So that must be Godelieve, patron saint of sore throats,” Rannie said, bearing forth a tray with the requested tumbler of gin and plate of buttered saltines on it. The painting, positioned between two windows in Daisy’s bedroom, was much smaller than Rannie had expected, not all that much bigger than a cereal box, and judging from the deep crack that ran through Godelieve’s blue gown, it had never been subjected to the TLC of F. Anthony Weld. F. Anthony? How many people used a first initial when introducing themselves?
Daisy motioned impatiently for the gin. “Ghastly painting. But there’s no way I’ll part with it.” She was reclining on a chaise lounge covered in faded chintz, the back of her free hand pressed against her forehead, very southern Gothic, very late Tennessee Williams.
Rannie set down the tray and went over to inspect Daisy’s miracle worker. Godelieve was no beauty but who looked their best hanging from a tree? Besides bulging eyes and death’s head grin, Godelieve had wispy hair and an unnaturally broad expanse of forehead, as if she was suffering from the early onset of female pattern baldness. Rannie had once read somewhere that in the 1400s, upper-class ladies plucked their hairline way back for a noble-looking brow. Oh, the vagaries of fashion!
“All the poor thing wanted was to become a nun. Prayed day and night. But she got married off when she was still a child and had a mother-in-law from hell. She tried to behead Godelieve. Then tried drowning her. Finally hanging did the trick. Do you see the mother-in-law peeking from behind a tree?”
Rannie squinted. “No . . . Oh, maybe.”
“The painting’s a wreck. It’s my fault. For years I kept it right over my bed in direct sunlight. Then when it cracked, I moved Godelieve. She and my grandmother traded places.”
That accounted for the frame of brighter floral wallpaper around the actual frame, evidence that a larger painting had once occupied this spot. Suddenly Rannie experienced a disorienting flash of déjà vu, then it fled, and she turned to look at the painting over Daisy’s four-poster, a sizable portrait of a jowly dowager, circa 1920, in a lavender dress and formidable pearls.
Rannie was about to comment on the startling resemblance Daisy bore to her grandmother when Daisy said, “I don’t care what happens to that painting. My grandmother was dreadful. She terrified me. When I was small, if I misbehaved, she’d rap my knuckles with her cane.”
Moments later, Mary arrived with lunch for everyone in Tupperware containers.
“Earla’s cod balls?”
Mary nodded.
“Oh, Mims, how you spoil me!” Daisy exclaimed.
They repaired to the lugubrious elegance of the dining room (dining “ruhm” in these ladies’ boarding school parlance) where more portraits of Daisy’s ancestors surrounded them and watched disapprovingly as they ate. More gin for Daisy and a “well, if you insist” drink for Mary.
“I’ll tell you this, I have simply had it with funerals,” Daisy declared. “The next one I attend will be my own. That’s a promise.”
“Poor Rannie. Daisy must have given you quite a scare.”
Rannie was eyeing her cod ball. She doused it with ketchup and tried holding her breath while swallowing the first bite.
“Oh, pssh. I faint all the time,” Daisy said dismissively. “Last month it was at the Food Emporium, in the frozen food aisle.”
“Was it a beautiful service?” Mary inquired brightly. “I love it when the boys’ choir sings, but they never do funerals. Too upsetting for the little fellows, I suppose.”
“I didn’t see a soul I knew, Mims. I looked for Helen Dunham.”
“Dear, Helen’s been hooked up to a feeding tube at NewYork-Presbyterian for months. You know that.”
From there the conversation turned to Charlotte Cummings, Mary exclaiming over the length of the obituary in the New York Times. “A full page! Can you imagine!”
“Did you know I was interviewed for Charlotte’s obituary?” Daisy said.
“No, really?”
“This was”—Daisy paused with a forkful of cod ball in midair—“oh, many months ago. A reporter from the Times called and came up to the apartment. For important people, their obituary is written beforehand and updated from time to time. Well, we chatted for a good long while but nothing I told him ended up in the paper.” Daisy smiled, almost coyly. “It’s just as well. Somehow he got me on the subject of Silas and I’m afraid I wasn’t very discreet. I said some awful things.”
“I don’t know why everyone was always so hard on Silas. He was always very pleasant to me.” Mary dabbed her lips with a napkin.
“That’s your problem, Mims. You think the best of everyone!”
“I do not!” Mary defended herself staunchly.
“Silas was dreadful.” Daisy was addressing Rannie now. “Gas attacks that could wake the dead. And I never saw a hairier man in my life. At the club all the little children used to race out of the pool whenever Silas took a swim. He looked like a gorilla.”
A bit of cod ball stuck in Rannie’s throat. Daisy’s descriptions of Silas had appeared almost verbatim in Portrait of a Lady, except in the book, “gas attacks” had been changed to the more vernacular “farts” and the “gorilla” had grown to “King Kong.” Ret Sullivan taking literary license.
“Honestly, Daisy, how you love to exaggerate.”
“Well, Mims, you won’t deny that Silas’s first wife palmed him off on Charlotte.” Daisy launched into a long anecdote, one that Rannie already knew from having copyedited it only days ago. “Silas’s first wife felt guilty leaving him—Lord knows why—and wouldn’t start divorce proceedings until she’d lined up a replacement wife.”
Mary was draining her gin, then said, “I never heard that.”
“It wasn’t common knowledge, Mims,” Daisy said tersely. “Silas knew he was no picnic in the park. So he came to Charlotte with doctors’ letters outlining all his medical problems. Swore he’d be dead within five years and his estate would be hers. Then they get married and Silas lives for eons! When it came to dying, Silas was almost as stubborn as Charlotte.”
Rannie was ready with a plausible-sounding fib. “A friend of mine dates a guy at the Times who writes some of the big obituaries. Do you happen to remember who interviewed you?”
Daisy didn’t, but her description nailed Larry. Tall, gray-haired, and “disheveled. He looked as if he’d slept in his clothes.”
Surprise, surprise. Daisy Satterthwaite, unwittingly, had been one of Audeo’s sources, a big, loose-lipped one! Rannie bet Larry had come with phony credentials that Daisy never thought to question. After all, Bibi Gaines had bought Larry’s masquerading as an art scholar and Bibi seemed far less gullible than Daisy.
“I showed the reporter the album from Charlotte’s one-hundredth birthday. What a party that was!”
Rannie didn’t have to ask to see the album; Mary beat her to it.
Back in the bedroom, cursing how she had no memory left, Daisy finally unearthed the album and they all sat on the chaise, Daisy in the middle. The album was covered in sunburst yellow needlepoint. Charlotte Cummings’s initials and the date were stitched in dark blue in the lower right corner. As they flipped through the pages that documented the gala held in the New York Public Library at Forty-Second Street, photos of Charlotte Cummings—looking pretty hale for a woman who had hit triple digits—showed her in a canary yellow evening gown. She had been decked out in yellow the other night, lying comatose in bed.
“Oh!” Rannie exclaimed. “Bibi Gaines wore yellow to the funeral, because it was her grandmother’s favorite color. And the ushers. They had yellow freesia in their lapels.”
From Mary: “Isn’t that a lovely gesture.”
From Daisy, grudgingly: “I suppose. She still looked like a stick of margarine. . . . I couldn’t tell whether Barbara was”—Daisy hesitated, searching for the appropriate word—“all right, if you know what I mean. I only caught a glimpse of her.”
“That’s all ancient history,” Mary replied. “Whenever I run into her, she seems absolutely fine. Has for years.”
Were they referring to Bibi’s alcoholism? If so, that was surprising given that Mary seemed to consider heavy drinking a birthright of the wellborn. Everyone she knew drank too much, so you couldn’t call it a problem.
“Mims, you don’t know the half of it.” Daisy shut the album and addressed Rannie. “Did you notice there were no pictures of Barbara at the birthday party? That was because she came high as a kite. Kept trying to dance with a waiter, and she interrupted all the toasts.” Turning back to Mary. “You’ll notice she still always wears long sleeves. Even if it’s ninety degrees out.”
Hold on a second! Was this about drugs? Something administered with a needle and that left track marks . . . as in heroin or—even more unimaginable—crack? Bibi Gaines, an alcoholic. Okay. Understood. But jonesing, a monkey on her back? She was so not the type. But then, Rannie reminded herself, neither was Olivia’s brother, Grant, equally fair-haired, equally privileged. And hadn’t Tim told her that often people in AA had struggled with a double addiction—booze and drugs.
“You never liked Barbara. That’s all there is to it,” Mary stated with finality.
“How could I like her when she caused her mother—my best friend!—so much pain? If melanoma hadn’t killed poor Madeline, worrying over Barbara would have. In and out of Silver Hill—”
Daisy didn’t get the chance to finish her sentence.
“Daisy! Really!” Mary was aghast. “Why are you going on about this?” Mary rose and held on to the back of the chaise to steady herself. She was tipsy. “I think perhaps Rannie and I should be going.” Her voice quavered. It was testament to Mary’s good breeding that she didn’t like to dish, but dammit, couldn’t she let Daisy spill a little more?
Mary was gathering up her purse and muttering, “None of this is anything Rannie wants to hear.”
Au contraire! Rannie definitely wanted to hear more. And Daisy could tell. Nevertheless, when Mary said stiffly, “Don’t bother seeing us out, dear,” Rannie had no choice but to follow. At the door to the bedroom, Rannie turned to wave good-bye. Daisy remained on the chaise, sulking, like a child whose party had ended too early.