Saturday morning
“NATE A SUSPECT? WHAT, RANNIE, WITH BEAVER CLEAVER IN THE GETAWAY car?” Joan Gordon said, glancing in the rearview mirror through Jackie O-sized sunglasses. They were heading east on the L.I.E. Destination: David and Danka Ross’s weekend compound. Mission: For Joan to return with a hefty six-figure check for Chaps. The only time the Rosses could spare was brunch today, interpreted by Joan to mean, if she wanted the dough, she had to schlep out to the Hamptons to get it. Rannie was happy to tag along, eager to see the House That Ate the Hamptons and breathe some un-urban air.
“Look, there are twenty-five lifers in the senior class, seventeen of them boys. And of those seventeen, Rannie, I bet at least half could pass for the kid in the photo…. If I were you, I’d worry more about the S.W.A.K. maniac.” Joan shook her head though not a hair of her blond coiffeur moved. “I think you and Nate should stay with us ’til they catch the guy.”
“Thanks. I’ll think about it.” Alice had said essentially the same thing on the phone; only her suggestion was to camp out at Mary’s.
Rannie passed a container of coffee with two packets of Equal to her friend’s outstretched hand. Rannie had first met Joan when Ben and Nate were in kindergarten. They’d spent countless hours on playground benches together and had consoled each other through times of crisis—Rannie’s divorce, Joan’s bout with breast cancer.
“I still don’t get it, why kill somebody who’s already dying?” Rannie said.
“Poor impulse control?” Joan responded.
“Be serious.”
“I am.” Joan paused to change lanes. “I think some kid at Chaps did it. To me this murder screams ‘pissed-off teenager.’ Somebody got mad at Tut—I’m talking really, really mad—and couldn’t stand to wait a few months and let Mother Nature do the job. And a date rape drug? Doesn’t that say horny and under twenty-one to you?”
Rannie sipped her coffee. “Not necessarily.”
“Why? It’s a kid on the camera. Can’t you picture some little shithead thinking, ‘I hate Tut. He’s not gonna get me into Yale. He’s screwing me.’ It’s never ‘I’m not gonna get in, because I happen to be ninety-ninth in a class of one hundred. And for extracurricular activities, I like torturing small animals.’”
“But—”
“Wait. Hear me out. So we go from some kid blaming Tut for screwing them out of a good college and, to me, it’s just a hop, skip, and a jump to, ‘Tut deserves to die. Right this minute.’ There are kids at Chaps with all the conscience of your average Venus flytrap.”
The exact same thought Tut had expressed. “Yes, but what you said before—about impulse control. The way Tut was murdered wasn’t impulsive. The opposite, in fact. This was planned…and planned to look as if it wasn’t murder at all.”
Joan tilted her head, quasi-acknowledging Rannie’s logic. “Then maybe a parent of some kid who wound up at Stupid U? Someone who never forgave Tut for ruining their kid’s bright and shining future?”
“Did you know that David Ross saw Tut Monday afternoon? Elliot is no brain trust, and I hear he’s hell-bent on Harvard. Maybe David had gripes.”
Joan’s head swiveled in Rannie’s direction for a second before pulling her gaze back on the road. “No, I didn’t know he saw Tut that day. And, yes, I do know they didn’t like each other.”
“Why?”
“I never asked. Look, Rannie. I’m going out here to extract a lot of money from David Ross. I let you come because you said you wanted to see the house. So no pointed questions.”
Rannie nibbled on a blueberry muffin that had an unpleasantly gummy texture. She returned it to the bag. Okay, she thought, no pointed questions, but maybe one or two with the rough edges polished down as smoothly as the pebbles on the Rosses’ beachfront property.