Camilla T. Crespi - The Breakfast Club Murder (16 page)

“I thought you guys had gone deaf,” Ellie answered.

“We have now. I was on the phone and Jess was in the bathroom.” One day soon she had to stop making excuses for her daughter. “Come on in, Mom.”

Ellie stepped inside and lifted both her arms. Her satchel hung limp from the crook of her elbow. “You can stop worrying. The only food I’ve got on me is mints. I’m counting on being able to eat your stuff. If not, I’ll starve.” Ellie offered one cheek, then the other, the Italian way she insisted on.

Lori kissed her and smelled Chanel No. 5. Her mother’s only perfume ever since Marilyn Monroe told a radio interviewer that was all she wore to bed. “Do you have news from Joey Pellegrino?”

Ellie slipped off her shoes, short-heeled navy pumps. “Is Jess coming down?” She was whispering.

“Of course she is. She wants to say hello to you.” Lori found herself whispering, too. “Did Pellegrino call?”

Instead of answering, Ellie headed for the kitchen in her bare feet, the pumps abandoned on the front hall floor. Lori followed, noticing the blue cotton suit her mother was wearing, the stockings on her legs. Perfume she only wore on Easter Sunday and Christmas Day. “You look good, Mom. What’s the occasion?” She was even wearing makeup. Only her hair retained its helter-skelter look.

Ellie lowered herself into her usual ladder-backed chair by the kitchen table. “I had meetings.” She fingered one of Jonathan’s roses. “Did you put in a drop of bleach? That’ll keep them for days. Kills the bacteria.”

“I thought the trick was half an aspirin.”

“Flowers don’t get headaches. Use bleach.”

Lori walked over to a kitchen cabinet and took down a box of De Cecco spaghetti. “Was one of your meetings with Pellegrino?”

“Holy sky, Loretta! The murder can wait. Now I want to be with my family, all that’s left of it, have some supper,
and
”—she swung her satchel onto the table, where it landed with a thud— “fix up your face.” Ellie rummaged inside, took out five jars of cream. “This is top of the line, costs a fortune, but it’s worth it for my baby.”

Lori smiled. She hadn’t been Ellie’s baby in years. Her mother must have good news. Of what kind, Lori couldn’t guess.

Ellie held up one jar. “Morning regime. You exfoliate with this”—she held up another cream—“then you smear on this antioxidant cream.” The last two she pointed at. “Next, moisturizer, eye-lifting cream, then sunblock. At night you skip the exfoliant and the sunblock. In a month you’ll be as good as new. Keep them in the fridge.”

“I didn’t think I looked that bad, but thanks. I’ll give it a try.” Lori gathered up the jars, still in their cellophane wrappers, and released them into the refrigerator’s vegetable bin. She was never going to put all that stuff on her face, she told herself as she took out a pint of tomatoes and some basil and walked back to the counter. “Now for supper, I’m making Jess’s favorite summer pasta. Spaghetti with a sauce of fresh cherry tomatoes, basil, ricotta, and olive oil.” She’d made the ricotta this morning after throwing out the gnocchi dough. A welcome-back-home present for Jessica. “I’ll leave out the ricotta for you, okay?”

“Yes, but remember your father’s lessons. The spaghetti has to be
al dente
and put in enough salt in the water,
after
it boils, so it tastes like the Mediterranean.”

“Hi, Grammy.” Jessica walked in. She was wearing her new Gap jeans and a striped blue and white shirt she had snitched from her father. Lori thought she looked lovely and brave. “Why can’t you put in the salt before?”

“The water takes longer to boil. Hi, gorgeous. Come and kiss your Grammy.” Jessica kissed Ellie on both cheeks. “So. Sit down next to me and tell me all about yourself.”

Jessica talked about her upcoming trip with Angie, about the shopping she and Lori had done that afternoon. Lori prepared dinner. Jessica helped set the table. They ate. Ellie approved of the food with a nod of her head and a second helping. They talked about the latest fun movies, about the boredom of the summer reruns on TV, about Ellie’s passion for Sudoku. Valerie’s murder was carefully avoided. After a dessert of vanilla sorbet and warm berry sauce, Jessica loaded the dishwasher and excused herself. “I’ve got stuff to do.”

“Sure, hon. Thanks for the help.”

“I’m working Saturday,” Ellie said. “You come visit. And when you get back from Cape Cod I’m going to put you to work. It’s time you learned how to earn some money.”

“I’ll come with Angie.” Jessica kissed her grandmother and loped away to the inner sanctum of her room upstairs.

“Mom, I haven’t seen you look so elegant in ages,” Lori said, quickly washing the spaghetti pot and the pasta bowl. “Tell me about these meetings.”

Ellie shrugged and ran her fingers through her hair. Lori left the pot and bowl to dry on their own and sat down facing her mother. “Was one of those meetings with Joey Pellegrino?”

Ellie raised her chin to the door. “I don’t want Jess to hear.”

That didn’t sound good, Lori thought, as she got up to close the door. “What’s up?” she asked, sitting back down.

“Joey treated me to a drink in Greenwich.” That explained the fancy clothes, the perfume, the makeup. “He’s very happy to help me.” The dreamy look in Ellie’s eyes squeezed Lori’s heart. She had never stopped to think how lonely her mother must have been all these years, raising her daughter alone, working six days a week. Never a date with another man while Lori still lived with her. And now here she was with a crush on a married police captain. It was sweet, senseless, and sad all at the same time. “He sounds like a very nice man,” Lori said.

“Too nice. His wife doesn’t know how good she’s got it.”

“Mom, be careful. I don’t want you to get hurt.”

“What are you talking about? I just had a drink with the guy. To help you.”

“I know. I really appreciate it. Thanks.”

“The police lab isn’t through with your car yet, but those two detectives went to talk to Valerie’s lawyer.” Ellie crossed her arms under her chest and leaned back on the chair with a smug look on her face.

“What, Mom?”

“Both Rob and Valerie rewrote their wills the morning she was killed, and it’s manna from heaven for our little Jess.” The grin on Ellie’s face could have put the Cheshire Cat out of business.

“She left Jess money?”

“She left the whole pot of gold to Rob, with just a few thousand to her office manager.”

“Seth was right, then.”

“What about Seth?” Ellie had been Seth and Janet’s travel agent when they still had money to go places.

“I met him on the train yesterday. He assumed Valerie’s will had already been changed in Rob’s favor.”

“That’s Seth for you, always guessing at things. How’s he doing? Got a job yet?”

“I think so. He looked pretty happy yesterday, although Janet didn’t say anything this morning so I could be wrong. What else did Pellegrino tell you?”

Heat rose up Ellie’s face like pasta water roiling to a boil. “Lots, but it had nothing to do with the murder.” She pushed herself up from the table with both hands. “I’m going home. It’s been a big day for me.”

“Thanks for your help, Mom.” Lori gave Ellie a rare strong hug. “And the creams.”

Ellie pushed herself away. She’d never been one for physical shows of affection, except for the regimented double kiss. “Just because your husband left you is no reason to stop looking your best.” She walked to the front hall. Lori followed. “And who knows what’s around the corner.” She tried to slip back into her pumps, found she couldn’t, and brought them up close to her nose to examine them. “Why did they shrink?”

“The air-conditioning,” Lori said. She picked up the shoes and handed them to her mother, who could never admit to swollen feet. “I’ll get you a pair of open-back slippers.” Ellie had size nine feet, Lori and Jessica size seven and a half.

“Forget it. These stockings have a run in them anyway. Has that handsome young man come calling again?”

“Men don’t come calling anymore, Mom. If anything they e-mail. And no, I haven’t heard from Jonathan.” Although she had caught herself thinking about him a few times.

“I bet you think men don’t open car doors for women anymore either.” Ellie smiled and waved a finger in the air. “But they do. They do. I wish that for you. A man who comes calling with flowers and opens doors for you. Good night and make sure Jess comes over Saturday.”

Lori wished her mother good night and watched as she padded down the walkway to her car.

From across the street a camera flashed. A woman came running across the street, a camera man following her. Ellie veered from the path and pushed all her weight right into the woman, who fell backward with a yelp.

Lori had time to hear her mother apologize loudly before shutting the door. She did not answer the doorbell.

Jessica walked into her parents’ bedroom in her pajamas and settled herself on Rob’s side of the bed.

Lori, who was already in bed, put her book down and smiled at her daughter.

“Mom?” Jessica took in a big breath as if getting ready to lift something heavy.

“Hi sweetie, what’s up?”

“All those flowers you got? You’d tell me if you had a boyfriend, right?”

“You’d be the first to know.” Lori explained why Alec Winters had sent her flowers. She also brought up Jonathan’s yellow roses. “They were both just being nice, honey. What about you? You’d tell me if you had a boyfriend, right?”

Jessica rolled over on her hip, her head propped up by her arm. She looked at her mother for a few seconds, her expression intent. “I don’t know, Mom,” she said in a hesitant voice. “I mean, if I got serious with someone I’d feel funny about telling you.”

“Whatever for?”

“Wouldn’t it make you feel bad? Being alone and all?”

Lori reached over and gently lifted a strand of hair from Jessica’s face. How lucky she was to have this generous child. “If he treated you nicely, I’d be happy for you. And I’m not alone. I have you, my friends, my work. That’s more than enough. Life isn’t just about having a man in your life. It really isn’t.”

“Well, maybe, but there’s this guy in school, kinda nerdy? Skinny? Wears glasses? But I think he’s cute. He’s a year ahead of me and he hasn’t noticed I exist so I can’t call him a boyfriend.” Jessica giggled. “Yet.”

“What’s his name?”

“Ha!” Jessica sat up. “I’m not going to tell you. You’ll call up his mother and arrange something totally obnoxious.”

“That sounds more like Grammy.”

“Yeah, it does, but you’re her daughter.”

“And you’re mine. So then how about giving him an alias? That way you can refer to him whenever you want and I’ll know he’s your special guy.”

“Okay. Deuce.”

Shake It Up
had been Jessica’s favorite program before she moved on to more adult fare. “Can you tell me why you like Deuce so much?”

“I don’t know. I’d just like to go up to him and say hi. He looks so lost.”

“Why don’t you?”

“Because if I do, I might kiss him. That’s what I really want. That would be way too embarrassing.”

“Say hi from a safe distance.”

“Then what if he comes close?”

“You smile that smile of yours and he’s a goner.”

Jessica blushed. “You’re just saying that.”

“If he isn’t, he doesn’t deserve you.”

“Oh, Mom.” Jessica flung herself at Lori, hugged her, and with the hug, the sobs came. Lori cried with her. Each hid her face, but held on tight to the other.

“It’s going to be okay again, honey,” Lori said, after Jessica quieted down. She handed her the tissue box and dried her own tears with the palms of her hands. “I promise.” She was completely beat from too much emotion. “What have you got planned for tomorrow?”

“Angie, me, and a group of kids from school are going to Playland.”

“Is Deuce going to be there?”

Jessica nodded, the blush rising on her cheeks like a fever.

Grammy and Jess were both harboring crushes, Lori thought. In Jess’s case it was lovely. “You should go.”

“It’s okay? I mean, with Valerie dead?”

Maybe it wasn’t okay, but Jessica needed to have fun. “Why don’t you ask your father?”

Jessica scrambled over Lori to get off the bed. “I’m going to call Dad now.”

“It’s past eleven thirty.”

“He never goes to sleep before two. Don’t you remember?”

“I guess I didn’t. I’m sure he’ll say it’s okay.” She sat up and blew Jess a kiss. “Good night, sweetie. Sleep tight.”

Hours later a weight fell on Lori, waking her up. With only the light of a half moon to help her, Lori turned her head slowly to see Jessica lying next to her, fast asleep. Lori leaned over, planted a light kiss on Jessica’s forehead, and cradling the arm her daughter had flung across her chest, closed her eyes. With a great sense of peace, she fell back asleep.

The day was gleaming as Lori drove onto the grounds of the exclusive, two-hundred-thousand-dollars-initiation-fee Maples Country Club. The clubhouse, a low stone building barely visible through the trees, spread itself on top of a hill of wild grasses sprinkled with black-eyed Susans. As Lori reached the roundabout, she stole a quick glance at the rearview mirror. In a burst of foolishness she had layered all of Ellie’s creams on her skin before leaving the house. She was surprised oil wasn’t oozing out of her pores, although her skin actually didn’t look half bad.

“Hey, Lori,” Warren said, coming out of the club as soon as she stepped out of Margot’s Mercedes. He was wearing green slacks, a yellow linen shirt, and tasseled loafers without socks. Short, stocky, with a sizable paunch and a large flattened nose, it was the power he exuded that attracted both men and women to him, a power he wore as lightly as the shirt on his back.

Warren kissed Lori’s cheek while taking the car keys from her and handing them to a waiting valet, who drove the Mercedes to some hidden region of the club. “Margot’s car looks good with you in it. I’ll tell her to give it to you. I paid for the damn thing.”

Lori smiled. “I can’t afford the upkeep.”

Warren wagged a finger at her. “Your fault, not mine. Kidding aside, I’m glad you’re here.” He squeezed her arm.