The Broadway bus was approaching 106th Street. The next stop was hers. Rannie didn’t want to budge. She wanted to stay seated right where she was until she reached the final stop at the George Washington Bridge. She felt totally wiped. Not that signing a couple of gym forms counted as a punishing workout. But she was mentally exhausted. Too many facts were bombarding her brain, caroming off in different directions before any sense could be made of them.
Larry had visited Ret’s apartment the morning of the murder. Tim had told her that. But why had Larry gone there? In all likelihood, Ret’s accusations about Larry bilking her stemmed from nothing more than typical Ret paranoia. Nevertheless, if Ret was convinced she’d been cheated, it wasn’t that hard to imagine her threatening Larry, saying that she was going to go blab to Dusk about his role as Audeo. After all, Tattletale was the title she’d chosen for her autobiography. Or—here was another possibility: perhaps Ret wanted to punish Larry for spurning her sexual advances. Hell-hath-no-fury payback. Larry was forking out alimony; he’d told Rannie that. He couldn’t afford to get fired from a job with a good salary. So maybe he’d gone to see Ret that morning hoping to calm her down but had had no success. So he went to Plan B. Murdering Ret ensured that he wouldn’t be ratted out at Dusk.
But how could Larry have carried out the crime? Motive needed opportunity. Unfortunately, figuring out logistics was not Rannie’s strong suit. It seemed a left brain ability, like understanding architectural designs or solving KenKen puzzles, talents totally alien to her. So she tried to imagine how Tim, a man blessed with a sharp practical mind, might approach the question. And that helped. She could almost hear Tim saying that murdering Ret wouldn’t be all that complicated. In the many times Larry had been at Ret’s apartment, he must have seen keys laying around. Maybe he’d pocketed a set last Saturday morning, and later that afternoon, while visiting the demented mother in Long Island, drove back to East Sixty-Ninth Street. Slipping past the concierge desk—first into the building and then out again—would be the highest hurdle to clear. No, wait. Tim would point out, “That’s forgetting about security cameras.” The cameras obviously had shown Larry in the building that morning. If there was any evidence linking him to the crime scene much later in the day, Larry would already be in custody.
So where did that leave Rannie?
On 116th Street and Broadway, unfortunately. Eight blocks past her stop. Hastily she exited from the back door of the bus.
When she arrived home, the apartment was still empty. She flopped on her bed and tried—unsuccessfully—to ignore the message light blinking on her phone.
Peter, her ex-husband, had called. “Ran, hi. Give a call. We need to discuss Thanksgiving.” Rannie stared at the phone. It wasn’t fair that he had such an appealing speaking voice—low, relaxed, unhurried—when almost nothing out of his mouth was stuff she wanted to hear. He was canceling plans to come to New York. Rannie was sure of it. Alice had been predicting he’d bail for weeks. “Thanksgiving with the whole family at Uncle Will’s? Dad can’t stand being around his brothers.” Yet Nate, far less cynical than Alice and far more invested in keeping up a relationship with his father, had gone online and ordered tickets for the two of them to see Steely Dan at the Beacon and to attend an exhibition tennis match at the Garden.
Schlepping to Will and Beth Lorimer’s house in Chappaqua wasn’t Rannie’s idea of a jolly time either. Will, the eldest brother, had married late in life. He was a trusts and estates lawyer at a white shoe firm, whose disdain for ninety-nine percent of the world was masked by a bullying joviality that fooled no one, including his six-year-old twin daughters.
Harry, the middle son, taught statistics at Middlebury. Statistically, Harry was the most reserved—Rannie felt mean saying “boring”—person on the planet. A lifelong bachelor, Harry was sweet, unfailingly polite, yet after a twenty-year-long association with the Lorimers, Rannie knew Harry no better than she had after first shaking hands with him on the receiving line at her wedding reception.
During the early years of their marriage, Peter and Rannie would spend hours inventing unlikely talents and passions for Harry: Harry won prizes dancing the Macarena, Harry’s vast collection of Beanie Babies was now worth a fortune, Harry had seen every episode of The Cosby Show and was president of the Rudy Huxtable fan club.
Peter had a terrific silly streak but no gravitas whatsoever. He was unreliable and, without meaning to be, often cruelly thoughtless. He had quick bursts of enthusiasm, which were all-consuming while they lasted. But they never lasted long. At forty-five he was still floundering. And it embarrassed him. In all likelihood, in Chappaqua, Will would make sure to rub it in, clapping Peter on the back, and, all smiles, would inquire, “So, baby bro, what’s the latest venture?”
But this Thanksgiving wasn’t about Peter. Mary, who never made demands on her sons (hmmm, maybe that was part of Peter’s problem), had requested that everybody celebrate the holiday together. “Won’t that be fun!” Mary insisted cheerily nearly every time Rannie saw her.
A mile-long e-mail chain, mostly between Will’s wife, Beth, and Rannie, finally determined that Will and Beth would host the dinner with everyone spending the night at their Greek revival house where the heat was kept so low that Rannie always pictured her young nieces with gooseflesh, chattering teeth, and slightly blue lips.
Rannie braced herself for the conversation with Peter. She knew exactly what she’d say. “There is no wiggle room. Not this time. You are coming.” She punched in the number.
“Hey, Peter. I got your message. Listen. There is no wiggle room. None. You are coming for Thanksgiving and that’s that.”
“Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Who said anything about not coming?’
“You did on your message. . . . Didn’t you?”
“No. As a matter of fact, I didn’t.” Rather than taking offense, he seemed amused. “But now that I’ve been unjustly accused, I think you owe me. I called because I’m hoping you’ll let me crash at the apartment.”
“Nope. Sorry. It sends a wrong message to the kids.”
“Come on. It’d just be for Wednesday and Friday night. I’m having a helluva time booking a hotel.”
“You waited till now?” That was another irritating thing about Peter: he had amazing luck; without any effort on his part, plans almost always fell into place for him. But evidently not this time. She wanted to dig it in. She felt like saying, “Well, why would you have thought to make a reservation earlier? I mean, who ever wants to visit New York City at holiday time?” Instead, she said, “You can stay at Mary’s.” All three brothers’ rooms had remained untouched since their boyhood. “You can commune with your tennis trophies.”
“What put you in such a good mood?”
“Oh, let’s see. A long day that began with yours truly escorting Daisy Satterthwaite to a funeral. She blacked out during the reading of the Twenty-Third Psalm. I thought she was dead.”
Peter chuckled. “Charlotte Cummings’s funeral?”
“Yes. How’d you know?” But of course Peter would know, and suddenly it dawned on Rannie that her former husband might be able to provide something other than child support payments. Namely information. “Peter, did you know the granddaughter? Barbara. Bibi . . . she’s Bibi Gaines now, but that’s her married name.”
“Yeah. Of course. Since forever. One summer we hung out together. I’d take her sailing. Her mother had died pretty recently; the dad was long out of the picture. She was already living with her grandmother.”
“What was she like? Bibi, I mean, not her grandmother.”
“We used to get stoned together. Bibi always had epic dope. To look at her, you’d write her off as just another ‘Polly Prepster’ in a sundress. We’d show up at dinnertime in the clubhouse, and I’d be giggling and red-eyed, while Bibi, who was just as shit-faced as I was, would sit at the bar, sipping a wine spritzer and charming all the oldsters. I never understood how she did it. It was an amazing act. Fooled everybody.”
“Daisy was making veiled comments about serious drug problems; I mean like crack or heroin, not just typical stupid teen stuff.”
“That’s exactly right. But I’d lost touch with her by then. She was at one of those junior colleges for rich girls. She sold a piece of pretty valuable jewelry to a friend, then reported it lost and collected from the insurance company.”
“Double dipping?”
“Yeah. I forget how she got caught but that’s when the shit hit, about the drug problem.”
Not a word of this had appeared in Portrait of a Lady. “I’ve met Bibi a couple of times recently and to look at her, you’d never know. As your mother would say, she’s ‘a very attractive gal,’ somebody who’d still look great in tennis whites. She seems fine, yet Daisy was hinting otherwise.”
“All I know is she spent a lot of time at Silver Hill. Married a guy she met there. Another crackhead, or should I say ‘recovering crackhead’? Isn’t that how all serious twelve-steppers refer to themselves?”
Rannie winced at Peter’s making light of addiction; Tim always called himself a recovering, not former, alcoholic. Tim would write Peter off as a total lightweight. “Him? Really?” she could hear him saying.
“So tell me. Why the sudden fascination with Bibi Gaines?”
“Morbid curiosity? You meet somebody. Chat a bit. She seems to have it so totally together . . . when of course nobody does.”
“Listen. I grew up with lots of people who tarnished their families’ good names. Let me stay at the apartment and you can hear all the stories. It’ll be like Scheherazade.”
“Nice try. The answer is still no.”
I am flummoxed, Rannie told herself after hanging up with Peter. Only an hour earlier, when she was leaving the Equinox gym, Rannie’s money was on Larry as “most likely” murder suspect. Now Bibi Gaines was . . . ooh, bad pun in the vicinity! . . . gaining on him.
Ret must have found out all about Bibi’s past. Daisy hadn’t had any compunction about bad-mouthing Silas Cummings to the quote/unquote Times obit writer, so why would she hold back about Bibi, whom Daisy didn’t like any better? And without a doubt, Larry would have reported everything he’d heard to Ret. That’s what Ret was paying him for. What if Ret had threatened to include Bibi’s youthful transgressions in Portrait of a Lady? It was one thing for the tight-knit circle of your friends and family to know about your crackhead/scam artist days, quite another to have the whole world read about it in a blockbuster bestseller.
Then in the next instant Rannie recalled that this was just wheel spinning: she’d already discounted extortion as a murder motive. Before now she hadn’t any clue what particular items of dirty laundry Ret might get the chance to air. Now that she did, it didn’t mean murdering Ret made any more sense than before. . . . How would a conversation have gone?
Ret: Pay me off or else you’ll get your own chapter in the book about Grammy.
Bibi: Okay, but you swear up and down that if I give you gobs of money, you’ll only write nice things about me?
Ret: It’s a promise. We can pinkie lock on it.
No, it didn’t matter how much money Bibi coughed up, she’d have no guarantee of what made it into print until she had a copy of the book in hand.
Also, Ret didn’t need money. What she needed was a new face and that she couldn’t get. Furthermore, Ret relished outing people like Mike Bellettra who were poisonous fakes, doing real harm while passing themselves off as upstanding and decent. That’s what kept Ret shoveling for dirt. Smearing somebody like Bibi Gaines, a troubled social twit, was not Ret’s M.O. And the proof was the manuscript itself. Bibi appeared on the printed page as a dutiful granddaughter.
In many ways, Ret must have envied Bibi. Bibi had essentially been adopted by her grandmother, exactly what little Ret had fantasized happening to her after meeting Charlotte Cummings all those years ago at the convent. So once again Larry was the front-runner. But why, even if he murdered Ret, did he have to go and murder Ellen?
Unless he hadn’t. Was it possible that Ellen’s death was unrelated? Though the timing was eerily coincidental, was it just an awful instance of random violence?
As if tuned directly into Station WRANNIE, Larry called that very instant. “I’m parked in front your building.”
“What! Why?”
“I’ve got a scarf of yours. You left it at the deli.”
“I—I—I can’t come down,” Rannie phumphered. “Just leave it in the vestibule. I’ll get it later.”
“Look. I need to talk.”
“So talk.”
“My phone’s almost out of juice.”
“Then talk fast.”
“Aw, c’mon, Rannie, I wo—” On cue, cellular screeches and blips obliterated half of Larry’s next sentence.
Rannie heaved a sigh that she hoped carried through to Larry’s dying cell. “I’m coming down but only for a second. Larry? Larry? You hear me?” She pulled on a fleece hoodie over her head. Was it nutty to grab the blue metallic wand of Mace? Even if the answer was yes, she rummaged through a drawer and pocketed it in her fleece.
Larry was leaning against the car. As soon as he saw her he held out the scarf.
Rannie checked sidewalk traffic. A dad was barreling down the street with a double-wide stroller, one twin screaming, snot cascading down his upper lip, the other one out cold. Dad was a big guy, somebody who could subdue Larry if he tried anything funny, like shoving Rannie into the trunk of his car. Rannie took the scarf. “Thanks. Didn’t even realize I left it.”
Larry was staring at the Yale track pants. “Don’t tell me you work out now! Weren’t you the woman who once told me se—”
“Yes. I know what I once said.” Her credo had been: sex was all the workout anybody needed. “Look, Larry, to be perfectly honest, I don’t think we should be in contact.”
“Why not?”
Rannie had no answer that Larry would like hearing, so she remained silent.
“Unbelievable. You still think I’m some homicidal maniac?”
“I don’t understand why you’re here.”
“How about this? I’m scared. Ret, Ellen too, must have been murdered because of something in the damn book.”
“Not necessarily.”
Larry ignored Rannie and kept on. “Maybe I know something only I don’t know what it is.”
Almost verbatim what Ellen had said the very last time Rannie had spoken to her.
“You don’t need to be in Mensa to figure out Ret had somebody helping her do interviews.” He went on. “Who knows what that sicko did to Ret before strangling her? She was trussed to her bed, right? It wouldn’t have taken much coaxing to get her to give out my name. . . . Ergo, I am in danger.”
Rannie decided to throw him a bone. “Listen. You haven’t read the book. I have and there are no bombshells, I promise. It is a tame, very un-Ret-like book. . . . You didn’t uncover anything big and nasty, right?” Rannie looked at him, waiting.
Larry shook his head. “The granddaughter—Babsy? Boobsy?—was a druggie back in the day. All Ret said to that was ‘big whoop,’ that it was old news and wasn’t worth wasting even a paragraph on.”
“And she doesn’t bring it up. It’s not in the book. So there you have it.”
“You’re forgetting one thing. I only know what I came across. There’s Snoop 2 in the mix. You told me that yourself.”
“Gery Antioch.”
“Yeah, him. Who knows what he uncovered.”
Rannie didn’t remember the exact wording of the acknowledgment but the gist was that the truth would always come out. “Wait. Even if this Gery Antioch did uncover something truly horrible, something that Ret kept out of the book for whatever reason—”
“Surely not out of the goodness of her heart.”
“Let me finish. Even if Gery Antioch did uncover something, and even if the killer forced Gery Antioch’s name out of Ret, he’s the one in danger, Gery Antioch, not you. Have the police gotten hold of him?”
“They have no idea who he is or where he is. My guess is it’s a phony name, to disguise his true identity, which, when I suggested as much to the sergeant, he actually started pondering . . . you know what I mean? Stroked his chin, eyes went all squinty, brow got all furrowed, lips clamped together.” As he spoke, Larry mimicked each facial gesture. “And finally he nods a little and says to me, ‘That’s certainly an interesting idea, Mr. Katz.’ This is the caliber of investigative mind that’s going to solve a double murder?”
“Did you try playing around with the name? It’s Gery with only one R.”
“Of course. I tried anagrams, different codes. I got nowhere. I tried Gerald Antioch. Gerard. Geraldo. Zippo.”
“It could be Gery as in Geraldine.”
“Thought of that too. There’s a writer who’s done a couple of word puzzle books for me. I called him. He did no better. He said maybe Ret knew a Gery who went to Antioch College. That was a big help.”
Once again, the more Larry talked, the more Rannie became convinced that his agitation was genuine, not an act to throw suspicion off himself. Then she remembered a nagging fact. “One more thing, Larry. What made you go see Ret the day she was killed?”
“I didn’t! I merely dropped off an envelope in the lobby. I was on my way out to Long Island. I left the envelope with the concierge; I was in and out in less than a minute. This is why you’re acting like you’re gonna wind up chloroformed in my trunk? How’d you know, anyway?”
She ignored his last question. “What was in the envelope?”
“Duplicates of all the photos I took. Ret insisted on having them. God knows why. She said she paid me to take the pictures, so they were her property. Fine. What the fuck did I want with them?”
“What time was that?”
“No earlier than eleven, eleven thirty. I got a late start out to my mother’s. . . . That’s where I just came from. Today Mom and I went over the guest list for my bar mitzvah.”
It was growing chillier and darker. Also, the couple who lived in 5B, the apartment directly under hers, was approaching the building. Now was the time to bring this tête-à-tête to an end.
“I’ve got to start dinner. Nate and a friend are upstairs waiting,” she lied. “Thanks for the scarf. And for what it’s worth, I’m really starting to think Ellen’s death is unrelated.”
“And what will Santa be bringing you this year, little girl?”
“I’m just telling you what I think.”
The husband of 5B gave Rannie a stingy smile as he got his keys. There had been several calls as of late to inform her of the level at which Nate blasted music while she wasn’t home. He opened the outer door for his wife, who had a large bag from B&N. Rannie half expected Larry to inquire whether a copy of Tattletale was inside it. He didn’t and Rannie slipped inside her building before the door closed.
Upstairs, Rannie couldn’t stop obsessing about the photos. What were the odds that they were still sitting in the package room at Ret’s building? A long shot but, hey, you never knew. Ret avoided being seen, so she wouldn’t have come down to the lobby for them. The concierge would have had to deliver the envelope himself to her apartment. And with only one guy on duty, that probably meant waiting until his shift was over to do so. By then it might have slipped his mind. Had it also slipped the mind of the police sergeant? Highly unlikely and, if he was dotting his i’s, he’d have checked the contents.
Rannie had seen the photos and copyedited the captions for Portrait of a Lady. Most were of family members and famous close friends of Charlotte Cummings saying “cheese” with her on yachts, in boardrooms, at celebrations, and the like. There were photos of the various residences Charlotte had owned over the century-long span of her life, real estate porn for readers to drool over. And also there were four or five interior shots of the Cummings Fifth Avenue mansion—the dining room in which every president from Eisenhower through Bush 43 had been feted, the conservatory with a trove of priceless instruments, and the grand salon that housed the art collection Rannie had seen. Although the copyrights for all the photos of the mansion rooms were in Ret’s name, undoubtedly Larry was the shutterbug. He must have taken many more than what ended up in the book. Ret already had a complete set. Why, on what turned out to be the very last day of her life, would Ret insist on having all the duplicates in her possession?
A compelling urge to see the photos—or at least attempt to see them—seized hold of Rannie. Was it worth making a special trip over to the East Side? Rannie was debating the issue when Nate texted her.
“O and I thinking about Paolo’s. Wanna come?”
Translation: neither of us has a credit card or dough, so we’ll let you treat us to dinner.
Cheap (for Manhattan) and convivial, a throwback to the days when small family-owned joints populated Lexington Avenue, Paolo’s was renowned for thin crust pizzas—Rannie’s favorite, clam with bacon. It also happened to be located on Sixty-Eighth Street, a meatball’s throw from Ret’s apartment building. Dinner for three? At the very least sixty bucks with tip. And she couldn’t forget blowing a hundred dollars already for her nontraining session. But a little more snooping? In the immortal words of MasterCard, “Priceless!”
Rannie texted back. “There in an hour.” Forty-five minutes of which were eaten up by public transportation, not bad for a Saturday, which evidently was a day off for ninety-nine percent of the MTA’s workforce.
First stop, Ret’s. Happily the concierge from last Saturday was not on duty when Rannie entered the lobby. A young skinny guy was at the concierge desk; the maroon jacket he wore, with 69 East Sixty-Ninth Street stitched on the breast, was swimming on him . . . was there only one uniform and all the security guys had to share it?
Rannie approached him, cleared her throat, and hoped the addition of her newly repossessed scarf and wool duffle coat made more of a statement than the Yale pants or Converse high-tops. All businesslike brisk she introduced herself. “I’m Miranda Bookman. A week ago, a package was left for me in care of Ret Sullivan. I’m here to pick it up.”
His Adam’s apple, a considerable one, bobbled up and down. “Ms. Sullivan? Uh, I’m afraid . . . maybe you don’t know but—”
Rannie toned down the professional and assumed a just-sad-enough smile. “Yes. Of course I know about her passing.” Rannie would have preferred the plainer, more forthright “death”; however, her hunch was that the euphemism would play better with this guy. “Just awful, awful, awful. I worked with Ms. Sullivan. I was her editor on the book she just finished.” Rannie produced the S&S business card and hoped (A) the guy would be impressed with the title on it and (B) he would disregard its far-from-mint condition.
“Let me check if anything’s still here,” he said and in a moment returned with an 8½ × 11 manila envelope. Rannie’s heart practically went into tachycardia at the sight of it.
“Gee. I’m sorry but it just has Ms. Sullivan’s name on it.”
“I’ve been away. She was supposed to hold it for me. That’s why.”
He was shaking his head. “I’m sorry but I can’t—”
Rannie cut him off, returned to businesslike brisk, and threw some exasperation into the mix. “Look. This is important. Those are photos for Ms. Sullivan’s new book. Is there someone else I can talk to? Is the building manager around?”
“Michael! I need help with my bags.” A petulant voice preceded the entrance of a middle-aged woman who by the look of her outfit—a real Barbour jacket, expensive “driving” loafers, and brandy-colored cords—had returned from her weekend place. She was cradling a yappy terrier in a pink cable-knit sweater.
“Right with you, Mrs. Gordon.” Then to Rannie. “You could leave your card. I’ll ask the manager to call you Monday.” He placed the envelope by the phone console.
Rannie nodded and he hustled off toward a brass luggage cart stationed by the mailroom.
His back was to her. She snatched the envelope.
An adrenaline-infused “Go me!” rush acted like Super Premium Unleaded, propelling her out of the lobby.
Was it actually theft when the dupes had no value? Yes, Rannie decided. To call it anything else was hairsplitting semantics à la Bill Clinton and his famous definition of sex. At a pace that was faster than trotting but still didn’t really qualify as running, she traversed the two blocks to Paolo’s. At one point she heard a police siren and looked back, convinced that in a minute she’d be escorted via squad car to the nearest precinct to pose for her mug shot.
Rannie had always prided herself on what till now had been the unstickiest fingers among the Bookman sisters. As soon as Amy, older than Betsy by twenty months, had her learner’s permit in hand, they’d head to the mall every Saturday to shoplift cheap cosmetics from Walgreens. Rannie, who was no more than seven, was dragged along and forced to play decoy. Her sisters would generously steal a candy bar for her as payoff. Like that Proustian madeleine, Rannie could still conjure the taste, texture, and aroma of those purloined Snickers, how she savored their peanutty goodness but was simultaneously nauseated by waves of guilt. Tim was right: in another life, she’d definitely clocked a lot of hours in confessional booths.
Olivia and Nate had beaten her to Paolo’s. They were at a table in the back under a garish fresco of the Bay of Naples. Examining the photos had to be put on hold.
“We already ordered,” Nate told her and within ten minutes Rannie was gratified to see two medium-size clam and bacon pizzas arrive.
“I caught a glimpse of your parents at the funeral for Charlotte Cummings earlier today,” Rannie said.
Olivia did the throat-clearing thing. “Yeah, my mother was totally stressing over what to wear. I’m like, ‘Black, Mom. Black’ll work.’ She’s at Mrs. Gaines’s now. My mom is taking her on a trip next week maybe to Cabo.”
“Your mother sounds like a good friend.”
Olivia shrugged. “They haven’t known each other very long. My mom thinks Mrs. Gaines is a big deal because of her family.” Then, without Rannie having to resort to any unseemly probing, Olivia all on her own launched into a discourse offering up the fact, swaddled within layers of extraneous, forgettable information, that it was the Werners who actually owned Bibilots. Olivia didn’t state it so baldly—“I think my dad bought the whole building or something ages ago” was how she phrased it—and she referred to Bibi and her mother as “partners.” Yet since Olivia added, “Although I can’t remember when my mother ever worked a day there,” Rannie came away with the distinct impression that on some level, whatever livelihood Bibi Gaines earned from Bibilots came via the generosity of Carole Werner.
This was certainly not the larkish “working keeps me out of trouble” interpretation of her career delivered by Bibi that day Rannie had stopped in at Bibilots.
It was awfully hard to imagine Bibi Gaines needing to work in the same fiscally mandatory way Rannie Bookman needed to work. Bibi was rich . . . or rather she came from a rich family, which, Rannie stopped to remind herself, wasn’t precisely the same thing. Look at Mary Lorimer. She came from money, piles of it. However, the stringent terms of Mary’s father’s will were such that even now at eighty-two, she was allowed access only to the interest on her inheritance. Mary could never touch so much as a dime of the principal. Peter had told Rannie all this: “My grandfather didn’t think women could be trusted to handle money.”
Up until this past Tuesday, when Charlotte Cummings finally checked out, whatever inheritance coming Bibi’s way was theoretical, nothing Bibi could lay her hands on. Of course there was Bibi’s late mother—Daisy’s beloved friend—who must have provided for her only child. But Bibi was already getting into serious trouble before her mother’s death. Straight from Daisy’s lipstick-smeared lips had come the words “If melanoma hadn’t killed Madeline, worrying over Barbara would have.” So Madeline’s will might have taken precautions to keep the purse strings pulled tightly on inheritance money, ensuring that Bibi couldn’t squander it all on highly controlled substances.
Hard drugs were costly. An appetite for them would take a large bite out of anyone’s monthly budget, even a budget with a lot of zeros after the dollar sign. Still, nothing about present-day Barbara Gaines whispered, let alone screamed, substance abuser . . . except for Daisy’s comments about long sleeves and the one-hundredth birthday party. . . . Also, what was it Peter had said? Bibi had a knack for appearing fine when she was stoned out of her gourd.
“I’m going to walk O home,” Nate said once the check arrived, which with tax and tip included was only three dollars over Rannie’s earlier sixty-dollar guesstimate.
On Lexington Avenue, after waving good-bye, Rannie watched their two silhouettes head into the night, hand in hand, backlit by a streetlamp. She was happy for Nate, she was worried for Nate. But mostly she was hit with a sharp loneliness: almost like an amputee continuing to feel a phantom limb, she suddenly experienced the sensation of Tim’s hand in hers, the comfortable, warm pressure of his grasp. Her fingers flexed involuntarily, yet all she grasped now was the envelope of duplicate photos.
The headiness of having done something that her bad angel would applaud had disappeared. Now remembering the way she’d cased the lobby so furtively, then hotfooted it outside made her cringe. It was pathetic, a little scary too. If she didn’t watch out, thirty years from now she could wind up as “kooky” as her mother’s friend, the one who interpreted messages from the beyond in pennies laying in the street.