Dana decided Sam had a point—had anyone thought of Yolanda? Greed could be as much of a motive as a woman being scorned, couldn’t it?
The questions had kept her awake most of the night—that and the fact that Bridget had cancer.
All things considered, Dana would rather not be reminded about her mother.
In the morning she took one more trip to LaGuardia, this time with Ben, who was overloaded with sunscreen and jibes for his brother who would “rather hang out with old people.”
Sam told him to shut up and Ben told him to make him and Dana tuned them out, an art she’d perfected.
Sam had wanted to go with her to see Kitty, but Dana had said no, she didn’t think Kitty would be comfortable with that.
He’d argued that Kitty had two kids of her own, even though he thought both of them were kind of fucked up.
Dana had thrown him a look.
“Screwed up,” he said, amending his words. “Marvin and Elise. Marvin’s the biggest nerd on the planet; Elise is so hot she’s got her own calendar. Boob shots and everything.”
Dana didn’t need a translator to know what “everything” meant. “Do you have one?” she asked because of the small smile that turned up Sam’s mouth.
“One what?”
“One of her calendars?”
He hesitated long enough for a blush. “A couple of guys have them at school.”
So it was hot Elise, not a sociology paper, that was the real motivation behind Sam’s interest in the case: If he helped out the mother, he might wind up with the daughter.
How could Dana say no to her little boy who always had stood in the shadow of his more outgoing, get-all-the-girls brothers? How could she tell him that Elise, hot or not, would probably not be around?
She decided not to burst his testosterone bubble, so they now trekked to Tarrytown to the two-bedroom apartment without having called first because Sam said it would be best not to tip Kitty off that they were coming.
Dana didn’t know whether he was right, but she’d always been proud that her sons were smarter than she was.
Kitty was home.
“Come in,” she said, then quickly closed the door from the daylight that had leaked in with them.
“Kitty,” Dana said, “you remember my son Sam? One of my twins?”
Sam said, “Hello, Mrs. DeLano,” and Kitty blanched and told him to please call her Kitty.
Dana explained that Sam wanted to be a lawyer and would like to help out if he could.
Kitty said she didn’t care, which, by the looks of her place and herself, pretty much now covered everything in her life.
“Have a seat,” she said.
They cleared magazines off the couch and sat down. Sam’s knee landed too close to Kitty’s; he squirmed.
“Kitty,” Dana said, “there’s been some good news.”
“Yolanda’s dead, too?”
“Not that I know of. But according to the medical examiner’s report, the time of death was long before you were found at the scene.” It was hard to understand how Kitty could be wearing a bathrobe that was so old and threadbare. Dana averted her eyes.
“How early?”
She told her.
“Well,” Kitty said, “doesn’t that beat all.”
“Do you have an alibi for eleven-thirty?” Sam piped up.
Dana cringed.
Kitty laughed. “My only plan for the day was to meet Vincent at the house with the rug dealer. Other than that, I was home. Alone. That’s a good alibi, isn’t it?”
Dana cleared her throat. “Well, the time difference means the police will investigate others. For instance, everyone at Caroline’s party who might have had…” She stammered there, and wished that she hadn’t. “Who might have known Vincent.”
“Yolanda included,” Sam said. “She should be a prime suspect.”
“Yolanda,” Kitty said again, as if it were a name she could never get used to.
“She could have done it for the money,” Sam said.
“What money?”
“His investment portfolio. Life insurance. The value of their house.”
Kitty laughed. “According to my divorce lawyer, Vincent didn’t have any money.”
She could have said the sky was green or the lawn was blue or her shabby apartment was going to be featured in Architectural Digest and it would have been more believable.
“But he bought her a house…”
“That wasn’t decorated yet.”
“And they planned to go to the gala. He’d bring a check…”
Kitty shrugged. “It hadn’t happened yet.”
“So?” Dana asked. “Is that proof he was broke?”
“No, but it explains why I’m living like this,” Kitty continued, sweeping her arm around someone’s idea of a home. “It is proof that my lawyer couldn’t find Vincent’s stash.”
“But do you believe it?” Sam asked.
Kitty sighed. “Vincent lost a few clients. But he knew how to make money. Besides. Look how Yolanda dresses. And pink diamonds? Pretty pricey, even for Vincent.”
The dim light settled in, cloaking the tale with a more dismal shroud.
“So it’s probably true,” Sam said. “Yolanda could have killed him for the money.” Then he hemmed and hawed, the same way Steven did when he was thinking. “Yolanda might know where Vincent hid his fortune. She could have known he was going to meet you. She could have shot him. She could have set you up, Mrs. DeLano.”
“Yes,” Kitty said, “I’ve wondered about that.”
Dana closed her eyes.
Once, she had hoped they’d accept her as Mrs. Vincent DeLano. They’d liked her, hadn’t they? Back when she’d scissored their hair and got rid of their gray and listened to their troubles, which, compared with hers, were a teeny piss hole in the snow?
She’d been good enough for that, but not for the rest.
Yolanda wiped a tear with her left hand as her right hand kept busy with a small can of spray paint.
She sniffed as she worked. She missed him, her Vincent. It hadn’t been her fault that he’d loved her more than he’d loved his wife, Kitty.
Kitty had been mean to him, or so he’d said. She’d hated sex: She said it was dirty. She hated that their son and their daughter were so successful, while she had no job or career because she’d gone to college only with the intent to find a rich guy, which she’d done.
Ha! Yolanda thought as she swirled a daisylike flower around the letters she had written. College won’t help Kitty now. Yolanda, of course, never had gone. She’d been raised in the Bronx, on the wrong side of most things, and had been lucky, real lucky, that her brother joined the army and sent money home for her to enroll in beauty school, the Big Apple School of Esthetology.
Her mother had gasped when she’d heard that word. “Well, aren’t you something?” she said when Yolanda got her letter of acceptance, which pretty much only meant the school had received her tuition deposit.
They never dreamed that ten years later, Yolanda would do a wash and set on a woman who lived in New Falls and was in the city for somebody’s funeral. It turned out that the woman (who’d been cursed with coarse hair) was so impressed with Yolanda’s work that she found her a job in the classy-ass town.
So, like the famous TV family George and Louise Jefferson, Yolanda Valdes moved on up.
The wives of New Falls didn’t know if she was black or white or Hispanic. Vincent once told her if they knew her real history—that her father had come from Cuba on a raft—an honest-to-God, freaking raft—they would take pity and stop giving her crap with their tips. He said they would love her like he did.
But she’d been too embarrassed to tell them.
Then Yolanda got pregnant.
She figured he’d offer to pay for an abortion though she wouldn’t have one. She was thirty by then, and most men around there didn’t want a woman whose skin was darker than theirs and whose family had lived in a ghetto.
Besides, Yolanda had always wanted a baby.
The best she hoped for was that Vincent would pay her rent until she could go back to work.
She never, ever imagined he’d leave Kitty and ask her to marry him.
But he went to Vegas, and six weeks later they married, and three weeks after that, Yolanda miscarried.
Vincent said they could try again. He really did love her, she guessed.
She dabbed a big dot in the center of the flower, then wiped another tear because no matter how hard she’d tried the women laughed at her, had wanted to laugh right out loud when Kitty showed up at the funeral and made a fool out of her.
Loosening the wide, sparkly belt on her shocking pink minidress that, as Vincent once said, “leaves nothing to nobody’s imagination,” Yolanda studied her artwork on the back window of the dark green Jaguar that, like everything else, had once been his but now was hers.
R.I.P. Vincent DeLano, the artwork read. It was tacky and tasteless and would make the women all loco as she drove through their town, taunting them as they’d taunted her, taunting them, as they deserved.
And if that didn’t work, she thought, hands on her hips, one foot skating in and out of its high-heeled sandal, she would tell the whole world all the secrets she knew, and watch the wives of New Falls come undone.