Kleenex box. I bet Doris had counted all her Kleenex and would be alarmed the next morning when she came to work and found five missing.
I wiped away my tears, hesitating before blurting the one neurosis that had been keeping me up nights. “I’m beginning to think I suck as a mother.”
“That’s bullshit and you know it. It’s not even worth discussing. Unless . . . Hold on. That’s what Dan’s telling you, isn’t it?”
Yes,
I wanted to say,
and Dr. Caswell, too,
though I wasn’t about to let Stiletto know.
“Guess what. Dan doesn’t know anything. Nothing.” Stiletto held up his hands as if stopping himself. “Don’t get me started. You’re getting married to the creep. I don’t want to go there.”
That’s okay,
I could have said.
You can go there.
“Listen, trashing Dan’s not going to help Jane, and to tell you the truth, I can’t see how I can help, either,” he said. “But how about this story you’re working on, Debbie Shatsky’s murder. Is there any way I can help you with that?”
As soon as he said it, I realized he could.
An hour later, Stiletto and I had fine-tuned our plan to get Tess to spill the details about Debbie’s lust boat cruises. On second thought, I’m not sure “fine-tune” was an accurate description. More like thrown-together. A thrown-together, half-assed plan.
As Stiletto said, half-assed plans were the best kind.
“Had to make me get out of the car and come to the door, didn’t ya?” Dan said, when we pulled off in his BMW 320i. “Couldn’t be out front waiting like I asked. A little consideration would be nice once, Bubbles.”
I made myself small in the black leather passenger seat and worked hard not to think of how many nights I’d be in this role. Me, the cowed, verbally abused wife. Dan, the hair-tonic-dripping lord and master.
How was it that a man like Stiletto could only view me as strong and beautiful and resourceful, and another man like Dan could only pass me off as weak and dumb and useless?
Certainly it wasn’t me. I was the same old Bubbles Yablonsky.
“Now, when we get to the courthouse, don’t say nothing to Vern. She’s the clerk who owes me big-time, and if it got out she was pushing through the paperwork ’cause I’d greased a few palms to get her low-life, car-thieving boyfriend off the books, it’d be bad for all three of us.”
Dan’s car phone rang. It was Jane checking up, reporting that Mama and Genevieve had arrived with a white noise machine, a humidifier, two electric blankets, a box of Christmas decorations, three boxes of multicolored blinking lights and Robert Goulet’s complete yuletide collection.
I motioned to speak with her but Dan didn’t let me. After he hung up, he explained. “Every minute on a cell phone is my money wasted. That’s why I don’t trust you with a cell, because you have no sense with electrical things.
“Back to Vern.” He gripped the wheel with his black leather gloves. “She talks a lot. Has a big mouth. Don’t pay attention, and whatever you do, don’t ask any questions. Just smile and nod like a good wifey-to-be.” He patted my knee. “Okay?”
“Okay,” I said, since it wasn’t as though I was dying to have a chat with Vern, anyway.
“That’s good. I like it when you agree with me. You should do that more often, okay?”
“Sure.” But I lied. I was just tired of saying okay.
The big stone courthouse was almost dark except for a few lights in the basement and the lobby. It brought back memories of last month when I’d interviewed Julia Simon, a homeless woman charged with murder who collapsed and died while I was interviewing her. There was something wrong with me, I decided, that caused strangers to drop dead when I was around.
I plodded after Dan, who confidently informed the security guard on duty that he was there on business related to his legal profession. The security guard clearly knew him and clearly didn’t give a shit. He let Dan and me pass through the metal detector, which was turned off.
Vern’s office was in the basement. She was waiting for us, bags under her eyes, limp hair framing her face. She looked as tired and worn-out as I felt. And she looked as though she was thinking the same thing about me.
“This should take fifteen minutes,” Dan said. “You got your driver’s license, Bubbles?”
I reached for my purse. This was it. This was the moment of truth, making it legal. I couldn’t help but think back to that day when I came home early from the House of Beauty and found Jane asleep upstairs in her crib and Dan on the couch with the Avon lady. The naked Avon lady. I could still see her black lace bra flung over Jane’s high chair.
Never again,
I swore. I’d spent the prior three years putting Dan through law school by shampooing at the House of Beauty nights. After he left me, after he said proudly that the Avon lady was the best lay he’d had in months, I never got a penny of alimony from him. Only insufficient child support and a judicial order that he contribute to my continuing education.
Dan had laughed. The judge had cut him a great deal. Bubbles go to school? Not. But I did go to school and kept my job at the House of Beauty and raised Jane. A million credits later, including a thousand failures, and I won a job writing features on strawberry festivals and flatulent greyhounds for the
News-Times
, thanks in part to Mr. Salvo, my Two Guys journalism professor, later to become my own editor.
Things were looking up. Dan had married Wendy and the two of them took wildly expensive vacations and made fun of me. Fine. I was achieving goals I’d never even dared to dream. I investigated and wrote a blockbuster that the
Philadelphia Inquirer
bought. Then I came on as a real reporter for the
News-Times
.
Along the way I met Stiletto, the most cocky, arrogant, talented and gorgeous man ever. Stiletto taught me about taking chances, whether that was hanging off a bridge to get the perfect shot, or going undercover in Amish country to find a runaway bride. He stood behind me when a judge fined me thousands of dollars for not handing over my interview notes.
He made love to me in his big bed with the soft white sheets while rain pattered on the roof and a fire crackled in the fireplace. We were joined by more than physical passion—though we were pretty joined by that, too. We were joined by the sense that we belonged together for a higher purpose yet to come. We were each other’s future and, as corny as it might sound, a team.
And then . . . then it all went to hell. My daughter slipped away from me one night into the wrong hands of the wrong man and I was damned lucky to get her back alive.
At a price.
“This price,” Dan was saying, as he finished up the paperwork. “Forty bucks. You’re not going to charge me that, Vern.”
Forty dollars. It was nothing! The shindig at the union hall on Saturday was setting him back ten thousand times that.
Vern narrowed her eyes. “I should be charging you an extra fifteen to expedite this before your wedding. You don’t even have your divorce decree.”
Dan fluttered a paper in her face. “Sure, I do. Whaddya call this?”
“Not notarized.”
“What does it matter? I’m remarrying my first wife. She’s standing next to me.”
“Yes, but what about your second?”
“I told you. That was all taken care of in Guam.”
“Guam,” Vern repeated disdainfully, pressing her own notary stamp onto the paper.
“I’ll call my secretary to see if she’s still in. Maybe she can dig up an official copy.” Dan went out of the glass doors to the darkened linoleum hallway to call his secretary.
Vern eyed him through the glass. “What’s a smart girl like you doing remarrying a bum like that?”
“Pardon?” I asked, violating Dan’s order to keep my mouth shut.
“I read your stories in the paper. They’re good. Lots of detail. You’re one of the few reporters who gets it right. You’re too sharp to be hooking your star to him.”
This was rare, compliments from a bureaucrat. “Thanks. I, uh, admire your clerking.”
Vern smiled wryly. “You do know, don’t you, that he’s been sleeping with that secretary of his for years.”
Silence. I twirled my laminated driver’s license on the counter. More pain.
“You must have something to offer—that’s all I can say. No one does anything for nothing, especially Ritter.”
She was right, of course.
Vern lifted the lid of the photocopier and slid our marriage license application underneath. “Take, for example, his second wife. She had the dough, until he ran through that. Then he couldn’t ditch her fast enough. Now he’s back after you with a vengeance. You’ve gotta be asking yourself, what does he want so bad that I’ve got?”
“His daughter.”
“And what do you get?”
The light pulsated as it copied our application. “I get to keep her.”
“Ahh.”
The doors burst open and Dan returned, regarding both of us with suspicion. He wanted me to verify if I’d been gossiping with Vern. So I took out my compact and refreshed my lipstick like a good little wifey.
“Sorry, Vern. Secretary’s gone for the night. I’ll have to get you the divorce decree tomorrow, if it’s come back from Guam.”
“You better,” Vern said. “Or else the marriage is null and void.”
We left and trod joylessly up the marble stairs, past the security guard and out the door. The snowy night air was refreshing. The star of Lehigh was lit up on South Mountain for Christmas and white lights lit up the trees by the courthouse door. It was very romantic.
Well, it would have been if I’d been with any other man besides Dan.
“You weren’t gabbing with Vern, were you? Because I told you to keep your mouth shut as far as she was concerned.”
“Vern didn’t say anything I hadn’t heard already,” I said, linking my arm in his. “Where to now?”
Dan was startled by my physical contact. “You don’t want me to drop you off at your car?”