Dana should have called the Hudson Valley Red Cab to drive her home, but her house was only a few blocks away, and it was still daylight, and she wasn’t totally wasted as her boys called it. She’d wait, however, until she was safely home before calling Lauren.
“The police want to question everyone,” she would warn her. “They know Vincent had an affair, but they have no way of knowing with whom.”
It seemed plausible, she thought as she turned into her driveway, lost control of her car, and promptly drove up on the lawn and through the euonymus that Mario had planted last week.
She decided her driving skills hadn’t been impaired by the wine but by the fact the twins’ Jeep Wrangler was parked in the driveway and Steven would be angry if one of them had dropped out of college.
The mudroom was a landfill of big-footed sneakers and laundry bags. She traversed it and went into the kitchen, where Sam stood, head in the refrigerator.
“Hello,” Dana said, and when there was no answer she knew she must be competing with his iPod. “Samuel!” she shouted this time, and the kid jumped, banged his head on the deli bin, and spun around. There was no trace of headphones.
“Jesus, Mom, you scared the shit out of me.”
When her boys came home it always took a few days for Dana to clean up the frat house lexicon. She smiled. “That would be ‘Gosh, Mom, you scared the wits out of me.’”
He laughed.
He stepped toward her, she toward him. He lifted her into a six-foot-one hug. “Hi, Mommy,” he said.
She laughed that time, then wriggled from his arms and touched the top of his head. “Does it hurt?”
He waved his hand in front of his face. “Whoa. Not as much as your breath. Gosh, Mom, how much did you drink?”
“Probably not enough. But I’ll make tea while you tell me what you’re doing here and where your brother is.” She filled the tea kettle.
“Ah, well, I can start by saying my twin brother—Benjamin is his name—is upstairs in his room probably crashing from our four-and-a-half-hour trip home. I can then continue to express that the reason we’re here might have something to do with the fact it’s spring break.”
“Oh,” she said. “Well, I knew that. I just lost track of the time. There’s so much going on.”
He rolled his eyes as if to say, Sure, Mom. Sam was a straight-arrow-looking boy, the younger of the twins, who took after his father the way that Ben took after her, as if one twin had received all Steven’s DNA, the other one got all of hers. Michael, the lone birth, the first, resembled them both, the egg correctly having conjoined the sperm. “Aren’t you boys going to Cozumel or somewhere?”
“Ben’s leaving tomorrow.” He shuffled back to the refrigerator, grabbed a Coke, popped the top. “I’m staying here. I want to help you solve Mr. DeLano’s murder.”
“What?” Dana asked, her head sliding into hangover mode.
“I want to study the law, jurisprudence, remember?”
“And you’ll be home for how long? Ten days? You think you can solve it in ten days?”
“Maybe we can if we try.” It was so like him to want to help.
“What makes you think I don’t have better things to do?”
“You were a journalist.”
Dana laughed. “That was a long time ago, honey. Now I’m a housewife. I’m a mother.” She’d always believed that her penchant for putting together pieces of a story rivaled her father’s powers of deduction when he’d been a cop. Her sons didn’t know about him, though: All they knew was he’d left and her mother had died.
Sam wrinkled his nose.
“Besides,” she continued, “the hospital gala is a week from tomorrow. I thought I’d help Caroline with her last-minute plans.” It wasn’t exactly the truth, but even the gala would be preferable to having one of her kids get too close to this mess. “And you should be with your friends. Doing college-age things.”
“I think murder is more exciting, don’t you?”
The whistle blew. She steeped her tea.
“Not to mention I can use this for a sociology paper.”
Dana had always helped the kids with their homework. It had been more fun than tennis or golf. But there was the nonsense with Lauren…how much would she want Sam to know? Then she thought about Ben. “What about your brother? Will he go without you?”
“A whole bunch of kids from school will be there, Mom. Besides. He’s a big boy now. He can take care of himself. Me, too. Please, Mom?”
“Oh, honey,” she said. “I don’t know.” What she did know was that Ben was the party boy and Sam, the stay-at-homer, the quiet, shy one, who never cost her any sleep. “Well,” she said, “Maybe…”
He took that as a yes and pulled out a stool from the breakfast bar. “So, did she do it?”
Dana sighed. “Kitty? No. She says not.”
“Who else then?”
She could have told him about Lauren but she really was too tired to get into that now. It was bad enough she hadn’t called Lauren yet and the police might have showed up at her door. “There’s a chance Vincent had at least one mistress,” she said.
“A mistress? Cool.”
“Not to his wife.”
“What about her? The new wife? Has anyone checked her out?”
Dana held the tea mug to her lips and stared at her son as if he’d just asked if she’d walked on the moon. “Yolanda?”
“Well,” he said, “she’s probably the one who gets the life insurance, or at least a bunch of money from his estate. Like everyone in New Falls, Vincent’s probably loaded, so it makes sense, doesn’t it?”
“Detective Johnson from the New Falls Police Department. Are you Lauren Halliday?”
Luckily Lauren had seen the cruiser pull into the driveway. She’d ducked behind the six-panel, early nineteenth-century Chinese screen with the soapstone inlaid artwork of cranes and pine trees and other images that symbolized long life in the Asian culture. Her husband had shipped it home from Canton as part of his efforts to deny his oncoming mortality.
“Mrs. Halliday is not available.” Florence had been around since before Bob’s first wife died. When it came to protecting the family, she was tougher than a pair of big-toothed sentry dogs.
“We’ll wait,” the detective said.
Silence followed. She pictured Florence, hands on square hips, eyes narrowed and glaring.
More silence.
Could they hear Lauren breathing?
Perspiration rose on her forehead. She remembered the time when she’d been a kid, trapped in the closet of her aunt’s bedroom at the house on Nantucket. She’d been hunting for her sandals; she’d thought her cousin Gracie had borrowed them. (Stolen was more like it.) But when she’d heard voices Lauren had closed the door. How was she supposed to know Uncle Raymond and Aunt Clara would choose that very moment in the middle of the day to have sex on the four-poster bed? Or that Uncle Raymond really did have sex on the brain the way she’d overheard Aunt Jane say to her mother?
“Maybe she’d rather come to the station,” the detective said now, and Lauren blinked back to the present and the Chinese screen and the bleak situation at hand.
She would not go to the station because that was where Kitty had gone and look where that had gotten her.
“Gentlemen,” she said, propelling herself from behind the screen, the courage to do so greater than the fear of ending up in a cell. “You must excuse my housekeeper. We’ve had some problems with men snooping because of my husband’s business. He deals with investors who are out of the country.” She knew it made no sense, but it was the best she could do. “Florence was merely doing her job.”
“If you have problems,” the detective said, “you should call the police.”
She smiled, but did not say she’d call. “How may I help you?” she asked, her Boston–Palm Beach–Nantucket upbringing usurping her terrified self.
“We’d like to know where you were at eleven-thirty in the morning the day Vincent DeLano was murdered.”
She tipped her head to one side as if she’d heard incorrectly.
Eleven-thirty.
Vincent.
Murdered.
The tiny squirt glands in the back of her throat suddenly spurted and she knew the next thing that would happen was that she would throw up.
“She was here,” Florence said. “Having a bath.”
Lauren turned to Florence. “Was I?” she asked, because she didn’t want to remember that day and because of course Florence would lie; she already had.
“Were you?” the detective asked.
“She was,” Florence added. “You were getting ready for Mrs. Meacham’s luncheon. I remember because I was laying out your ensemble. You wore your Mikimotos.”
Lauren’s hand went to her throat. “Yes,” she said. “I believe that’s correct.”
The phone rang. The little group paused. Eyes ping-ponged around.
“It’s okay, Florence,” Lauren said. “Answer the phone.”
The woman hesitated, then left the foyer with several looks over her shoulder.
“Is there anything else?” Lauren asked as if fully cooperating.
“Just one thing,” the detective said. “How well did you know Mr. DeLano?”
Lauren’s private school posture faltered only a second. Then Florence called out, “Mrs. Halliday!” and waddled back to the foyer carrying the cordless. “It’s for you. I believe it’s Shanghai.”
It wasn’t Shanghai; it was Dana.
“This is the first chance I’ve had to warn you,” Dana said in a rush. “The police might show up. Don’t tell them anything.”
“Yes,” Lauren said, “that’s wonderful news. Thank you so much for calling.” She clicked off the phone and asked the detective if they were finished. He repeated the question about Vincent, and Lauren simply said, “Well, he was Kitty’s husband, if that’s what you mean.”