Camilla T. Crespi - The Breakfast Club Murder (27 page)

“A sandwich is what you get.” Callie swayed down the narrow aisle between counter and booth, nodding as her customers greeted her.

Lori followed. “Please, Callie, just tell me. I haven’t been sleeping nights, wondering.”

Callie stopped and turned. “You look like you’ve had the best night’s sleep since you got rid of that man, so don’t go making up stuff.”

Lori felt herself blushing. Yes, she had slept wonderfully last night, dreaming. “I’m sorry. But how about telling me what you meant?”

Callie didn’t move. After a few seconds she called out to Cy, “Take over for five,” and walked out to the street. Callie’s Place had a bench on each side of the door. Callie sat in one. Lori sat next to her.

“I shouldn’t have opened my mouth,” Callie said, folding her arms over her aproned belly. “Words can put a snake in your heart. It was a bad day.” A pigeon waddled over to Callie and looked at her expectantly.

“Why was it bad?”

Callie reached into her pocket and scattered crumbs at her feet, then threw more crumbs in a widening arc to include the sparrows. “It’s the day Nick died, twenty-two years ago.” An aneurism had killed her husband in his sleep when he was only thirty-seven. Eugenia had been three at the time. Callie’s two boys, eleven and nine. “That’s the day I go to the cemetery and it breaks my heart in two because I see him, you know, like he’d be now. A little fat, a little bald, still with the moustache but now it’s gray like he’s been eating too many powdered sugar doughnuts. He never could get enough. I see him and I miss him so much it’s like a wall has dropped on my chest and I can’t breathe.” Callie squinted at Lori. She was facing the sun. “My kids think I’m nuts.”

Lori put her hand over Callie’s. “I think you’re still in love.”

Callie nodded. “Like the day he walked into my parents’ home to fix the piano.” She lifted her gaze to the blue dome of the sky. The wisps of clouds had disappeared. “I visit Nick every Sunday, but he only shows himself on the day he died, like he’s trying to tell me something about it. What do you think he’s trying to tell me?”

Lori didn’t know, but she felt a mixture of admiration and envy for Callie’s strength of feeling. “Maybe Nick is showing you that he didn’t die that day,” Lori said. “He’s still with you.”

Callie reached over and opened the coffee shop door. “Hey, Cy, did you have to go kill the pig?” she called out. “Lori’s hungry.” She let the door go. “Enough about my bad day. And don’t go telling anyone I’m seeing my husband’s ghost or there’ll be a run on the shop, if that Starbucks across the street doesn’t do me in first.”

“Never,” Lori said, but she wasn’t so sure. Downtown Hawthorne Park had once been a vibrant mixture of the quaint, the dilapidated, and the fashionable. The thrift shop sat next to the designer boutique, which shared a building with the bookstore. The exquisite little antique shop faced the pawnshop across the street, and the pharmacy with oak wainscoting, a beamed ceiling, and old apothecary jars in the window was next door to the hardware, which had been owned by the same family for over seventy-five years and looked like it hadn’t been dusted in over a hundred. Then the overflow of the wealthy from Greenwich had bought up homes in Hawthorne Park only to tear them down and build McMansions. The McStores—Starbucks, The Gap, Barnes and Noble, and CVS—followed.

“If you shut down, I’ll move,” Lori said, this time with conviction.

Callie grunted. “To where?”

“The Australian Outback. Now about your warning?”

Callie rubbed her eyes, scrunched up her face. “There’s nothing worse than a ratter, but sometimes you just have to, you know. So here goes.” Callie took a deep breath, then plunged. “When you asked your friends, sitting in my coffee shop, about the night that woman was killed, your friend Margot didn’t tell you everything.”

Lori leaned forward. “Go on.”

“Five minutes after that woman drove—”

“Her name was Valerie.”

Callie squared her shoulders. “Five minutes after that woman drove your kid and Margot’s kid home, Margot drove off and left those kids alone in that huge house.”

“How do you know that?”

“I know from my sixteen-year-old granddaughter Vicki, who babysits the Carltons’ ratty little dogs next door to Margot’s place. They got four dogs that yap their heads off if Vicki isn’t there to keep them company. And they growl whenever a car goes by or when Margot’s garage door opens or closes. So Vicki heard that woman drive up to Margot’s roundabout, and she saw Margot drive off five minutes later. Make of that what you will, and I’m sorry if this upsets you.”

“I’m surprised, that’s all.” Surprised and confused.
Why didn’t Margot tell me?
Lori asked herself.
Was she worried I’d be upset she’d left the girls alone? Did she see something she didn’t want to share? Where was she going? And what will happen to our friendship if I confront her?
“Thanks, Callie,” Lori said. “You’re not a ratter. Ratters are self-serving. You mean well.”

“Okay, since I’m so good, I’ll add some advice. Lose that real estate guy you’ve set your eyes on.”

Lori’s cheeks burned. “Who?”

“Jonathan something. Six-footer, handsome enough to curl your toes. That’s who.”

“What makes you think I’ve set my eyes on Jonathan Ashe?”

“Because Ellie came in here on Tuesday and told me he brought you flowers. Because last night I was sitting right here with Vicki and the two of you drove by, and you looked as pretty as a Georgia peach. Because today you look like you’ve swallowed that peach and liked it.”

Lori couldn’t believe her mother. Correction: she could believe, she just didn’t want to. “How do you know he’s in real estate?”

“Your mother Googled him.”

Ellie! What next? “Thanks for the advice, but I haven’t set my eyes on him.”

“Good. The right guy will come along. I feel it here.” Callie pointed to her heart.

“What do you have against Jonathan?”

“The fact that his looks curl my toes. You can take it for a Greek superstition, or Callie going crazy, but trust me on this. Curling my toes is not good.”

Cy’s hand reached out the door, holding a paper plate on which sat a toasted English muffin bacon sandwich.

Callie took it from him and handed it to Lori. “It’s on the house for all those nights you didn’t sleep, wondering. Now off with you.” Callie heaved herself up from the bench. “I’ve got to go make a living.”

Lori bit into the sandwich. It was delicious, but it didn’t stop her from doubting whether Callie had told her the whole truth. She loved Callie, wanted to accept her every word, but a man’s looks curling her toes?

In front of the neo-Victorian brick building that housed the Boathouse Restaurant, Ruth greeted Lori like a long-lost friend—kisses on both cheeks and a lung-scrunching hug. Ruth was a big woman with a smooth round face and the rosy cheeks of a kid, although she had to be at least forty according to Mrs. Ashe. She was wearing a beige short-sleeved pantsuit that matched the color of her short hair. An expensive-looking tiny red leather handbag dangled from one hand. On her feet, brand new white Nikes. She clutched Lori’s shoulders. “You must be feeling great!”

Lori extracted herself and asked, “Why?”

Ruth was already walking ahead of her through the gate to the terrace where she gave the hostess Lori’s name. The hostess, a pretty young blonde with a sexy swing to her walk, accompanied them to a front row table facing the lake and handed them two menus. A gondola that had once escorted the rowboats bobbed gently in front of them. In the distance the tall buildings of Central Park West rose above the canopy of trees.

Ruth looked at the water and shook her head. “Why can’t we sit there?” she asked, pointing to a table in front of the restaurant’s glass windows. The hostess bowed her head and walked them there. A couple at the next table were talking loudly into their cell phones.

“I bet they’re yelling at each other.” Ruth gave them an angry look and strode to the other side of the terrace. The hostess and Lori scrambled after her. “You’re it,” Ruth said to a table near the entrance, dropped her handbag on an empty chair, and sat with her back to the lake.
So much for picking an atmospheric restaurant,
Lori thought, as she gave the hostess an apologetic smile.

“Water gives me the creeps,” Ruth announced.

“You should have told me. I would have made a reservation elsewhere.”

“I’m good here. Isn’t it obvious why you should be feeling great? Valerie Fenwick, DDS, is dead. You know, when you slapped her, I had to pretend I was mad. I didn’t want to lose my job, but I could have hugged you.”

“You didn’t like Valerie?”

“Now I didn’t say that. She was my cousin, you know. Next thing you’ll think I killed her.” She stopped talking to squint at the menu, then started fanning herself with it. “Aren’t you hot? It’s hot. I’m too young to be flashing.”

The temperature was in the low eighties but Lori had to admit it was muggy.

“You’re flashing already, right?” Ruth asked.

“Wrong.” Lori was beginning to worry about this lunch.

Ruth ignored her answer. “All I’m saying is Valerie needed to be taken down a peg or two and you did it. No one ever had the guts. You have no idea what a spoiled brat she was. I lived with the Fenwicks for a few years when I was a kid, you know.”

“I had no idea you were cousins,” Lori said. Embarrassing Ruth by revealing that she knew about her falling out with Valerie’s parents would not get her the information she wanted.

“I was good for hired help, but she didn’t want anyone to know we shared genes.”

“Tell me more about her.”

The busboy came by to fill their water glasses. Without looking up, Ruth ordered the country pâté appetizer, the Boathouse burger well done, and a side order of the house-made
cavatelli.
The busboy nodded and went to fetch a waiter.

“She could do no wrong in that household,” Ruth said. “Her father adored her, her mother was drunk most of the time and didn’t know which way was up, and the servants were scared stiff of her.”

“Were you?”

“No. I made her cringe. She was rich, gorgeous, and skinny. I was poor, with acne all over my face and thirty extra pounds on my body.”

“Are you ready to order?” the waiter asked in a heavy Slavic accent.

“I already did,” Ruth said.

“I’m sorry, you have to tell me.”

“Why? Didn’t the kid understand English? Why do they hire people who don’t understand English?”

Lori felt like crawling under the table. “The kid is the busboy, Ruth. He’s not supposed to take our order.”

Ruth’s mistake did not faze her. “Are we going to get a bottle of wine?”

“I don’t drink,” Lori lied. “You’re welcome to have a glass if you want.” Lunch was on Lori.

After informing the waiter that red wine made her sweat, Ruth asked for a glass of Chardonnay, then rattled off her food order and picked up where she had left off. “We avoided each other. That way we got along just fine.” Lori slipped her order of a house salad and an appetizer portion of lump crab cake between Ruth’s sentences. “We worked together for nine years, and we got along because we kept it strictly business.”

How could this be the woman who Margot said had shed a lot of tears over Valerie’s death? “How long did you live with the Fenwicks?” Lori asked.

“Three or four years. I don’t remember. Then my stepfather wanted me back.”

Lori didn’t blame Ruth for lying, but she did want to know why the Fenwicks had asked her to leave. Maybe Ruth had a long-buried resentment that had come to the fore. Especially if there was money waiting in Valerie’s will. “You kept up with the Fenwicks?”

“Why are you asking about me? Who do you think killed Valerie? Rob?”

“Didn’t you tell Margot you thought a carjacker killed her?”

“That was a dumb thought. Valerie’s car wasn’t hijacked. Look, you’re here asking questions so I figured you were worried about your ex or for yourself.”

“I didn’t kill her and neither did Rob. He loved Valerie.”

“For her money.”

“He has money of his own,” Lori said, then quickly added, “Why do you think she married Rob? From what I hear she turned down many men, afraid it was her money they were after.”

A smug look appeared on Ruth’s face. She took her time answering. “Maybe at thirty-nine she thought she was getting old. And Rob is a charmer, isn’t he?”

“Valerie could have wanted children,” Lori said, finally voicing a fear she had held inside ever since Rob had announced he was marrying her.

Ruth raised both eyebrows. “Valerie ruin her figure? No way.”

Their food arrived and for a few minutes they didn’t speak. Ruth scraped her fork against her plate and chewed loudly. The wine glass was empty in two gulps. Lori watched her and decided her childhood must have been very miserable.

“Have the police questioned you?”

“Sure thing,” Ruth said. “Two of them came around to the office, which my new boss didn’t appreciate.”

“A new dentist has already moved in?”

“Three days after Valerie died, there he was, ready to take over her lease and her practice. Read about her death in the paper. That’s New Yorkers for you. A bunch of hyenas. You should try him. He’s good.”

“Have the detectives come around more than once?” Lori was trying to find out if the police suspected Ruth. “They’ve questioned me three or four times.”

“They’re buzzing. The minute someone leaves you even a little money in their will, they’re going to think it gives you motive. I’m getting a lousy fifty thousand. Rob’s the one who’s cashing in. He’s the one with motive to spare.”

Lori wanted to point out that people had been killed for much less than fifty thousand, but instead said, “Were you surprised Valerie left you money?”

“Valerie and I weren’t compatible but she was good to me. She hired me when I came back to the city and needed a job.” Ruth popped a cornichon into her mouth. “Blood is thicker than water.” She grabbed the waiter’s arm as he passed by. “Another glass of wine and tell the cook to ease up on the salt.” She released the waiter and turned to Lori. “Of course they oversalt the food on purpose so we’ll drink more. Liquor is how they make their money.”