The Busy Woman's Guide to Murder (21 page)

I called Jack back.

“Are you watching the news?” he said.

“No. I try to never—”

“Then I guess you don’t know.”

“That’s right,” I said with an edge to my voice. “I have a busy day, so please spit it out.”

“Another hit-and-run. Turn on your television and call me later.”

Click.

Dial tone. I was getting so sick of that.

I braced myself for Todd Tyrell’s relentless cheer in the face of disaster. Snow swirled around his gelled head as he reported. I leaned forward to try to see where he was.

A gorgeous brown-eyed blonde whose golden skin seemed out of place in the swirling snow filled the screen. She flashed back an ultrawhite smile while tears trickled prettily down her velvety cheeks. Not everyone can do that. But of course, it came naturally to Serena Redding Zeitz.

I felt a chill run down my spine as she said, “Tiffanee was a
wonderful
woman, very
spiritual
and
evolved
. She was my lifelong friend. I can’t
begin
to tell you how
devastated
we are. And now this . . . Things will
never
be the same.” She broke off and dissolved into very attractive weeping. A distinguished silver-haired man—in what had to be a cashmere overcoat—led her away to comfort her. That revealed the woman behind her. Haley, mascara smeared, eyes swollen, shaking. As Todd thrust the mic into her ruined face, all she could manage was a strangled wail. Fortunately, Randy shambled up, got between Haley and Todd, and put his arms around his wife to keep her from collapsing. “They are very old friends. This has been very hard on everybody,” he said, looking like he meant it. “Please leave us alone.”

The camera lingered enough to catch Haley being sick in the fresh snowbank. While Haley was falling about, that beautiful witch Serena was no more grief stricken than my dogs were. I was 100 percent sure of that. I made a note to bring flowers or cookies to Haley though. She needed serious support.

I switched off Todd with a shudder. Now I understood the three messages. Mona didn’t answer her phone. Pepper was probably in full investigation mode. Jack had no information.

Jasmin. It had to be Jasmin Lorenz who’d been killed.

I couldn’t keep the thought out of my head: Two down. Two to go. And there was the one mistaken identity of course.

My appointment with Dr. Partridge wasn’t until noon and that left me time to visit my favorite reference librarian.

“Don’t have to,” Ramona said. “I know half this stuff. So if you’re asking me as a friend, I can just tell you. If you’re asking me as a librarian, I’ll give you documents and sources.”

“Friend,” I said.

“Okay, now I’m officially on my break, so I can say that Serena Redding is on her third marriage and—”

“What? She’s my age!”

That outburst earned me the usual disapproving stares from the reference regulars.

“You want to know or not?”

“Keep spilling and I’ll try to keep my voice down.”

“Her former mother-in-law is a good friend of my aunt’s. She says that Serena has actually made a profit on each marriage. Apparently this third one is on the rocks too.”

“A profit?”

“Surely you know what a profit is, Charlotte.”

“Very funny. But it doesn’t seem very—”

“Modern?”

“Moral. Decent. Ethical.”

“I hear you,” Ramona agreed. “Of course, her ex-mother-in-law could be just the tiniest bit biased.”

“I’m sure. But if anyone was going to use people that way, I guess it doesn’t surprise me that it would be Serena.”

“You and me both. I saw the results of her handiwork the summer I was working in parks. I saw what she did to Mona.”

“Wait. We weren’t even in high school then. I didn’t realize when you were talking about Mona wearing the ‘kick me’ sign that it was Serena doing the kicking.”

“She had help. It took me a long time to figure out that Serena was behind a lot of the cruel behavior of the other kids. She got to suck up to the counselors and come across like such a smart little angel, but she was not at all what she seemed. And if my aunt’s friend is to be believed, nothing much has changed.”

“She has a new persona; churchgoing, charitable, kind, giving. I’m trying to find out what she’s up to.”

“You don’t want to get too close to her. This woman makes a nasty enemy.”

“What’s that they say? Keep your friends close and your enemies closer? Who said that?”

“Sun Tzu,” Ramona said. “Way, way back in the day. Although I’ll confirm the reference. I like to be sure about these things.”

“That’s okay. Can you keep me posted about what Serena’s up to?”

“Sure thing, but it will be a hobby, not business. I’ll troll around a bit too on my own time. Woodbridge is a pretty small town.”

“Thank you. If you’re in contact with Mona, tell her I said if she needs anything to get in touch. I’ll be there for her. And I’ll make a better job of it this time. She can even stay with me. She just needs to pick up her phone when I call.”

The cafeteria at Woodbridge General was a vast clatter of activity. Crowds of people in white coats accessorized with stethoscopes, or wearing scrubs and ID tags stood jostling and chatting, grabbing good-size servings of food they’d never let their patients get away with: pizza, fries, gravy. Fried cholesterol, supersize starch, sugared and salted snacks. As Jack would say, yowza. I glanced around. Staff tended to congregate at tables, laughing and socializing, a brief break from their demanding jobs.

Near the entrance a man was just taking a seat at a table for four near a window with a view over the parklike area in back of the hospital. Very serene. He carefully set out a lunch from a lunch bag that featured Homer Simpson.

As I approached, he glanced my way. He recognized me, no question about it. But Dr. Sam Partridge was not what I was expecting.

He waved and stood up. I smiled and waved back. I estimated he was five seven tops. A man I could have made eye contact with, if he wasn’t wearing glasses with bottle-thick lenses. Behind the lenses, a pair of intelligent green eyes blinked back at me. The ceiling lights were reflected on his shiny head. His tidy fringe of gray hair could have worked on a medieval monk too. The hand-knit brown sweater was about as far from
GQ
as you could get, ditto the relaxed-fit jeans and the deck shoes. I put him in his midfifties. For an instant, I wished he was my father. Of course, my mother likes men with proper wardrobes.

I liked him before I even sat down. He wore a wedding ring. I thought he’d be a nice husband for someone to come home to. I imagined he was a good dad too, even if he could never have been mine.

He didn’t want to shake my hand though. “I’m at the tail end of a bad cold and a bit of bronchitis. I think I’m past the contagious stage, but why take a chance. Picked it up here in the hospital. Make sure you use hand sanitizer while you’re here,” he said, pointing to his small sanitizer sitting next to a small blue container of medications and a mug of steaming coffee. He saw me check that out and said, “I’m doped up on cold meds to get through the day: antihistamines, decongestants, painkillers, you name it. Coffee too.”

“I love those little dispensers,” I said as I pulled my sanitizer out of my handbag. The last thing I needed was a cold.

“Sally said it was urgent.” He had the kind of voice that could make you believe your fears and troubles would soon be fixed. If I hadn’t had my own agenda, I think I might have leaned over and spilled every secret I’d ever had, just to be reassured by this man. I managed to hold back.

“I’ve been hoping it isn’t urgent, but I fear that it is.”

Behind the thick lenses, the green eyes twinkled. Or maybe they gleamed. Whichever, it was effective. “Let’s hear it.”

I watched as he opened three packets of sugar and sprinkled them slowly into his coffee.

“How about I give you the background while you eat. Then you can tell me what you think.”

He smiled, stirred the coffee, and then started to unwrap a sandwich that had been carefully constructed and was obviously homemade. Someone cared deeply about this therapist. I imagined a small, round wife happily preparing celery, carrots, and a small container of hummus, then moving on to the sandwich, which was making my mouth water: I figured it was multigrain bread with smoked turkey and cheese, and some brilliant green, cheerful lettuce variety. I wondered if there were matching small, round children sitting at a table somewhere, each with the same lunch. I was going to have to deal with this mixing love and food fixation I seemed to be developing. Maybe the next time I saw Dr. Partridge, I’d be stretched out on the couch blabbing on about steaming bowls of soup and how I never got anything like that from my mother, although Jack’s mom had made plenty. Now Jack was unlikely to get that from me. Not that he’d ever requested it. On the other hand, he didn’t turn down the sandwiches I brought him from Ciao! Ciao! on a regular basis. These were modern times and I didn’t have to be tied to a kitchen to have a happy life. Did I?

Dr. Partridge said, “Charlotte?”

“Oh, sorry. I got a bit distracted.” I pulled myself together and started my long and bizarre story, trying not to leave out anything germane and giving what detail I could about the bullying incidents at St. Jude’s and outside.

The green eyes watched my face carefully as I filled him in, without naming any names, on the rumored and known crimes of Serena and her ilk, Mona’s reaction, Haley’s guilt and regret, my own fears for Mona and my anger at myself for my inaction and at the bully who could still reach out after all that time to ruin lives.

“Sadly,” he said, “this is not an uncommon story.”

“What? You mean the hit-and-runs?”

He shook his head. “Of course, the hit-and-runs are unusual, although I wish they were nonexistent. I’m talking about the events at St. Jude’s. The damage to your friend. And the fallout. For her and for you.”

“Well, I like to fix things. And I need to know what to do.”

He shook his head. “Not sure if you can fix this one. But I can give you some advice.”

“I’ll pay you for your time, of course.”

“This bit will be on the house. There are often consequences to childhood bullying. A person can end up with diminished self-esteem, anger, depression. All that can happen. It’s a horrible history for someone to carry around with them.”

“Does treatment help?”

“I’m biased, of course, since that’s what I do, but I believe it does, if the patient finds the right therapist to help them move past it. People need to work through the trauma. To see what was going on. And most important to understand and forgive their own helplessness. And see the bullies for what they were. Children, too. Adolescents in this case, but not adults. I hope your friend will get some professional help.”

“So they get away with it? The bullies? The tormentors? They get forgiven by their victims and it’s all la-la-la?”

“Not always. Many bullies get in trouble with the law, do jail time. That’s another pattern.”

“Well these bullies were beautiful, smart, successful, and respected, and in one case, rich and getting richer. They got away with it.”