Dying in Style (22 page)

“Oh, I don’t know,” Alyce said softly. “I heard Danessa wasn’t very permissive. Wasn’t there a scene with her at the country club?”

“That self-righteous bitch,” Amy said. Her skin wasn’t flushed with alcohol now, but anger. She stood up. “Well, ladies, it’s been fun, but I have to go. Things to do, people to eat.”

Amy laughed raucously and teetered out on her black stiletto heels, hips swinging provocatively. Her salad was untouched. She’d had a liquid lunch.

“You know her,” Josie said. “Do you think Amy is telling the truth about Kate?”

“The only thing Amy likes better than sleeping with other women’s husbands is trashing other women’s reputations,” Alyce said. “I enjoyed turning the tables on her for once.”

Alyce said it with such bitterness, Josie wondered if Amy had been between the sheets with Jake. Was Alyce’s barb about Danessa a payback? Amy must still burn with her public humiliation at the country club. She’d left suddenly after Alyce mentioned it. Did any of the politely eavesdropping women in the restaurant witness Danessa’s attack on Amy?

“When you think about it,” Josie said, “Amy’s story doesn’t make much sense. Why wouldn’t Kate bury it in the backyard? The ones in your subdivision have high fences.”

“Because her backyard is paved in granite blocks,” Alyce said.

“Sounds cozy,” Josie said.

“You have to see it to believe it.”

“Do you really think Kate could have a baby and no one would notice she was pregnant?” Josie asked.

“I know this sounds mean, but no one notices anything about Kate but those teeth and that hair. I want to kidnap her and take her to a good salon. She has beautiful eyes and a terrific figure, but nobody sees it. Half the time she’s wearing these flappy things that make her look like a scarecrow in a windstorm. So, yes, she could hide triplets under her clothes. From what I’ve heard about her husband, he wouldn’t bother to look.”

“Maybe she wasn’t burying a baby,” Josie said. “Maybe she was burying something that belonged to Serge—some papers, some of that fake nuclear weapons material, maybe some keepsake from their affair.”

“It’s possible,” Alyce said. “But when you bury it in the dead of night, you sure don’t want people to know what it is.”

“Do you think Amy told the police that Kate may have buried something?” Josie said.

“I doubt it. We would have seen the crime-scene people digging up Kate’s yard,” Alyce said. “Amy’s not a tattletale—she’s a gossip. By her rules, ratting Kate out to the cops wouldn’t be playing fair.”

“So how do we get Kate to tell us what she buried?” Josie said.

“It won’t be easy,” Alyce said. “I’ve been on committees with her. She’s a weeper. Kate bursts into tears to avoid anything unpleasant. We’ll have to surprise her into talking. Once the waterworks start, you won’t get much out of her.”

“Let me do the questioning,” Josie said. “You have to live in this neighborhood. Just get me into Kate’s house.”

“That’s easy. We’ll collect for my library charity,” Alyce said. “But I’m going with you. I wouldn’t miss this for the world—even if I’m barred from the women’s club for life.”

Kate lived next door to Serge and Danessa in a gray stone French château with a moat and swans. Three hundred years ago, the inhabitants would have been dragged from the house and guillotined.

As they drove up the hill to Kate’s château, Josie looked at the FOR SALE sign and shuddered. She tried to see if there was a small mound near it, but there was no indication that anything had been buried in the beautifully manicured lawn.

“Kate’s home,” Alyce said. “That’s her Cadillac Escalade.”

“Which way does Amy live from here?” Josie said.

“Just over the hill,” Alyce said. “Why?”

“Drive up to Amy’s house,” Josie said. “I want to see something.”

Amy lived in a golden stone Italian palace. “Good Lord,” Josie said. “It’s immense. Look at the loggia and the courtyard with a fountain.”

“I think Amy was a Borgia in a past life,” Alyce said. “That’s one reason why I’ve declined her dinner invitations.”

“Is she home?” Josie said.

“No, she parks her Jaguar out front.”

“Then park in front of Amy’s place, will you?” Josie said.

Alyce pulled over. Josie rolled down the window and peered out. Amy’s palace was surrounded on three sides by those tall, gloomy evergreens that showed up in so many Italian paintings. What did it cost to bring them in?

“Now drive around the side of Amy’s house,” Josie said.

“What do you see?” Alyce said.

“It’s what I don’t see,” Josie said. “There’s no way Amy saw Kate bury something by the For Sale sign if she looked out her windows. The front of the house faces away from Kate’s. She’d have to look out the side. Kate’s FOR SALE sign is screened by those tall evergreens. Kate’s house is surrounded by a six-foot yew hedge. You only see the FOR SALE sign if you are coming up the hill toward Kate’s house.”

“I’m not sure what you’re saying,” Alyce said.

“If Amy saw Kate burying anything, she had to be in Kate’s yard. That means she was either in Kate’s yard helping her bury whatever it was or hiding out and stalking her. I don’t believe she would help Kate do anything. Amy has a real hate-on for that woman. I saw it in her face at lunch. Even all that alcohol couldn’t wash it away.”

“So what’s it mean?” Alyce said.

“I don’t know yet.”

“Then let’s find out,” Alyce said. “Batten down the hatches. Things are going to get soggy.”

Josie was glad she had on her Suburban Lady outfit. When Kate answered the door, she was wearing almost the same thing. No flappy clothes today. But she didn’t have anything to hide anymore. She looked like she’d either been crying or had a cold. Her eyes and nose were red. She carried a box of extra-soft tissues.

“I’m collecting donations for my inner-city library association,” Alyce said. “Anything you can give us—books, textbooks, paperbacks or money—would be welcome.”

“Oh, good,” Kate said. “I have boxes of books. We’re moving, you know. Come in. If you can take them off my hands, I’d be ever so grateful.”

Kate sounded as if Alyce really was doing her a favor by taking the books. Alyce was right. Kate was not a pretty woman. Josie tried not to stare at her lank hair and prominent teeth. But there was something about her that was so sweet, Josie had to like her.

Alyce and Josie followed Kate into a vast entry hall. Their footsteps echoed on the stone floors. The walls were stone, too, and colder than a bill collector’s heart. Even the fireplace and the tapestries on the walls didn’t warm up the house. Josie expected beheadings on the back deck, jousting in the courtyard and prisoners groaning in the basement.

The library’s bookshelves were twelve feet high. Stone statues of medieval saints with their eyes turned heavenward stood on pedestals. There was also a black-framed tomb rubbing of a knight, armored hands resting on his sword.

“That’s an old rubbing,” Kate said proudly, “before the British outlawed them.”

Josie imagined the dead knight in her own living room. He might scare Amelia into picking up her inline skates.

An army of packers was wrapping books in white paper. “My husband’s first editions,” Kate said. “He has an extensive collection of medical textbooks. I can give you some children’s books that my four boys have outgrown and boxes of popular novels, mostly romances and mysteries.”

Love and death, Josie thought.

“Super,” Alyce said. “Show me where they are and I’ll start loading them.”

“Oh, no,” Kate said. “I’ll have Marino carry them out.”

She gave instructions to a short, muscular man. It took the man half an hour to haul the boxes out to Alyce’s SUV. While he worked, Alyce and Kate sipped iced tea, ate dainty cookies and made small talk about committees until Josie was ready to climb the stone walls.

Josie wanted to ask Kate what was buried in her yard. But she knew Alyce was right. They had to lull Kate into talking about soothing subjects, then spring the tough one on her. While they talked, Kate never sneezed or blew her nose. Josie didn’t think she had a cold. Kate was in deep mourning, for either her lost man or her lost child.

When the last box of books was loaded, Kate looked pointedly at her gold-and-diamond watch and said, “Anything else? I have to leave soon. I have an appointment.”

Alyce gave a barely perceptible nod. It was time.

“Just one question,” Josie said. “What did you bury by the FOR SALE sign?”

The blood drained from Kate’s long face. Her lips drew back over her horse teeth, making them seem cruelly large. Her beautiful brown eyes were stricken.

“Please, please,” she said, clinging desperately to Josie’s arm. “You can’t tell my husband. Bob doesn’t know about him. I buried him at night so Bob would never find out. You can’t tell him. You can’t.”

“I can,” Josie said, “if you don’t tell us what happened.”

Kate started gulping air. “I didn’t want to do it. I didn’t. But I needed help so bad. I heard he was the only one who could do it.”

Do what? Josie wondered. But now the words were spilling out of Kate.

“I paid cash to get him so my husband wouldn’t see it on my charge card. I can’t have Bob find out. We’re Catholic, but he doesn’t go in for things like that.”

“Adultery?” Josie said, then wished she hadn’t. Kate turned bright red, but didn’t deny it.

“It’s worse than that,” Kate said. “I buried a statue of Saint Joseph by the FOR SALE sign.”

She paused dramatically, as if she’d confessed to the crime of the decade.

Josie started to laugh. Burying Saint Joseph was a harmless city tradition for house sellers.

Kate didn’t think it was funny. She burst into furious tears. Alyce gave Josie a “now you’ve done it” look.

“You don’t know what Bob’s like,” Kate wept. “He’s a doctor. A man of science. He hates superstition. He thinks burying statues is for the poor and ignorant.”

Josie couldn’t help it. Her eyes shifted to the bloodless stone saints lining the library.

“Those are different,” Kate said quickly. “Those are works of art. My husband would be violently opposed to burying a plastic statue. He says it’s lower class.”

Josie got the feeling that was a greater sin than adultery.

“Bob is a good man,” Kate said, “but relations between us are strained right now. I wouldn’t do anything to make them worse. If he finds out, he’ll be furious. It could be the end for us.

“I knew this house would be hard to sell. Our real estate agent said so. We had a murder next door and the police are still all over the subdivision. But everyone, even people who aren’t Catholic, say Saint Joseph works. You’re supposed to bury his statue upside down by the FOR SALE sign, and he’ll sell the house for you. Bob and I had been talking about moving for some time. After Serge died, I couldn’t bear to live here another moment.”

Kate was crying and hugging the tissue box. She stopped to blow her nose noisily.

“You fell in love with him,” Josie said gently. She didn’t want to judge this woman. She wasn’t a paragon of virtue herself.

Kate hung her head and sniffled.

“I won’t tell your husband,” Josie said. “I understand. It’s lonely here, rattling around in this big empty house while Bob’s at the hospital with all those glamorous nurses and women doctors.”

Kate gave a small nod. “Bob was having an affair with an ER nurse. Someone was kind enough to tell me, but I knew already. My husband was never home. That’s not an excuse, I know, for what I did. But I was lonely, like you said. The only people I talked to all day were my twins and my committee chair.

“Then I met Serge. I never intended our love to happen, but he was so masterful, so sensitive. He listened to me. He loved me.”

Josie could feel the woman’s loneliness clinging to her like a shroud. Kate prettied up her affair with florid phrases from the romance novels she loved to read. Marino had taken boxes of them to Alyce’s SUV. He’d also moved heaps of murder mysteries. Josie wondered if Kate had absorbed their lessons as well.

Kate’s crying had slowed, and she started talking again. “Serge said that Danessa didn’t love him. She refused to marry him. Serge needed the love of a good woman. He wanted a wife and mother. He asked me to divorce Bob and marry him. I don’t feel the same way about divorce that my husband does. Serge and I would have been happy, I know it. He would have been faithful to me. Serge was not the sort of man who was happy living in sin.”

Especially not with immigration breathing down his neck, Josie thought.

“Then Serge was murdered. After that, I couldn’t stand to be in this house any longer. I saw Serge everywhere. If I don’t leave here soon, I’ll go crazy.

“I told my husband I knew about his affair at the hospital. Bob said he was sorry he’d hurt me. He was tired of sneaking around. His romance with the nurse was over. He wanted a fresh start. Bob had a good offer from a big hospital in Dallas. We put this house up for sale the next day. Every time I looked out my window, I saw Serge running toward me in the morning mist, waiting to take me in his arms. I wanted to be a good wife to Bob, but I was haunted by my lost love.

“So I bought that statue of Saint Joseph. I knew my husband would hate it, absolutely hate it, but I needed all the help I could get. I kept it hidden in my underwear drawer, wrapped in one of the boys’ old blue blankets. I waited until Bob was asleep, then sneaked out of the house. I buried the statue of Saint Joseph at midnight. I thought I was hidden by the hedge and no one would see me. I was wrong. I’ve betrayed my husband twice, once with Serge and now with Saint Joseph.”

She buried her head in her hands. Alyce rolled her eyes. Josie bit her lip. The stone saints looked heavenward.

Kate, who was neither stone nor a saint, wept uncontrollably.

Chapter 22

“Grandma bought a toe ring last night,” Amelia said.

“Right,” Josie said. “And I had six Chippendales dancing in my living room.”

“Mooooom,” Amelia said. She hated when Josie was sarcastic. “I’m serious. We were watching the Home Shopping Network and the man said time was running out to call in for the special offer of a gold-filled toe ring with a matching ankle bracelet for only twenty-nine ninety. Gold-filled is good, right? It means filled with gold.”