Thursday, 6:30 P.M.
“SO GLAD YOU COULD MAKE IT, RANDY! COULD WE HAVE ORDERED MORE perfect weather?”
Rannie smiled, not bothering to correct Olivia’s mother and at the same time thinking it was typical that she not only knew Carole Werner’s first name but that it was spelled with an extraneous “e.” The Werners were hosting tonight’s Senior Parents cocktail party. Tut’s death did not warrant postponing the event, not when money needed to be raised for Chaps.
Olivia’s mother, slim as a fiddlehead fern in sleeveless green silk, stood in the front hall of the Werner townhouse. On her left hand sat a diamond that wasn’t as big as the Ritz perhaps but still very sizable.
“As soon as Olivia comes back down in the elevator, she’ll take you up to the roof.”
“How is Olivia? I was concerned.”
Carole Werner either didn’t understand the thrust of the question or chose not to acknowledge it. “Oh, fine, fine. Trying to figure out about college, of course.” Her voice had the same appealing huskiness as her daughter’s. “We told my in-laws that she might take a gap year in order to be a stronger candidate next fall. They looked at me as if I’d gone mad and said, ‘Why on earth would selling jeans make her more desirable to colleges?’ Isn’t that hilarious?” Carole Werner continued chattering about Sophie Roper from last year’s senior class—did Randy know the Ropers? Super people!—and how Sophie was off ice-fishing in Alaska, living with an Inuit family. “We considered that for Olivia, but frankly it’s, well, it’s not special enough anymore. And it’s so hard to fly tutors up there.”
No response was required as another mother had arrived and, while she was air-kissing Olivia’s mother, the elevator door opened.
“Ms. Bookman, hey,” Olivia said as the small mahogany car filled up with two more parents and slowly climbed three floors. Rannie took in Olivia’s outfit. Despite the season, she was in a tummy-baring spaghetti-strap top, capri pants, and sequined flip-flops. Rannie wondered if Olivia knew how close she’d come to acquiring a new wardrobe of fur-hooded parkas and muk-luks.
“Make sure to have the baby lamb chops,” Olivia advised. Then, with one practiced sweep of her hand, she pulled across the retractable gate and pushed open the elevator door.
It truly was a spectacular night, Cole Porter-glamorous. A cloudless and transparent navy blue sky, peculiar to Manhattan in the fall, hung overhead. And the evening was mild enough for the camisole Rannie was wearing with gray silk pants and Mandarin-style jacket, items filched from her daughter’s abundantly stocked closet. She breathed in the balmy air and surveyed the Werners’ rooftop. Under a striped awning a cloth-covered table served as a bar. Black wrought iron furniture was pushed against the opposite wall where waiters appeared through a door bearing trays laden with sushi, caviar on toast points, bite-sized quesadillas, and the vaunted baby lamb chops.
A moment later, armed with a glass of wine and a quesadilla, Rannie zigzagged through the crowd to the far side of the roof, avoiding both Ms. Hollins and Arthur Black. Eager parents clustered around Tut’s newly-named interim replacement, a woman in a chic wrap dress who’d made a name as a private college counselor. Rannie sipped her wine and waved to her friend Joan who was busy chatting up David Ross, the real estate mogul. He remained in his trenchcoat as if only dropping by before heading off to a more important social engagement. Not far away Jem Marshall stood off by himself, looking like the “new kid” with nobody to talk to; Rannie decided to help him out.
“Hi there! Is this your first Chaps cocktail party?”
He nodded and smiled.
“Cheers, then.” Rannie tapped her glass to his. “May you have many long and happy years at the school.”
“Thanks. That’s very kind. You’re the mother of a lifer, if I’m not mistaken.”
“Yes. My name is—”
“Oh, I know your name. Rannie Bookman. I see you at school. You’re Nate’s mother.” His face grew solemn. “It must be very sad for you.”
What? Being Nate’s mother?
He saw the utter confusion on her face and sputtered, “Oh! You thought I was referring to Nate! No, no! I meant about Mr. Tutwiler passing…. He looked particularly ill Monday, don’t you think?”
So he was still clinging to the “natural death” party line. God willing, maybe he’d be proven right.
“It’s my loss I never got the chance to know him better,” Mr. Marshall added. An uncomfortable smile, half mournful, half “hail-fellow” jolly, sat uneasily on his face. Then, seeming to have reached the end of his remarks, he blinked a couple of times.
“Well, lovely seeing you,” Rannie said to his evident relief, and, to avoid any awkwardness, she moved toward the door. She always checked out bathrooms at Chaps parties, as often they were the most dazzling feature of the apartment. One in a penthouse aerie had an entire wall of windows so you could bathe while enjoying a panoramic view of Central Park. Another was a Turkish-tiled fantasy the size of Rannie’s living room.
The nearest bathroom chez Werner was down a flight of stairs. It was utterly simple and utterly luxurious in soft apricot matte marble. There was an orchid plant with blooms in the exact same shade of apricot and a Matisse print…nothing more than four or five black lines but—God!—what perfect lines.
Then returning to the rooftop, Rannie remained stationed near the door, snagging a baby lamb chop at every opportunity while she eavesdropped on bits of conversation. Some typical alpha-male chest-pounding, some “any word on Tut” inquiries, and one mother-to-mother exchange she wished her own mother could hear.
“He was all set to apply to Chapel Hill until we drove in from the airport. Churches everywhere. Not that I have anything against religion, mind you. But the signs out front! ‘Forget e-mail, try knee-mail’…‘This church is prayer-conditioned.’ One had a gigantic billboard saying, ‘Apply SON-screen now to prevent burning later.’ We turned right around and took the next plane home.”
“Hello again.”
Rannie, mid-bite into another baby lamb chop, looked up. The gray-haired, cute dad.
“Can I ask you something?”
She nodded and attempted to smile around the lamb chop.
“What are you doing with them? The bones, I mean.” He had on a sportscoat and tie tonight.
Rannie swallowed. “I beg your pardon?”
He stepped closer. “I’m pretty sure that’s your fourth lamb chop, but you don’t seem to have the other bones. I’m curious. Where’d they go?”
“You’re watching me eat?” Stuffing her face was more accurate.
“Look. Don’t get offended. It’s great food. And I’m strategically positioned just like you. Personally I like the chicken kebabs best, but they have those sticks.” He pulled a few out of his jacket pocket. “So I just want to know. How did you make those bones disappear?”
Right then a waiter walked by with an empty silver platter. Rannie delicately placed the latest bone, carefully blanketed in her napkin, on it.
“I don’t think that was so hard to figure out.”
“I guess not. But what’s that?” He pointed to a ficus tree in a brass planter right behind her. “An elephant graveyard?”
Rannie had no choice but to face the evidence—three gnawed bones poking out from among the white pebbles in the planter. She could feel her cheeks reddening. “I have no idea how those got there.” She strove for a haughtily aggrieved tone, then, not thinking, added, “But if you knew, why ask?”
“Conversation starter?”
“You ditch me in a coffee shop, and now I’m getting grief about my manners?”
Although she remembered his name perfectly well, Rannie asked, “Remind me. Who at Chaps gets to call you Dad?”
He smiled. A great smile, with a front tooth overlapping the other just a little. “Tim Butler. And I’m sorry for the other night, but it was unavoidable.” He scanned the rooftop which, in the growing darkness, was lit by hurricane lamps and waylaid a waiter. He presented Rannie with the last remaining lamb chop.
Rannie shooed away his hand although she couldn’t help smiling. “Oh, no, you don’t…. Absolutely not.”
“Come on. Consider it a peace offering.” He winked. Beautiful, curly eyelashes. So Rannie relented, allowing Tim to bury the remains in the planter along with the others.
“I don’t know a soul here,” he told her. His son had transferred to Chaps junior year. “All Chris’s doing. I never heard of Chaps before. He was at Saint Eustace up in the Bronx, playing basketball, mouthing off to the priests. Normal kid.” Nah-mil as pronounced by a man from Kennedy country. “Then spring vacation his sophmore year, he takes a trip to the Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield with one of his buddies on the team. Sunday, the family goes for a drive in the country and stops for lunch in Amherst—‘Ammersed’ not ‘Am-Herst,’ he informs me is how you pronounce it. Anyway, he comes home and tells me Father Slattery can just forget about him applying to B.C. because this is where he’s going to college. Next thing he’s talking about switching high schools and ends up getting practically a free ride here. I’m paying no more than I was for Catholic School with eight hundred kids in a graduating class. And he’s doing fine…has to take eleventh grade math and gets extra help in physics. But Latin? Honors class.”
Rannie laughed and even found it endearing that Tim Butler looked so pleased to see that she wasn’t annoyed. His expression, with its slight gleam of triumph, reminded her of Nate when he was a small boy who, after misbehaving, would quickly worm his way back in her good graces.
“Tell you what. Let me treat you to a meal at my place some time.” He told her it was called The Offbeat. “I pour a good drink and the pastrami sandwiches are nice and thick.”
So, a bartender, but one who was drinking nothing but club soda, she noticed.
“And you? What do you do? I’m guessing lawyer. Not corporate, nothing near Wall Street. More like public service.”
Rannie shook her head. “Forget the ‘no cigar.’ You’re not even close. I’m unemployed now. I used to work in publishing…. until Nancy Drew got me fired.” It was a pretty good line, one she’d used before.
He smiled. “What happened?”
“There was a typographical error in a book—a doozy. And”—Rannie shrugged—“I was the managing editor in charge and the fall guy. They hired someone else with less experience at half the salary.”
“Managing editor…sounds important.”
“It’s not. Believe me. I’m a copy editor, not a real editor. I was just part of the cleanup squad, checking grammar, making sure that the red car on page forty-seven isn’t blue a chapter later. Or that a character isn’t using a telephone in a book that takes place before 1870.”
“A language cop.”
“I never thought of it that way, but yeah.” The term appealed to her. “It was the kind of work I could do from home when my kids were little. Then I went back fulltime.”
“I read all of them as a kid.”
“What? The Nancy Drews?” Rannie cocked a skeptical eye.
“I’m not putting you on. One of my older sisters had the whole series. Witch Tree Symbol, that was a good one. And Something…Larkspur Lane. But what was with the boyfriend? Ned? Strictly arm candy.”
“Password. It was Password to Larkspur Lane.” As for Ned Nickerson, Rannie chose not to share the classic comment of one editor—“Yes, Nancy Drew has a boyfriend. But no, she does not have a vagina.”
A tinkling of silver against glass cut short their conversation. Carole Werner was tapping a wine goblet with a spoon, Jem Marshall at her side. She waited, toothy grin in place, while the crowd quieted down. Then after thanking everyone for coming, she turned to the headmaster, giving him a “take-it-away” wave of her hand. There was lipstick smeared on her front teeth, Rannie noticed.
Jem Marshall launched into a polished pitch for a new chem lab in the science complex that, with the generosity of the Senior Class parents, would bear Larry Tutwiler’s name on a plaque. While Jem Marshall unfurled an architectural rendering of the space, his cell phone started bleeping inside his jacket pocket. He turned it off, barely missing a beat, and continued. It was only when Olivia appeared on the roof a moment later and started frantically signaling her mother at the same time pointing at the headmaster that Rannie began to sense something was amiss. Carole Werner squeezed past parents and after hearing whatever Olivia whispered in her ear, scurried over to Jem and in turn murmured something in his.
Making a hasty apology and promising to be right back, Jem left the gathering, the architectural scroll curling in on itself on the bar table, and despite Olivia’s mother’s urging for everyone to have another drink, the crowd stood stock still, as if playing a game of “Statue,” with lots of raised, “what’s-going-on?” eyebrows.
Everyone found out soon enough.
When Marshall returned, he marched solemnly to the same spot he’d been standing at before and faced the parents and teachers with possibly the queerest expression Rannie had ever seen. It was as if he had commanded his face to remain composed, but none of his features was completely cooperating. Finally he spoke. “You will all find out soon enough, so you might as well hear it from me. That was a call from the police. They have the results of the medical examiner’s report, and—and this is awful news, just awful.” His lips, now in open revolt, suddenly contorted into a grimace. “It appears—it appears Mr. Tut died from something called GHB.”
“What!” and “Is that some drug?” and “Tut?” erupted from the crowd.
GHB? Rannie turned to Tim whose gaze remained trained on Jem Marshall. Rannie’s first reaction was that GHB sounded like an industrial decontaminant or something an exterminator would carry.
“What are you talking about?”…“Tut took an overdose?”…“So it was a suicide?” The rapid-fire questions came to a halt when Jem Marshall thrust up his hand. “I don’t know much; I’ll tell you what I was told: GHB is a date-rape drug, and Mr. Tut did not take an overdose on purpose.”
Rannie’s hand clamped over her mouth. The spilled glass of Dalwhinnie…
“The police are certain now that Mr. Tut was murdered.”
There was a loud thud, several feet away, as if the proverbial “other shoe” had dropped. It was Ms. Hollins. She’d fainted.
Thursday night, 11:00 P.M.
Phone call Lily B. and Lily G.
Lily B: Omigod! Did you hear?
Lily G: Yeah, I heard. Calm down. I can hear you hyperventilating through the phone.
Lily B: The cops are gonna find out!
Lily G: Not unless you or Elliot blabs.
Lily B: It was just a prank. Maybe we should tell them.
Lily G: Are you crazy! NO!
Lily B: We can say it was all Elliot’s idea.
Lily G: Just keep your mouth shut. Trust me on this.