Point O’ Palms, where my parents have lived since the mid-eighties, is like every other gated, upscale “country club community” in south Florida—only more so.
Occupying several hundred acres in Boca Raton and developed by Westinghouse or General Electric or some other American corporate giant, it boasts two golf courses, a tennis stadium, three pools (in addition to the private screened-in pools that are de rigueur in the backyards of every house), a marina, several man-made lakes, an opulently appointed clubhouse, dozens of fountains, and a profusion of tropical shrubs and flowers. And then there are the homes themselves—ostentatious megastructures that the Point O’ Palms sales agent who sold my parents their homesite referred to as “product.”
“How can you live in a place where they call houses ‘product’?” I had asked my parents when they’d announced their intention to build in Point O’ Palms.
“That’s the way they talk in Florida,” my father had explained. “The communities are ‘subdivisions,’ the houses are ‘product’ and the people who live in the houses are ‘units.’”
“Sounds dehumanizing,” I’d said.
“It’s not dehumanizing at all,” my father had maintained. “The developers think of everything a human being could possibly need when they build the houses. Jacuzzis. Bidets. Subzero refrigerators. Three-car garages, plus a separate garage for your golf cart.”
Presently, Point O’ Palms consists of six “neighborhoods,” although construction is under way for at least six more. The neighborhoods have names like “Crystal Isles,” “Leeward Estates,” and “Mangrove Way,” and every house in its neighborhood looks exactly like the one on either side of it, right down to the landscaping. For example, the “Windemere Key” neighborhood is adjacent to the North golf course and features pastel-colored houses that are Bahamian in architecture. The “Coral Cove” neighborhood, where my parents live, is set close to the marina and offers Mediterranean-style homes complete with red tile roofs.
It was nearly noon when we drove through the Point O’ Palms gatehouse in our rental car. Our plane had landed right on time at the Fort Lauderdale airport, thank goodness. Never a fan of flying (did they have to call the airline building a “terminal?”), I had been particularly on edge during the two-and-a-half-hour flight from LaGuardia, to the point where I’d needed three drinks to calm me down. It wasn’t the occasional turbulence that had made me anxious, I knew, or Kimberley’s presence, or even the fact that the man who sat in front of us insisted on leaving his window shade open during the movie. No, whatever had caused my anxiety was far less obvious. But there it was and continued to be—a very real sense of foreboding that I just couldn’t shake, no matter how many Bloody Marys I threw back.
“It’s probably from all those weeks of wondering who murdered Claire,” Hunt suggested when I told him I had a bad case of the willies. “After what happened to you in our elevator, who would blame you for feeling shaky? You could be having a delayed reaction. ‘Post-traumatic stress,’ isn’t that what they call it?”
I nodded and tried to concentrate on happy thoughts, on the fact that I had made it out of Belford alive; that I had escaped the lunacy of The Oaks; that I no longer had a murder case weighing on me; that the police knew who killed Claire and would put him away; and that I didn’t have to worry about anyone breaking into my house, especially since Arlene was staying there and looking after it.
Kimberley had been remarkably pleasant during the flight. She even thanked me for letting her come along on the trip. She said she liked being included instead of left out. Maybe she was growing up. Maybe we all were.
“Here we are, everybody,” I said as Hunt pulled into my parents’ driveway.
Arthur and Lucille Mills were standing on the lawn waiting for us. My father waved, while my mother chatted with someone on her portable cellular phone.
“Lucille, hang up. They’re here,” my father nudged her.
“I can see that, Arthur. I have eyes,” said my mother, who ended her call, rested the phone on the front steps of the house, and rushed over to our car. She was wearing a mauve jogging outfit, Reeboks, and a Florida Marlins baseball cap, which must have infuriated my father, the Mets fan. He had on his Florida uniform: madras shirt, white slacks, white shoes.
“Hello, hello,” said my mother as she hugged and kissed me, then Hunt. “And look at Kimberley! What a big girl she is! And so bee-yew-tiful!”
Kimberley pretended to wince as my mother clasped her to her ample bosom and covered her cheeks with wet, sloppy kisses. But I could tell my stepdaughter was flattered by the attention. She never received that kind of overt affection from her mother—or, for that matter, from me.
We carried our bags inside as we talked about the flight down, the food on the flight down, the weather, how well we all looked, etc. After we had unpacked, we were summoned to the pool for the huge lunch my mother had prepared for us.
“You didn’t have to do all this, Mom,” I said as I surveyed the platters of food. There were salads, cold cuts, pastas, breads, cookies, pastries. My mother’s idea of a light repast.
As we ate, I asked my parents what plans they had made for my father’s birthday party the following evening.
“We’re going to Stefano’s,” said my father. “I made a reservation for seven-thirty.” Stefano’s, an Italian eatery, was one of three restaurants in Point O’ Palms. The other two were Chinese, and they delivered.
“I wanted to throw a party for your father here at the house, invite some friends, people from the club, go all the way,” said my mother. “But Arthur wouldn’t hear of it. The man didn’t want me to exert myself. He’s convinced I’m going to drop dead any second.”
“Drop dead? What are you talking about?” I asked.
“Oh, you know Arthur. The way he worries.”
I looked at my father, then back at her. “No, I don’t know the way he worries. He’s never struck me as much of a worrier.”
“Well, he’s a worrier now,” she said. “Ever since I had that incident.”
“What incident, Lucille?” said Hunt.
“Just some heart thing,” said my mother.
“What heart thing?” I said, putting my fork down on the plate and looking at my mother expectantly. I was more than a little alarmed. She had always been so strong, so healthy. She’d certainly never said a word about a “heart thing.”
“A few months ago. I had chest pains.” She shrugged. “No big deal.”
“Mom! You had chest pains and you didn’t tell me?”
“What’s to tell? The doctor sent me home from the hospital after a couple—”
“You were in the hospital?”
I had always thought my relationship with my parents was a close one, considering that they lived in Florida and I lived in Connecticut. We spoke on the phone every Sunday. We visited each other at least once a year. We didn’t have periods of estrangement. We didn’t go on “Oprah” and accuse each other of heinous crimes. Besides, my mother had always been somewhat of a kvetch, who told you more about her aches and pains that you ever wanted to know. So why had I been kept in the dark about her chest pains and hospitalization? Why hadn’t my parents said a word about something so potentially serious? Instead, they’d acted as if my mother had been in perfect health when they’d been up North the previous month.
“We didn’t want to worry you,” was my father’s explanation. “What was the point?”
“The point?” I said, my voice rising. “The point is that I’m your daughter. Your only daughter. You’re supposed to be honest with me. When I call you every Sunday and say, ‘How are you?,’ you’re supposed to tell me. You’re supposed to tell me what’s really going on with you, even if it’s bad. Especially if it’s bad.”
“Excuse me,” Kimberley interjected, her mouth full of egg salad. “But I’m your only daughter and you and Daddy don’t tell me what’s really going on with you. I always feel like you tell me one thing but really mean another.”
I was too stunned to speak. I had just arrived in Florida for a few days of vacation, and suddenly I was in the middle of a psychodrama.
“What do you mean, pumpkin?” Hunt asked Kimberley. “I’ve never heard you say those things before.”
“I never heard Judy say those things to her parents before,” she replied. “It made me realize that you two treat me exactly like they treat her.”
“Oh, now Kim,” I said. “Let’s not get carried away here. You—”
“I’m telling you,” she went on, ignoring my interruption and directing her comments to Hunt, “that whenever there’s a problem—like when Judy lost her job or when you two are mad at each other—you always try to pretend everything’s fine. You treat me like a total retard. Like I’m too stupid to understand anything.”
Hunt patted Kimberley’s knee and said, “I had no idea you felt that way, Kim. Neither did Judy, I’m sure. I guess our only excuse is that we know that you have a lot to deal with in your life—your schoolwork, your friends, your mom—and we don’t want to add to it by laying our problems on you.”
“Well put, Hunt,” my mother applauded. “Now you all understand why your father and I didn’t mention my heart thing.”
“Look, Mom, Dad. I can appreciate the desire to protect me,” I said. “But if there’s a serious medical problem, I really should have been told.”
“All right. So we’re telling you,” said my father. “The doctor says your mother has early signs of clogged arteries. But you know Lucille. She knows everything. She thinks she can carry on as if she’s seventeen.”
“Now, Arthur. Don’t exaggerate. So I had some chest pains,” my mother said. “I’m supposed to exercise and watch the cholesterol now, Judy. But does anybody really expect me to change my lifestyle—at my age?” She rolled her eyes and shoved a large forkful of chopped liver into her mouth.
I felt sick. My mother had heart trouble, yet she didn’t seem to care. Was this what my sense of foreboding had been about? Had I somehow known that my mother was going to reveal that she had health problems? “Mom, no wonder Daddy’s worried about you,” I sighed. “Do you still have the pains?”
“Not really,” she said. “The doctor gave me some pills. Now. Let’s forget all about this business and talk about your father’s birthday. A man doesn’t turn seventy-five every day, you know.”
My mother began to describe the new set of golf clubs she’d bought my father for his birthday, but Kimberley cut her off. She wanted to keep talking about the way Hunt and I never treated her like a real person.
“Take the time we were at the country club and I found Judy’s beeper in her purse,” she told my parents. “Dad was real mad because he didn’t even know that Judy had a beeper. And then when he saw the message that this guy sent her, he went nuts. He got real jealous and accused her of sleeping with the guy. The next thing I know, Dad is taking me to my grandparents’ house and not telling me a thing!”
My parents eyed me.
“Sleeping with what guy?” they said simultaneously.
I shook my head. “It’s not what you think,” I told them.
“Judy. Not you. Not our daughter,” said my father. “We didn’t bring you up to—”
“You see that, Arthur?” my mother interrupted. “I knew something was funny when we visited them in July. I even asked her about it. Remember, Judy?”
“Hunt, tell them,” I said. “Tell them I wasn’t fooling around. Tell them I was doing a job, for God’s sake.”
“I thought you couldn’t get a job,” said my mother. “You told me your friend Arlene found another job but you couldn’t.”
“Right,” I said. “But I meant that I couldn’t get a publishing job. The job I got was a police job.”
“A police job?” my parents said, once again in unison.
I took a deep breath and told everybody all about my job as a police informant.
“You were involved in that Claire Cox murder case and didn’t tell your parents about it?” said my father.
“Or your stepdaughter?” said Kimberley.
“I didn’t want any of you to worry,” I said. “You would have worried if you’d known.”
“Aha! Now you see why we didn’t tell you about your mother’s chest pains,” said my father. “Nobody wants to worry anybody.”
“So nobody tells anybody the truth,” said Kimberley with a pout.
“Look, everybody. Let’s just agree that, from now on, we’ll stop protecting each other and be honest,” I said.
Hunt lifted his water glass. “A toast,” he said. “To honesty.”
We all clinked glasses and drank.
“On second thought,” said my mother, setting her glass down. “I want to hear more about the murder case, Judy. How do we know you’re not in any danger?”
“I told you,” I said. “The police caught the guy who killed Claire. He was the chef at the club.”
“But you said he hasn’t been arrested for the murder yet,” said my father. “Only for the kickbacks. And that he’s still out on bail.”
“Detective Cunningham said that, by the time we come home from Florida, Brendan Hardy will be back in jail,” I said. “For good.”
“I certainly hope so,” said my mother.
“Hey, let’s drink to that,” Hunt said, lifting his glass once more. “To putting Claire Cox’s murderer away—for good.”
“Here, here,” I said.
We all clinked glasses again. Then Hunt and my father volunteered to clear the table and do the dishes.
“What do you say you and I go swimming?” I asked Kimberley, bracing myself for her usual reluctance to do anything with me.
She considered the question, then did something truly startling: she smiled at me and said, “Sure.” Then she jumped off her seat and went into her room to put on her bathing suit.
“See that?” said my mother, who had observed the scene. “All it took was a little food. You feed the girl and she’s happy.”
That night the five of us enjoyed a relaxing evening. Well, it would have been if I had been able to relax. But I couldn’t. The anxiety hovered, made worse by the revelation of my mother’s heart trouble.
We cooked swordfish on the grill, took a swim, and watched Goodbye Columbus, my parents’ favorite movie. Everything’s fine, I told myself. Just fine.
My father’s birthday began on a cheerful note. Hunt and I were just waking up when Kimberley knocked on our door about eight-thirty and said she was taking a walk with my parents, who had recently started walking one or two miles each morning. After I heard the front door slam, I rolled over and tapped Hunt on the shoulder.
“Booch?” I said. “It’s just the two of us in the house. What do you say we take advantage of our good fortune?”
“I say, ‘I’d love to. Come closer.’”
And so I did.
We made sweet, languorous love in my parents’ sunny guest room overlooking the pool. Afterward, I clung to Hunt and said, “Am I being paranoid or are things going a little too well on this trip so far, aside from the stuff about my mother’s chest pains, I mean?”
“Why shouldn’t they go well?” he said. “We’re on vacation. Besides, they only kept your mother in the hospital for observation. If she was seriously ill, they would have recommended open heart surgery or some other procedure. She’s going to be fine, if she watches her diet.”
“That’s a big ‘if,’” I said. “My mother’s never met a piece of cheesecake she didn’t like.”
The weather on Saturday was as hot and humid as the day before. Hunt and my father intended to play golf. My mother had a bridge game. And Kimberley and I decided to check out the mall.
“I like malls,” Kimberley said as we strolled past the shops. “I wish they had them in New York. We don’t have anything good in New York. Everybody’s always rushing around and forgetting you exist.”
“Forgetting you exist?” It was a strange thing to say, and I turned to look at her. She had always tried to seem so tough, so sophisticated, so urbane. It was easy to forget that she was young and vulnerable—a little girl who’d been left by her daddy at a young age and would probably never get over it, no matter how often he visited her.
“Who forgets you exist, Kim?” I asked. “Are things okay between you and your mom?” I wondered if Bree had found herself a boyfriend. Or maybe Bree had found herself a job. Fat chance.
“My mother is busy with her acting classes,” she said. “And my dad is busy with his job. And you’re busy with…I don’t know what you’re busy with, but you never have time for me.”
I felt a wave of tenderness toward her—and of confusion. Kimberley had never given me the impression that she wanted to spend even five minutes with me. I’d always thought she wished I’d drop off the face of the earth.
“I’m sorry you feel that way,” I said. We were standing in front of an electronics store, and a half a dozen boom boxes were booming with rap music. “Why don’t we sit down somewhere,” I suggested. “I’ll buy you a soda and we can talk quietly, huh?”
She agreed and we found an ice cream parlor on the second level of the mall and ordered a couple of Cokes.
We talked for an hour and a half. About the divorce. About her mother and father. About me. About how I act as if I don’t have time for her and, worse, as if I don’t like her.
“Is that why you’re so angry whenever you come to Belford?” I asked, grateful that Kimberley was unburdening herself to me this way. It was the first time.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I guess so. I get mad when you act like Daddy is all you care about and that you have to be with me because he says so.”
I shook my head and put my hand on hers. “I’m so sorry if I’ve made you feel that way,” I said, and began to describe to Kimberley how much I cared for her, how much I wanted us to be close. She listened intently as she sipped her soda, her lower lip quivering occasionally.
“I’m so sorry,” I said again. “I’ll try to be a better stepmother. But you have to try too, Kim. You have to try to understand that it takes both of us to make our relationship work. We have to treat each other with love and respect.”
At the mention of the word “respect,” she sat up very straight in her chair, looked me right in the eye, and said in her most grown-up voice, “No problem.”
I smiled. “Good. Want to get back out there and do some serious shopping?”
She did, and so we did.
We pulled into my parents’ driveway just after one o’clock and found Hunt pacing on the front lawn, a worried look on his face.
“Jude! Where have you been?” was the way he greeted us.
“At the mall,” I said. “I thought you were playing golf with Dad.”
“I was, but something’s happened.”
My hand flew to my mouth. My mother! “Okay,” I said. “You can tell me, Hunt. We promised we’d tell each other everything, no matter how serious.”
“That’s right, Dad,” said Kimberley as she got out of the car and joined us on the lawn. “You’ve got to tell us.”
I reached for her hand and squeezed it. She inched closer to me.
“Go on, Hunt. Tell us,” I said. “How bad is she?”
“She’s in the hospital,” he frowned.
“Oh, God,” I said. “Is she…?”
He shook his head. “But it’s serious,” he admitted.
I gasped. “We’ve got to go to her,” I managed. “Right away!”
“Okay,” said Hunt. “I didn’t know what you’d want to do about your father’s birthday party tonight, but there’s a flight out of here at five o’clock this afternoon, and we could—”
“Flight out of here?” I said. “What are you talking about?”
“I know it’s Arthur’s birthday,” said Hunt, “but I thought you’d want to get right to the—”
“Hunt! If my mother is in serious condition, why on earth would I want to leave Boca?”
“It’s not your mother who’s in serious condition,” he said.
“Not my mother?” I looked at Hunt, who was obviously in such a state that he wasn’t thinking clearly. “Then who is it?”
“Arlene,” he said.
I stared at him. “Arlene Handlebaum?”
He nodded. “Somebody broke into our house last night and tried to kill her. The police have arrested Brendan Hardy. He denies it, of course, but then he denied killing Claire too.”
I grabbed Kimberley and clutched her to me.
“I still don’t understand,” I said as my heart raced and my mouth went dry. “Why would Brendan—”
“Come inside,” Hunt said, “and I’ll tell you what I know.”
What Hunt knew was what Tom Cunningham told him when he had called my parents’ house, just as Hunt and my father were about to leave for the golf course. Apparently, at ten o’clock on Friday night, Tom had been summoned to the scene of the crime—our house—after Arlene had been viciously beaten about the head and face and, after she had been left for dead, had managed to drag herself to the phone and call 911. From what the police had been able to piece together, it seemed that Arlene had been upstairs in our guest room, reading a manuscript, when she heard someone enter through the front door. She must have called out and surprised the person, who then panicked and attacked her. When the police found her, she was lying on the floor near the telephone, dazed, in shock, her head a mass of contusions, her memory a combination of incomprehensible images and terrifying nothingness. She was rushed to the hospital and diagnosed as suffering from a subdural hematoma as well as cerebral edema, which had required several hours of delicate brain surgery to remove. But instead of recovering, she had lapsed into a coma, which the doctors had pronounced rare but not unheard of. They were hopeful that she would emerge very quickly from her sleeplike state. So were the police, who were eager for her to wake up and identify Brendan as her attacker.
“The doctors really think she’s going to come out of the coma and be all right?” I asked, barely able to process the information I was being given. My friend, Arlene, was in a coma! After spending the night at my house!
“According to Tom, there’s a good possibility she’ll be fine. In time,” said Hunt. “He’s been right on top of things at the hospital. Hardly left Arlene’s side. And I don’t think it’s just because he’s waiting for her to regain consciousness and identify Brendan. I think he genuinely feels bad about what happened to her.”
“I’m sure he does,” I said. “He’s a very sensitive man. But what about Brendan? How did they figure out that he was the one who did it?” I suddenly flashed back to my ordeal in the elevator and recalled the way Brendan had disguised his voice, calling me on the elevator phone and threatening me in that bizarre, singsong pitch. “Mrs. Price,” he had teased. “Mrs. Price, I have a message for you.” I shuddered, despite the Florida heat.
“There was a cigarette butt in the kitchen sink,” said Hunt. “It was too wet for them to get prints on it, but there was one thing they could determine: it was Brendan’s brand—Merit.”
“But why?” I asked. “Why would Brendan go back to our house? He was out on bail for the kickback scheme at the club. He was about to be arrested for Claire’s murder. Why would he make matters worse for himself?”
“Tom says it has to do with the criminal mentality,” said Hunt. “That if Brendan knew he could break into our house once, he also knew he could break into our house twice, the theory being that hardcore criminals always need that one last hit, that one last thrill, that one last high before they’re caught.” Hunt paused to consider his words. “And then there was the more practical reason.”
“Which was?”
“That there was something in our house he wanted.”
“Such as?”
“Evidence against him. His lawyer, the illustrious Patrick Delaney, must have advised him that he was about to be arrested for Claire’s murder. Tom thinks Brendan found out we were in Florida and decided to come looking for evidence, afraid we might have something in the house, something that would put him away for life, something he could steal. Unfortunately for Arlene, he had no idea there was anybody home.”
“I can’t believe this happened,” I said angrily. “Brendan should have been in jail weeks ago. If only the Tewksburys had gone to the police about him, instead of to their grandniece. If only we hadn’t taken so long to discover his kickback scheme. If we’d been able to put all the pieces together faster, Arlene would be all right and this whole mess would be well behind us.”
“Does all this mean we have to leave Florida tonight?” asked Kimberley with obvious disappointment.
“I don’t know what to do,” I said. “I hate to miss my father’s birthday. But I can’t enjoy it either, knowing that Arlene is lying in a hospital bed, half-dead, because she decided to spend a relaxing weekend at our house.”
“Would you like to stay here, pumpkin?” Hunt asked his daughter. “Even if Judy and I go home, you could probably stay here with Grandma and Grandpa Mills.”
She shook her head. “I want to be with you and Judy,” she said firmly.
When my parents came home twenty minutes later, we discussed whether we should return to Connecticut or stay in Florida.
“You can’t do anything for your friend tonight,” my mother said. “Why not stay for Arthur’s birthday and go back in the morning?”
Which was what we did.
I tried my best to enjoy the evening, but thoughts of Arlene, Brendan, and our house of horrors continued to haunt me. The only consolation was that Brendan had finally been arrested and jailed and, according to Tom, would not be roaming the streets anytime soon.
We left Boca Raton early the next morning and arrived in Belford around noon. I dropped Hunt and Kimberley at the house, then drove to the hospital to see Arlene.
There was a policeman posted at her door and her parents were sitting at her bedside. I told them how sorry I was about what had happened to their daughter at my house. They told me not to blame myself and left me alone with Arlene.
It was difficult to be in the same room with her, painful to see how ill she was. She looked so pale, so fragile, as she lay in bed, her right cheek bruised and swollen, her newly shorn head wrapped in bandages that were held in place by something called a “neurocap,” a sort of beanie that, in happier times, would have made her laugh. “How did this all happen?” I whispered to her, tears rolling slowly down my cheeks. It seemed only days ago that we were sitting in my office at Charlton House, gabbing about Loathsome Leeza and wondering when she would reveal herself as the Know-Nothing she was and be tossed out on her butt the way we eventually were. How had we come to this: I becoming a police informant, she slipping into a coma? And when would our lives get back to normal?
Normal, I thought, as I watched Arlene sleep. My life hadn’t been normal for a very long time, not since Hunt joined that dopey country club and put us all in jeopardy.
“Judy?”
I looked up from the bed. It was Tom. I stood up and went to him. He hugged me for several seconds, patting my back and telling me everything was going to be all right. Then, he pulled away.
“I’m glad you’re here,” he said. “Glad you’re safe.”
I nodded.
He looked over at Arlene. “How is she?”
“The same, I guess. Oh, Tom. She’s got to be all right. She’s such a wonderful person. Such a good friend. And such a romantic.”
“Tell me,” he said. “I want to know all about her.”
There was something in the way he said it that made me do a double take. He reminded me of Dana Andrews in the movie Laura—the cop who found himself mooning over a woman he’d never met but should have saved. But then Tom had once told me he was a sucker for damsels in distress. And Arlene Handlebaum was definitely in distress.
“Well,” I began, “Arlene’s the best romance editor in publishing…” and I proceeded to give Detective Tom Cunningham a thumbnail sketch of the woman who had been my closest friend in the book business. He seemed very moved when I explained that, despite her talent, attractiveness, and good nature, Arlene had never been married or even had a long-term relationship with a man. “She always aimed high when it came to men,” I said. “She was looking for Prince Charming and never found him.”
He smiled. “Then there’s no way she won’t come out of this coma,” he said. “Not when her Prince Charming is still out there waiting for her.”