On the Monday morning after my arrest, I had a stinking hangover. I sat in the kitchen and sipped coffee and shot dirty looks at the answering machine. Finally, at nine o’clock, I made myself pick up the phone. If I call her, I told myself, I’ll be the one in charge. I’ll be the one calling the shots.
What a joke.
“Mama?”
“Where have you been?” she demanded. “I have been calling and calling you for twenty-four hours straight. Your daddy and I have been out of our minds with worry.”
“I know. I’m sorry. There were reporters camped out at my place, so I spent the night at BeBe’s. Then, when I finally got home last night, it was so late, I didn’t want to call and wake you up.”
“As if we’d slept a wink since all this happened,” she snapped.
“I’m sorry,” I said again, making two hatch marks on the back of an envelope on the kitchen counter. It was a habit I’d developed, talking to Mama. Keeping track of the apologies per conversation. My goal was to keep it under a dozen for each ten minutes. Didn’t look like I was gonna make goal this time.
“Are you all right? You didn’t, I mean, those people at the jail didn’t touch you—or anything?”
“I’m fine,” I said. “I watched television and read. Didn’t Uncle James call and let you know what was going on?”
“He did,” Mama admitted, “but I still don’t understand why you called him instead of us.”
“James is a lawyer,” I pointed out unnecessarily. “I just figured he’d know what to do. About getting me bailed out and all.”
“Bailed out,” she wailed. “I still can’t believe this has happened.”
“It’s not that bad,” I said. “Criminal trespass. Hardly even a real crime.”
“But they think you murdered that woman,” Mama said sharply. “It was on the news, and all over the papers. Even the Atlanta paper. I saw Sarah Donnellen at ten-o’clock mass yesterday. Daddy lit two candles for you, by the way. Sarah’s daughter-in-law is a lawyer in Atlanta. She called Sarah because she knew we’re friends. And Sarah says her daughter-in-law says they could still charge you with murder.”
I bit my lip. Sarah Donnellen’s son Ricky had been in my class at Blessed Sacrament School. He was famous for hanging around the jungle gym on the playground, hoping to get a glimpse of a girl’s underpants. Any woman who’d married that pervert couldn’t have too much on the ball, lawyer or not.
“Mama,” I said quietly, “they are not going to charge me with murder, because I did not kill Caroline DeSantos. I never touched her. I went in that house to use the bathroom, and that’s the truth.”
She gave a prolonged sigh. “How many times have I told you not to use public bathrooms? And I still don’t understand what you were doing out there at that time of night.”
“I wanted to get into the estate sale as early as possible,” I said, trying to be patient.
“It surely doesn’t look very good,” Mama said. “Everybody was staring at us in mass yesterday. I could hardly hold my head up. Even Father Morrison looked at me funny, when I went up for Communion.”
“Father Morrison looks at everybody funny,” I said, starting to lose it. “He’s cross-eyed, for Christ’s sake.”
“Don’t you take the Lord’s name in vain to me, young lady,” Mama said. “I have to go now. I’m getting one of my migraines. But your daddy would like to speak to you.”
I rolled my eyes to the heavens.
“Eloise?” Daddy grunted.
“I’m sorry, Daddy,” I said, getting it out of the way.
“You need any money?”
Good old Daddy.
“No. I’m fine.”
“Your mother’s pretty upset,” he said.
“I know. But Uncle James is going to get it all straightened out. It was just a misunderstanding, that’s all.”
“What about that dead gal?”
“I didn’t kill her,” I said.
“Good,” he said, as though that settled it. “You be sweet, you hear?”
The phone rang as soon as I put it down. I looked at the caller ID screen and didn’t recognize the number, so I let the machine pick up. Good thinking. It was Ira Stein, the police reporter for the Morning News. “Please call me immediately,” he said. “I understand the police have found your fingerprints on the gun believed to be the murder weapon in the Caroline DeSantos homicide. And I also understand Ms. DeSantos was engaged to be married to your ex-husband, and that you’d been overheard making threats against her.”
God. I found the ibuprofen bottle and swallowed four capsules with another cup of coffee.
The phone rang off and on for the next hour. The doorbell rang too. Instead of answering, I ran upstairs and looked out and saw two different television satellite trucks set up in the lane behind the carriage house.
I was massaging my temples and wishing for a straight shot of morphine when there was another rap at the front door. Jethro ran to the hall and started barking. He’d been racing up and down the stairs all morning, barking like crazy with all the phones and doorbells ringing. He was as stressed as I was. I started wondering if they made doggy Valium.
“Good,” I muttered, setting the coffee cup down. “Sic ’em, boy.”
“Don’t sic that dog on me,” called a voice from the other side of the door.
BeBe.
“Tie him up or something, would you? I’m wearing white and you know how he loves to jump up on me.”
I took Jethro by the collar and coaxed him into the kitchen. “Good boy,” I said. “Stay here and I’ll let you jump up on the very next reporter.”
BeBe was in rare form. She was, as advertised, dressed in a simple white linen sheath, with white sling-back sandals. Her hair was glossy and twisted on top of her head in something like a chignon. She was clutching a tote bag full of groceries.
“You look like death,” she said, holding me at arm’s length. “What have you done to yourself?”
“I got drunk on cheap chardonnay last night,” I said. “People have been calling all morning. My father has started making novenas for me.”
BeBe shook her head in disapproval. “How many times do I have to tell you, life is too short to drink bad wine.”
“Easy for you to say. You never pay retail.”
“True,” she said, sitting down in an armchair near the window. “But it’s not like you to go get drunk all by yourself. Why the toot?”
“I was depressed,” I said. “You know, just getting out of jail, all that.”
BeBe pursed her lips. “Uh-uh.
“What else?” she asked, leaning closer. “Come on, tell Dr. Babes.”
“It was Tal.”
She looked shocked. “He came over here? What did he say?”
“He didn’t come over here,” I said. “I haven’t talked to him. I was sitting out in the courtyard, and I happened to look up, and he was upstairs, sitting at his desk, looking out the window. The look on his face, BeBe, the anguish. It was so pathetic. I felt so sorry for him. He looked so brokenhearted. And it all came back in a rush. How we fell in love, what we had together. It was all I could do to keep from running over there and asking him to take me back.”
Her eyes widened. “Tell me you didn’t do anything stupid.”
I snorted. “Yeah, I went over there and fucked his brains out.”
“Which means you drank yourself into a stupor feeling all sorry for the scumbag and his slutty little girlfriend.”
“Getting drunk seemed smarter than getting laid by my ex,” I said.
“True again,” BeBe said. “But look, I brought you some provisions.”
She started pulling packages out of her tote bag, inventorying the contents. “Chocolate. Much more satisfying than shitty chardonnay. Croissants. Coke. Fruity Pebbles cereal—oh yes, I know your little shameful secret, Eloise Foley. Skim milk, even some doggy treats for Jethro.”
“You’re the best,” I said, getting up to take the groceries into the kitchen.
“Down, Jethro,” BeBe said, following right behind me. She took the box of treats, opened it, and tossed him one. “See how nice Aunt BeBe is?”
She reached back into the tote bag again, then paused. “I brought something else, besides food. The papers. Want to see?”
“I think I’ll pass. Mama already gave me the rundown.”
“Well, now what?” BeBe asked, pouring herself a cup of coffee. “Are you just going to hide out here the rest of your life?”
“No. Maybe. Hell, I don’t know.”
“What does your uncle say?”
“He says his friend who’s a criminal lawyer thinks the security guards screwed up everything out at Beaulieu by messing around inside the house and seizing my bag without my permission. This friend says it’s doubtful that any of that evidence—including the pistols—would be admissible as evidence in court.”
She took a sip of her coffee. “Who is this hotshot lawyer friend?”
“I don’t know. James is being very mysterious about that.”
She grinned. “Do you think he’s got a girlfriend? Good for him!”
“I don’t know who this person is,” I said truthfully. I hadn’t told BeBe yet that James was gay. He was still very hesitant to let people know about his personal life.
“I think we need to get you out of this house,” BeBe said, eyeing the empty two-liter wine bottle in the trash can, “before you start drinking gin out of a steam iron.”
“What did you have in mind?” I asked. I was starting to feel a little claustrophobic.
She brought out the newspaper.
“Not interested,” I said.
“Not so fast,” she said, tapping the page. “These are the classifieds. Remember the Little Sisters of Charity school—out in Sandfly?”
“Sure,” I said. “It was the all-black parochial school before the archdiocese integrated all the schools. But it’s been closed since the eighties.”
“Right,” BeBe said. “And the last of the Little Sisters has retired. Gone back to the mother house in Philadelphia, according to a story in today’s paper. They’re getting ready to tear down the school and the convent, to build a shopping center. Can you say liquidation sale?”
I slid my bare feet into the flip-flops by the back door and grabbed for my purse. “Let’s go.”