Camilla T. Crespi - The Breakfast Club Murder (11 page)

“Husband of sixteen years leaves you and your kid for another woman,” Scardini continued. “A very rich woman. He lets you keep the house and throws in child support, but no alimony. None of the above is going to sit well with most wives.”

“I didn’t want any alimony.” She turned on the flame under the sauté pan. “And I’m not most wives.”

Scardini raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Do you own a gun?” He took the meatballs she had rolled and settled them gently in the pan.

“No and stop interfering!”

“You sound like my wife. How about your ex, while you were still married to him, did he own a gun?”

“No!”

“That’s settled, then. Last night your ex takes his daughter and her friend to a fancy restaurant in Manhattan without getting your permission first, which could only add to your bad feelings. You know that he’s going to drive them back to the Dixon lady. You say your daughter called when she got back, but if she did, I bet she didn’t tell you the new wife drove her back instead of her father because she’s a sweet girl and didn’t want to upset you.”

Those were two details Scardini got right. Jess was sweet and Lori would have been upset if she had known Valerie was driving them back. Maybe not upset, more like jealous. She’d lost a husband to that woman. She didn’t want to lose a daughter. Now, of course, there was no danger of that. Maybe Scardini would think that was an added motive. Lori slipped the spoon out of Scardini’s hand and stirred the washed and chopped escarole into the pot. She and Mitchell watched it wilt.

Scardini kept talking. “You know your daughter’s back. You get in your car, drive fast to Caldwell Road, park the car in the middle of the road, hide in the trees. Dr. Fenwick comes along a few minutes later. You hail her down or your car blocks her way. She gets out of her husband’s new BMW—a car you know, because he picked you up at the airport when you came back from Italy.”

“I see my ex has been very talkative.”

“From your vantage point all you can see is the car and a tall person—Dr. Fenwick was only two inches shorter than Mr. Staunton—dressed in chinos, a man’s shirt, wearing your ex’s baseball cap. You’re blinded by fury, by the darkness in the trees. You aim, shoot, and kill the dentist instead of the ex.”

Lori added the chicken broth to the escarole, turned the meatballs to brown evenly. “I would say that’s an impossible scenario. First of all, Valerie would have had to stay put at Margot’s for at least ten minutes in order for me to reach Caldwell Road in time to stop her, and secondly, even blinded by fury and the dark, I would still recognize my husband just by the sound of his footsteps. Sixteen years of marriage does that. Besides, I love my daughter too much to kill the father she adores.”

“That’s a good point,” Mitchell said.

Scardini didn’t let up. “So maybe you knew who you were killing. Three-day-old wife, bang, bang, dead. Like you saying to the ex: ‘So much for your new life, buster.’ ”

“Did you find tire tracks on the road to match to my car?”

Scardini pushed a finger in the air. “Now that’s a good point. We’ll need to take your car.”

Lori dropped the wooden spoon and stared at him. “You’re kidding, right? How am I going to get around? Public transportation stinks where I live.”

Scardini shrugged. “Rent.”

While Lori glared at Scardini, Mitchell bent down to pick up the spoon and handed it to her.

“Thank you,” she said and pointed to the dangling button. “Be careful with that. You’ll lose it.” He gave her a smile that almost made up for the other guy. “The car’s at home.”

“Okay, tomorrow,” Scardini said. “And don’t try cleaning anything because we’ll spot whatever was in there.”

Lori washed the spoon, dried it. “I thought that worked only on TV.” Renting a car was not in her budget and she was about to ask how long they’d keep the car, but she was afraid the answer would only make her feel worse. Maybe Margot would lend her one of her cars—the least fancy one. She had three.

Mitchell took a deep breath. “The soup sure smells good.” He had a baritone voice, the kind that wraps itself around you like a blanket on a cold day.

Lori gave him a smile. He was trying to make her feel better. “What about the gun?” she asked. Being under suspicion did not stop her from being curious. “Did you find it?”

The look on Scardini’s face stopped Mitchell from saying anything.

“I can answer that myself,” Lori said. “You found nothing.”

“How’s that?” Scardini wanted to know.

“You asked me if I or Rob owned a gun. If you’d found it you’d know already who it belonged to.”

Scardini shook his head. “It’s that fast only on TV.”

Lori lifted the pot lid and stirred the soup. Neither of the men moved. “Any more questions?” she asked after a few minutes of silence. She couldn’t think of anything else to ask.

“If we do, we’ll let you know,” Mitchell said. ‘We’re only at the beginning of our investigation.”

“Are you waiting for Rob?”

“No.” Scardini glanced at his watch. “Soup’s been simmering for twelve minutes.”

“I know.”

Scardini looked at her, looked at the meatballs. Mitchell took another deep breath. Lori looked at the crystal wall clock. It was five minutes to five. Snack time. Feed your enemy, make a friend, her father had taught her as she sat on a stool to watch him cook. By the time she was seven he had taught her Bolognese, pesto, and carbonara sauces. More lessons were going to follow, but suddenly he was gone.

Maybe Scardini was teaching his kids how to cook. If he was, she could forgive him his stupid “possible” scenario. And Mitchell was a sweet man. Lori dropped the meatballs into the soup, gave the soup a stir. “Three more minutes and it’s done.” She unearthed two soup bowls, two spoons, grated cheese into the bowls, ladled out the soup and fed the two homicide detectives.

After Mitchell and Scardini left, Lori washed out the bowls and the spoons, dried them, and set them in front of the two stools on the other side of the island for Rob and Jessica, and then walked down the corridor.

“Are they still here?” Jessica asked as soon as Lori opened the door. She was still under the duvet.

“Fed and gone.” Lori picked up the needlepoint pillow from the floor, set it against the back of a white leather armchair. The entire room was white. “Hi, honey.” She bent over to kiss Jessica. “You don’t seem surprised to see me.”

“You’re like Grandma. Once you get something in your head, that’s it.”

“You mean, I’m just like you.”

Jessica started crying. Lori sat down on the bed and held her, stroking her back, kissing her head. “I’m so sorry you’re going through this, Jess.”

“Is Dad here?” Jess finally asked, letting go of her mother to reach for the tissue box.

“Not yet.”

“I’m so worried about him, Mom.” Jessica blew her nose. “It’s just so mean for this to happen to him.”

“I know.”

“I can’t go to Cape Cod with Angie on Monday. He needs me here.”

“We’ll see.” Lori said. Staying with Rob with the police hanging around and making life miserable for everyone was the last thing her daughter needed. “I’ll talk to Dad about it.”

“I’ll talk to him,” Jessica said with the annoyed voice she used whenever she thought she was being treated like a little girl. “I think you should go before Dad comes back. He doesn’t want to see you, Mom. I’m sorry.”

Lori didn’t care if Rob wanted to see her or not. After listening to Scardini’s “possible scenario,” she needed to find out why Rob was going around saying he was the intended victim.

“Please, Mom?” Jessica’s lower lip trembled. Tears were about to start again.

“Okay, hon.” Scardini wasn’t going to arrest her tonight, not without more solid evidence, and Jess needed to be coddled. With Valerie gone, Lori suspected Jess felt responsible for her beloved Daddy and didn’t want rejected Mom to run interference. “I just came to make sure you were all right.” Lori got up from the bed, smoothed the duvet over Jessica’s body. She would talk to Rob tomorrow. He was probably too upset to make much sense tonight. “I hope those two detectives were nice to you?”

“They asked me a lot of questions about the divorce, how angry you were at Dad, did you hate Valerie, dumb stuff like that. It was like they thought you’d killed her so I didn’t tell them I called you when I got to Margot’s house.”

“Why not? Your phone call tells them I was home when Valerie dropped you off.”

“But you didn’t answer the phone! I let it ring and ring. I hung up and called you on your cell. That means you could have been anywhere.”

“That can’t be.” Lori felt her stomach hollow out.

“Mom! I’m not lying.”

Now she had no alibi. “I know you’re not, but I was home, Jess. In bed. Right next to the phone. Even if I was asleep, I would have heard the phone. You must have dialed the wrong number.”

“I tried three times! I know my own home number. I’m not stupid.”

“Of course you’re not.” Would Jessica’s cell phone records show a dialed wrong number? Of course not, no one had answered. “Wait a minute! The answering machine should have picked up.”

“It didn’t, Mom. You always forget to turn it on.”

No, she had turned it on, Lori was sure of it. Had she somehow unplugged the phone without being aware of it?

Lori planted a kiss on the top of Jessica’s head and gave her a reassuring mother smile, the kind that was supposed to communicate
Be brave, we’ll get through this somehow.
It was meant to help her as much as Jess. “I’ve made escarole and meatball soup for you and Daddy. There’s some grated Parmesan in the fridge. I’ll be home if you need me. Okay?”

Jessica clutched her pillow to her chest. “I told them you didn’t kill her.” To Lori’s relief, there was no doubt in Jessica’s eyes.

“Thank you, sweetie, you’re the best.” They hugged. Jessica scrambled out of bed and, linking her arm through Lori’s, walked her to the front door. Whether out of love or the need to make sure her mother was leaving, Lori didn’t want to know.

The train was jammed with commuters. Lori was lucky to find a middle seat in the last car. Once the train emerged out of the Grand Central tunnel, she reached into the pocket of her skirt for a tissue. Scrunched at the bottom she found Alec Winters’s letter and stared at it for a few minutes, not remembering why it was in her hand, why the man had written to her. She thought of slipping it back into her pocket—she still needed to find a tissue—but was momentarily distracted by the strips of sunburnt clouds flashing in between the buildings as she tried to let go of the hard ball of tension in her chest.

The train stopped at the 125
^th
Street Station. More commuters streamed in, looking for seats, walking past to the next cars. People-watching was one of Ellie Corvino’s favorite occupations, always ready to make snap judgments on what they did for a living, how happy or unhappy they were, from where they or their parents or grandparents had come. Right after Rob’s betrayal Lori had picked up the habit, counting on the great variety of faces and expressions to confirm her hope that life would be bearable again. Well, it had become more than bearable. Until now.
Put that thought aside,
Lori told herself,
and read Alec Winters’s letter.
She tore one end of the envelope open.

“Happy news, huh?” a man’s voice said from the aisle.

Lori looked up to her right. Janet’s husband was grinning at her, a welcome change from the beaten-dog look he’d been carrying around for the last couple of years. Seth still had the tight compact body from when he’d been a star of his college ski team, but now his dark brown hair was thinning and deep lines ran across a face Lori had thought handsome for many years.

“Hi, Seth. You’re looking good.” He was dressed in a gray suit, white shirt, blue tie—the perfect interview outfit—but from the relaxed look on his face, Lori guessed he had finally landed a job. She smiled back at him. Seeing satisfaction light Seth’s eyes again took the edge off this horrible day.

“Getting out of the hole, finally.” He raked fingers across what hair he had left. “Tough about Valerie, huh? No skin off your back, though.”

Seth had never scored high on sensitivity. Janet was always trying to find excuses for his blunders. “It’s terrible for Rob and for Jessica,” Lori reminded him.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean . . . any chance now the two of you—”

Lori cut him off. “No.”

“Rob’s going to be one filthy rich mister, but I guess there’s too much water under the bridge for the two of you—”

“A tsunami’s worth. And they’d only been married three days. I doubt Valerie had time to change her will.”

Seth leaned into the seat. “Right. Didn’t think of that.”

The man on the aisle seat next to Lori rustled his newspaper loudly, gave Seth a nasty look, and left his seat.

“Thank you, sir,” Seth said, and slipped in. “Now we can get personal. Isn’t it funny she should get it when Rob thought somebody was after him.”

Lori gave him a questioning look.

“He was telling everyone at the wedding.”

Lori played nonchalant. “That explains how Janet knew, before I told anyone.” She must have been too embarrassed to say they’d gone to the wedding. “Did you believe him?”

Seth shrugged. “Not really. You know how Rob likes to make a big deal out of nothing, but still . . . you never know these days. With all the bad news we keep getting, people are going crazy. What’s your take on it?”

“He was looking for sympathy,” Lori said. What if Rob was the intended victim? Was it possible? The killer would have to be blind not to spot the difference between Rob and Valerie, even with her wearing chinos and his baseball cap. Rob was thin but he had a paunch, his shoulders were wide, and his gait was heavy. Valerie moved with the lightness of a breeze. And why would anyone want to kill Rob? Or Valerie, for that matter? Lori hated the uncertainty of being lost in unanswered questions, in “what if” scenarios. She’d already had a year of it.

She changed the subject. “I’m glad you and Rob have made up your differences. Rob missed you.” Rob and Seth had been best friends since college, and they’d often gone out as a foursome, but about two years ago, Rob and Seth stopped speaking to each other. According to Rob, Seth had turned his back on the friendship because he was too ashamed he couldn’t pay back the five thousand dollars he had borrowed a few weeks before he lost his job. According to Janet, she had asked Seth to stop seeing Rob because she was tired of Rob rubbing his own success in Seth’s face. Rob did like to brag. Maybe Janet was right, maybe Rob was right. Or maybe the truth was somewhere in between.