Bridget started in Randall’s dressing room.
She yanked open one built-in cherry drawer, then another:
socks,
socks,
socks,
briefs,
briefs,
briefs.
How much of this merde did he have, anyway? How much did she? Did either of them really need several dozen sets of silk undergarments?
Consumption, she thought. So American. Like the society pages that triggered this frenzy. It had been the thought of those pictures—lousy, grainy photos—that made Bridget think about passports.
Were there any worse pictures than those pasted on passports?
Then another thought sparked: Her husband would soon need his passport when he—not she—went to pick up Aimée.
She spun from the drawers to the solid teak,
hand-carved,
velvet lined,
twelve-drawer
jewelry chest.
Did men who lived outside New Falls have such opulent places to harbor their treasures?
Certainly not Luc.
She poked. She pried. She rummaged around.
A tie pin from St. Andrew’s in Scotland.
Silver cuff links from Tiffany’s that she’d given Randall on their tenth anniversary, bought with his money, which was also an American way.
A small gold bracelet he’d worn in the eighties when men were trying out that sort of thing.
But where was the ruby pinkie ring she’d given him when he’d agreed to let Aimée go to school in France?
And where was his grandfather’s Patek Philippe watch?
And where, mon dieu, was his passport?
The safe! her brain or mon dieu suddenly exclaimed.
Without wasting a second, she raced downstairs to Randall’s den. She flew to the Rubens in the gilt frame on the wall (Rubens was one of Randall’s favorites, a fantasy he lived out through Bridget’s full breasts). She pulled back the right side, spun the dial right, left, right, then tugged at the handle.
And there it was: the navy blue, pocket-size folder with the word “PASSPORT” hot-stamped in gold on the cover.
With a wide, happy smile, Bridget extracted the document. Then she closed the safe slowly, replaced the painting, and realized she needed to restore Randall’s dressing room to its neat, anal order before he returned from the club.
In the meantime she’d find a perfect spot to hide his passport. What a pity he wouldn’t be able to leave the country without it. And she would have to get Aimée after all.
Dana had been in the New Falls police station once when Michael was twelve and had stolen pumpkins from Mr. White’s garden and pitched them into the Hudson to see if they’d float, which, according to Michael, they did.
It didn’t look like the old brick police station where she’d gone the night her father had been arrested.
In New Falls the station was built out of limestone and had peculiar sharp angles that mimicked the library and the town hall.
“I’d like to speak with the investigator in charge of the Vincent DeLano case,” she said to the officer who sat at the welcoming desk.
The cop eyed her like a glazed cruller.
“About what?” he asked.
She realized she was still wearing her funeral clothes that exposed her as a New Falls wife—one of those. “About who might have killed him.”
Her point had been made; he picked up the phone and called an extension. She was quickly escorted to Detective Glen Johnson’s office, a square glass cubicle with a desk and no windows.
“We have the killer,” Johnson said, standing up. He was a tall man, angular like the building. He leaned against his desk and folded his arms. “A neighbor called and reported hearing a gunshot. When we arrived, the killer was standing there, holding the gun.”
“Please,” Dana said. “The woman you’ve arrested is my friend. And I don’t know if she killed Vincent or not, but I do know someone else might have had a motive.”
He studied her face.
She shifted on one foot.
“Vincent DeLano was a ladies’ man,” she said, wondering if that were an outdated term. “Before he married Yolanda, while he was still married to Kitty, I know that he had at least one affair.”
“With…?”
“Well, I can’t tell you that.”
“But you know this because…?”
“Because I was told.”
“By a reliable source?”
“Yes.”
He unfolded his arms, tented his fingers. “That woman wouldn’t have been you, I suppose?”
“Me?” Good grief, she hadn’t thought he’d accuse her. “Look, Officer, I’m trying to help. Kitty is my friend and I didn’t sleep with her husband, but someone else did. Which means that at least one other person might have wanted to kill him.”
He nodded and said, “By the way, where you were at eleven-thirty that morning?”
“Eleven-thirty? Why?”
He raised an eyebrow. She got the message.
“Eleven-thirty,” she repeated. “Well, I was having my manicure for Caroline’s luncheon. Caroline Meacham.”
“We know about Ms. Meacham and her spring party. We might not be Manhattan’s Twenty-seventh Precinct, but we know what we’re doing.”
Apparently Detective Johnson was a Law & Order fan, too.
She sat down on a nearby metal chair. “Why do you care what I was doing in the morning?”
He circled his desk and pointed to his computer screen. “We have new information. The medical examiner has set the time of death earlier than we first thought.”
“You’re kidding!”
The eyebrow lifted again.
“So Kitty didn’t do it!”
“I didn’t say that. But further examination showed that rigor mortis had begun to set in, so it had been a few hours. We’re thinking eleven-thirty.”
“Could it have been suicide?”
“No. The trajectory of the bullet was all wrong for that.”
“So anyone could have shot him.”
“Any of many.”
“Like people you’d already ruled out.”
“Bingo.”
“Like all of the women at Caroline’s party?”
He sat down and lodged his eyes on her. “Not all of them, maybe. But one, anyway.”
“Help,” Dana said when Bridget answered her door a few minutes later. “Is it possible Lauren killed Vincent?” She’d been heading home when, halfway there, she took a left not a right, because she knew this was something she could not figure out for herself.
“Why on earth would she?” Bridget asked as she let Dana into the house. “Did he beat Bob at golf?” She poured wine without asking.
Dana collapsed on the couch, then told Bridget about the Helmsley and the flagpole and the rest of the stuff.
Bridget made no comment.
“Aren’t you shocked?” Dana asked.
“Actually,” Bridget replied, “yes. I am.”
They toasted each other and took a quick drink. Then Dana said, “I feel like our world is falling apart.”
“It might not be a bad thing. Maybe we were getting—how you say—too big for our pantaloons.”
It would have been nicer if Bridget weren’t right.
“It’s hard enough to think that Kitty was capable of killing Vincent. But Lauren?” Dana asked.
“Maybe she was afraid he would tell Bob about the affair.”
“I wonder if Bob would leave her.”
“Doubtful. He’s an old man. And she raised all those kids.”
“Like they were her own.”
“But they aren’t.”
“Neither was Vincent.”
They thought. They drank. They sat, thinking some more, black hair and silver, big boobs and little, Franco-American.
“Kitty is our friend,” Dana said. “But Lauren is, too.”
“We should warn her.”
“I’ll drive.”
They set down their wineglasses and Dana found her keys and they opened the front door to leave. Unfortunately, on the other side of the door, stood Detective Glen Johnson and three other officers.
He asked where Bridget had been at eleven-thirty the day Vincent was murdered and if she’d had an affair with the man.
Bridget said she’d had a massage from eleven until noon and then stopped by her stylist’s for a blow-dry. She pronounced “massage” as if she were in France, and “blow-dry” like a proposition.
Dana figured she’d done that on purpose just to anger the cops who had no doubt followed Dana to Bridget’s. The Sherlocks of New Falls must have deduced that Dana would run to the woman whose name she hadn’t disclosed.
She must remember to call Lauren, not pay her a visit.
Bridget then told the police if she were to have an affair, it wouldn’t be with a man from New Falls. “Gossip, darling,” she said, sounding more like Zsa Zsa Gabor than Marie Antoinette. “It can keel one in a town such as this.”
No one suggested that gossip—or the fear of it—might have been what had keeled Vincent.
They asked the names of Bridget’s masseur and hairstylist. Bridget cooperated, then invited them to come back if there was anything else they needed. The men stared at her boobs, then reluctantly left.
The door barely closed, Bridget flew to her cell phone and began punching numbers.
“Thomas,” she said breathlessly. “It’s me, Bridget. Pick up. Please. Peeeeeck up the damn phone.”
Dana watched as Bridget drained what was left in her glass and in Dana’s, too.
“Oy vey,” Bridget said then, having morphed into Golda Meir. “Pick up, pick up, pick up.”
When Thomas did not, Bridget said, “Listen, this is important. The police weel ask you about me. Tell them I was at your place the morning Vincent DeLano was keeled, that I was there from eleven to twelve. If you don’t, I weel have your balls for my dinner.”
She hung up, stared at Dana, and said, “That little bastard better remember I gave him five hundred for Christmas.”
“Bridget,” Dana said, “what are you doing? Did you lie to the police?”
“Mais oui,” she said. “What else could I do? Tell them I was at my doctor’s? That I was arranging for my chemotherapy?”
Dana reached for her wineglass, realized it was empty. “Make some sense, please.”
With a casual shrug, Bridget said, “Chemotherapy. For my cancer. Didn’t I tell you about that?”
Half a bottle of wine later Bridget had decanted the details and dumped the sediment in Dana’s lap: She had cervical cancer. She’d had surgery. She’d had radiation. And now they wanted to inject her with poison, mon dieu, quel ennui—what a nuisance—that will be.
Dana was as stunned as when she’d learned Vincent had been murdered and Kitty had been arrested and Lauren had slept with him, too. “Bridget,” she said, “how can I help? Why didn’t you tell me?”
Then Bridget explained that she’d told no one, not even Randall, not Aimée.
“They should know,” Dana said.
Bridget threw her a mind-your-own-beeswax kind of look.
“Bridget,” Dana protested, then Bridget held up her hand.
“Stop harassing me,” Bridget said. “Stop before I call the police.”
It wasn’t very funny, but Dana laughed anyway, then asked, “What are you going to do?”
“First, I am making you promise to keep my secret.”
Dana supposed if she promised, she could ask for more wine, so she did both. It was, after all, not an appropriate time to comment that her mother had died of cancer, not cervical, but ovarian, “in that woman’s place,” her father had told her when Dana was eighteen and she was living on Long Island and hadn’t been told until her mother was dead.
She supposed she hadn’t forgiven him for that, either.
Bridget poured and Dana drank.
“I’ll have chemo soon. When Aimée has gone back to school after her holiday.”
“But that’s two weeks from now.”
She shrugged again. “I don’t think it will kill me.”
It was a poor choice of a word, whether accented by English or French.
“Besides,” Bridget added, “I don’t want to miss Caroline’s partie magnifique.”
Partie magnifique. Well, that was one way of describing the hospital gala. “I think the whole thing will be awkward,” Dana said. She set down her glass because she was drunk.
Bridget sipped again, then said, “But everyone will be there. Maybe even the person who really killed Vincent.”
“Don’t change the subject. I want to talk about your cancer.”
“And I, s’il vous plait, do not.”