Camilla T. Crespi - The Breakfast Club Murder (21 page)

“I don’t know,” Beth answered. “All she talked about was the murder. We all pledged to help you to try to find out more about Valerie, and maybe Janet has gotten too emotionally involved in the outcome. She’s had a rough year, but listening to her, I thought she was scared.”

“Thanks for telling me. If she’s still upset when she comes to work, I can try to make the evening easier for her. I’ll talk to her while we’re cleaning up and see if there’s anything we can do.”

“Good. I know your dinner is going to go off without a hitch. See you tomorrow at eleven. Don’t bring a thing. I’m picking up two quiches for us, mushroom and leek, from Callie’s before she closes tonight.”

After saying goodbye, Lori switched off her speaker phone and veered onto the exit for Hawthorne Park. Beth’s call had reminded her she had a question begging for an answer. She looked at the car clock. Nine thirty-five. She had time to take a detour.

Saturday morning, half the town came for breakfast at Callie’s. Lori had to walk past a long line to get to the coffee shop. It was the worst time to get Callie’s attention, but she couldn’t just go back to her kitchen and cook tomatoes. She had to find out what Callie meant by her warning to be careful of friends.

Eugenia, Callie’s daughter, was standing by a booth in the front, stacking dirty dishes on a tray while her sixteen-year-old daughter, Vicki, wiped the table clean. “I need to ask your mother a quick question,” Lori said, not catching sight of Callie.

“She’s not here,” Eugenia said, “and this is no time to ask any of us questions. If you want to eat, get in line, if not . . .” Eugenia lifted the tray above Lori’s head and walked back toward the kitchen without another word.

Vicki leaned toward Lori and whispered, “Grandma’s at the cemetery,” before waving in the next customers.

Lori thanked Vicki and walked out onto the street, back to her car. Callie at the cemetery, probably visiting Nick, her husband. His picture, showing a handsome burly man with a snazzy moustache and a thick head of wavy black hair, hung in a black frame in the coffee shop, over the cakes display. It was Nick’s life insurance money and a bank loan that had allowed Callie to buy the coffee shop and provide for her family.

Lori sat in her car. It smelled funny. The police must have sprayed some chemical on the seats. She opened all the windows and picked up her cell phone. She didn’t have time to come back today, and tomorrow, Sunday, the coffee shop would be closed. She would have to wait until Monday, after breakfast with the girls. Lori punched in her mother’s phone number. When Ellie answered, she said, “I’d like to go with you to go visit Papa tomorrow.”

There was silence at the other end of the line.

“I know, it’s been a long time.”

“You’ve still got Margot’s Mercedes?”

“Yes.” Beth was going to help her return the car tomorrow.

“Come by at nine and honk the horn. I want Mrs. DeRosa to bite her tongue from envy.”

Lori laughed to herself. Mrs. DeRosa was Ellie’s sworn enemy because Papa had once, under the influence of too much wine at a block party, declared for everyone to hear that there wasn’t a finer specimen of womanhood in the entire block than Mrs. Ernestine DeRosa.

Lori pressed the speaker button and started the car toward home. “How’s Joey Pellegrino?”

“Lonely. His family’s gone to Long Island for a couple of weeks. I was thinking of inviting him over for some food.”

Lori didn’t like the sound of that. “He’s a vegan?”

“Don’t go huffy on me. I can still remember how to make a meat sauce that’ll put hair on your chest.”

“I’ll remember that if I should ever need it.”

“I didn’t raise you to be a sarcastic daughter.”

“You’re right. I’m sorry. It’s just that—”

“Loretta, don’t go there. There’s nothing wrong in feeding a lonely man.”

“Mom, a
married
lonely man.”

“All right, Miss High and Mighty, we’ll take up this discussion after you’ve been without a man’s company for years, and now I’ve got this to tell you. This married man is clamming up on me. He’s just remembered that he may be retired, but he’s still a cop and if he leaks anything out it might compromise the investigation. See you at nine sharp and don’t forget to honk real loud.”

Lori parked in the garage next to Margot’s car and sat back against the seat. She was sorry she’d been patronizing and sarcastic with Ellie. She had no right to interfere, especially since she’d always resented her mother butting in on her life. And who was she to make moral judgments? It was only a dinner. It didn’t have to mean anything else. How had Rob’s affair with Valerie started? Chit-chat between drillings, then a friendly lunch to keep each other company? Lori knew that her role as betrayed wife made her very sensitive about married men stepping out on their wives, but it was the yearning in Ellie’s voice that had gone straight to her heart. The realization of how great her mother’s neediness was, the extent of her loneliness, hurt terribly. Ellie had hidden it well behind an in-your-face attitude of independence. Or maybe Lori, smug in her married happiness, had never stopped to read between the lines of Ellie’s bluster as she had never spotted Beth’s unhappiness. Now she hurt for her mother and her friend. She worried for herself. Was loneliness her only future, too?

While the peppers were blistering in the broiler, the pasta water was reaching a boil for the orzo, and the tomato soup was waiting to be strained, Lori’s doorbell rang. She took a quick peek out the kitchen window. A car she didn’t recognize sat next to her driveway. Whoever it was, a reporter, a Jehovah’s Witness, the Ten Million Dollar Sweepstakes people, she didn’t care. Right now she couldn’t deal with anything except Mrs. Ashe’s dinner. She checked the broiler. The peppers were nicely charred, the peel already curling away. Lori used a pair of tongs to remove the peppers and drop them into a paper bag, which she folded over to let them steam and cool down. The doorbell stopped ringing. The lid on the pasta pot started rattling. Before Lori could reach the stove, the lid lifted and foamy water gushed out of the pot. She ran to lift the lid and cried out. The lid dropped to the floor. Her fingertips throbbed. She went to the windowsill, tore off a leaf from the aloe plant, pierced the stalk open with a fingernail and pressed it against her fingers to let the gooey juice soothe the burn. A tap on the window made Lori look up.

Margot waved fingers at her. “Let me in,” she mouthed.

Margot clacked into the kitchen on her high-heeled mules and pecked Lori’s cheeks.

“What brings you here?” Lori asked. She was too busy and in too foul a mood to welcome the interruption.

“I was worried about you.”

Lori dropped the orzo in the boiling pasta water. “There’s no reason to be.”

Margot sat on one of the ladder-backed chairs and crossed her legs carefully. She was wearing a skimpy white dress that would have looked great on Jessica or Angie. “The police are looking into phone calls.”

Lori turned to look at her friend. Margot’s usually alabaster complexion looked flushed and a frown was trying to worm its way through the Botox freeze. Lori set the timer for five minutes, knowing she would need a reminder, and sat facing Margot.

“How do you know?”

“Two big detectives came over. They said they were in charge of the case, that they had my phone records, and they wanted to know why I’d called your cell the night Valerie died instead of calling you on your home phone. I didn’t know how to lie. I’m sorry.” Tears appeared at the edges of Margot’s eyes. “I’m so sorry.”

“It’s all right. Really. Lying would have only made things worse. Scardini and Mitchell would have found out sooner or later.” They couldn’t arrest her on such skimpy grounds, could they? No. At the most it meant the two would come visiting, ply her with questions again. She hoped not today. “Come on, Margot, they’re not going to arrest me.” She stood up and circled Margot’s chair to put an arm around her. To Lori’s immense surprise, Margot was crying into her hands. Margot crying for her? It was sweet, but out of character. Lori ran a hand across Margot’s shoulders and waited for her to calm down. Her ideas of the world around her were being totally upended.

After a couple of minutes, Margot looked up. “I’m so sorry. It’s just that—”

The timer went off. “Give me a sec,” Lori said. She fished out a few bits of orzo with a ladle, blew on the pasta to cool it down and tasted. It needed two more minutes. Margot joined her at the stove, her face composed. Lori smiled at her and noticed, in a frivolous second she was instantly ashamed of, that Margot’s mascara hadn’t run.

“You saw Jonathan yesterday,” Margot said lightly.

“Yes, we had lunch together. He wanted to fill me in on what he’d found out about Valerie.”

“What?”

“He knew about Ruth, but you’d already told me.”

Margot looked down on the boiling pasta pot as if she’d never seen the likes of it before. “Do you like him?” she asked finally, in the same tone of voice she used to ask if anyone wanted a drink.

“Sure.” Without checking the orzo, Lori lifted the pot off the stove—with oven mitts this time—and drained the pasta in the fine mesh colander she had placed in the sink. “Jonathan’s fun, good-looking, nice. What’s not to like?” She ran cold water over the orzo to stop the cooking.

“Be careful,” Margot said, narrowing her eyes.

Lori was reminded of a cat eyeing a fishbowl. “Why?”

“He plays the field.”

“I wasn’t planning to marry him. He hasn’t asked me out, either.”

Margot kissed her. Lori’s nose was overwhelmed by the smell of Opium. “I don’t want you to get hurt.”

“Thanks for letting me know about the police,” Lori said, dropping the orzo into a stainless steel bowl. “You did the right thing and please don’t worry. Now I really have to concentrate on the dinner.”

Margot offered to help, despite her freshly manicured nails. Lori turned her down with a laugh.

Later, while peeling the peppers and cutting them into thin strips, Lori thought about Margot’s warning. That Jonathan played the field didn’t come as a surprise. And he was at least five years younger than she was. Did it matter? If he asked her out, would she say yes? She was sure he would make a beautiful, considerate lover. She’d always thought lovers were like the tasty pre-dinner bites fancy restaurants offered, what the French called
amuse-bouche,
something to keep the mouth entertained momentarily. Maybe that could be all right for now, but she wasn’t too old to hope for a solid, deeply satisfying relationship with a man. If she was capable of loving a man again.

Lori was in Jonathan Ashe’s gray marble kitchen, having just finished setting the dinner table, when Janet arrived with a hand truck that held three boxes filled with flowers in their vases. Janet had put on makeup, unusual for her, and tied her old-fashioned pageboy in a low ponytail. She looked pretty and young, dressed in the catering staff uniform: black loafers, white socks, black trousers, a white button-down shirt, and a black bow tie she had borrowed from Seth. Lori was wearing the same outfit without the bow tie.

“You look good,” Lori said, opening up the bread stick boxes. “Thanks for coming so early.” It was five o’clock. The guests were expected at seven. “Those flowers are gorgeous.”

“It’s all Sally’s doing.”

“I’m sure you helped.” Janet was always putting herself down, and after what Beth had said, Lori expected Janet to be upset or nervous. If she was, she was keeping it well hidden, to Lori’s great relief. She wanted Mrs. Ashe’s birthday party to be as perfect as she could make it. If the guests were impressed, she was counting on them to spread the word or hire her for their own parties. Later, when they were washing up, she and Janet would have a talk.

“Where shall I put them?” Janet asked.

“Anywhere you’d like.” Lori knew exactly where she wanted the flowers, but micromanaging was counterproductive. She’d learned that lesson from Ellie. Lori was hoping she and Janet could become a team if and when Corvino Catering took off.

“Hey, Janet,” Jonathan called out, striding into the kitchen in bare feet, a white terry cloth bathrobe covering what Lori presumed was his naked body. His hair was still wet from the shower. “Glad you’re here to help out,” he said.

“Hi,” Janet said, and hurried out of the room with her box of flowers.

Jonathan edged himself next to Lori at the island in the center of the room, close enough for her to smell the soap he’d used: sandalwood. She carefully rolled prosciutto slices onto pencil-thin bread sticks and thought of the first time she had seen Jonathan. At the car wash, chatting with Janet as if they were old friends. “Need anything, Lori?”

She wanted to ask him how he and Janet knew each other, but she was afraid of sounding jealous.

“I can help.” Jonathan reached for a prosciutto slice and folded it into his mouth.

Lori pushed him away with her hip. The intimacy of the gesture brought instant heat to her cheeks. “No distractions, please, and no picking at the food.”

“Anything you say. Until later, then.” He planted a kiss on the back of her neck that sent a shiver down her spine. His departure left wet footprints on the floor.

Janet walked back into the kitchen. “The flowers are in place. What do you want me to do now?”

Lori asked her to arrange the cheeses on the ornate, gold-edged Mottahedeh platters Mrs. Ashe had given her, platters that had been wedding gifts. Platters that would need to be hand washed with the rest of the gold-edged Duke of Gloucester dinner service. Next time, Lori promised herself, she would ask to see the plates before setting a price.

“How do you know Jonathan?”

“From the shop,” Janet said.

“He orders flowers for his girlfriends?” Lori wanted to kick herself for acting like a schoolgirl, but that kiss on the back of her neck had made her go soft in the head.

“He comes in with his mother to pick an orchid, which we make into a corsage for her. It’s a weekly ritual.”

“I don’t like to give up old habits,” Mrs. Ashe said from the doorway.

Startled, Lori broke the bread stick in her hand. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Ashe.” Lori turned around to face Jonathan’s mother, who looked the epitome of old New York elegance in her long mauve chiffon gown, triple string of pearls resting on the shelf of her bosom, a deep purple orchid corsage pinned just below one shoulder. A hair stylist had swept her silvery gray hair high above her forehead. She looked like she was wearing a tiara. “I hope you won’t think we were gossiping.”