The
Dunamai
Memorial Collection
This
ebook is part of
a collection to honor the memory of Hugh ‘Dunamai’ Miller who passed
away on
the evening of January 19th, 2006.
Dunamai
was an
incredible asset to the ebook community, literally converting books to
ebooks
by hand like a modern day clerical monk when he had to. He was the
Knight of
the Obscure Book and a better champion could not be found. They don't
make them
much better than this man.
If you
are lucky in
your life you might meet a handful of really 'good' people. If you knew
Dunamai,
then you were lucky in meeting just such a person. He was a very
special man
who had time for everyone and asked nothing of anyone. He also had a
smile and
a kind word for you anytime you needed one. Dunamai was one of the
nicest,
helpful and easygoing people you could meet online.
“For
what is it to
die but to stand naked in the wind and melt into the sun. And what is
it to cease
breathing but to free the breath from its restless tides, that it may
rise and
expand and seek god unencumbered. Only when you drink from the river of
silence
shall you indeed sing. And when you have reached the mountain top, then
you
shall begin to climb. And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then
you shall
truly dance.”
I'm
sure Dun is
dancing today. He was a star on earth, and will be a star in heaven.
We
grieve the loss of
an important member of the ebook community. We will remember you
forever, dear friend.
Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Quote
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Epilogue
About the
Author
By Leslie
Glass
Copyright
Page
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
A thousand thanks to all the people who keep me
financially savvy and sound. Judy Zilm, my bookkeeper and friend, has
kept track of every little financial detail of my life for going on a
decade. I couldn't possibly do it without her. Thanks to Kenny Hicks,
my accountant, who has advised and bullied and relentlessly overpaid
the government but has finally been truly fun with something—research
for this novel. Through ups and downs of all the markets in recent
years, Donald Wolfson has always been there to carry the burden. Thanks
for taking the graveyard shift so I don't have to. Thanks are also due
to tax professor Jan Sweeney, who gave me the textbooks and the goods
on the IRS, and estate planner Charles Baldwin, who helped with
insurance and other questions. Thanks to Dr. Thomas Loeb for help with
research on cosmetic surgery. Thanks to my agent, Deborah Schneider; my
editor, Joe Blades; and all the good people at Ballantine, from bottom
to top, who work behind the scenes to produce the books and send them
out into the world. This one is for all of you. Cheers.
CHAPTER 1
LIFE HOLDS OUT ITS LITTLE SURPRISES. Our
stories
unfold sideways, backwards, upside down. In a single second truth can
be shuffled like cards and scattered in all directions, never to be
arranged the same way again. So it was with Cassandra Sales. At the
moment she had her epiphany, she was kneeling in her garden surrounded
by the exploding beauty of spring. Years of devoted attention to this
garden had yielded absolute perfection, a feast of nature's botanical
wonders.
Daffodils, egg yolk yellow, frolicked in a
light wind off
Long Island Sound less than a mile away. Hyacinths, blue, were heavy
with moisture and fragrant beyond belief. Narcissi, hundreds of them in
all manner of the palest pink, heavy cream, bisque, with touches of
apple green and orange, also had an aroma to dream and rhapsodize about
all year long. They nodded, too.
Now the tulips, the parrot kind, with
ruffled feathers in
pink and green. So thick, no earth could be seen below them. The beds
were fully planted. There was no room for more. Above, a number of
dogwood trees were in bloom. Two weeping cherry trees wept copiously by
the front door. The whole garden enchilada on just over a half-acre
plot. The place was a tiny gem.
Cassie's lifestyle was nowhere near as
grand as her
husband's business success as a top wine importer suggested it should
be, and her house was nothing special either. It was just a step or two
above the ordinary clapboard colonial, surrounded by thousands of
similar two- and three-bedroom suburban dwellings of brick or shingle
with two-car garages in old and pleasant neighborhoods on the North
Shore of Long Island. It was her landscaping and gardens that put the
property in an altogether different league from anything else around
it. Everyone who went through the gate into the backyard felt the magic
Cassie had brought to the place. An arbor was covered with roses all
summer long. A small greenhouse contained an orchid collection that
seemed continuously in bloom. A flagstone patio around the
twenty-by-thirty in-ground pool had teak outdoor furniture and was
artistically arranged with potted plants in decorative planters that
changed with the seasons.
That day the fifty-year-old woman, who
could have been
anybody's relative, was kneeling all alone in a fine April drizzle
wearing rubber boots, damp khakis, a sweatshirt, and a baseball hat.
The garden, the unpleasant weather, her acute attention to detail
despite it, her outfit, her mud-caked hands, and complete lack of
vanity told her whole story. Almost.
The piece that didn't show was that turning
fifty had
driven her crazy as turning forty to forty-nine had not. Now she was
looking at her life through a different prism and not liking what she
saw. Her children were grown. Her husband, only five years older than
herself, had an obsession with his business so intense, it seemed like
an illness that robbed him of his old sense of fun and desire. He was
limp morning and night. When she asked him what they could do about it,
his finger would jump to his lips, "shhh," as if merely voicing the
problem might blow them both away.
Although she'd never counted the days and
months since
last they'd tumbled around, giggling and panting in the sheets, on that
rainy April day soon after she turned fifty, Cassie allowed herself to
acknowledge it had been years. Years since a thrill! And her own real
achievements didn't seem enough to pick up the slack. Here she was,
secretly longing for passion and purpose, and what she was doing was
cooking, growing orchids, and watching the Discovery Channel. She also
read the newspapers and People magazine, caught the evening news
programs and magazine format news shows. She followed the biographies
on the Biography Channel and was a secret devotee of the nascent lives
in The Real World on MTV. And the Survivors.
Cassie Sales saw all these lives and wished
she could
start over, have a job that paid her money instead of endlessly
donating her gifts to causes like world hunger, whales, rain forests,
refugees, battered women, child abuse, and cures for illnesses no one
in her family had. She'd been very useful to others, donating her
special gifts, but she was fifty and she'd had it.
Now she wanted to be beautiful again, like
her daughter,
Marsha, like her garden. She wanted to sparkle and dazzle, be flocked
to by the birds and the butterflies and the bees that just didn't seem
to come to her anymore. The longing to be seen by her husband and have
fun was so intense, so fierce and relentless, it felt like unrequited
love.
Was fifty that old? Was it? She knew
perfectly well that
fifty wasn't old. It was her problem that dazzle was gone. Other people
way older than they were had sex every day. You saw it all the time on
TV. Mitch wasn't old, he'd just fizzled out. The sudden longing for the
birds and bees, after a dry spell of—Cassie didn't want to count the
years—was everywhere in her dreams. She loved Mitch she was sure, but
she was dreaming plane crashes, car crashes, a spectacularly fiery end
to him absolutely every night. And she was dreaming love from other
sources every single day. It had to be around somewhere. Other people
were getting it. She fantasized burgeoning cocks in every man she saw.
Young men, old men, nasty-looking men. Bald men, fat men, small men.
Everywhere burgeoning cocks. In the
supermarket, in the
bank. At doctors' offices. On the playing fields when she drove past
the high school. When she was with her daughter, Marsha, in the city.
No male was immune to her imagination. She thought about everybody.
Everywhere. Something upsetting and unnatural happened to her when she
turned fifty. Something snapped. She had no idea what it was. Suddenly
she was tired of being sensible, of saving money, of being endlessly
understanding and good about Mitch's languished desire. On the outside
she was middle-aged, as predictable and conventional as a boiled
potato, but on the inside she was beautiful, reckless, independent, a
hard-drinking playgirl of twenty-three. Younger than those Sex and the
City girls. She dreamed of death and youth in tandem.
In the misty moment of her epiphany, Cassie
believed that
she and her husband loved and were loyal to each other in the way that
husbands and wives were supposed to love and be loyal. But quite
frankly, she also wished he were dead so she could be a widow with all
the pleasures that accrued to the state. A silly thought, she knew.
Death wouldn't help her.
Years ago, before she and Mitch were
married and before
her mother got cancer and died, she and her mother had foraged one day
for treasure in an antiques store for the perfect Valentine's Day gift
for her father. And they found it in a dusty frame with bars standing
out in bas-relief across the sepia photo of a female lion lying in a
cage with a male lion standing protectively by her side. Under the
ancient photo was the title:LIFE SENTENCE . The idea of
no way out but death had amused them then. Seventeen years after her
mother died, Cassandra's father still had it on his bedside table. He
never remarried. After he died, Cassandra kept it on her own desk for
seven more years. And all the time, her own face slowly squared off to
look like the face of her dead mother, frozen just at the beginning of
middle age, only a year older than Cassie was now. Cassie's own life
sentence had no end in sight, nor did she really want it to. For her,
simple divorce was out of the question and widowhood wasn't at all
likely; her husband came from the old school and resisted everything.
No, death or divorce wouldn't do. A real change in herself was required.
That fateful day in April, soon after
crossing the chasm
of fifty, Cassie saw beauty waving at her from the other side. In a
split second she decided on the surgical overhaul, and there was no
turning back. In a few short days she'd read every magazine and book on
the subject and obtained a consultation with an upcoming plastic
surgeon who had delusions of grandeur.
The artist in flesh was certain he could
make her over as
she had been as a blushing bride. On the enormous TV screen in his
office he projected her as she had been with round cheeks, smiling
lips, and wide, hopeful eyes. She'd been a beauty. The surgeon was as
totally inspired by the youthful Cassie as Cassie was depressed to have
lost her. He liked her spirit and her little plot. She wanted to have
the procedures done while her husband was away on a business trip, to
heal while he was gone, and to surprise the passion right back into him
upon his return. Would that it were so simple. The confident surgeon,
however, saw no flaws in the plan and agreed to fit her in quickly. She
charged the surgery to American Express for the True Rewards. It all
happened in the blink of an eye. Cassie never considered the
possibility of unanticipated consequences.
CHAPTER 2
A MONTH LATER, at the end of May, seven
days after her
surgery, however, Cassie knew she'd made a truly appalling mistake. Her
dos and don'ts folder said she would feel "mild discomfort" in her
first two postop days. And "minor" swelling. Excruciating pain was what
she felt and major swelling. The Time Line of Recovery in her
Instructions for Aftercare predicted that she would feel entirely
better after the first week and looking forward to total recovery and
miraculous results.
Cassie was feeling worse and worse as the
days went on.
It was almost as if the great upcoming surgeon she'd chosen to turn her
lights back On had made a little mistake and switched her power button
to Off. She looked really terrible. Her eyes were so black-and-blue and
swollen, she could hardly see a thing. Everything hurt. She couldn't
eat because she wasn't allowed to open her mouth wide enough to chew.
Worst of all, she didn't care about any of the things she used to care
about: the skirmishes between the Democrats and Republicans, the latest
in the abortion wars. The Middle East. Beauty. She was way, way down,
depressed, angry.
And her beautiful, smart daughter, Marsha,
now
twenty-five, was no help in the reassurance department. Marsha was on
vacation from social work school that week and had returned home to
take care of Cassie, to drive her back and forth from her postop visits
to the doctor, and so forth. Marsha turned out to be less supportive of
the event than Cassie might have predicted, so the visit had taken on a
surreal quality.
In her youth, Marsha had been something of
a chore to her
mother. As a teenager, she'd had every color hair possible. She'd worn
slut dresses up to her butt from the age of twelve on. She'd stuck
pieces of metal in her tongue and nose and eyebrow and navel, then
protested angrily when anyone said something. She'd smoked pot in the
backyard, crashed the Volvo station wagon into Cassie's favorite
dogwood while trying to prove she could turn the car around in the
driveway without benefit of driving lessons (when she was not yet
thirteen) on the very first day Cassie had brought it home. She'd been
caught in a neighbor's hot tub naked with three boys. For a number of
years she'd weighed 170. She'd taunted her mother, worn army boots and
grunge. She'd failed Italian. Twice. The girl got 1400 on her SATs, but
school counselors thought she'd never make it to college. When she got
to college, she constantly threatened to not make it through.
That completely loved and accepted girl (no
matter what
she did) had metamorphosed into the Marsha of today. Somehow she'd lost
about 150 pounds. She was down to nothing at all. Her hair was no
longer pink. Or green or purple. It was tawny. She was cooking. She was
bathing wounds. She was cleaning the house. Sort of. She was fielding
the phone calls from her mother's benefit-giving buddies, lying to
cover for her so no one would know what an asshole her mother had been.
Marsha didn't want anyone to know how bad
things were.
She was screaming at the doctor because her mother's face looked as if
it were rejecting itself. She was demanding attention and care, and she
was getting it. She was scolding and nursing her own mother. She was a
fierce and ferocious disapproving protector. It was downright weird.
Their roles were completely reversed.
On the Friday, seven days after Cassie's
surgery, at
twelve noon, Cassie had the final stitches removed from her eyes. On
the trip home she felt utterly defeated because the doctor had refused
to remove the stitches located around and in her ears, as well as a
myriad of staples hidden in her scalp. He'd told her they weren't done
yet. What was she, a roasting chicken? She was further upset because
she didn't look like anybody she'd ever seen in her whole life (least
of all herself), and her face felt like somebody else's, too. The
numbness in her cheeks and chin that no one had told her would occur in
the first place persisted, and she was beginning to suspect that
feeling in those areas might never return.
As soon as she got home, she climbed the
stairs to her
room and sat on the closed toilet seat in her bathroom completely
demoralized. Mitch, who traveled a lot more than he was at home, was in
Italy at the moment, blissfully unaware of her distress. As he was
blissfully unaware of most everything. He was no doubt checking out the
Nebbiolo grapes in Piedmont or the Sangiovese grapes in Tuscany, the
short- or long-vatting of producers, haggling for prices or position in
the distribution chain, and making money they never spent. She longed
for and resented him in equal proportions. Marsha, who'd been
uncharacteristically nice for a whole week, was now taking her new and
stunning self back to social work school. In her defeated situation,
Cassie couldn't help thinking that sometimes her daughter was just as
annoying as a do-gooder as she'd been as a teenage nightmare. Cassie
loved and resented her in equal proportions, too.
After all she'd been through, it turned out
that she was
going to be all alone with herself once again. And she'd become someone
she detested with no reservations whatsoever.
"Here, Mom. This should cheer you up."
Suddenly, Marsha
appeared in the doorway with a soft pink tissue–wrapped package. "Come
on, life isn't so bad. We all love you no matter how rotten you look.
So what if you look like a fright for a while? Think of poor people.
Think of what it would be like to be in prison, or maimed . . ."
Marsha's voice trailed off as she lifted her shoulders in a delicate
shrug.
Cassie couldn't answer without weeping. She
was maimed.
Before her surgery, she'd been simply invisible. Now, she was
impossible to miss, a plastic surgery victim guaranteed to elicit
scorn, contempt, and pity wherever she went. Her friends would laugh at
her, and she wouldn't even be able to react. Her face was so tight, all
expression had been wiped away. She didn't want to be a good sport
about it. Blankly, she took the gift her daughter offered and opened it.
Nestled in the tissue paper was a pair of
exquisite aqua
satin pajamas. The satin was thick and there was plenty of creamy lace
around the wrists, neck, and ankles. The shade was lovely and strong.
Even in her condition Cassie could see the quality and the cheering
color of the thing. Mitch was a monochrome beige-loving kind of guy,
but Cassie loved color. Her passion for it had always been confined to
the outside, to the landscape, the flower beds. She couldn't believe
her daughter's thoughtfulness and jumped up to give her a hug.
"Aw, Mom." Marsha was uncomfortable and
moved away.
"Really. Thank you," Cassie gushed.
Marsha gave her a funny look and went into
the bedroom.
Cassie took off her gray cardigan and gray trousers and put the pajamas
on. They felt silky and great and were only about four or five inches
too long in the arms and legs. She wanted to show them off to Marsha
and, trailing lace, she padded into the bedroom where Marsha was busily
engaged punching the pillows on the bed.
"They're really gorgeous. You shouldn't
have," Cassie
murmured. The price tag tickled her wrist. She couldn't help herself.
She picked up her glasses from the bedside table and brought them to
her eyes backwards so they wouldn't touch the stitches around her ears.
She peeked at the numbers on the bottom to see what Marsha had spent on
her and almost tripped over the pants legs in surprise. One thousand
eighty dollars? Could that be right? Maybe it was one hundred eighty
dollars. She tried to get a better look. "Marsha, you shouldn't have!"
she cried in alarm.
"I didn't." Marsha turned around, lifting
those shoulders
again.
"What?" Cassie took a step, tripped again,
and fell on
the bed. It was a king. "I thought these pajamas were a gift from you."
"Well, Mom. They're very nice. I wish they
were, but they
aren't."
"Well, where did they come from?" Cassie
was puzzled.
"Aren't they yours? The package was in a
drawer in the
dressing room," she said slyly.
"What? Uh-uh. Not one of my drawers!"
Cassie protested
heatedly. She was so careful with her spending. She would never be so
irresponsible.
"Well, I don't know which drawer." Marsha
made a little
noise. Cassie didn't know why she should be impatient.
"It wasn't in my drawers," she insisted
again, then
collapsed against the pillows. A package in the dressing room that she
didn't know about, impossible. She was furious because the doctor
hadn't taken out the staples. Why hadn't he told her how many staples
there would be? She would never have done this if she'd known what was
involved: the procedures, the pain, the awful results! She'd rather be
dead than look and feel like this.
"Well, maybe Dad bought them." Marsha sat
down next to
her. "Wouldn't it be a hoot if he knew what you were planning and—?"
Cassie raised her hand to stop the
speculation from going
any further. Her head throbbed. Her eyes throbbed. Her cheeks and neck
and chin felt like those of someone who'd been firebombed in the Blitz.
Mitch didn't believe in plastic surgery. That's the reason she'd
planned to be completely healed before he found out. One thousand
eighty dollars? For pajamas? Would he do that? She considered it. He
used to spend on her. Back in the old days. She lifted a shoulder.
Maybe . . .
Marsha rolled her eyes, then changed the
subject. "Mom,
remember what the doctor said. You need to be drinking something all
the time. You're dehydrating."
"No, no. I'm fine." Cassie's eyes were dry
and irritated.
The nurse had told her she needed to hydrate them, too, with fake tears
no less. She couldn't even cry anymore.
"You're not fine. You need to talk to
someone."
"I'm talking to you," Cassie told her.
"Yes, but you're not saying anything.
You're not talking
about this, This thing. This—" she resorted to body language to
describe the mess her competent mother had become.
"You're depressed. You're withdrawn.
You're—I don't
know—out of it. I think you need a professional. Maybe medicine would
help." It was clear what she meant.
"I'm taking penicillin," Cassie told her.
"Not that kind of medicine, Mom."
"Oh, you mean Prozac. Thanks a lot! Now I'm
crazy." Real
tears finally arrived, filling Cassie's eyes. They spilled over. She
felt so sorry for herself. Her formerly impossible daughter, who'd been
so much trouble over the years and now was a wonderful
dream-child-come-true, didn't approve of her. It really hurt.
"Well, one wonders about the self-esteem of
someone
who—you know—can't accept life's natural progression."
Oh, now they were on aging gracefully.
Cassie wondered
how this insensitive social worker wanna-be was going to do with
prostitutes, drug addicts, and child abusers if she had no compassion
for her very own mother's feelings of loss and loneliness at impending
old age. She was too upset to reply.
"Let's face it, Mom. You're not taking this
well." She
was just like her father. Now that Marsha had gotten started, she
wasn't going to stop.
Cassie stared up at her through the tears
in her eyes. So
what if she wasn't taking the ruin of her life well? Why should she
take it well? She'd read all the self-help books. She was trying to
better herself, not get left behind. She'd trusted a board certified
doctor to give her a little lift. She'd done exactly what the books
told her to do: Assert herself to look better and feel better. This
wasn't the time to question her self-esteem. This wasn't the time to be
a good sport or an obedient soldier. She was indignant at her
daughter's unfeeling and cruel reaction. Now the truth was coming out.
After all the love she'd gotten as a child, Marsha had the nerve to
disapprove of her.
Well, so what about that? Cassie wasn't
just some dying
breed, some housewife gone to seed, some squaw who'd numbly grind the
corn until she dropped dead! This was one squaw who wasn't grinding the
corn anymore. She didn't want to be the sensible one, the prop and
moral center for the whole family. She could have a breakdown, if she
wanted to. Why not?
"Fine. Fine. Don't face it. Don't talk to
me." Marsha
clicked her tongue and left the room.
Cassie heard the stairs creak as the
wonderful
rehabilitated daughter she now thought of as the hurtful know-it-all
went downstairs. Her finger stroked the satin of the aqua pajamas. In
spite of herself, she perked up just a little. Maybe she was being
unfair about her neglectful husband, who traveled all over Europe,
Australia, Chile, and South Africa visiting wineries, tasting, tasting,
tasting, eating, eating, eating, bidding, bidding, bidding at wine
auctions and never never never taking her. Maybe Mitch had thought of
her and bought the pajamas as a surprise. He had to be making tons of
money. He had to be feeling older and older. Maybe secretly he felt as
bad about the gaps in their marriage as she did. Maybe the pajamas were
a very meaningful—indeed, symbolic—gesture and there would be love in
the night again, after all. Oooh.
It occurred to Cassie that she should take
the gorgeous
pajamas off and rewrap them in the tissue so Mitch could make the
presentation himself. A thousand dollars was a lot of money. She didn't
want to spoil his surprise. She was stroking the satin and thinking
about this when she heard Marsha's urgent voice downstairs. She must
have hit the intercom button on the phone. Cassie sat up in shock at
the sound of her voice.
"Dad, why don't you just sit down and relax
a little.
I'll give you some chicken soup."
What? Mitch, home? Naah. In all the years
of their
marriage, Mitch had never returned home from a business trip early.
"I don't want fucking chicken soup. I want
to go to bed."
His voice sounded peevish and angry. Cassie's stomach knotted at the
familiar sound of her husband grumbling.
"Why do you have to go upstairs this
minute?" Marsha was
wheedling. "Sit down, have a drink with me. Let's talk for a moment,
catch up."
"I don't want my daughter drinking. Since
when are you
drinking?" He was whining.
"Dad, I'm twenty-five."
"I don't give a shit. You know how I hate
drunks." This
from the man who made his fortune on drinkers.
Cassie heard Marsha click her tongue some
more. Both
parents crazy as loons. "Have some orange juice then, Dad."
"I don't want orange juice. What's going on
here? I bet
you're up to something."
"Okay, okay. To tell you the truth, Mom
isn't feeling
well." Cassie sat there paralyzed, listening to Marsha trying to help
her out.
"What's the matter with her?" Mitch asked
irritably.
"She has the flu."
"Well, Marshmallow, I don't feel well
either, and I've
been on an airplane for ten hours. I need to go to my room and get in
bed."
"She has a bad flu, Dad. I don't think you
want to see
her right now."
"You know what? I know you're up to
something. I bet your
mother isn't even here. What are you doing, having some kind of pot
party? Some kind of cocaine orgy?"
"Oh Jesus, Daddy. Don't even go there. You
know I don't
do that stuff."
"I don't know that. I bet you do. With you
I wouldn't be
at all surprised. I foot the bills for everything around here and this
is how you repay me. It makes me sick." He went on muttering, inaudibly
now.
"Oh, Daddy, be reasonable." Marsha laughed.
"This is my fucking house. What are you
talking about,
reasonable? I can go anywhere I want."
Cassie couldn't hear anymore. They must
have left the
room. She sat on the bed dazed, waiting for the ax to fall. It was
Friday afternoon. Mitch must have flown in from Rome. He was in a bad
mood. He wanted to go to bed. What was she supposed to do, jump out the
window?
She was thinking about jumping to avoid his
anger when he
strode into the room. He took one look at her, his mouth fell open just
like in the movies, and he stopped dead a few feet from where she sat
paralyzed on the bed in the aqua pajamas. He was a tall man, beefy from
a lifetime of the very best wine and food the world had to offer. He
had a full florid face, plush pillow lips that were the envy of women,
and tense brown eyes that captured rather than saw. He had an eye for
detail, and a full head of hair. The hair had been black but was steely
now. He was proud of his hair and his taste. The man was always
impeccable. At the moment he was wearing his travel uniform of Gucci
loafers with tassels, a navy Ferragamo cashmere jacket with brass
buttons, black silk turtleneck. There was a maroon and navy silk square
in his jacket pocket.
"What the fucking hell is going on here?"
he shouted.
"I-I-I—" Cassie's heart thundered. She
couldn't say
anything else. But then she was nearly always mute when he was around.
"She was in a car accident," Marsha said
quickly.
Mitch took a step forward to get a better
look.
"I had my face lifted," Cassie corrected
quickly. She'd
never been able to lie.
"What? Are you crazy?" His face changed.
His eyes
narrowed with fury. "Where'd you get those pajamas?" He glared at her.
Then his full face took on an odd expression. He looked surprised,
puzzled. "I feel funny," he said.
His fine tan paled to putty. "Something's
wrong." It was
the last thing he said.
Before she was aware of moving, Cassie was
up, jumping to
his aid. She touched his forehead. His skin was wet and cold. His eyes
pierced her for a moment, demanding one last thing of her that she
couldn't fulfill. Then she saw his powerful personality leech out of
his body. His eyes lost their focus. He staggered. He reached out his
hand for the bedpost, missed it, and pitched forward. His loafered feet
stayed on the floor, but the rest of him toppled like a tree. His
forehead smacked the bedside table as he went down.
"Daddy!" Marsha ran to him.
"Mitch," Cassie cried.
The two women tried desperately to revive
him, but he
wouldn't wake up. Frantically, Cassie called 911.
CHAPTER 3
"MOM, PUT ON YOUR CLOTHES. Mom! Come on,
Mom. Get up."
Marsha pulled on her mother's arm. "I'll stay with Daddy until they
come."
"OhymyGod! OhmyGod!" Cassie whimpered,
listening to her
husband try to breathe. Her forehead was pressed against the carpet at
a lower level than it should be. She could feel the blood pulsing in
her face. Her surgeon's warning about blood clots and hematomas flashed
into her mind. She pushed it away. None of that mattered now.
"Maybe you should get some ammonia to wake
him up. He's
okay. It's a cut, right? It's a just a cut. He hit his head." Cassie
kept trying to reassure them both.
"Mom!" Marsha spoke sharply. "Get up! I'll
stay with him."
"Marsha, do you think he's drunk? Did he
seem drunk when
he came in?" Cassie couldn't put this thing together in her mind. Could
Mitch have been that shocked by seeing her like this? No, it couldn't
be. He just fell over all of a sudden, so he had to be drunk. That had
to be it. Mitch had toppled like a tree several times in the last few
years. She'd never told this to the children, or anyone else, but he'd
been a big drinker for at least five or six years. Maybe more. Big.
She blamed all those Syrahs he'd been
slurping up. The
finicky Pinots, the grapes that make the headache wines. Oh, and the
zinfandels—so rich, they tasted like jam. The gamays, low in tannin
with a grapey taste: the grenaches light colored, high in alcohol and
not so great as reds went. But the best were like raspberries. All
these he'd guzzled, and the whites, too. Chardonnays, the great
universal white with the oaky flavor. They called the taste oaky
because of the oak barrels in which the wine aged. The reislings were
dry, light bodied, and fresh, never oaky. The Cabernet Sauvignons,
fairly tannic, rich and firm, with great depth. Oaky, she'd always
liked the word. Oaky, oaky.
She tried to remember all the grape names
Mitch had
taught her when she was young. Wine had seemed so innocent then, so
promising. Not a drug at all. Wait a minute, there were so many names
she'd banished over the years. Some wines were place-names, like
Bordeaux, like Rhone. Like Haut Medoc. But some were grape names, like
Chardonnay, Cabernet, Merlot. The Loire valley. One side of the river
or the other? Quick, which side of the river was which? She used to
know it all. And the blends, sometimes nine grapes to a label, the
Graves, the Pomerols. Mouton something or other . . . Those wines had
stolen him from her.
"Oh God. Mitch, you idiot. You're drunk!
You're supposed
to swish and spit. But you always have to swallow, don't you. Shit you
always swallowed, swallowed a lot." She chafed his hands. "Come on,
baby. Wake up. I forgive you."
"Mom! EMS is coming, put on your clothes."
Marsha
couldn't budge her. "Come on, help me out, here," she pleaded. "You
have to go to the hospital with him."
"Medoc," she whispered. Place-name, not a
grape. La
Grande Dame Champagne, Le Grand Cru of Perrier-Jouet, right? Nine
grapes or only three? The one he'd planned for their son, Teddy's,
wedding.
"Come on, Mitch. Come on, baby." Cassie
couldn't get off
her knees. Mitch was her other half, the man to whom she'd been
faithful all her life. Practically the only lover she'd ever had,
except for Matthew Howard. And look at what Matthew had become: owner
of a cruise ship line! Tears flooded her swollen eyes. What had she
done? He looked so pathetic, lying there in his Gucci loafers and
cashmere jacket, his ruddy face blue as skim milk. Had she done this,
felled the captain of their ship with a face-lift?
"OhmyGod." She kept chafing the lifeless
hand, terrified
that she and Marsha had done the wrong thing when they thumped on his
chest and breathed into his mouth. They had no idea if the CPR they'd
seen on the TV show ER was the right procedure. It certainly didn't
seem to make any difference. His heart had kept on beating throughout
their ministrations, and he was breathing on his own. Porto, Portugal.
Madeira, the longest-lived wine of all. It could keep practically
forever. But it wasn't really a wine, more a fortified wine. That's
right—right, Mitch?
"Oh God." Their failure to revive him made
Cassie think
he had to be drunk. His mouth against hers brought back all the
memories, all the familiar smells. The dominant one right now was not
wine at all. It was whiskey. Under that, the stale emanation of Havana
cigar. Tobacco smoke, like the air in a musty old attic, was deep in
the fabric of his jacket, in his hair, in his hot breath. Under that
cigar smoke was sweat. Musk male and unusually strong this afternoon.
And under all those masculine aromas, a peculiarly sweet cologne that
didn't match any of the above, or indeed the man himself. None of the
smells were reassuring to Cassie. All were dangerous in their ways. The
cologne teased her nose. It was not his brand. But maybe he'd been
trying a new one. The idea of a new cologne was too painful to linger
long. Instead of getting up, Cassie collapsed further. She laid the
ruin of her face on the carpet near Mitch's large, cauliflower ear that
suddenly seemed not ugly and wrong on his handsome head, but dear,
inexpressibly dear.
He lay on his back, conscious, but not
conscious. It was
odd. He didn't seem connected. He stared straight up, his eyes
unfocused. The white fingertip towel with the gold embroidered sun on
it that Marsha had used to swab the cut on his forehead was now soaked
with his blood. So was the hand towel that replaced it. The cut where
Mitch's head had hit the side table didn't seem so bad. Not bad at all,
but it was still seeping red. Blood trickled down the side of his head
into the thick pile of the carpet in a steady stream. It wouldn't stop.
It was a beige carpet. He'd chosen it himself. A shocking thought
paraded in and out of Cassie's head. If he died, she could get a
brighter one.
"Where are they? Why are they taking so
long?" she cried.
"It's been less than five minutes. Come on,
Mom. Get up.
You can't go to the hospital like this."
"Oh God," Cassie cried. "Maybe he's just
dazed. Don't you
think so? It's nothing more than that, is it?" She held on to his hand,
trying to reassure herself like all the times recently when his plane
had been delayed or he'd been late getting back from a tasting or a
dinner in the city. She'd wish that plane had gone down or his car had
crashed. So small-minded, she'd wished him dead for the petty reason
that her kids didn't need her anymore and he, too, had left her behind.
Then, full of remorse, she'd frantically reassured herself that he was
fine, probably fine. And he always was. These sad and panicked feelings
she had were such a cliché, she was afraid to tell a single soul.
"I don't know." Marsha was dressed in her
new uniform, a
little cashmere sweater twinset, this one baby blue to complement her
lovely eyes. Her short black skirt ended just above her knees. Her
sheer black panty hose set off her lovely legs, as long as her mother's
and just as nicely formed. It occurred to Cassie that maybe Marsha had
planned to go out. She'd always been something of a freak in high
school, never had any fun. She really deserved a break. And now this,
poor girl. Cassie's heart broke for her former loser of a daughter who
so deserved a dashing suitor.
The heavy chimes of the doorbell resounded
throughout the
house. "They're here," Marsha screamed in relief, and ran out of the
room. Cassie put her lips to Mitch's ear.
"Help is here," she whispered. "Champagne.
You're going
to be fine." She let go of his hand and pulled herself to her feet. Her
head throbbed as she dragged herself to the bedroom door. Her face felt
unbearably tight. No part of her body felt like it belonged to her. She
went out of the room to the hallway and leaned over the banister. When
she heard Marsha speak, she was overcome with dizziness and had to hang
on for dear life. She wished she could just topple over it and break
her neck.
"It's my dad. Up here." Marsha marched up
the stairs with
two odd-looking people behind her. They were dressed in gray pants and
nylon zip jackets with the logo of their service on the front. The man
was wearing Birkenstocks and orange socks. Cassie swooned as those
socks moved up the stairs under a long graying ponytail. Oh God! She
realized he had an earring in each ear. The woman with him was much
bigger than he was; her hair was very short. It appeared that the two
had switched genders. Cassie's vision blurred as she thought of a man
in a ponytail touching her darling husband, the virulent homophobe.
"I don't know what it is. I don't think
it's a heart
attack," Marsha was saying.
"Did you check for the Babinski reflex?"
"What's that?" Marsha asked.
They rounded the top of the staircase.
Cassie got a
better look at them and swayed.
"Holy shit, it's a domestic case," the
woman blurted.
"Take it easy, ma'am." The man rushed
toward her.
"Mom!" Marsha said sharply as the two raced
to the top of
the stairs and wrestled her mother into a chair, examining her swollen
black-and-blue eyes, her face, raw as hamburger, the blood on the aqua
silk pajamas that were way too big for her.
In a second they had slapped the blood
pressure cuff onto
her arm and were pumping it up.
"Mom, are you all right?" Marsha's
anguished cry revived
her.
Cassie's vision cleared. "Mitch," she
mumbled.
"What, Mom?"
"Take care of Daddy!" she said sharply.
"They're here for
Daddy."
The two EMS people talked to each other.
"Her blood pressure is—"
Cassie slapped their hands away. "Stop
that. I'm not the
patient."
"We understand, ma'am."
"I'm telling you I'm all right. It's my
husband."
The two referred to Marsha. "My father
collapsed," she
told them.
"Must have been quite a fight. Where is the
other vic?"
"Better call in for another ambulance," the
man said to
the woman.
The woman pulled out her radio.
"No no, I'm fine," Cassie insisted.
"What about you, are you all right?" he
asked, turning to
Marsha.
"I'm perfectly well."
"Is there only one other victim? Is there
anyone in the
house with a weapon?" The questions came fast.
"There are no victims. Daddy collapsed and
hit his head.
It may just be fatigue, for all we know," Marsha cried.
"What about your mom, here?"
Marsha shook her head. "Car accident. Last
week. She's on
the mend."
"No kidding, looks fresh to me," the woman
said,
examining her critically.
"Hurry. Please," Cassie begged them.
"This way," Marsha said.
"Are you sure there's no one with a weapon
in here?"
"Absolutely certain."
"Okay, then. Let's go."
They left Cassie sitting there and headed
for the
bedroom. Cassie remained in the hall just for a moment, trying to calm
herself. She had to go in there and protect Mitch from these idiots.
She didn't want to, but God help her, she had to. She only hoped they
wouldn't stick anything into him. Or shock him with those paddles she'd
seen on ER. Finally, when she felt able to stand, she followed them in.
CHAPTER 4
IT TOOK TWENTY PRECIOUS MINUTES for the
EMS team to
try to talk to Mitch, get no response from him, cursorily examine him,
strap him onto a gurney, carry him down the stairs, and roll him out to
the ambulance, where they firmly shut the doors on his women. The team
would not allow Cassie to ride in the vehicle with them, given her own
condition, so she was separated from her husband on the driveway, where
a rising wind suddenly churned the air, shaking the limbs of the two
cherry trees that flanked the front door. As the trees trembled,
thousands of cherry blossoms way past their prime were seized by the
current and jettisoned up into the air. The moribund blooms whirled
around and showered down on the ambulance just like some deeply
meaningful scene from a foreign film.
"Oh my God, look at that," Cassie cried as
the
flower-strewn ambulance sped away. "Look at it, Marsha, look."
"Get in the car, Mom, we have to hurry."
Marsha already
had her father's Mercedes out of the garage. She opened the car door
for her mother, and Cassie gingerly edged herself in.
"You missed it," she said, thinking of the
flower shower.
Marsha didn't care what she'd missed. As
soon as the car
door was shut, she peeled off, spewing gravel on the drive. She then
broke every speed limit on the way to North Fork Hospital. There, she
stopped at the E.R. entrance and let Cassie out to deal with the
paperwork, because there was no parking space nearby. Four minutes
later she found her battered-looking mother in deep conversation with a
woman whose name tag readESTELLE ROGERS .
"What's the problem?" Marsha asked.
"She won't listen to me. She thinks I'm the
patient,"
Cassie said. She was nicely dressed now in gray slacks and a blue
blazer like Mitch's.
"It's okay. Put on your scarf, Mother. And
go sit down.
I'll take care of this."
"What?" Surprised, Cassie saw the immense
black chiffon
scarf from her very best evening dress dangling over her arm. How had
it gotten there? Had she grabbed it when she got dressed?
"Put the scarf on," Marsha urged her,
making faces at the
Frankenstein stitches around her ears.
"Oh." Cassie had forgotten how she looked.
"Oh God." She
struggled with the scarf, couldn't manage it.
"Here, I'll do it." Marsha wrapped the
dressy scarf
around Cassie's head, covering everything but her eyeballs. Now she had
a crown of sequins. "There, isn't that better?"
With her newly dyed, aggressively blond
hair, discolored
forehead, and bruised lower face all suddenly hidden from view, Cassie
found herself actually calming down.
"Good girl. Sit here, I'll be right back."
Oh God. Cassie had heard that before, a
thousand years
ago. Her mother took her out once for ice cream and the next thing she
knew she was in the hospital having her tonsils out. "Don't leave me,"
she whimpered.
"Just for a second, you can do it." Marsha
led her to a
molded plastic chair, where Cassie watched helplessly when Mitch was
rolled in on the gurney and rushed through so quickly, she didn't have
a chance to offer him even one encouraging word before he disappeared
through automatic doors, his face lifeless and gray. OhmyGod, he's
going to die, she thought. I'm going to be a widow, after all.
"Hi, I'm Maureen. I'm your social worker.
I'll be guiding
you through the process."
Cassie's panicked thoughts were interrupted
by a
worn-looking woman with curly red hair and oversized purple glasses.
She held out her hand as she introduced herself. "You're"—she checked
her clipboard—"the Sales family."
Cassie blinked in surprise. Social worker?
What did they
need a social worker for? "How is my husband?" she asked timorously.
"Oh, that's not my department. I'm here for
you. How are
you doing?"
The woman regarded her with such deep
meaning that Cassie
gasped. "Is he—?"
"Oh no, no. Nothing like that. The doctors
are working on
him. We won't know anything for a while." Maureen pushed up her
glasses, hesitating. Then she put her hand solicitously on Cassie's
arm. "Estelle, the head nurse, tells me you don't want to be examined
yourself. Can I talk to you a little about that?"
"Oh no, that's all right." Marsha suddenly
reappeared. "My mother has already been to the doctor today. Thank you
for asking,
but we're fine."
Maureen shook her head. "Don't worry.
There's nothing to
be ashamed of. This kind of thing happens at all levels of society. We
have many services to offer, and we're here to help you in every way we
can."
"I'm not in the least ashamed. My husband
hit his head. I
think he tripped." Cassie spoke quietly from behind her sequined veil.
"I'm sure he's going to be fine."
Maureen clicked her tongue. "Yes, well, I
understand your
reticence about addressing the matter. This is not uncommon. Reporting
incidents of domestic violence is very difficult for everyone," she
assured them. "But the reporting must be done. It's the law, and how
else can we heal, hmmmm?"
She turned suddenly to Marsha. "Think of
your daughter's
future and the precedent you're setting for her." Maureen gave Marsha
an encouraging look as she shoved some informational pamphlets into her
hand, then charged right ahead without drawing breath. "We have a DV
unit from the Sheriff's Department right here in the hospital.
Someone's available 24/7. That's how seriously we take family violence."
Cassie bristled angrily. This was the third
person to
assume that she and Mitch had been in some kind of physical fight.
"You're mistaken!" She was almost ready to issue a formal protest about
this kind of offensive jumping to conclusions.
"My mother was in a car accident," Marsha
chimed in
quickly. "I told that to the EMS people. Her bruises are from a car
accident."
It was clear, however, that the EMS team
with the gender
identity issues hadn't bought the story. Maureen was looking pretty
doubtful about it herself.
Marsha raised her voice. "Look, Daddy just
returned from
a business trip in Europe an hour ago. He had no idea how badly hurt
Mommy was. Maybe he had a heart attack when he saw her. They're a very
devoted couple." On a roll, the suddenly competent Marsha embroidered
further.
Cassie stared at her in surprise. The girl
was good
enough to have been a lawyer. When did Marsha develop such a talent to
lie?
"Oh my." Even Maureen was caught up in the
story.
Nervously, she shoved her glasses up the bridge of her nose, not sure
what to believe. "Well . . ."
"Yes, well indeed," Marsha said pompously.
"My father is
a trustee of the hospital. Is there anywhere more private we could
wait?"
Maureen tilted her frizzy head to the side,
adjusted her
glasses. Marsha's story wasn't really working for her, but she was
impressed with the performance. "This is very embarrassing. But you
know, so often people lie." She forced her lips into a smile. The
patient was a trustee, after all. He must give the hospital a lot of
money. Maybe she was wrong.
"Yes, I know it. I'm at NYU's Ehrenkranz
School of Social
Work." Marsha let her know they were almost colleagues.
"Really, I went there." Lifting her
eyebrows as if that
changed everything, Maureen scurried off.
About an hour later, without a word of
apology, she came
back and led them down a glass corridor to another wing of the
hospital. There, she left them in a smallish turquoise lounge furnished
with tables, sofas, and a TV set that was on. It was hardly private,
and by late afternoon the garbage cans were overflowing with the
remains of many take-out meals in soggy containers.
Cassie sat down on a sticky brown sofa, her
nose
twitching with indignation and hunger.
"You want me to get you something to eat,
Mom?" Marsha
asked.
Cassie's stomach churned. "No, no,
sweetheart. I don't
want anything. Maybe later."
Further conversation was prevented by the
arrival of a
young woman dressed in a lavender tennis outfit. "Get your hands off
me, you fucking asshole!" she yelled at the deputy sheriff who was
escorting her. "I told you to let me go." She launched herself at him,
pummeling him hard.
The deputy was a big guy. He had a
nightstick, a gun, and
a pair of plastic cuffs dangling from his belt, but none of them were
any help. He tried to ward off the woman's blows and talk her down.
Almost immediately some hospital staff members arrived to help him.
Mesmerized, Cassie and Marsha watched the
drama. Two male
nurses calmed the woman. The deputy departed quickly. After he was
gone, she became enraged again and tried to punch out the TV screen.
More hospital staff arrived. They surrounded and eased her into one of
the chairs. Their soothing voices hummed in the air. Now this was a
domestic violence case. She put her hand over her eyes.
"Are you okay, Mom?" Marsha asked
solicitously.
"Oh yes, fine. Don't think about me." She
felt sick and
frightened, but she had to be strong for the children.
"Mom, I hope you don't mind. I called
Teddy," Marsha went
on.
"Oh God," Cassie groaned. All she needed
was to have the
two of them together at a time like this. "Promise me you won't fight."
Her body wouldn't stop shivering. Mitch would be upset about this. He
was a private man, a gourmet. He'd hate the take-out food odors, the
drama, the idea of his adoring son seeing him like this.
Suddenly the noise level increased. Cassie
opened her
eyes. The small room was filled with people screaming in Italian. The
smell of garlic was strong. Oh, was it strong. Cassie swooned against
her daughter's shoulder.
"I'll get you something to drink," Marsha
said quickly. "You need to hydrate."
"Poor Mitch. This is such bad luck. I hope
he doesn't
die," Cassie murmured. And she meant it. She really did.
"I'll be right back." Marsha hurried away.
Cassie hid her eyes. There was screaming
all around her.
She couldn't help hearing the story. Oh God. The woman who'd tried to
punch out the sheriff and the TV had good reason. Her husband had been
driving their two kids to pick up a pizza for dinner. That's how late
it had gotten. They'd been in an accident on the Long Island
Expressway. He was dead on the scene; her son, too. The woman's
nine-year-old daughter was alive, but her skull had been crushed. No
one wanted to tell her how bad her daughter was. Protocol seemed to
demand a certain order to things. A person could absorb just so much.
An old man, talking to himself, was wondering what Tony had been doing,
driving on the L.I.E. Apparently it wasn't his usual route to the
pizzeria.
Marsha returned with two Diet Cokes. Cassie
thought she
was going to explode. Teddy was coming by way of the L.I.E.
"I called Edith," Marsha informed her.
"What?" Cassie cried. Oh, now her aunt was
involved.
Cassie couldn't bear it.
"She's your only relative. Except for
Julie. Do you want
me to call Julie?"
Edith, her mother's sister, was now
seventy-three and the
worst pain in the neck in the entire world. Except for Cassie's sister
Julie. "No!" Cassie said. Julie lived in L.A. and hadn't spoken to
Cassie in years. Cassie didn't want either of them here with her.
"You need support," Marsha told her.
What was that, some word she'd learned in
social work
school? "I didn't tell Edith about the face-lift," Cassie admitted
softly.
"Car crash," Marsha said. "I've got that
covered."
"Oh God," she whispered. It seemed so
trivial now.
Another hour went by. The room emptied. The
Italian
family hurried away. Cassie realized she had been holding her breath.
"The poor little girl was never admitted
here," Marsha
said suddenly. "They let her go in the emergency room."
"They let her go?"
"She died."
"Oh no." Cassie's head throbbed. That poor
woman had lost
everything in a second. Cassie covered her eyes to stop her tears.
Dark descended outside, and the lounge
filled up again.
Old women came to see their old husbands, middle-aged women came to see
their mothers, young parents came to see their kids, and every single
patient was hanging on by a thread. Cassie was agonized by the wait.
Why was it taking so long? Teddy finally arrived at eightP
.M. Why had it taken him five hours to get there from
Manhattan where he lived and worked?
"Oh shit, Mom! What happened to you? I
thought it was
Daddy!" He pretty much freaked out when he saw her.
"It is Daddy. She's going to be fine,"
Marsha told him
superciliously, right away setting the tone for an unpleasant
confrontation between them. "Where have you been?" she demanded.
"She doesn't look fine." Teddy was not as
tall as his
father and was much thinner. He had never grown into his nose. He
didn't work out. His shirt and pants didn't go together. Two plaids. He
had a golf hat on his head, but still he was a handsome boy. Very
handsome, Cassie thought. And very good at numbers.
"Hi, Teddy," she said.
He paced back and forth in front of her as
if she were an
inanimate object. "She looks like shit," he announced. "Mom?" He raised
his voice as if she'd gone deaf.
"She's fine!" Marsha insisted.
"She doesn't look fine, Marsha. What's that
thing on her
head? What's going on?"
"Shut up, you idiot, I told you she's fine!"
"What do you know about it?" Teddy stared
angrily at his
sister.
"I'm fine," Cassie said weakly. "Don't
fight."
"I demand to know what's going on. What's
wrong with her?
She looks like an Arab," Teddy spoke to his sister.
"Mom was in a car accident," Marsha said
quickly.
"No shit!" Teddy moved in for a closer
look. "In Dad's
Mercedes?" His voice was hushed.
"No."
"In the Volvo?"
"Yes, the Volvo."
"How is it? Is it totaled?"
Marsha rolled her eyes. She didn't, after
all, think very
much of her brother.
CHAPTER 5
THE KIDS WERE STILL BICKERING twenty
minutes later when three doctors hustled importantly into the lounge.
The family internist was the one in charge. Dr. Cohen had taken care of
both Cassie and Mitch for twenty years. They'd had dinners together
many times. His cellar was stocked with their very good wines, nothing
less than $140 to $200 a bottle. He had about a thousand-bottle cellar
and could afford it. He was a short, wide, completely bald man with a
round, usually smiling face like the happy stickers the kids used to
get on their papers when they were small. He wasn't smiling now.
"Cassie!" Unprepared for the black eyes and
bruised jawline, he stopped short. Truly shocked, he turned to Marsha
for an explanation.
Marsha, however, missed his distress. She
had caught sight of something she liked and had put three fingers to
her forehead as if to keep her head on during a religious experience.
The object of her attention was a thin, stern-looking, white-coated
young man, about five feet nine, totally unremarkable, and a complete
opposite of the long-haired, tattooed biker-types that usually caused
her seizures.
"Uhhh, hhhhh." A third doctor, whose tag
readNESSIM SALIM , coughed delicately. This one looked
as exotic as his name sounded.
"Ah, Dr. Salim is a neurosurgeon. This is
Mrs. Sales, Marsha, Teddy," Dr. Cohen introduced them, bowing slightly.
He straightened up and smoothed his bald head as if he still missed his
hair. "Cassie, what happened . . . ?" The question hung in the air.
"It's nothing at all." Cassie waved her
hand at him impatiently.
"Ah. Unfortunate timing, then," he murmured
with full understanding. "This is Dr. Wellfleet. He's our best young
neurologist."
Dr. Wellfleet nodded solemnly. He must have
thought so, too.
A fourth man, this one dressed in a black
suit, hurried officiously in, his jacket flapping in his haste. "Sorry
to keep you waiting, Mrs. Sales, I'm so sorry." He put his hand on
Cassie's arm to comfort her and pulled her scarf off. Now everyone saw
the black stitches around her ears and the change of hair color her
surgeon had suggested to distract people from the changes in her face.
Her hair was no longer the light silvery brown of the last decade. It
was now a shocking daffodil yellow.
"Mom!" Teddy screamed.
Marsha gasped and dove for the scarf as it
slipped to the floor.
"Uh uh uh." The man coughed to cover his
dismay.
"Um, um. This is Reverend Ballister. He's
the chaplain here at the hospital. We thought it would be a good idea
to have him here with us." Dr. Cohen only choked a little on the
awkwardness and the public revelation: Old Cassie had done some
restoration work and dyed her hair an awful color.
"Mrs. Sales. I'm so sorry," the reverend
intoned again.
Marsha rearranged the sparkling evening
scarf over Cassie's head and blue blazer as if she were a mannequin in
a store window, while Cassie wished she'd gone over the banister and
broken her neck.
"My husband is not a believer," she said to
the minister with as much dignity as she could muster. Never mind that
the appalling man had humiliated her. Never mind her ridiculous blond
hair and black eyes. This was something Mitch would not tolerate. This
God thing she had to nip in the bud.
"Perhaps you'd prefer a priest or a rabbi."
This from Dr. Salim. "We have both nearby, practically on the
premises," he said, eager to please.
"My husband is not a believer in any God,"
Cassie replied firmly. "He's not a religious man. He's against
organized religion of any kind. He specifically doesn't want special
prayers . . ." Her voice failed her. Her hands flew to her face. It
occurred to her that Mitch really was dead, and that that was the
reason they had all come together. The last family members brought to
this room had lost their little girl. Mitch was gone. She stared at the
four of them, her hands fluttering helplessly. She'd been waiting for
him all these years, and now he'd left her for good. The future flashed
dangerously in front of her. What would she and the children do? Teddy
couldn't run a sophisticated business. He might be able to add, but he
could barely dress himself. Marsha didn't care about money. She was in
the helping profession. And Cassie herself didn't know a thing about
the finances. Mitch had taught her how to stock a cellar and what to
serve with what, but yelled at her if she sampled the merchandise or
wrote a check.
"It doesn't matter if your husband is not a
religious man. I'm here for you, for the family, to help you through
this," the chaplain went on as if he hadn't heard her.
Luckily, Cassie didn't have a gun handy.
She would have shot him on the spot.
"Is Daddy dead?" Teddy, still in shock over
the yellow hair and stitches, was the one to blurt out the question.
Marsha elbowed him. "Shut up, Teddy."
"What's wrong with that? He's being
audited. I need to know." Teddy was offended.
"Shut up, you idiot. Don't you have any
sensitivity at all?"
"Fuck you, I'm not an idiot." Teddy balled
up his fists for a fight.
"Go ahead, hit me," Marsha invited him
softly, rolling her eyes at Wellfleet as if she'd known the neurologist
all her life. She had a crazy brother, right? Wellfleet raised an
eyebrow, responding to her attractions.
"Oh my God," Cassie murmured. Marsha was
making a conquest on her father's deathbed.
"Now, now. Let's calm down and take a
break," Dr. Cohen suggested. "Come on, kids, I know you're upset, but
have a little respect." His voice was soft and tolerant. After all,
he'd known the family for a long time and had children of his own.
"I have respect. She's calling me an
idiot," Teddy muttered.
"Well, but think of your father," he said.
Mitchell Sales had pledged several million to the hospital.
"I am thinking of him. I'm closer to him
than they are."
"Idiot," Marsha spat out again.
"Well, I am," Teddy said. "I'm closer to
him—I know him better than any of you. I bet you didn't even know he
was being audited."
"Teddy, now is not the time for sibling
rivalry." Dr. Cohen put a hand on his shoulder and moved him and the
rest of the group down the hall into a conference room with a mahogany
table and ten chairs. Cassie shivered as they took their places.
At this moment Cassie couldn't help
remembering the intense pride Mitch had taken in all the family
funerals. He'd arranged everything for the funerals of both her parents
and his mother. Three beautiful affairs. She remembered that they'd
served only white wine (when she'd always preferred red), a Côte
de Beaune, Puligny-Montrachet, Grand Cru Vineyard Chevalier-Montrachet.
She'd forgotten the vintage, it was so long ago. She hadn't had to make
a single decision, or even go to the hospital to identify their remains
before the bodies were cremated. Mitch had insisted on cremation. He'd
taken care of everything.
And now she wondered how she was going to
manage the kind of affair he'd want. Ever since the news that red wine
was better for the heart than white came out a decade or so ago, red
wine sales had absolutely soared. Maybe a Petrus Pomerol would be
acceptable to him now. Or maybe she should serve both red and white.
But which ones? Mitch's father was ninety-two and hadn't had all his
marbles since 1966. Cassie hiccuped on her panic, holding back a sob.
"The good news is we've got him
stabilized," Dr. Wellfleet began.
Teddy let out his breath in a whoosh.
"Well, thank God!"
"Amen," echoed Dr. Ballister.
Alive? Stable? Cassie was further confused
by the good news.
"We couldn't get any more time on the audit
even if the old man croaked," Teddy explained, all smiles in his relief.
"Teddy!" Marsha cried.
"Well, he's had it postponed twice. They
won't take any more postponements now," he said. "Ira Mandel is
resigned to going ahead with it no matter what."
"I never heard anything about this." Now
Cassie was confused. Why was Teddy harping on this? What did an audit
have to do with anything? Mitch was alive. That meant no funeral. What
else could possibly matter? Ira Mandel was Mitch's accountant. He also
happened to be Teddy's boss. Nepotism was rampant everywhere.
"You never called me when you were in a
damn car accident. It's obvious you don't love me as much as her."
Teddy shook his head angrily. He was back on the car accident.
Cassie thought she was going nuts. Audit,
stabilized. These words were not in her vocabulary.
Dr. Cohen glanced at Dr. Wellfleet.
Wellfleet was lifting his eyebrows up and down at Marsha à la
Groucho Marx. Cassie was shocked. They were connecting. Her daughter
and the skinny neurologist. Dr. Cohen broke the silence.
"Let's stick with your father for a moment.
He's in critical condition. It was touch and go for a while there, but
we gave him TPA in the ER, and we've got him stabilized for the moment.
Oh, and Dr. Salim is here on consultation. In case there's a need for
emergency surgery."
"On what?" Cassie's head spun.
"TPA is the drug that halts brain damage
after a stroke, Mom," Marsha translated softly for her mother. "Surgery
would be for, like, bleeding, or a blood clot. It would be brain
surgery, of course." Marsha put a protective hand on her mother's arm.
Dr. Wellfleet gave Marsha a melting smile
for understanding the medical situation. "I'm afraid your husband had a
stroke," he confirmed to Cassie.
"A stroke!" That was the one possibility
that hadn't occurred to her. Life or death was all that had been on her
mind. She swallowed hard. A stroke was a long-term kind of thing.
"Of course he's going to recover; he
wouldn't want to miss his audit," Teddy quipped. He struck the pose of
a madman with one eye closed and his right side drooping, hand
crippled—his idea of his daddy as a stroke victim.
"Oh my God!" Marsha made a disgusted sound
at the inappropriate, fifth-grade humor of her brother.
Teddy mouthed the word "bitch" at her.
Cassie was appalled. They seemed so
heartless, without feeling of any kind. Suddenly it wasn't hard to
understand why animals in the wild sometimes ate their young. "What's
the prognosis?" she asked timorously. She had to focus on Mitch, poor
Mitch struck down in his prime.
"Will he walk? Will he talk? Will he be
able to write checks?" Marsha zoomed right in on the practical
considerations. Daddy paid the bills, after all. Mommy was the idiot
who didn't even know where the checkbook was.
Dr. Cohen tapped the table with his pen.
"It's very early to predict. Some people do better than expected.
Others—"
"What do you mean ‘better than expected'?"
Cassie cried.
"The CT scans show that your husband had a
stroke. That means plaque on his arteries prevented the blood flow from
getting to his brain. His brain shows quite a bit of damage from oxygen
deprivation."
"How much damage?" Teddy broke in.
Dr. Cohen put his lips together. "We'll
have to see. We're just going to have to take this one day at a time."
He gave them his first bright encouraging smile.
"But you gave him PTA. Doesn't that arrest
the damage?" Cassie asked hopefully.
"TPA," Marsha corrected gently.
"I know. I'm no dummy," she replied.
"Of course, you're not, Mother," Marsha
said sweetly enough to indicate that she thought her mother was a great
big dummy.
"Well, how long before we'll know
something?" she asked slowly, trying not to take offense.
"We'll have a better idea in forty-eight
hours." Wellfleet spoke slowly, too. It was pretty clear they didn't
have much hope.
"The first few days are crucial. We'll know
more in a day or two," Dr. Cohen added quickly.
"One day at a time. That has to be our
credo." Dr. Ballister took this opportunity to say a few comforting
words. Cassie didn't hear them. She was alarmed by the prospect of her
husband in a wheelchair. Mitch had to recover, he had to. As an
invalid, he'd be very difficult to manage.
"I'd like to see him. Is he awake?" she
asked.
"He's in intensive care. You can go in for
a few minutes, but don't expect much."
"Oh no." Panic overtook Teddy's face for
the first time. Courage wasn't his middle name.
Marsha, on the other hand, had resolve
written all over her. She squared her shoulders, the social worker
kicking in. All three doctors gave her admiring glances. She glowed
with the attention. The past week she'd been through hell with her
mother. Now it was Daddy's turn. The girl was jumping into the
parenting role with both feet. She draped her arm around her mother's
shoulder. "Don't cry, Mom. Daddy's strong. He'll pull through this. I
know he will."
Grateful for the comfort, Cassie reached
across her chest and patted Marsha's hand. She didn't want to tell this
finally empathizing daughter that the tears in her eyes were for the
young mother who'd lost in a nanosecond her husband and both children
when they went out for pizza on the L.I.E.
CHAPTER 6
CASSIE FOUND MITCH IN A GLASS ROOM in
the Neurological
Intensive Care unit, where he and his many monitors were highly visible
to the nurses and doctors responsible for keeping him alive. He was
also mercilessly displayed in all his certain mortality to anyone else
who happened to pass by. With breathing tubes in his nose, and hookups
to any number of life-sustaining devices, he wasn't a pretty sight.
Plastic tubing and drip bags were everywhere, several going in, and one
tube that snaked out from under the covers led to a half-filled urine
bag.
The head of their family, the captain of
their little
ship, lay on his back like a beached whale. His beautiful tan had
turned to a putty gray. The hair that he had freshly blow-dried every
single morning of his life was now a thin, oily mat on his scalp. The
true extent of his receding hairline was now clearly revealed. He was
motionless, yet there was motion all around him. A respirator breathed
for him, making whooshing noises. Monitors clicked, showing his brain
and heart activity. There didn't appear to be much. Mitchell Anderson
Sales was alive, but only just.
Teddy hung back outside the window. "I
can't take this.
I'll wait for you outside."
Having ascertained no wedding ring on
Wellfleet's finger,
Marsha now took the opportunity to consult with the neurologist just
down the hall. So Cassie pulled herself together and went into her
husband's glass cocoon all alone. The first thing she saw was that his
eyes were open, and her heart spiked with hope.
"Sweetheart, it's Cassie," she said
brightly. "You're
going to be just fine. I know it." The cheerleader in her went right to
work. Go Mitch.
Mitch didn't seem interested. His eyes,
directed
elsewhere, did not register her optimism.
"Can you hear me, baby? It's Cassie. I'm
with you." She
leaned closer to catch his reply, but Mitch wasn't home. The breathing
machine with its loud mechanical whoosh answered for him.
"Baby, I'm with you. Marsha is here. Teddy.
We're all
here, and we're going to stay with you until you come back from there.
From wherever you are." She paused. Nothing. This emptiness where there
used to be such power scared her.
"Listen, kiddo, remember that swami who
came to see
Mother in the hospital? Remember what he told her about going into the
light? Mitch, listen. Whatever they tell you about heaven, don't go
into the light, okay?" She paused again, thinking of her mother, who'd
gone right into that damn light when Cassie was only twenty-four. Oh
God, she still missed her mommy.
"Listen to me, Mitch, honey. I know what
I'm talking
about. That light thing, forget it. Look at me, sweetheart. I'll stay
with you. I'll bring you back, I promise. I don't care what the doctors
say. You can do it. I know you can. We'll travel together from now on.
I'll keep you company. We'll have fun, live to be old, okay? An old
couple, having fun."
She leaned down close to his ear. A big
cauliflower ear.
Five or six gray hairs were growing out of it. She swooned, dizzy from
those hairs and the smell of intensive care. The tubes were everywhere.
So many plastic tubes laced back and forth around him, they actually
appeared to be mating. Cassie realized she was now in greater intimacy
with her husband than she'd been in years. She closed her eyes and let
the noise take over. She didn't realize that his unseeing eyes were
empty. She felt a profound irritation, thinking he was resisting her
attempt to be with and care for him.
This was not an unusual situation for them.
She'd walk
into a room, and he'd walk out. He only hung around long enough to have
a fight with her. But this time she was here and he wasn't walking out.
He wasn't fighting. He was stuck, and had to listen to her. And this
time she wasn't taking no for an answer. He was hers and he had to
survive. She wouldn't be able to live with herself if he didn't.
"Listen to me, Mitch. I won't let you go
like this. It's
my fault. I didn't tell you about the face-lift, and I know that was
wrong. I'm sorry if it was a shock. Just wake up, and I'll never do it
again. I promise. Okay? Okay? I'm sorry. I'll remember every single
thing about wine. I'll drink white, or I won't drink it. Whatever you
want. Okay? I won't complain about cigars. Honey, just come back." She
finished her prayer and stood there, waiting for a sign from him. But
there was no pressure back from his fingers. He wasn't going to forgive
her for the plastic surgery, for not being whatever it was he'd wanted
of her. The tears came again. She was sorry, oh was she sorry.
Finally she composed herself and went into
the hall.
Teddy was nowhere in sight. Marsha was in deep dialogue with Dr.
Wellfleet. She could tell from their body language that the
conversation would continue for some time. She found Dr. Cohen facing a
window, talking to himself. When she approached, she realized he was on
his cell phone. He finished the call when she touched his shoulder.
"Mark, I want to spend the night here," she
told him.
"I know it looks bad, Cassie, dear. But I
don't want you
to do that. I want you to go home and get some rest. We'll call you if
there's any change. I promise."
"I have to stay with him. I feel so
responsible for this."
"What are you talking about? You're not
responsible. He
had a stroke."
"No, you don't understand. He saw me like
this. He took
one look at me and just . . . Mark, he keeled over!"
"Well, it is a surprise." Mark pulled back
the scarf and
turned her head this way and that. A doctor can never resist examining.
"I'm surprised myself. We go back a long way, Cassie. You might have
told me you were planning this. We could have consulted. I know the
best people. But it's not bad," he admitted grudgingly. "Whose work is
this?"
"Who cares, it caused a stroke."
"No, Cassie. Don't think like that. You
know Mitch had
dangerously high blood pressure. I told him months ago he needed
medication. He was in denial. That's not your fault."
"High blood pressure?" Cassie tried to
frown but couldn't.
Mark frowned for her. His forehead creased
like an
accordion. "Didn't he tell you?" he asked.
"Oh, you know Mitch and the privacy thing.
He may have
mentioned something a few years ago," Cassie said vaguely, trying to
defend the indefensible. Her husband was sick and hadn't told her.
"No, no. This is not years ago. This is
recent. I warned
him a month ago. I gave him some medicine, but he wouldn't take it. He
said it killed his libido." Mark smiled. That man thing.
Cassie stared at him. Mitch was worried
about his libido?
What libido? She blew air out of her mouth. Mitch had some ego. He
didn't want his own doctor to know he hadn't been interested in sex in
years.
"I'm sorry, Cassie. Mitch called me
yesterday from Paris
and told me he felt funny. Didn't he tell you he was coming back?"
"No, I guess he didn't want to worry me."
Cassie didn't
know he was in Paris. She defended him some more. It probably would
never in a million years occur to Mitch that she might not be in any
condition to care for him. Paris? She'd thought he was in Rome.
Mark gave her a funny look. "Is everything
in order?
You're going to have to take over now, you know."
"What?" The look on his face puzzled her.
What else was
she missing here?
"You know, the insurance—the paperwork, his
will. . . .
We don't want to be premature. But just to be on the safe side, you
might check and see if he has a living will."
"Oh that," she said vaguely.
Mark took both her hands in his. "I'm sorry
to have to
tell you this. But you have to be prepared. In case his heart fails."
He squeezed her hands.
She was puzzled by the warmth with which he
was speaking
and squeezing her. But he was an old friend, as well as their doctor.
Why not? He was talking more, and she tried to listen.
"It could happen, you know. And you have a
power of
attorney, right? You need that."
"Is it that serious?" Cassie whispered.
"I don't want to alarm you. But yes, it's
that serious.
You know I'll always be there for you, Cassie. But you're going to have
to make the decisions now. I'll be frank with you. Mitch may have a
partial recovery, but not for a long time. You're a strong and
beautiful woman. And you never know. This may all be for the best." He
stared into her bruised face and squeezed her hands one last time. "Go
home now. I'll see you back here in the morning."
It was ten-thirty on a Friday night. Cassie
was reeling
with the things Mark had told her. She didn't know what to think about
it. Mitch was so stubborn. He'd come home because he was sick? He'd
never breathed a word about it to her. He was being audited? He'd never
breathed a word about that, either. She needed a painkiller badly. She
was deeply hurt that he'd been hiding these things from her, but no
matter what had been in his mind about it, she couldn't imagine why an
old friend like Mark Cohen could think a disaster like this could
possibly be for the best. She was still thinking about it when she
found Marsha and pried her away from the neurologist. The two of them
located Teddy in the lobby talking to a zaftig nurse with orange hair.
For the first time in years, his face, too, was full of hope.
CHAPTER 7
FORTY-FIVE MINUTES LATER, when Teddy
pulled into the
driveway of the family house, he still had that happy grin on his face.
Cassie went right inside through the garage. Teddy started to follow
her, then saw the Volvo station wagon in its usual spot in the
driveway. Marsha watched him stop and circle it curiously. "What's the
matter, bro?" she asked.
He came into the garage where the Mercedes
and Porche sat
companionably side by side, then circled both of them with a dawning
comprehension. "Mom wasn't in a car crash," he said.
"Of course she was. Don't make a big thing
of it." Marsha
draped an arm around his shoulder. "Look, idiot. We're going to have to
stick together now. Dad isn't going to get better."
Teddy was a big boy, twenty-three and a
half, but he
looked about ten now, stricken by two felled parents in one day. "How
do you know? Daddy's real tough. Maybe he'll get better."
"Tom said he's pretty much brain-dead.
We're going to
have to close ranks and help Mom," Marsha said.
Teddy shrugged off the diagnosis. "Well,
Lorraine told me
they do wonders with stroke victims these days. I'm not writing him
off."
"You didn't see him, Teddy. He's
nonresponsive. He's in a
deep coma. Face it, he's not coming out of this."
"Well, you don't know him. He's a tough
guy. He's not
toppling."
"You didn't see him," Marsha repeated. "It
was awful. . .
." She shook her head. "I almost felt sorry for him."
Teddy snorted derisively. "Well, I'm sure
you'll get over
it."
Marsha gave him a sharp look. "What is that
supposed to
mean? Who's Lorraine?"
Teddy's mood suddenly lifted. "Isn't she
great? She's the
nurse I was talking to. She gave me her number and everything. She told
me to call anytime. She never sleeps."
"What is she, a hooker?"
"Bitch," Teddy spat at her.
"Teddy, you're disgusting. Your father had
a stroke and
you're flirting with nurses." Marsha turned her back on him.
"Well, who the fuck is Tom?" he mimicked
her.
"Tom is Daddy's doctor. I was talking to
his doctor!
Don't you have any brains at all?"
"He looked like a little runt to me," Teddy
muttered.
"You're such a jerk," Marsha replied
loftily.
The door to the house opened. "What's the
matter with you
two? I could hear you arguing all the way in the living room," Cassie
cried. The sequined scarf was gone, and her garish yellow hair stood
out in the halo of light from the kitchen.
"Why hurt each other like that?"
Teddy stared at her, as if he hadn't seen
her bad dye job
before. "Mom, you dyed your hair."
"Yes, I did," she said quietly.
"I bet you had your face lifted, too. Oh
God, it's gross!"
Marsha let her breath out explosively.
"What a jerk!
Teddy! How can you be so mean?"
"She had her face lifted. What did she do
that for? It
looks terrible."
"Teddy!" Marsha screamed loud enough to
rouse the entire
neighborhood. She was known for being something of a hysteric.
Cassie pushed the button to close the
garage door and
waved them inside. "Stop, Marsha. It doesn't matter. The only thing I
care about is peace."
"What are you mad at me for? I'm the good
one," Marsha
complained.
"I'm not mad at anybody." Cassie threw up
her hands and
disappeared into the house.
"Watch out, the shit's hitting the fan,"
Teddy warned.
Marsha spun around and caught his arm.
"What's going on,
Teddy?"
"I don't want to go into it," he said.
"Give, asshole. What's going on?"
He shook his head. "Uh-uh. I'm sick of your
calling me an
asshole."
"Oh Jesus! You're something." Marsha
followed her mother
into the house and slammed the door. She found Cassie in the kitchen,
sitting at the kitchen table, shredding a used paper napkin.
"Mom, are you okay?"
"No, I'm not. Why do you two have to fight
like that? I
heard every word you said. I'm demoralized with this."
"Oh we're just playing. Don't let it get to
you, Mom."
Marsha touched her mother's awful hair.
"It is getting to me. Everybody's fallen
apart and it's
all because of that face-lift. What was I thinking?"
"The face-lift had nothing to do with it.
Daddy had high
blood pressure. Tom told me he was a walking time bomb."
Teddy barged in. "What's for dinner? I'm
starved."
The two women ignored him.
"No, no, Marsha. I know it was the shock.
Daddy likes
things natural," Cassie said.
Teddy laughed. "Natural, oh sure."
Marsha turned on him. "What do you know
about anything?"
"Daddy couldn't stand women who had plastic
surgery. He
said you could always tell a mile away."
Cassie groaned. Why oh why had she done it?
Teddy snorted and opened the refrigerator.
"Teddy!" Marsha cried. "Stop that."
"What did I do? I'm hungry . . . Jesus,
Jell-O! Soup!
Cottage cheese! What happened to food?" he complained.
"Shh Teddy, we have to talk seriously about
this. Mom,
does Daddy have a living will?"
"I have no idea. He never tells me
anything. I didn't
even know he had high blood pressure." Cassie touched her cheek and
didn't feel a thing.
"Well, where's his will? The document will
be with that."
Marsha spoke briskly. She was back in social work mode.
"Diet Coke, anyone?" Teddy offered.
Ignored again.
"I don't know where his will is. Call
Parker, he'll
know," Cassie said.
"Why don't I call out for a pizza, then,"
Teddy suggested.
"I'm trying to get something accomplished
here," Marsha
told him sharply. "Let's focus on the problem."
"Well, we have to eat," he replied
reasonably enough.
"Can't you see Mom can't eat pizza? Where
is your head,
Teddy? Daddy had a stroke; Mom can't eat pizza. This doesn't take a
rocket scientist to figure out. Order something else."
"Marsha, why can't he have pizza?" Cassie
asked.
"You always indulge him," Marsha grumbled.
Cassie gave her daughter an angry look.
"Let's not get
caught up in this ridiculous bickering, okay?"
"Don't make me feel guilty. I'm just trying
to—"
"Thanks, Mommy, you're a peach. What do you
want on it,
everything?" Teddy interrupted happily as he dove for the phone.
"I'd rather die on the spot than eat that
poison. Mom,
what about the health insurance policy?"
"And don't forget the life insurance,"
Teddy threw in
when Domino's put him on hold.
"How can you talk about money when your
father's in
intensive care?" Cassie was shocked at the very mention of life
insurance. She couldn't believe the way her children were behaving. And
she had no idea where the documents were. Her ignorance made her feel
like an absolute jerk, just as helpless and infantile in the situation
as her children were.
"This isn't about money," Marsha said.
"This is about
caring for him. We have to know what he wanted . . ."
"I'm sure he'd want to linger," Teddy said.
"Teddy! Mom!" Marsha was boiling over.
"Honey, calm down. We'll sort it out."
"Fine, let's sort it out now. Where's the
will?"
"Gee, I don't even know if he has a will.
Your daddy
never talked about things like that. Could I have a cup of tea, please,
sweetheart?"
"What do you mean, you didn't talk about
it? Didn't you
plan for your future?" Marsha was shocked.
Cassie clicked her tongue. "Of course, he
worked for the
future. He wanted to be in the top ten, you know that. He just didn't
want to burden me with the dust of life, sweetheart."
"What's the dust of life, everything?"
"Marsha, that's not nice!" Cassie put her
head down on
the table.
"He didn't talk about anything, and you put
your head in
the sand. Same old, same old."
"Amen," said Teddy.
Marsha sighed and put the kettle on.
Crushed, Cassie
watched her daughter move around the kitchen, putting together the
cups, the teapot, the milk, amazed that she seemed to know how to do
it. When the pizza arrived, Teddy paid for it himself, then sat at the
kitchen table, eating it thoughtfully. Despite her contempt for it,
Marsha also ate the pizza. Cassie, however, couldn't eat a thing.
"Poor Mitch." She kept thinking of his
blank face and all
those tubes going into him. Poor Mitch. How he had loved the good
things of life. He would absolutely hate seeing his children resort to
the humble pizza. He'd hate being a vegetable.
Marsha finished her pizza. "Come on, Mom.
I'll clean this
up. You need to lie down."
"I am tired," she admitted, and let Marsha
take her
upstairs and help her get ready for bed. It wasn't so easy. Cassie had
to sleep sitting up, bolstered against the pillows so her head would be
above her chest and the blood wouldn't collect in her face. All week
she'd kept waking herself up to be sure she didn't relax too much and
fall over. Plastic surgery was like giving birth the first time. No one
had told you beforehand any of the things you needed to know. In this
case the doctor had promised that she would look gorgeous and
completely natural. He didn't tell her that to achieve this she'd have
to be practically immobile for weeks to prevent scarring. Cassie was
certainly scarred for life now. She'd been so humiliated by everyone
looking at her in that ridiculous scarf. She lay back against the
pillows, groaning, wishing she could put a bullet in her head.
"Just close your eyes and get some sleep,
Mom." Marsha
covered her sore eyes with a plastic bag filled with crushed ice even
though the time for cold packs was long gone.
"Thank you, Marsha. You're a nice girl."
The cold was
comforting, but it didn't stop Cassie's seeing the same thing over and
over. All the devastating moments: Mitch's unexpected return home. His
angry conversation with Marsha in the kitchen. The way he'd looked when
he walked through the bedroom door and his handsome face went purple at
the sight of her in bed, a mess, wearing his beautiful aqua lace
pajamas. The sweat that beaded his forehead. The color leeching out of
his face. Just like in a movie, frame by frame, she watched it all
again and again. She saw him teeter and fall. She saw his head crack
against the corner of the bedside table. She saw his blood spilling out
of the cut onto the boring beige carpet she'd never liked. Marsha left
the room and returned a few moments later to give her a pill.
Gratefully, she took it. In a little while she wasn't seeing anything
anymore.
Many hours later when it was still deep
night outside,
Cassie was startled back into consciousness. Sounds of people in the
house alarmed her. She wasn't used to hearing anything but the wind and
rain. Squirrels running on the roof. At first she thought Mitch had
come home and was down in his den, doing his paperwork. Then with a
start she remembered he was in the hospital. She realized the sounds
were her kids. Teddy and Marsha were quartered in their old rooms that
had never been remodeled from the days they'd lived there as children
and teenagers. But they were not asleep. She could hear their voices
drift up from downstairs. What were they doing down there?
Cassie dragged herself out of bed, grabbed
her old
bathrobe, and padded downstairs to see what they were up to. When she
came to the door of Mitch's office, she was horrified to see that they
had invaded their father's territory. Mitch's computer was on. The
locked filing cabinet was open, and her two children were deep in
conversation surrounded by his sacred private papers.
CHAPTER 8
CASSIE STOOD IN THE HALL FOR SEVERAL
MOMENTS trying to
figure out what her children were doing in their father's office and
why they were talking so loudly. She tried to yawn herself awake, but
the yawn wouldn't come because she couldn't open her mouth wide enough
to pop her ears. Once again she had the feeling that more than a few
inches were missing from her neck and chin area, and a completely
separate heart throbbed in her cheeks. Why did they have to wake her up
with all their noise? Marsha's and Teddy's voices were so loud, they
had disturbed her drugged sleep. Not only that, they had gone into
their father's private space without his permission.
As she struggled for a clear thought,
Cassie realized
that she'd never seen the room from this perspective. Even when Mitch
had been home, the door was always closed. He'd kept it locked so not
even the cleaning lady who came once a week could get in. The desk
where he'd worked was deep and wide. The filing cabinets spread across
one wall. Mitch had stored his personal papers here since the early
days of their marriage. He'd felt it was safe here. Safe from his
secretary, from his managers, his sales force, from whomever it was he
didn't trust at the warehouse. He'd been consolidating with other small
distributors for years, taking them over, buying them out, trying to
get a bigger piece of developing wineries abroad and also the growing
American producers' pie.
This was an important point that he'd
impressed upon her.
American family-owned wineries in forty-three states had grown from 377
to over 1,770, a 430 percent increase since Mitch had started his
business in the late 1960s. This was a fact he liked to tell her to let
her know how important he'd become in the scheme of things. In the same
time frame, while the number of producers had grown, the number of
distributors had decreased from 10,900 to just over 2,800. He was very
proud of that. His piece of the action was getting bigger. Since laws
in the United States prevented direct sales from vintners to consumers
and, in many states, the sale of wine in grocery and convenience
stores, the distributor's role of choosing which wines to represent,
and how to sell them to the consumers through liquor stores and
restaurants, was a key one. Distributors like Mitch were desperate to
preserve those antibootlegging laws and keep their lock on the market.
Cassie was sure much sensitive material was in those filing cabinets.
Now seeing her children eagerly engaged in
studying what
she herself had never dared to open filled her with a mixture of horror
and awe. She hugged her old bathrobe around her excitedly, the hearts
in her cheeks and chest beating like mad. Here, finally, was a good
reason to find out how much money Mitch had amassed in the bank
accounts from which he alone paid the bills, how much life insurance he
had, how much there was in the pension fund.
From the way Mitch had talked about his
operations, she
suspected millions, more than $10 million, maybe as much as twenty,
because he was very tight with money. Everyone else they knew had
traded up their houses and lives at least once in their
twenty-five-year-plus marriages. Mitch was much richer than any of
them, but they alone hadn't moved up. He was always telling her he was
putting all his earnings into the company, to grow it bigger and
bigger. He'd gotten into trading Bordeaux futures. The future was what
he was banking on. In the future, they'd be very rich. He'd promised.
Cassie's robe was medium-weight cotton with
a raised
pattern like turn-of-the-century bedspreads in summer cottages. She'd
had it so long, the hem and cuffs were frayed. The bathrobe was
comfortable, a little like the ignorance of not knowing how rich they
were. She'd always suspected Mitch was hoarding. There was no reason to
be so cheap, and now her heart raced with the thrill of acing the
control freak and finding out they could afford anything in the world
they wanted, after all.
"Hi," she said after a minute. "I must have
nodded off
for a few minutes. Any word from the hospital?"
"No. Go back to bed, Mom. It's only five
o'clock." Marsha
spoke sharply.
"I don't want to go back to bed. I'm wide
awake. What are
you doing?" Cassie was quite pleased that it was they and not she who'd
betrayed Mitch's trust and started the digging.
"We wanted to check on the health
insurance," Teddy said,
avoiding her eyes.
"We have plenty of health insurance,
right?" Suddenly she
got a chilly feeling. Neither of her children would look at her.
"What's the matter? Is something wrong?" she asked.
"Yes, plenty is wrong. Mom, since when did
you become a
compulsive shopper?" Marsha demanded.
"What? You know I'm not a compulsive
shopper." Cassie
laughed out loud.
Marsha gave her a scathing look. "Uh-huh.
Right. So
where's all the stuff you bought?"
"What stuff?" Cassie stared at her.
"Tiffany, $65,000 in March, nearly three
months ago?
What's that? East Hills Jaguar. You leased a $53,000 car back in
January? ABC Carpet and Home, $154,000 for curtains and bedding, are
you crazy? Where's the Jaguar, Mom? Where are the curtains? What did
you think you were doing?"
"Marsha, don't be silly. You know I don't
have a Jaguar."
"Here's your name on the car insurance.
Here's your name
on the MasterCard. You have an $89,596 balance due at Bergdorf Goodman,
for clothes and shoes and accessories, for God's sake. What about
that?" Marsha shook a sheaf of receipts at her.
Bergdorf Goodman? Cassie put a hand to her
head. She was
dreaming. She was having a bad dream. She knew that pill Marsha had
given her was a bad thing. Better to wrestle around sitting up all
night than to have dreams like this. She shook her head and turned
around to go back upstairs, get out of this dream.
"Don't walk away. You have some big
explaining to do."
Now Marsha was talking to her mother as if Cassie were a teenager
arrested on drug charges. "How could you do this to Daddy? To all of
us?"
Cassie was agog. "I don't know what you're
talking about.
I haven't been in Bergdorf Goodman in years. You know I shop in
Daffy's. Bergdorf's must be your father's bills. You know how he is
about his clothes."
"No, Mom. This is not men's department
stuff."
Marsha was the one sitting at the computer.
Teddy had
pulled up a chair. He had a pile of files on his lap. They had a lot of
nerve.
"Teddy, you know your father. What is all
this about?"
Teddy was still busy avoiding her eyes.
Marsha went on. "And how about this? Taxes!
You paid the
taxes with a Visa card at a twenty-one percent annual rate? Are you
crazy?"
"I don't pay the taxes at all," Cassie
said. "I don't
earn the money. I've never paid the taxes. I'm not crazy."
"Four hundred and fifty thousand dollars to
the IRS on a
credit card? It's in your name. This debt. All this debt is in your
name. What were you thinking?" Marsha lost it altogether and was now
shrieking.
Cassie's brain whirled. "We paid that much
in taxes?" she
said in a hushed tone. "I had no idea he made that much." She did the
math quickly. He must make close to a million dollars a year. Wow, she
had new respect for her husband. Then she wondered, where was it?
"Mom! You're some kind of psychopath.
You're . . . you're
. . ." Marsha had no words for what her mother was. She'd jumped to a
conclusion just like the EMS people.
But things were not as they seemed. Right
between the rib
cage, above the belly button and below the heart, Cassie was stabbed
with a vicious truth. It hadn't come to her slowly over hours or months
or years. It hit her all of a sudden, like a sword striking home. She
got it in one, then she wanted to cover it up. "Shhh. Let's not talk
about this now," she said. A person could only take so much in one day.
"Mom!" Marsha screamed. "We're talking now.
What did you
do with the stuff? You have to send it back."
Okay. Maybe he gave it to the poor, but
probably not.
Cassie glanced at her darling son. Teddy was wiggling uncomfortably in
his chair. "Maybe Teddy knows where the stuff is," she said softly.
"Mom's right. We don't have to talk about
this now,"
Teddy murmured.
"What's the matter with you? Of course we
do. The debts
are huge. Almost a million dollars."
"Well, Daddy must have it saved somewhere.
He's very
careful. I'm sure he's got it covered," Cassie said with a quavering
voice. They didn't have to do it now.
"Why are you glossing this over?" Marsha
was beside
herself.
"Sweetheart, when Daddy wakes up, I'm sure
he'll explain
all of this to us. He always has reasons for everything he does."
"Mom, these are your signatures."
Cassie tilted her head to one side. For a
second, her
vision failed her. Her signatures? How could that be? Red spots
appeared before her eyes. They turned to green ones, white ones. Marsha
handed over a Tiffany receipt. Cassie took it. She squinted at the slip
through puffy eyes and the fireworks of spots, and she saw, clear as
mud, her very own signature, Cassandra Sales. All those s's skipping
along just the way she always wrote them. Proud and perky as can be.
She scratched the side of her face and didn't feel a thing, nothing
except the sword between her ribs, ripping her guts out. "Shh," was the
only sound she could make. "Shh."
CHAPTER 9
CASSIE PACED BACK AND FORTH IN THE
KITCHEN, brooding
about her children. It was as if she and they had become instant
enemies, standing, armed and dangerous, on opposite sides of the great
unbridgeable divide that was the family fortune. Even when Marsha and
Teddy finally stopped yelling at her and marched off to their rooms in
a huff, it was clear that they were dying to prosecute her for
unspeakable crimes that could deprive them of their inheritance. If
she'd allowed them to continue, they might well have subjected her to
harsh lights and hectoring interrogations all morning until she broke
and confessed to spending sprees from which they had been excluded.
But she hadn't allowed them to question
her, so they'd
been forced to succumb to fitful sleep instead. The truth was, Cassie
didn't want to dignify their accusations with a denial. Further, she
didn't want to adjust their skewed perceptions just yet. Her heart
throbbed in her face, distracting her from the hunger that had been
gnawing at her belly for over a week. She was starved, but she wasn't
able to eat a thing. She looked worse than ever. Since yesterday, her
bruises had started to yellow, giving her both a beaten and jaundiced
appearance. Yesterday her face had been a plastic surgery postop
horror. Now it was a Noh mask of acrimony and psychic pain.
How could the children she'd loved and
cared for,
cherished all their lives, believe she'd done something so wrong when
they both knew it was their father who was the finagler in the family.
It was no secret that he liked to cheat the IRS. He called his ways
with money the entrepreneurial spirit. It was an actual philosophy. For
every honest and straightforward way of doing something, he came up
with three corners to turn and two tangents to follow to get the job
done in a much more convoluted manner to hide something. What had never
occurred to Cassie was that he might cheat not just the government but
real people. He might cheat her. It was horrifying.
Mitch had always told her he was saving,
saving, saving,
but he was also something of a kidder, kidder, kidder. And now she
could easily see that, for all she knew, he'd been spending all along.
He might already have purchased their retirement home in Boca Raton and
furnished it from ABC just for her. And he'd used her signature for tax
reasons, just like he'd lived way below his means for tax reasons. This
explanation of house buying in secret was not entirely beyond the realm
of possibility, but she knew that's not what he'd done.
Outside, the sun rose on Cassie's perfect
garden. Inside,
her secure home shifted under her feet. A sudden flash of red betrayed
the flight of a cardinal across the lawn. Unaware of her standing
motionless for a moment at the kitchen window, the bird aimed for the
feeder near the back door. It landed and began to pick at the seeds,
and Cassie trembled in awe at the spectacular beauty and ordinariness
of the new day. As the light fused the sky and filtered through the
leaves of the oaks dappling the grass, she struggled for balance. She
didn't want her husband to die, but she didn't want him to be a cheat
and a liar, either. And she didn't want to be another one of those
people who jumped to a conclusion without real facts in front of her.
She knew he was reckless, but it was a leap
to think he
would actually hurt her. Still, someone was driving around a new Jaguar
charged in her name when she'd had her Volvo for so long, it was old
enough to go to college. That hurt. She made a sudden angry movement,
and the cardinal darted away. Disappointed, she turned to the clock and
was disappointed again. She wanted it to be nine, but it was still only
six-thirty, too early to call anyone, to take any action, to do
anything at all.
Time was passing so slowly, she thought
she'd go crazy.
She longed to drink a quart of vodka, or at least to smoke a cigarette
to punctuate her frustration and pass the time. The last cigarette
she'd smoked was in 1970. Same with the vodka. Mitch sold fine wines
but didn't like seeing her drink in his presence. He had a philosophy
about that, too. He didn't want her pilfering, wasting the product, and
becoming a drunk. He despised all drunks except himself. He had a very
high opinion of himself.
She paced back and forth. What to do? What
to do? Her
surgeon had decreed that she must not put her glasses on while the
stitches remained around her ears. She must not worry or think angry
thoughts. She was not supposed to drive the car. She was supposed to
gobble down tranquilizers and painkillers to dream happy dreams for a
lovely, unscarred beautiful young face. But how could she do that now?
She wanted to put on her glasses and get into those files of Mitch's to
discover the truth about the house in Boca Raton that he had not bought
just for her. She wanted to drive to the hospital on her own. She
didn't care if Mitch was in a coma. She had to talk to him.
But old habits die hard. She couldn't help
following
orders. Afraid of infection, she didn't put on her glasses. Afraid of
driving into a wall, she didn't take out the car. While she waited for
Marsha to wake up and chauffeur her, she foraged in the refrigerator,
in the freezer. Now she was ready to eat, but that girl had not
provided any food for her. There was not a damn thing in the house to
eat. No coffee cake, no sticky buns, no bagels, no croissants. Nothing
gooey, nothing sweet. Nothing! Marsha had gone off food and wouldn't
let anybody else eat. Cassie sipped a little orange juice, but not
through a straw. She was starving.
Around seven, after waiting around for
hours, she
wandered into Mitch's den, where Teddy and Marsha had left things a big
mess. So thoughtless of them. The computer screen had colorful fish on
it that swam back and forth as the sound of water gurgled out of the
speakers. She punched a button and a menu came up. She couldn't exactly
see it, but she knew what was on it. Office something. Windows
something. AOL something. Quicken something. She bet their whole life
was in that computer, and she'd never dared to look in it. Never. Even
the simplest bills had waited until Mitch had gotten around to printing
them out.
She'd always been a little phobic about the
computer, and
she'd always accepted the deal. She had a husband who was fussy about
privacy. The house had been her territory. Finance had been Mitch's
territory. Now she was angry that Teddy and Marsha had been the first
invaders of it, had thought they had discovered some terrible secret
about her and were eager to believe it. She had no idea how many hours
they'd been looking into his files, or how much they thought they'd
learned. She shut off the computer and went upstairs to take a bath and
brood some more. She did this for quite a while.
At nineA .M.
she dressed in
a pair of pants that were now too loose and a blazer she'd grown out of
years ago that fit her again. She was eager to get to the hospital. She
had a thousand things to do, a sick husband to visit, doctors and
lawyers to consult. Enough brooding, she now had to take charge of her
life. It occurred to her that she didn't want Marsha and Teddy in the
files again, so she went back downstairs and locked the den, then
slipped the key into her pocket. She was fully alert now. She took the
stairs two at a time and marched into Marsha's room without knocking.
Marsha's room was the timeless fantasy of
sweet
femininity. The wallpaper was pink with white stripes. The printed
chintz on the bedspread and chairs was cheerful sprigs of pink
rosebuds. The curtains were frilly dotted swiss. The single bed had a
canopy that dated from Marsha's childhood, when her daddy had been
hopeful that with the right incentives she'd snap out of her
prepubescent doldrums and turn into an Ivy League preppy. This room,
too, was a total mess. The navy skirt and baby blue twinset (that
Cassie now saw was cashmere) were twisted up on the floor as if Marsha
had wrestled out of them. The pile of clothes she'd worn all week was
heaped on the ruffled chair. More cashmere. Partially flung over it
were two towels that still looked wet. The room smelled intensely
floral, as if a bottle of expensive perfume had been spilled in there.
Marsha was sleeping with the bedspread over
her head.
Only a very little of her hair showed at the top. Cassie approached the
bed cautiously. Then, feeling like the wicked witch of the West, she
suddenly pulled the covers all the way down to the foot of the bed. She
was startled to see that Marsha was sleeping in one of her father's
undershirts and a pair of his boxer shorts. The twenty-five-year-old
was hugging a small Curious George that her daddy had given her when
she was about four. Marsha's identification with her father was clear.
This hurt Cassie even more.
"Time to go see Daddy," she said.
"Huh?" Marsha didn't move.
"It's time to get up, Marsha, honey. We
have to go visit
Daddy."
"What time is it?" Marsha mumbled into the
monkey's head.
"It's late. It's nine-thirty."
"Nine-thirty!" Marsha patted the area
around her,
searching for the covers. When she couldn't find them, she gave up and
curled around her pillow.
"Marsha, get up." Cassie stamped her foot.
"I just went to sleep," she grumbled.
"It's not my fault you stayed up all night."
"What's the rush? Has there been a change?"
"I want to be with him. I want to see him,"
Cassie said.
Did she ever.
"Fine, just ten minutes." Marsha turned
over and stuck
her thumb in her mouth.
Cassie circled the bed to talk to her on
the other side
and saw that Marsha was refusing to open her eyes. "Marsha, sweetheart.
I want to go now."
"It's too early. They won't let you in."
"How do you know?"
"Tom told me. We're meeting him at
eleven-thirty."
"Really. When was that arrangement made? I
don't know
anything about that," she said.
Marsha rolled over on her back and spoke
with her eyes
closed. "Mom, go take a nap. Everything is being taken care of. You
don't have to do a thing."
"What?" Cassie was very alert now.
"Teddy and I have talked about it. I've
talked with Tom,
daddy's neurologist. We're on top of everything. You just concentrate
on healing that new face of yours." Still with her eyes glued shut
against the day, Marsha spoke in a tone guaranteed to insult a retard.
It hit Cassie like a jolt from the electric chair. Her yellow hair
practically stood on end with shock. Her children were excluding her
from her own tragedy.
"How dare you talk to me like that! Get up
right now,"
she cried.
"Mom, don't overreact. We know what we're
doing." Marsha
turned over again.
"You think I don't know what I'm doing! Get
up!" Cassie
marched around the bed and grabbed the pillow from Marsha's arms. This
violent action opened Marsha's eyes.
"What's the matter with you?" she said
irritably.
"I'm the mother here. I'm the wife. You
don't make any
decisions for your daddy or me, you understand that?" Cassie hopped up
and down on one foot. Her energy had returned with betrayal. This was
her and Mitch's life, not their children's.
"Look at you." Marsha sat up and rubbed her
eyes as if
she couldn't believe it. "You look bad and you're acting crazy, Mom.
You're not up to this."
"Don't you dare talk to me like this."
Cassie couldn't
stop hopping.
"Well, look at you. You're out of control.
You're not
qualified."
"I'll show you out of control, Marsha
Sales. Don't think
you can social work me." Cassie turned her head and caught sight of
herself in Marsha's full-length mirror. The Noh mask of wrath with the
bloodshot eyes and porcupine stitches around her ears animated by the
frenzied dance stopped her mid-sentence. She did look crazy. What was
happening to her? What was happening to all of them? The heat left her.
She sat down abruptly on the bed. Her face looked the same, but when
she spoke, her voice was calm. "Your father and I love you very much,
Marsha," she began.
"But . . . ," Marsha said bitterly, clearly
expecting the
usual reservations from her mother.
"But even though Daddy is in intensive
care, I am still
The Mother. We can talk about certain things as a family, but I am in
charge here. From now on, I will be the one to look after the financial
situation. Let's face it. This is my problem, not yours."
"Mom, with your record, I don't think
that's a good
idea," Marsha muttered sarcastically.
"I wouldn't jump to that conclusion so
fast, young lady,"
Cassie retorted through her teeth.
"Okay, what am I missing?" Marsha raked her
fingers
through her hair. "Crazy Mom, or what?"
Cassie inhaled sharply, stung by her
daughter's
bitterness. She'd been nothing but the most loving mother, had thought
of nothing but her daughter's welfare every single day of her life.
She'd had almost no pleasures of her own—none, in fact, that were not
connected with doing good for the family. What did Marsha have to be so
bitter about?
"What are you missing? You're missing
everything. What do
you know about me? What do you know about anything but yourself and
your own selfish feelings."
"You're obviously projecting," Marsha said
haughtily. "Just tell the truth, I can take it."
"You're very hurtful, Marsha." Cassie shook
her head.
Where had she gone wrong with this girl?
"Look who's talking."
"You're talking about money, is that it?
Money? That's
ridiculous. What if I did spend money on myself—I'm not saying I did,
but if I had, would it be so terrible?" The words were out of her mouth
before she could stop herself.
"Yes," Marsha said. "Yes, Mom, it would."
"I've given my whole life for you, for all
of you. You
got your camps and your trips to Europe and your college and your
graduate school . . ." Outraged, Cassie ticked the items off on her
fingers. She'd never even been to a day spa. Why were they arguing
about money?
"What are you two yelling about?" Teddy
stumbled into the
room, rubbing his eyes.
"Mom's gone psycho," Marsha told him.
"And you, Teddy. Every advantage. Special
schools,
special tutors. College enrichment programs." Cassie pointed an angry
finger at him. "Vineyards in Italy. Vineyards in France . . ."
"Teddy did get everything. He was Daddy's
boy," Marsha
confirmed, nodding at him.
"No, I didn't. You got everything," Teddy
jumped in, his
rage topping everyone's.
Marsha made a disgusted noise. "What?"
"You got the nervous breakdowns. You got
the attention,"
Teddy spit out.
"And what did I get?" Cassie demanded.
"Tell me, what did
I get!"
They both looked at her, then turned to
each other and
cracked up.
"You got a face-lift," they said in unison.
I hate them, Cassie thought. She was amazed
at herself. I
hate my own children.
CHAPTER 10
CASSIE WAS SO INCENSED by the behavior
of her children that she went back to her bathroom and put some
concealer on her face. Then she tied a scarf around her head à
la Jackie Kennedy. She was furious that her children thought she was
vain and a spendthrift. She wasn't vain. How could they think she was
vain just because she'd gotten a face-lift? She was going to show them.
And she was going to show Mitch. How dare he make her look like the bad
guy? She was the good guy. She'd always been the good guy, staying home
and taking care of them all. She marched downstairs and got into the
car. She sat there for a few minutes muttering to herself. When the
children didn't show up, she honked the horn.
After what felt like an hour and a half
Marsha came into the garage looking like a movie star in her size zero
slacks, high heels, and (now) pink cashmere twinset with little
embroidered flowers traveling up and down the cardigan's placket. She
pushed the button on the garage door, swinging it open and blinding
Cassie with the morning light. Where did all that cashmere come from?
Saks, Bergdorf's, Neiman's? The girl's hair appeared to have been
carefully styled by Frederic Fekkai in the last five minutes, and huge
sunglasses covered half her face, enhancing rather than disguising her
very good looks.
"What's the big hurry?" Marsha complained,
taking the glasses off and frowning at her mother as she rattled the
car keys.
"Where's Teddy?" Cassie demanded, feeling
hurt for so many reasons, she thought her heart would explode just like
Mitch's brain.
"He's having breakfast. He'll meet us
there."
Cassie shook her head. "I don't want him in
Daddy's den."
"Well, you locked the door. How's he going
to get in?"
So they'd checked. It was war. Cassie
jumped out of the car and marched back into the house. Teddy was
sitting at the kitchen table wearing khakis and one of his father's
expensive Italian knit shirts. He was reading the sports section of the
newspaper, eating a bowl of his father's favorite cereal, the one
holdout from his childhood—Frosted Flakes, with the tiger on the box.
"Hi, Mom," he said without looking up.
"Teddy, what are you up to?" Cassie
demanded.
"I'm eating breakfast."
"I don't want you in Daddy's files."
"No problem. I don't want to know."
"What do you mean you don't want to know?"
"Whatever," he said, taking a huge bite,
crunching loudly, swallowing, taking another, as if actually trying to
infuriate her further.
Cassie hesitated in the doorway. Her tone
softened, though her heart remained stone. "What does ‘whatever' mean?"
"Marsha's the one who wants to know. I told
her whatever, too."
"Teddy, what are you talking about?"
Teddy didn't look up from the page.
"Nothing."
Something about the way he said "nothing"
alarmed her. Teddy had been the one with the sweetest disposition in
the family. Everybody else walked all over him. It occurred to her that
with the good business sense inherited from his father, maybe Teddy was
the finagler. It had to be one of the three of them. Would Mitch
protect his children if they went crazy with the spending? Marsha?
Never. But his boy Teddy . . . ? She considered it. Teddy was his
father's favorite. Cassie couldn't see Teddy at Bergdorf's, though. He
probably didn't know where it was. Not Teddy. "Well, are you coming?"
she asked finally.
"If I have to," he muttered.
From the garage, Marsha called out, "For
God's sake, what are you doing in there?"
"Yes, you have to, Teddy. Daddy wants to
see you," Cassie told him.
"Sure he does," Teddy mumbled, lifting the
bowl to drink the milk.
Cassie closed the kitchen door quietly,
headed back into the garage, got into the Mercedes, and closed that
door quietly, too. Something was up between those kids.
Marsha was busy powdering her nose in the
mirror. "I don't know what you're so worried about. Teddy got all of
three hundred on his math SATs. You don't actually think he could read
a bank statement, do you?"
"Marsha, what's going on?" Cassie asked.
"Nothing." Marsha started the engine and
pulled out.
Again that "nothing."
"Teddy is no dummy," Cassie defended her
son.
"Yes, he is," Marsha said.
Agitated by the sibling rivalry and all the
things that she didn't know about the doings of her own family, Cassie
grabbed Marsha's sunglasses off the dashboard. Carefully, she put them
over the scarf tied around her head so they wouldn't come in contact
with those awful stitches that were pulling her face so tight, she
couldn't breathe at all. She felt as if she were choking to death from
those stitches, and they itched like hell. If she could rip them right
out of her head and go back to her old life, she would do it.
How cruel it was for Marsha to wave those
Tiffany receipts with her signature on them at her and to look so young
and great when her father was in the hospital and her mother was
falling apart. Cassie was so hurt, she didn't say a single word all the
way to the hospital. In the parking lot, she switched her attention to
Mitch so sick in intensive care and composed herself for him. She went
into the hospital lobby, determined to become the family hero. She'd
bring Mitch back from the dead. He'd be so grateful for her help and
support that his character would change completely. He'd give her his
money to manage, and they'd all live happily ever after. With this
strategy all planned out, she marched down the glass corridor into the
wing that housed the Neurological Intensive Care unit.
"How is Mitchell Sales?" she asked the
tough-looking nurse guarding the nine glass rooms reserved for head
traumas.
"He's doing just fine," Nurse Helen Gurnsey
said smoothly without looking at her. "His doctor has been on rounds
already. Don't stay too long, honey. We have a five-minute rule here."
Five minutes! Cassie's breath caught. What
could she accomplish in five minutes?
"You okay, honey?" Now the nurse looked up
at her with just a hint of concern.
"Yes, fine," Cassie said. She didn't want
any more sympathy for the car crash she hadn't had.
Two picture-windowed rooms down, she
slipped into Mitch's cubicle, which was packed with expensive
computerized monitoring devices and the spiderweb of plastic tubes that
kept those oh-so-important fluids moving from plastic bags to Mitch's
inert body and out of his body into more plastic bags. They still
looked obscene. The respirator pumped air into his lungs, and the sound
was enough to unnerve anyone. "Doing just fine" seemed to mean
unchanged. The space was still too cramped to accommodate a visitor's
chair, so Cassie stood by the bed and looked at the pathetic creature
her husband had become.
"Mitch?" she whispered. "Can you hear me?"
She saw him lying there and was actually, truly touched by his
vulnerability. It was the first she'd ever seen in him. In recent
years, with his great success, he had developed a slightly sarcastic,
even sneering way about him that always made her nervous in his
presence. Whenever he came in the door, she could feel her body begin
its dance of anticipatory agitation. It was as if he came home looking
for something wrong, which made him find something wrong. It was always
some omission on her part that she could never guess in advance. Right
now there was nothing critical about him except his condition.
Like yesterday, his eyes were half open.
The young Dr. Wellfleet had told her that if the pupils were enlarged,
maybe a blood vessel had exploded. Or something. Now that Mitch was
stabilized, though, Mark Cohen, whom Cassie trusted, seemed to be
afraid that more clots would form and move around—to his brain, his
heart, his lungs. Maybe a whole freight train of them. Cassie thought
of those blood clots traveling through Mitch's arteries that had to be
badly clogged with foie gras and hollandaise. Maybe they wouldn't make
it through.
As she studied him, immobilized and
helpless, a quartet of thoughts played in counterpoint in her mind:
IhatethismanIlovethismanIhopehelivesIhopehedies. And then the fugue
played more slowly. What will I do without him? Where will I go? Who
will I be with? How can I manage my children, who think I'm the enemy?
Oh God, help me please!
Yesterday she'd been so stunned by Mitch's
great fall that she hadn't been able to listen to all the things Mark
had to say about those pupils and clots and vessels. But now she leaned
over to see for herself what state Mitch's pupils were in. His eyes
were not open wide enough for her to get a good look. She didn't want
to pry them open with that picture window exposing them so clearly to
view from anyone passing in the hall, so she gave him a tight little
smile.
"Honey, it's Cassie. The nurse says you're
doing just fine," she said brightly, figuring that she'd just used up
about four of her five minutes. Those fake signatures of hers burned in
her gut and hampered her breathing. The I-hate-this-man theme came up
loudly, drowning out the others.
"Mitch, honey. I don't have a charge
account at Tiffany's, or Bergdorf Goodman. I don't have a Chase
MasterCard. In fact, I don't have a single account with only my name on
it. There's been some kind of mix-up." She said this very sweetly. He
was in intensive care, after all.
His eyes remained at half-mast.
"You're doing fine," she said stoically.
"Can you hear me? We have a few things to talk about."
Fugue: Why would he talk now if he never
has before?
"Sweetheart, if you can hear me, squeeze my
hand. We're going to get you out of this. Is it Marsha? She's certainly
had her behaviors over the years. But steal in my name? Mitch, tell me
who it is. Marsha, or Teddy? Teddy wouldn't . . . would he?"
She stroked his left hand with two fingers,
trying to feel some tenderness for a man who'd kept a big secret like
this. Maybe this was the reason he'd been so hard on Marsha. Cassie's
heart beat like a jungle drum. But why would he cover up for her to her
own mother? Mitch's nails were manicured. Hers were not. She'd never
been that interested. But his hand was bloated. His face was empty,
slack. His color was scary. The machine breathed noisily. Tentatively,
she curled his fingers around hers. "Squeeze my fingers if you can hear
me," she said. "Come on, honey. Help me out."
Nothing.
"Mitch, you're going to be okay. I know you
are. We have to establish some kind of communication here. I want you
to know I'm here for you all the way. I can't stay with you. They won't
let me. But I'm with you. Show me you know I'm with you."
Nothing.
Tears filled her eyes because he was so out
of it. She told herself that people sicker than this survived every
day. They had total recoveries all the time. The miracle of modern
medicine. Total.
Cassie blundered on. "Honey, can you wink?
How about this. Wink once if you can hear me, and twice if you can't."
He didn't wink. He didn't move. Nothing.
Maybe a little gurgle. But then again maybe not. His torso was thick.
His stomach protruded even when he was lying down. He'd gotten so fat.
He had a forest of black hair on his bare arms. A tube in one nostril
drew out his stomach's gastric fluids. A tube in his other nostril
suctioned mucus from his respiratory system. This was disgusting to
observe. Cassie tried to assign some tenderness to the lump that was
her husband. She searched her memory for loving moments when they'd
been happy together, when he'd held her hand or kissed her or told her
she was a good woman, after all. But those memories were curiously
absent in recent history. She scoured her mind for them frantically the
way she scoured for her wallet throughout the house when she knew it
was mislaid but present there somewhere. She was sure the absence of
recent happy memories was due to her present frame of mind and that
down the road when she returned to look for them, they would be there
in plenty.
Instead, the memories to which she had easy
access were old scars, the two occasions she returned home from the
hospital after giving birth to their two children when Mitch had looked
at her with a perfectly straight face and asked her what she planned to
serve him for lunch. She remembered his looks of disdain at gifts she
gave him that weren't good enough, and the way he abruptly changed the
subject when she asked where he'd been and what he'd done when they
were apart. Recent inflicted injuries that had seemed like thoughtless
slights, but not intentional hurts. She thought he'd become insensitive
with success, not mean.
"Mitch, I know you're not in a coma. This
is what you always do," she said, getting impatient now. The least he
could do was wink. Other stroke victims could wink.
Whoosh, whoosh. Click, click. Not Mitch. He
wasn't even going to try. He was holding out as usual. She tried
another tack.
"Mitch, the kids were going through your
files. Teddy says you're going to be audited. If you don't wake up, I'm
going to have to deal with this myself." There, it was out. Guiltily,
she sneaked a look out the window to see if anyone was watching. She
was talking to him harshly, raising forbidden subjects. He was supposed
to take it easy. He was supposed to feel it was safe to come back into
the world.
A voice came up, loud and urgent. "Code,
room six." Doctors and nurses rushed out. Lots of noise and urgency.
Everyone converged on the room across the hall. After several intense
minutes, the curtain was drawn and it was over. The second one in two
days. Cassie was shocked. This was how they died.
"Oh God. Mitch, don't leave me." The words
came out a cry from the heart if ever there was one. She dropped her
chin to her chest and prayed. Save this man. Oh God, save him.
CHAPTER 11
THE CODE YESTERDAY IN THE HOSPITAL had
been for a
toddler who'd fallen off his swing five days ago. Compared with the
tragedy of three dead children in two days, Cassie's problems with her
own children seemed like nothing, a pseudo problem. What were they
really doing that so annoyed her? Teddy had come home and appropriated
his father's best sports shirts, his most colorful socks and boxer
shorts from his father's closet as if he were already gone. And he was
eating all his father's favorite foods from the kitchen shelves.
Teddy also couldn't stop humming George
Michael's song "Freedom." On Saturday at the hospital he had spent all
his time trying
to locate and hang out with his surprising choice, Lorraine, a
big-boned, overweight operating room nurse who wore polyester and had a
Long Island accent. The Sales family did not have strong New York
accents.
On the positive side, Teddy's having to
locate this girl
in the very large hospital required some social skills. He was too shy
to call her on the phone, so his strategy had been to hang around in
hopes of running into her. On Saturday night, after Lorraine finished
up assisting the emergency repair of a ruptured spleen, Teddy ran into
her and asked her out for pizza.
Cassie heard him return home just after
midnight. On
Sunday morning, he ducked out at ten-thirty, earlier than he'd ever
gotten up in his life. He didn't arrive at the hospital to visit his
father until three in the afternoon. By then she was steaming.
"Teddy, where were you?" she asked when he
found her with
all the other visitors in the head trauma lounge.
"I took Lorraine out to brunch," he said,
grinning
happily despite the family tragedy.
"Where?" Marsha asked curiously.
"International House of Pancakes."
She snorted with contempt at his sudden
sinking to the
lowest possible food denominator.
"Shut up. How's Daddy?"
"The same," Cassie told him, thinking that
her son looked
happy. After all the praying she'd done for her wonderful, terribly shy
boy to meet a lovely girl, Lorraine was the thanks she got.
And Marsha! Well, Marsha was under some
kind of constant
advisory alert with Dr. Thomas Wellfleet—thirty-two, unmarried, and
definitely on the prowl. They had called each other on the phone. They
had met for a consultation in the hospital. Afterward, they had sipped
a not very good Merlot and talked on Saturday evening about the case in
a very pleasant restaurant on the Miracle Mile, the posh shopping mall
near their house. While their father was in intensive care, her two
children were having fun. They were going out, were dating. At home,
they were talking together, whispering. They became instantly quiet
whenever she walked into the room. In just one weekend they had become
allies. Clearly, they were hatching some plot to take over her life.
Cassie dreamed that they were four again and swept away in a giant
flood that covered the whole North Shore of Long Island, sparing
absolutely no one but her.
During the many hours that Cassie waited in
the visitors'
lounge expecting Mitch to come out of his coma and return to normal any
second, dozens of other patients' relatives schooled in and out,
eating, drinking, telling one another their stories, and visiting their
stricken family members who were usually too sick to recognize them.
Dr. Mark Cohen came to see Mitch several
times, and each
time he stayed for a few minutes to comfort Cassie. He'd sit down next
to her on one of the leatherette sofas for two and talk about the past,
about the changes in their lives since they'd known each other. Having
children, raising them, getting busier and busier. Mitch's phenomenal
success, and his own lesser one. Each time Mark settled on the sofa, he
leaned close to her and examined her face carefully with caressing
fingers. It never seemed to bother him that other visitors were around
or the TV set was on. He must be used to them, Cassie thought.
After the first time he saw her on Friday,
he arranged
for a nurse to bring gel packs for her face every few hours. After that
he had an investment in her convalescence and came to check on the
results. He must have wanted a good result with at least one person in
the family. On Sunday morning Mark took her for a short walk. On Sunday
afternoon he took her for coffee in the hospital cafeteria. She had
hers with hazelnut creamer and toyed with the spoon. She wondered how
much he knew about her husband and family that she didn't know. Mitch
had been a phenomenal success?
"Thanks for the gel packs," she began.
"Oh, forget it. It's nothing. You're
looking much better
today. Are you using those creams I suggested?"
"Yes, Marsha got them for me." She got the
feeling that
Mark, like Mitch, was avoiding all the meaningful subjects.
"Your doctor probably didn't tell you to,
but just
between you and me, it doesn't hurt at this point to start softening up
the stitches. When are they coming out?" he asked, sticking to her face.
"I'm not sure. Maybe Thursday."
"You're looking very good, really." Then he
gave her a
frankly admiring nod that made her think he'd lost his mind.
"Thanks, Mark, tell me about Mitch."
"Honey, he's holding his own. That's all I
can say for
now. Have you checked into his arrangements for a catastrophic event?"
Cassie stirred her coffee. "I don't want to
go into the
files just yet."
Mark gave her an incredulous look. "That's
not like you,
Cassie. You've always been a practical girl. Don't you want to know
what his wishes are should his body fail him?"
"I don't know what you mean."
"He's on a respirator," he said gently.
Cassie blinked. Of course she knew that.
"Does Mitch have a living will? I'm not
sure he would
want extraordinary measures to keep him alive in this condition
forever."
"Forever?" Cassie blinked again.
"Look, maybe I'm speaking out of turn. But
we're old
friends, Cassie. I don't want to hide anything from you."
"Forever? He could live like this forever?"
"Well, not forever, but for a long time.
People can hang
on for years."
"Years? Like this?" Cassie knew Mark
intended to be kind,
but his raising such a possibility felt somehow like an assault. She
started shredding her paper napkin. Just two days seemed an eternity.
"I told you, he made it through the first
forty-eight
hours, but that's about it." He shrugged. "We'll have a better picture
in the next few days, and we have to be hopeful, of course. But . . ."
"I'm very hopeful," Cassie said. Today was
only Sunday.
Hard to believe.
"But Cassie, you have to be your practical
self, too. You
need to look into the arrangements he's made for a major event like
this. I'm assuming you've checked and made sure Mitch has provisions in
his health insurance for all the long-term care he's going to need when
he comes out of intensive care."
Cassie didn't want to tell her doctor and
old friend that
her kids were plotting against her, and she wanted them to leave the
house before she started investigating those arrangements.
"What are the odds he'll recover?" she
asked again. He'd
told her already, but she couldn't take it in. She just couldn't absorb
the alternatives: death or a partial recovery.
"Oh, I don't want to go there, Cassie. A
lot of people do
very well." Mark was distracted by a dapper man in a sports jacket at
the coffee machines far away. He waved.
"But you don't think Mitch will do very
well, do you?"
she pressed. "You told me that yesterday."
"They can surprise you," he said, vague
again.
"I'll say," she murmured. She'd had about
as many
surprises as she could take. As far as she was concerned, Mitch should
just make up his mind: Walk into that heavenly light, or return to the
chaos of life. Right now, if she were in his situation, she wasn't sure
which she would choose herself.
She sighed, and Mark refocused on her. His
round face was
pink and healthy. He was overweight, but had a nice smile. He smelled
of soap and fruity cologne. He was a man who liked women. She could
feel it in his touch as he patted her hand. Mark, who'd always been so
brisk and professional, was acting like a real friend. It made her feel
important for a moment, and she realized that she'd forgotten what a
man's comfort felt like. She enjoyed the warmth of his hand as it
rested on top of hers. Her heart beat a little faster. A real friend.
Mark shifted a little in his chair, giving
her a knowing
smile that she felt all the way down to the tips of her toes. What was
this? She withdrew her hand, ostensibly to adjust the scarf on her
head. "How's Sondra?" she asked suddenly.
"Still very short. She's concerned about
Mitch, of
course, and sends her best," he replied, wry for a second, then casual
again with the doctor voice she knew so well.
"It was nice of her to call." Cassie kept
adjusting her
scarf.
"Well, she's a very nice woman," he said
without
conviction. "Cassie, has anyone else called, been to visit? Any of your
friends? You need a lot of support right now. Family and friends help."
"Oh, I totally agree." Cassie nodded. If
there was one
thing she didn't want, it was support. Mitch would hate having people
know, having people see him like this, gossip about and pity him. She
couldn't talk to anyone until things were more settled. It was a family
thing. She had to handle it herself. And there was the little thing of
her face-lift.
"Mark, what is this long-term health care
you're asking
me about? Why is it so important?" she asked. She just didn't get it.
"Oh, you know. When Mitch comes out of
this, he may need
to go to another facility for aftercare. We don't keep patients here
long-term."
"Another hospital?" she said faintly.
"For rehabilitation, therapy. It can take a
long time.
But let's not talk about that now." He reached out and squeezed her
hand one last time, then ended the conversation. "Well, I'll see you
tomorrow, okay? Just before noon is when I make my rounds during the
week. But I'm in constant touch with the staff here. And you can call
me on my cell anytime, night or day. You keep that pretty chin of yours
up, okay?" He chucked her under the chin.
"Okay," Cassie replied gamely.
"Absolutely." She tried to
smile bravely as he left the cafeteria. She was still trying to figure
out what had happened. Had he been coming on to her? Had she turned him
off? The fleeting electricity in his smile and the delicate touch of
his fingers lingered for a while in her mind after he was gone. She was
unnerved by the heat she'd felt and the undercurrents, the innuendo of
the conversation. She was concerned, but after a while she concluded
that nothing bad had happened. Mark was a friend. She'd been starving
for the personal touch and had gotten it, that was all. Still, she
couldn't drink her coffee, even with its pleasant hazelnut-flavored
creamer.
Sunday evening, ten days after Cassie's
surgery and two
days after Mitch's stroke, Marsha and Teddy further trashed their rooms
in preparation for their return to their studio apartments in
Manhattan. Just before they left, Marsha came into the kitchen, where
Cassie was still on her feet, dazedly trying to find things to do.
"Mom, you okay?"
"Sure, I am," Cassie told her. "Fine."
"I've washed my sheets and towels. The
towels are in the
dryer now. Teddy was only here for two nights. I figure his sheets are
good for a few more days. When is Rosa coming back?"
Rosa was the cleaning lady they'd had for
the last
fifteen years. She'd been on vacation in Peru for three weeks.
"Soon. I don't know."
"You should get someone else. And you don't
have to sit
at the hospital all day tomorrow. Why don't you rest for a few days. It
wouldn't hurt."
"I want to be there when he wakes up,"
Cassie said.
"I hate to leave you like this, Mom."
Marsha drew Cassie
over to the kitchen table and sat her down. She looked sad as she
patted her mother's hand. "Are you okay?"
It reminded Cassie of Mark's pats. She
thought she must
look pretty pathetic to engender this kind of reaction from both of
them.
"You're a nice girl, Marsha," she murmured,
her eyes
puddling as she realized for the second time that day how unused to
touch she'd become. "Marsha, about those receipts—"
"Oh, Mom, let's not talk about that now,"
Marsha cut her
off quickly.
"I didn't sign them," Cassie told her. "I
want you to
know that."
"I know that, Mom." Marsha gave her another
sympathetic
pat.
"You do?"
"Yes. I'm really sorry." Marsha hung her
head. "I
shouldn't have jumped on you like that."
"Marsha, why did you do it? We would have
taken care of
you, gotten you therapy. Why—?"
"Mom!" Marsha's tone changed into a whine.
"You don't
think it was me? Are you crazy? I wouldn't do anything like that. How
could you think it was me?" she cried.
"Teddy?" Cassie was astounded. "Was it
Teddy?"
"No, Mom. Not Teddy, either."
Cassie tried to frown with her new
forehead. "Daddy?
Daddy? Your father did this on purpose, didn't he?"
"We'll talk about it tomorrow."
This was hard to swallow. Cassie swallowed
it. "Your
father opened credit card accounts in my name? Signed my name? Bought a
Jaguar?" She was really annoyed about that Jaguar. "Who has it?"
Marsha shook her head, didn't want to say.
Teddy came in. "What are you two talking
about?" he asked
suspiciously.
"Teddy, Daddy took out credit cards in my
name? Bought
all that stuff? A car? Where is it all?"
Teddy put his arm around her shoulders.
Another one. Gave
her a pat.
"Why?" She looked from one to the other.
"Must be some kind of a tax thing," Teddy
said vaguely.
Suddenly he found his shoes very interesting. Very interesting indeed.
"What kind of tax thing, Teddy?"
"Mom, Teddy and I will talk to you about
these money
things some other time. We'll get a tax lawyer and, I don't know, we'll
work it out." Marsha gave Teddy an angry look.
"I'll get a lawyer," Cassie said. It was
her life. She
felt forlorn. "When are you coming back?"
"Maybe tomorrow night. Maybe Tuesday. Mom,
Edith is
coming over to be with you tomorrow. Are you okay for tonight?"
Cassie knew it was useless to question them
further. She
told them she was just fine. But where was that Jaguar? She kept
focusing on the car because hers was such an old one.
CHAPTER 12
BEFORE CASSIE WENT INTO HER HUSBAND'S
OFFICE for the
first time, she called the hospital to see if there had been any change
in his condition. It was half past ten on Sunday night, and she wanted
to give him one more chance at returning to his life before she entered
his world and took command of it. She was frightened by the
responsibility of having to do it, terrified of what she might find.
Money had never been her thing. She didn't know what to do about it,
how to handle it. She'd never had any of her own. She'd been told to
trust, and so she'd trusted.
Her stomach felt like a volcano, erupting
intermittently
in hot, dizzying waves of anxiety. It bubbled up again after the kids
left. Her life had become a mystery she had to crack. How could she
have let the big questions slide? She and Mitch used to be happy. They
used to have fun. Why hadn't she confronted him more directly when the
fun stopped? Even now she still couldn't help feeling that it wasn't
right for her to search for the health insurance, the will, the
simplest things about their lives with which she should already be
thoroughly familiar.
On the phone, the night nurse told her
Mitch was still
holding his own. Those words pretty much summed up their marriage.
After Cassie hung up, she put Mark's special cream on her stitches,
wound sterile gauze around her glasses, and carefully eased them on.
Then she went into Mitch's office and opened his file drawers one by
one.
What she found in them hit her like an atom
bomb. First
thing: Mitch had a bank account at the Bank of the Cayman Islands with
a May balance that topped a million and a half dollars. The statement
reassured her that he'd told her the truth when he'd said she never had
to worry about money. On the other hand, there was a balance of less
than two thousand in their joint Chase bank account. She didn't know
what day he deposited money for household expenses, or how much it was,
but she didn't worry about it. She could get money easily; he owned the
company.
He had a balance of $523,000 in his pension
fund. It
didn't seem like much after a quarter century of harping on her to save
for it. A little note of alarm buzzed in the back of her head about the
money he'd stashed outside the country. What was that about? On the
other hand, the life insurance policy she found seemed adequate. The
various pieces of it added up to a cool $3 million. If he died, she'd
be a wealthy woman, better off than she was now. However, the date on
the policy was old and the premium bills were not in the house, which
led her to believe he might have a newer and bigger one whose premiums
he paid from the office. At the moment everything they had was in his
name, and she couldn't put her hands on a nickel. Their affairs were as
clear as mud. She was sure somewhere there was more than this.
She opened the filing cabinet and plunged
into the
accounts in Mitch's name for which she had her own card. There was
nothing surprising there. The picture of their joint life jibed pretty
well with her knowledge of it. She herself used the family resources
sparingly, almost ascetically, always mindful of Mitch's constant
admonitions about sensible spending. And Mitch in turn faithfully, and
fully, paid off all the expenses of the house and all the bills that
she incurred every month. Virtually none of his personal expenses
appeared on these charges. The house had a small mortgage, but their
life, considering Mitch's income, was modest indeed.
The first discrepancy came out with the
spending habits
of the fictitious Cassandra Sales. Cassie discovered that her
fictitious self had two of her own American Express cards, as well as
accounts at Tiffany's, ABC Carpet and Home, Bergdorf Goodman, Saks
Fifth Avenue, Bloomingdale's, Neiman Marcus, Fancy Cleaners, a Chase
Platinum MasterCard, several gold airline MasterCards, and two Visa
Platinum Card accounts. Mitch kept a separate file for each one right
here under her very nose. This was both gross stupidity and colossal
nerve on his part. Clearly he'd understood her character well, and
she'd had not the slightest inkling of his.
A whole life was documented in the
receipts: Prada dress,
aubergine, $1,500. Armani suit, gray, $3,400. Lavender silk tank, $850.
Armani dress and coat, mauve wool, $4,500. Chanel silk scarf, $350.
Bergdorf Shoe Department: mauve suede sling backs, gray leather pumps,
$575; black crocodile loafers, $1,250. Escada red leather coat, $3,900.
Escada red leather bag, $850. Escada red leather shoes, $495. Bliss
Spa: La Mer face products, $890. Microbrasion treatments, $150 times
ten. Salon de Daniel: peach satin robe and gown, $1,200. La Perla
uplift bra, $125. Matching panties, $65. Hermès handbag, $8,600.
Louis Vuitton luggage, $10,000. It went on and on.
Cassie was stunned, could hardly absorb
what it all
meant. It took her until past oneA .M. to
look through the purchases of just the first five months of this year.
She couldn't believe it. Couldn't believe it! Eighteen thousand dollars
for a string of pearls at Cellini. Where was that? Boiling lava filled
her stomach and throat, and still she could not process this appalling
picture of a life in her name that she didn't have. It was beyond her
powers of imagination. It was like a horror story, a made-up nightmare
for shock TV. Not only that someone else had been enjoying the fruits
of her husband's labors, but worse than that the woman had taken
Cassie's very own identity, the financial credit she was due. And the
woman had used it with absolutely no restraint. Cassie didn't know that
people like this existed.
The real Cassie was frugal. She did not buy
ten thousand
dollars' worth of clothes every month at Escada and Prada and Armani.
She did not get her nails and hair done every three days at Fred's on
the Miracle Mile, did not buy expensive lingerie at Danielle in the
chic and costly Americana Mall in Manhasset, so close to home. She did
not have her clothes cleaned at Fancy in Locust Valley. She did not use
the expensive Martin Viette Nurseries in Old Brookville for her plants.
The real Cassie had not bought new carpets or furniture for their house
in twenty years, much less in the last few months at ABC Carpet and
Home. She had not bought silver or dishes at Tiffany's, nor would she
even dream of spending three thousand dollars at Williams-Sonoma for
nothing, nothing at all. The extent of the spending of the fictitious,
but nonetheless very real, Cassandra Sales exposed the habits of a
pathological shopper, a thief with staggering ambition. Moreover, her
debts were steadily building up, for Mitch had paid nothing beyond the
interest on all those charge accounts. That interest had to be very
considerable. And to this already stupefying debt only a few weeks ago,
Mitch had added even more when he used the Cassandra Sales MasterCard
to pay the Sales family tax bill.
In all the years of her marriage Cassie
never considered
that her husband might be unfaithful to her. Why not, she didn't know.
After seeing the fake Cassandra Sales bills, Cassie checked Mitch's
American Express business file. Here, she found that he was in the
habit of spending from twenty-five to fifty thousand dollars a month on
hotels and luxury items in places where she hadn't known he'd gone.
Even about this he'd lied. In January he'd been in the Caribbean; in
February he'd been in Australia, Hong Kong, and Thailand; in March at
Grand Cayman Island (probably depositing more money), and all this time
she'd been a jerk, alone at home.
This new knowledge about her husband
triggered a
long-forgotten memory. After a few years of marriage, Mitch's
lovemaking dramatically improved after a business trip to Paris.
Overnight he'd acquired a sudden interest in things he'd never done
with Cassie before. She was thrilled and wanted more. She'd teased him
in what she'd thought was a friendly kind of way that he must have been
inspired by another woman. She was interested, intrigued, fantasized
competition, and was excited by the possibility. Mitch's response,
however, had been denial all the way. He had been so vehement that he
could never even look at another woman that Cassie had been lulled into
letting the intriguing suspicion drop out of her mind.
Mitch had piled on the scam of their
marriage so heavily
that he'd destroyed her ability to see. He'd been a fog machine. He'd
lied to her about everything, every single thing. He'd never given her
an opportunity to compete for him, to share any of the fun. Instead of
just divorcing her—letting her be jilted and go on with her life—he and
his girlfriend had made her an object of contempt. They'd stolen her.
It was a stunning feat. No wonder Marsha had looked at her that way. No
wonder Mark looked at her that way. They all knew. Everybody in the
world knew.
For hours, Cassie ransacked her husband's
files and still
couldn't find anything like a will, or a living will. Maybe there was
no will. Maybe it was in Parker Higgins's office. When Cassie could no
longer see straight, she sat at Mitch's desk with her heart pounding
out a new fear. What else could the fake Cassandra Sales steal?
It was two in the morning when it occurred
to her to
start calling to cancel the cards. It was then that the nightmare
started to spiral. Not one of them would allow her to cancel her own
cards. They were in her name, but she was not the cardholder. Mitch was
the cardholder. Only he could cancel the cards. And he was in a coma.
She went to bed and tossed around all night, wondering what to do. At
around four, she closed her eyes and began to dream.
CHAPTER 13
Selma the faith healer was massaging
Charlotte Trotter's
bare scalp, exhorting the dying woman to give up her beautiful pearls
in exchange for a cure. "This is why your hair is falling out. Pearls
rob you of your energy," she scolded, holding out her hands to get
those pearls. "Let me keep them for you until you feel better."
Cassie's heart beat frantically in her
sleep as her
dream showed her mother being fleeced on her deathbed. The poor woman
had collected only a few treasures in a life that was ending far too
soon at only fifty-one. Charlotte had two daughters, her husband,
Albert, a diamond from Amsterdam that became the center stone for her
engagement ring, a heavy gold bracelet that had been her mother's, and
the pièce de résistance: a string of dazzling white
pearls the size of quail eggs. In her final days, when her looks, her
personality, and—most important to the family—her love for them and God
had been corrupted by the illness, the pearls disappeared, too. Cassie
never knew if it was her sister, Julie, who'd lifted them, or Selma,
the healer. The last blow to the three of them was that after all the
months of staying with her night and day, Charlotte had died alone
while they were across the street having lunch. Then, before they got
back, some nurse or orderly at the hospital took the diamond from her
finger, too. At the very end, Charlotte left Cassie nothing but a curse.
Instead of saying goodbye and good luck,
Cassie's
mother's very last words to her had been "trust no one." She'd been
angry at Cassie for being pregnant with a baby she would never live to
see. And she was angry at her husband, who'd promised he would die
first. She could not bear the fact that the good soldier who'd so
carefully planned her widowhood would be the one to be freed from the
lion's cage. Widowhood was getting to be a big theme, even in Cassie's
dreams.
Suddenly Selma disappeared, and her mother
rose from her
hospital bed, looking like a mummy. All her hair was gone and so was
the water that had bloated her body beyond recognition at the end. She
was very thin now, a model with a mummy's head. She was wearing the
lost pearls. They were at a hotel in Italy. Somewhere on the Amalfi
coast. Graham Greene was there, writing The End of the Affair. Cassie's
father, Albert, was wearing a dinner jacket and a bad toupee. Must have
been his wife's hair he was wearing. He was smiling, trying to take a
photo of them all where they sat at a table on a hill overlooking the
blue, blue Mediterranean. Marsha, Teddy, Mitch. Baby octopuses with red
sauce were piled on a platter in front of them. The octopuses were
still alive, wiggling and multiplying like crazy. Many wine bottles
cluttered the table, too. It looked as if they were having a tasting, a
good time, while the octopuses spilled onto the table and then the
ground. Nobody seemed to care about the lunch being alive and
multiplying.
"Cassie, honey, are you there? Pick up,
pick up if you
can hear me." On the answering machine it was her aunt Edith, who'd
never held a place of honor at the party of life.
"Pick up, I mean it." Edith's voice was
full of worry and
resentment.
Cassie reached for the phone without
opening her eyes. "Hello, Aunt Edith," she mumbled miserably.
"Cassie, Cassie. How are you doing? I heard
about poor
Mitch. Why didn't you call me? Oh, my dear, my poor darling. Marsha
told me he's very bad." Her voice sounded peevish that this could be
happening without her knowledge.
"Yes, he's very bad," Cassie told her.
"Honey, I've been so upset what with the
accident and
all. I'm furious that you didn't call me. I'm your aunt. I should have
been there for you. I could have driven you."
Edith's driver's license had been revoked
years ago for
moving violations that were so creative, no one else in the entire
world had ever thought of them before, even in emerging third world
countries. But that little detail never stopped her from taking the car
out.
"There was no accident. Mitch had a
stroke," Cassie told
her.
"Your accident, honey. I'm talking about
your accident.
You had a head-on collision with a Mack truck. It's lucky you're alive.
Oh Cassie, I'm so glad to hear your voice. Marsha told me you've been
out of it for weeks."
Fighting the dream of her mother, the
mummy, Cassie sat
up and saw the light of the digital clock. Even without her glasses she
could tell that it was eightA .M. How
could she have slept a single minute when this was the day she was
going to kill her cheating husband? Her heart started hammering away in
her chest at the thought of turning off that respirator, watching him
struggle for breath. Then canceling the credit of his mistress who
drove the Jaguar that should have been hers. That bitch! Wherever she
was. The billing address on the credit cards was Mitch's at the
warehouse. She wondered how she was going to find out where that woman
lived and shoot her in the face.
"What, honey? Speak up. I can't hear you."
"Nothing, I'm just all broken up," Cassie
murmured. "This
is so hard. I had a dream about Mother. I still miss her so much."
"I do, too, honey. Marsha told me you're
lucky to be
alive. I'm coming right over. I want to make sure you're all right."
"I had a face-lift," Cassie said quickly.
"What? I think we have a bad connection."
"We have a fine connection, Edith. Marsha
lied. I had a
face-lift."
There was a moment of silence. "You didn't
have an
accident?"
"Well, I had an accident, but it was
planned. I know I
never should have done it. I'm sorry now," Cassie admitted to the aunt
who drove her crazy.
"How do you look, dear?" Edith asked at
last.
"Terrible. I look just terrible." And my
husband has a
mistress, she didn't say.
Silence again as Edith tried to digest the
news. "What
about Mitch, honey, did he have a face-lift, too?"
"No, Mitch had a stroke."
"What bad timing. I'm so sorry. Is he . . .
a-a . . .
vegetable?" Edith asked bluntly.
"He's a piece of shit," Cassie told her.
"Oh honey, don't talk like that. I'm sure
he didn't do it
on purpose."
"Oh yes, he did it on purpose." Truth was
truth. Cassie
wasn't hiding from it now. She was up. The breathtaking spring sunlight
had drawn her out of bed to the window, where she surveyed the mess of
her yard after its first glorious spring bloom.
The tulips and daffodils and hyacinths were
finished. The
drying husks, listing to the ground, looked forlorn in the beds.
Growing up between them, however, the peonies were blooming and the
poppies were getting ready to burst open. A few days, maybe a week and
those poppies would pop. Cassie had no time to clean up the beds. This
upset her, too. She was a tidy person.
There she was yearning for the simple
pleasure of
cleaning out the old to make way for the new in her flower beds when
she caught a movement by the edge of the garage. She was startled when
a man walked boldly through the pretty white gate into her yard.
Without her glasses she couldn't see him that well, but he had a black
thing in his hand. He pointed it around, at the patio, at the pool. He
pointed it at the garage. She was puzzled, but unafraid until he
disappeared into the garage that she locked only from time to time.
Then she became frightened. What was going on? What was the man doing
in there? He didn't look like a thief. He was wearing a suit and some
kind of hat. She couldn't see his face, but his movements didn't fit
the furtive profile of a burglar.
Suddenly he emerged from the garage again
and moved
slowly toward the house, pointing the black thing up at the windows.
Cassie stepped back behind the curtains. "I've got to go, Edith. I'll
call you back," she whispered into the phone.
"What do you mean, you've got to go? You
and Marsha have
been avoiding me for two weeks. I'm not hanging up now," Edith retorted
angrily. "Family has to stick together in troubled times. If you hang
up this time, I'm coming over."
"Edith, there's a man with a gun in my
backyard. I'll
have to call you later. And don't come over. You don't have a driver's
license."
Cassie hung up and peered into the yard
from behind the
curtain. The man was definitely pointing the gun her way. She gasped
and ducked below the windowsill, half crawling to the chair where she'd
left the sweater and khaki pants she'd worn the night before. Shaking
all over like a teenager caught in a sex act, she fumbled with her
clothes.
She knew right away that the man with the
gun was a hit
man Mitch had hired to kill her so his girlfriend could step in and be
his wife without benefit of divorce. It was perfectly clear. He'd
bought another house. His girlfriend was furnishing it. The house had
to be someplace where no one knew what the real Cassie looked like. Now
he was going to have her assassinated. He'd probably planned to move
into his new house right after she was dead. Lucky for her he'd had a
stroke instead. Life threw its little curves. She was trembling all
over.
The phone started ringing again. "Shhh."
She didn't have
time to answer it. She got to the door of her room and looked down the
hall. No one. She crawled below the window line to the stairs. There
she froze. It occurred to her that one of the kids might have left a
door unlocked, the door to the kitchen from the garage. Or maybe the
basement or patio door. She almost never used the burglar alarm. The
hit man could come in without a sound and shoot her with that gun. The
phone kept ringing, but she was afraid to answer it. It rang and rang.
Cassie thought she was having a heart
attack. What should
she do? What could she do? The phone finally stopped ringing, and she
breathed a sigh of relief at the sudden quiet. She had to think. Mitch
had his stroke on Friday. Now it was Monday. What if the hit man had
taken the weekend off and didn't know Mitch was in the hospital, didn't
know there would be no one to pay him if he shot her and left her dead
on the floor? She had to tell him that. But how could she talk to a hit
man? They didn't give a shit. She was so scared, she could hardly
breathe. All these years she'd believed Mitch was a dull and faithful
husband, and now she had to face the fact that he was a crook and a
killer, too. The phone started ringing again.
For the second time it rang and rang as she
tried to
figure out what to do. Finally it stopped ringing. Talking was useless.
She knew she had to conquer her terror and get downstairs to lock all
the doors and activate the alarm so the hit man couldn't get in and
shoot her. She inched down the first stair. The phone didn't ring
again. Cassie knew if it had been Edith, she wouldn't have given up.
She wondered if it had been Mark or the hospital calling to say that
Mitch had died. She wished she'd told Edith to call the police. Why
hadn't she done that? Stupid.
She moved down the stairs one by one. It
took her many
minutes to get to the first floor. Now it was deadly quiet, like a
horror movie without the scary music. Opposite her was the front door.
The windows in the rooms on either side were so bright with glare, she
couldn't see outside. From where she was curled in terror on the bottom
step, it almost looked like that light she'd heard about from heaven.
She was quaking with fear. She didn't want to die. She could tell that
the top lock on the front door, that unpickable Medeco, was locked; but
still she knew she couldn't stop the freight train about to run over
her. She was going to die, but not of natural causes like her mother.
And Mitch was going to live on for another twenty years, in a
wheelchair with his whore pushing him around. It was more than she
could bear.
She got up and caught sight of herself in
the hall
mirror, let out a little scream. Mitch's mistress might be beautiful,
but she was a horror, a freak. She didn't recognize the woman in the
mirror with the blond hair, the black stitches, and puffy eyes. She
wanted to obliterate that face. Her scarf and Marsha's huge sunglasses
were on the hall table. She put them on to hide the damage she'd done
to herself. Then she remembered the hit man didn't care what she looked
like—he was going to kill her anyway. She fell to her knees and crawled
down the hall to the kitchen.
She made it to the basement door. That door
was locked,
too. The garage door had a chain. The chain was still in place. With a
sigh of relief she turned around and saw the man peering in through the
windowed kitchen door. She screamed. Startled, the man on the other
side of the window jumped back. As he turned to flee, his foot caught
on one of the many decorative pots she'd left out on the patio before
Mitch's incident in preparation for the ritual potting of red
geraniums. He stumbled backwards, falling hard on a garden tool with
many spikes for breaking up the ground. As he went down, the black
thing dropped out of his hand. Now Cassie got a good look at it. It was
a camera. Further shocked, she started screaming at him. "What the hell
do you think you're doing?" she yelled at the window.
The man was down. He didn't move. Cassie
thought she
detected some blood on the flagstone. Uh-oh, maybe he was hurt. Maybe
he'd sue. She stepped closer to the door. She saw the scuffed suede
shoes. The baggy pants of a glen plaid suit. The camera on a flagstone.
Looked like a good one, an Elph. The hat. A ridiculous hat, a crushed
fedora. She couldn't see the man's face.
"Hey you," she said tentatively. Now the
phone was
ringing again. Cassie ignored it. She opened the door and stepped
outside.
"Hey you," she said louder. In the distance
she could
hear sirens. She always dreaded the sound. It meant bad things,
someone's house on fire. Somebody in an accident. She kept her eye on
the downed man. "Hey, you all right?"
Suddenly, he held up a bleeding hand and
gave her a
jaunty little wave. After a second or two, he picked up his head, then
his shoulders. He turned over and gingerly got to his feet. On his feet
he adjusted the nonexistent creases in his unpressed trousers. He
looked around the patio and collected the camera, the hat. His
movements were all matter of fact, as if he felt perfectly at ease in
the situation and nothing untoward had happened. Finally he turned
toward Cassie and slowly looked her over. He did it with frank
curiosity, up and down, the way men look at things that interest them.
He tilted his head quizzically at the scarf and sunglasses. Finally he
cracked a little not-bad smile. It was the smile Cassie had seen
yesterday from Mark, but hadn't seen for such a long time before that
she didn't recognize it yet as admiration. Her face was so tight, she
couldn't adjust her expression. Terror, rage, sorrow, uncertainty—her
face couldn't seem to register. Luckily, her voice still knew what to
do. "What do you think you're doing here?" she demanded, hands on hips.
"Nothing at all, ma'am, just looking
around." The man put
the squashed hat back on and saluted with his bleeding hand.
"Looking around?" she said indignantly.
"What are you,
some kind of Peeping Tom?"
"Oh no, nothing like that." He laughed
easily. Not a
bad-looking kind of guy. "Are you Mrs. Sales?"
"Yes. Who's asking? Mafia hit man, FBI,
CIA?" The sirens
got louder and louder, until they were almost deafening. Cassie shifted
uneasily from one foot to another. Somebody's house was going up in a
puff of smoke.
"No, ma'am. Nothing that sinister. I'm with
the IRS," he
said with a modest smile. "Do you mind if I come inside for a minute?"
"Ahhh." She hesitated. IRS? What did he
want?
He held up his hand to show the cut. "I
could use some
water."
"Ahhh, we're in a bit of turmoil right
now." All those
files in the house. All those purchases by the girlfriend. The account
in the Bank of the Cayman Islands. Her husband was a crook. Dizziness
hit her. She didn't like to lie.
"Oh, don't worry about it. Mess doesn't
bother me."
The wailing sirens stopped abruptly. It
seemed as if
they'd stopped in front of her house. Cassie turned around. A loud
voice issued a command from a speaker.
"Police. Please drop your weapon and move
slowly to the
front of the house. I repeat, police, you are surrounded. Put your
hands over your head. There are fifty officers here. You are
surrounded."
That's when Cassie realized Aunt Edith must
have called
the cops, after all. She did the only thing she could think of: She
closed the door on the IRS agent and ran inside the house to hide in
her closet.
CHAPTER 14
ONLY A FEW MINUTES LATER, Cassie emerged
from her closet to see what was going on. From her new perch in a
second-floor window seat she counted four squad cars in the street in
front of her house. The doors of the cars were open, and seven
uniformed officers crouched behind them, pointing guns at the house. An
eighth officer was speaking over the P.A. system in his car, his voice
reverberating like thunder in the morning quiet. There was no sign of
the IRS agent.
"You are surrounded. Come out with your
hands up."
Cassie couldn't understand why the IRS man
didn't come out and show himself, talk to them, do something to end
this nightmare situation. Then it occurred to her that he wasn't really
with the IRS. That was just a lie. He was really a hit man or a robber
out to get her, after all. The phone started ringing again. She crawled
away from the upstairs hall window where she'd been hiding behind the
curtain to answer it in the bedroom.
"Yes, hello," she said impatiently. If it
was those Sprint people still trying to get her business after a
hundred perfectly polite nos, this time she wouldn't be able to resist
screaming at them.
"Oh my God, sweetheart, are you all right?"
It wasn't the Sprint people. It was Aunt Edith.
"Aunt Edith, we're in the middle of a
shoot-out here. I'll have to call you back," Cassie informed her
importantly.
"Did the police come? They gave me such a
lot of trouble when I called. They wanted to know what kind of gun the
perpetrator had. How would I know something like that?" Edith
complained.
"You must have said the right thing. They
came," Cassie told her.
"I told them it was a machine gun," Edith
said.
"Good job. It was a camera. I hope they
don't shoot up the house."
"A camera?"
"Yes, I have to go."
"Don't worry, honey. I'll be over as soon
as the cops are gone. I don't want them to run a warrant check on me."
"For God's sake, Edith, don't drive that
car! I have so many—oh no—" The line went dead. Cassie groaned. Now she
had to worry about Edith driving on top of everything else.
When she got back to the window in the
hall, all the cops were getting back in their cars except the one with
the microphone. The small thing that looked like a computer mouse
dangled against his thigh from the wire attached to his car as he
conversed easily with the suddenly reappeared, so-called IRS agent.
They were now having such a comfortable conversation, it looked as if
they knew each other, had beers together at the Landmark after work.
Then the conversation between the two
ended. The last cop, an older, gray-haired, heavyset man, got back into
his unit and slammed the door. Then, probably the entire fleet of the
sheriff's office turned on their engines simultaneously, backed up,
drove around the circle and out of the development without even trying
to speak to the homeowner under siege. Amazed, Cassie watched them
leave. Eight deputy sheriffs had come over to save her from a man with
a gun, then left the scene without even ringing her bell to see if she
was all right. For all they knew she could be bleeding on the floor,
knifed to death. Or raped and strangled.
"Hey, wait a minute, what about me?" She
wanted to run after and yell at them. She wanted to yell at somebody.
They hadn't even taken her statement. She returned to the phone in her
bedroom to call them and complain. She was full of resolve about the
matter until she was distracted by the sight of herself in the mirror
with the sunglasses and the scarf on her head. "Oh God, I'm being
punished," she whispered.
Moaning, she started slowly down the
stairs. Her life had spun out of control, but the coffeepot had come on
hours earlier at the usual time and now drew her into the kitchen with
its delicious aroma. She put one foot down after the other on the beige
carpet treads on the stairs. Suddenly she saw it the way the IRS agent
would have seen it if she'd let him in. Shabby. The carpet had worn
thin with twenty years of constant wear. The color was blah. At the
bottom of the stairs the furniture in the living room and dining room
was early American, a period that never matched Cassie's flare for the
baroque. Blah, too. Mitch had come from Long Island, from Huntington
Station. Cassie had grown up in Westchester in a better family. They'd
met in college, at Cornell. Cassie had been very pretty then, quite a
catch. Shape up, you're a regular person, not a victim, she told
herself.
But she'd made some bad choices. Instead of
going to law school, she'd married a handsome, ambitious man who'd
turned her into a caterer. Mitch was a fanatic about food, so she'd
cooked with the great restaurant chefs in Manhattan, always trying to
please him. When he'd gotten too busy to eat at home, she'd stayed home
with the kids and catered to them. Then she'd begun designing events
for not-for-profit causes in the area. She'd planned the menus, done
the flower arrangements. Sometimes she'd made the desserts, too. She
had a talent for it. Everybody said she could have been a Martha
Stewart.
Cassie moved through the dining room into
the kitchen, her territory, where she had a Viking stove, a Sub-Zero
refrigerator, two sets of dishes, six different kinds of wineglasses,
and enough utensils to equip a small restaurant. The tiles on the floor
were Mexican terra-cotta. The tiles between the cabinets and the
countertops were yellow sunflowers in a deep blue sky. A pots-and-pans
rack suspended from beams in the ceiling had bunches of her own dried
flowers and herbs hanging on its hooks. Cassie loved her kitchen. She
reached for a cup to pour herself some coffee, heard water running, and
spun around. Outside, the IRS man was hosing his hand off into her
swimming pool.
"Hey." She opened the back door.
"Oh, hi." He turned around and smiled his
nice smile, as if nothing unusual had happened. "I wondered where you
went."
"I hid in the closet," she said.
"I see. What's with the sunglasses, the
scarf?"
"What's with the camera?"
"Cassie! Oh, Cassie, is everything all
right?" Carol Carnahan marched through the gate, an entire invading
army in one person. A tall, slender woman with long, tapered legs and a
big chest, Carol was wearing pedal pushers, and a yellow T-shirt with a
plunging neckline. She was fifty-three but looked twenty-five, and took
up all the space wherever she went. Now she took up Cassie's whole
yard, eyeing with a good deal of interest the attractive stranger on
Cassie's patio.
Then Carol saw Cassie's face. "Oh, shit,
Cassie! What's with the—?"
"Carol, I'm fine. Just a misunderstanding."
Here was one of the thousands of people Cassie didn't want to know
she'd had work done. The mortification kept right on coming.
"And who's this?" Carol asked.
The agent turned off the hose at the hose
bib. He looked very much at home at her house, but Cassie didn't know
who he was.
"Ah, ah . . ."
He was not as tall as Carol, who was over
six feet tall in her five-inch sling backs. He was closer to five ten
and had a medium to sturdy build, looked as if he did regular exercise.
He certainly had a relaxed manner in the face of any drama. At the
moment the drama was Carol, and his intense blue eyes evaluated her
slowly, curiously, the way he had Cassie a little while ago.
"How do you do, ma'am," he said, swiping
the hat from his head to reveal sandy hair going gray, cut in a crew
cut. "Charles Schwab, at your service."
"Charles Schwab of the brokerage house?"
Carol yelped. Cassie had a boyfriend, and he was a big cheese—all this
was in the yelp. "Is Mitch at home?" Her eyes swept the upper windows.
The cops, a boyfriend, a disguise. Very big!
"Thanks for dropping by, Carol. I'm fine.
And Mr. Schwab was just leaving." Cassie gave him an ironic snicker.
Schwab, indeed.
He waved at Carol. "Nice meeting you," he
murmured.
"I can take a hint. Do you have any stock
tips for me before I go? God knows I could use a few."
"Oh, no. Sorry, I don't give tips."
"I bet you do," was Carol's parting shot.
Cassie went into the house and carefully
closed the door. Oh God. Her head was pounding. Agents and cops and
Carol Carnahan all in one day. She glanced at the clock. It was now
nine-thirty. Mark was meeting her at noon. She had things to do. She
couldn't remember at the moment what they were. She poured herself a
cup of coffee, her first of the morning. A noise at the door made her
turn around. The man who called himself Charles Schwab was tapping on
the glass, still there.
Cassie shook her head. "I'm not
entertaining."
"Just one question," he mouthed as if she
couldn't hear him perfectly through the glass doors.
"I have to go out soon." She opened the
back door. The storm door was still in place. She didn't open the storm
door. He opened the storm door.
"What a gorgeous kitchen!" he said,
sticking his head in.
"Thank you." Cassie blocked further
progress.
"Wow, copper pots and everything."
"Uh-huh." She wasn't going to budge.
"Do you use all those things?"
"Yes, I do."
He shook his head. "That's very impressive.
Have you noticed how few women do food these days?"
"It's good for the restaurants. Charles
Schwab?" she said sarcastically.
"That's my name." He smiled engagingly. The
man was a big smiler. "I love your kitchen; your garden, too. You must
be very creative," he said admiringly. "I bet you're good with roses."
She shook her head. Uh-uh, she wasn't
buying.
"Do you mind if I take a closer look at
your kitchen? I've been considering copper pots."
"It's a bad time." Cassie was trying so
hard to be civil. He said he was a civil servant, after all.
"Let me give you a little advice. This is
not the way to treat your auditor. First, I break my ankle on your damn
potting stuff." He backed away from the door to illustrate a little
limp. "Then you cut my hand with your gardening implement. I could call
that assault. And then you call the police to try to have me arrested."
Cassie snorted. "Auditor? I don't know what
you're talking about."
"I'm the one who's doing your audit," he
said officiously.
"Well, I don't know anything about an
audit. I'm just the wife here," Cassie told him.
"Wives are equal partners," Schwab said.
"Not in this house," she muttered.
Schwab laughed suddenly, and it was a
genuinely pleasant sound.
"I don't think that was so funny," she
retorted.
"Look, just let me in for a minute. I won't
touch anything, I promise, and then I'll get out of your hair." He held
up his hands. "I like your style, that's all."
"That is some kind of joke, right?"
"No, ma'am."
"The IRS doesn't go into people's homes for
a tax audit." What did he take her for, a dummy?
"Of course we do. We look at property,
possessions, cars, and jewelry. We do whatever it takes. Here." He
handed her his card.
The card went into Cassie's hand without
her actually taking it. Alarmed, she thought of the files. Mitch's
million plus in that Grand Caymans bank. The expenses of the girlfriend
who bought so much in Cassie's name. Whatever current practices were,
she didn't think a home visit right now would be a good idea. "My
husband had a stroke," she said quickly.
"Oh, I'm sorry to hear it. They usually
recover during the course of investigations." Schwab had sunglasses of
his own. They were the mirrored kind, like the state troopers wore so
you couldn't see their eyes when they stopped you for speeding. He gave
her a funny look, then put them on.
"No, no, you don't understand. My husband
really did have a stroke. He's in intensive care," Cassie told him.
"Oh, that's terrible. Would you mind if I
come in for a cup of coffee?" he asked, chilly now.
"Coffee?" Didn't he hear what she just said?
"Just a quick cup. It smells so good. I bet
you make a terrific cup of coffee. What kind of beans do you use?"
Cassie licked her lips. What was with this
guy? She'd just told him her husband was in intensive care.
Before she could open her mouth to tell him
he couldn't have coffee right now, a loud metal crunch announced the
arrival of Aunt Edith. As on many other occasions, she misjudged where
the road ended and drove her 1963 monster Cadillac into the mailbox.
"Cassie! Cassie," she started screaming, "I can't get out."
"Oh my, what's that?" Schwab asked.
"My aunt has come to drive me insane,"
Cassie told him.
CHAPTER 15
AN HOUR LATER the Cadillac was separated
from the
mailbox and was parked in the driveway. The lovely conversation azalea
that had been blooming in its myriad colors was a mangled mess. Above
it, the post that secured the mailbox was bent to the ground, and the
mailbox itself was crushed like a cookie in a toddler's hand. The
bloodred clematis that had started winding its way up the post on its
way to becoming a glorious flower bower that would camouflage the mail
by July was in leaf but hadn't yet produced a single fist-sized crimson
bloom. The vine lay on the grass, twisted forlornly around the wreckage.
Charles Schwab, the IRS one, had taken off,
but Edith was
still there, unrepentant about the damage to her niece's house and
eager to be of help. Her idea of help was telling Cassie how awful she
looked, how thin she'd gotten; requesting a breakfast of goat cheese
and pancetta omelette with raisin toast, none of which Cassie happened
to have in the house; and scolding her about wanting to improve herself
(the surgery). She also encouraged Cassie to think of the pleasant
future they would have together when Mitch was gone.
"Sweetheart, I'm going to take you on a
cruise the minute
this thing is over." She said as they left the house to drive to the
hospital to visit the vegetable who was not likely to be with them long.
Edith wanted to drive, but Cassie wouldn't
hear of it. So
now the old woman was sitting regally in the passenger seat of Mitch's
brand-new Mercedes that Cassie wasn't supposed to drive herself for
another four days, doctor's orders, or forever, if Mitch had anything
to say about it. Edith was wearing a white jogging suit with red
chevrons on her thighs that matched the white Cadillac and made her
look almost as large. Her moon of a face was round and rouged. Her lips
were drawn on big and red. Her chins were multiple. Her hair was done
like Debbie Reynolds's in 1952. And she was in a jolly mood, for
there's nothing in the world a widow enjoys more than the impending
widowhood of a close friend or relative.
"I don't know, it's almost summer, so we
could go to the
Greek Isles, how does that sound? Or maybe the Mediterranean. Heaven
knows you'll be able to afford it. Mitch did very well for himself,
didn't he? And you! You need to get away, get some rest, recover from
your ordeal. Poor Mitch," she rambled on. And on.
"But, you know, it won't be so bad without
him. He wasn't
around much anyway, was he poor thing?"
"No, he wasn't," Cassie affirmed stonily.
"Well, men aren't all they're cracked up to
be, if you
want my opinion," she said. "Keeping up your curiosity. That's what
keeps a person young. Look at me. I done all right for myself, haven't
I?"
Cassie didn't want to look at her aunt.
After the weekend
she'd had, her nerves were completely shot. And now the thing that was
beginning to gall her was that she couldn't even talk to Mitch,
couldn't confront him with all her years of loyalty and the heartless
way he'd repaid her for it. She was driving very slowly in the
Mercedes, reminding herself that she mustn't hit anything and have an
encounter with the police on the day she was going to murder her
husband. If she couldn't yell at Mitch, at least there was the plug to
pull.
"Who was that Charlie you were with?" her
aunt demanded
abruptly.
"I told you, Edith. He's assessing all the
houses in the
area for the IRS," Cassie told her.
"I never heard of such a thing," Edith
clicked her
tongue. "Casing the place in the morning before anybody is even up. My
land! What is this world coming to?"
"My land," as far as Cassie knew, was an
expression that
dated back two centuries from the Midwest, where Edith's grandmother
was said to have fought the Indians. Or maybe it was the far West. "My
land," indeed.
"I never heard of it either," she said
grimly about the
sneak IRS attack. She couldn't get Charlie Schwab out of her mind.
Hadn't she read somewhere that the IRS was trying to improve its image
and wasn't auditing people anymore? The New York Times? People
magazine? How could this be happening to her? Why now? What were the
procedures? Could the agency really make home visits without warning,
check out people's cars in their garages? Do anything they wanted?
Maybe this was one of those "random audits," like the pat-downs at the
airports.
"You two seemed very cozy. Did you know him
before?"
"No, of course not," Cassie snapped.
She stopped at a red light on Northern
Boulevard, only a
few blocks from the hospital. She hadn't heard from anyone there this
morning, and she hadn't called the nurses' station to check in. She
didn't know what she was going to find when she went into that
intensive care unit. Maybe Mitch had had another "event" in the night.
He could be gone already. She forgot about the IRS incident, was filled
with trepidation about the medical situation. Code, code. Where was a
code when one needed one?
The light changed. Cassie reminded herself
that she had
to tell Mitch's employees what had happened to him, take charge at the
warehouse. She had to call his lawyer. All kinds of arrangements had to
be made. She pulled into the hospital, her head spinning again. She
didn't know who Mitch's girlfriend was, what that woman was doing right
now, or how she and Mitch communicated. One thing she did know was that
the two of them were not talking again. She was going to pop that
woman's balloon.
Cassie parked the car and got out. She
adjusted her scarf
and sunglasses. The tide was rising in her. Mitch had underestimated
her. She wanted revenge.
"Come on, Aunt Edith, come say goodbye to
Mitch."
"Oh dear, oh my, your poor children, losing
their daddy
so young," Edith said. Then, "You know, dear, I never liked that man."
"What?" Cassie turned to look at her. Edith
was heavy. It
wasn't easy for her to get out of that Mercedes, roomy as it was. She
moved one enormous chevroned leg out the door, then another. Cassie had
to haul her to a standing position. Upright, she examined her niece
again.
"Cassie, are you sure you're all right? You
look so thin."
"You never told me you didn't like Mitch."
"Oh well, you know. People don't say these
things. They
don't want to hurt your feelings. But he was a difficult man," Edith
said vaguely.
Cassie blew air through her nose. Edith's
opinion of her
husband came as a surprise to her. She thought everybody liked Mitch.
This was getting to be the longest day of her life. Slowly they made
their way through the lot and into the hospital. There was the same
bustle in the lobby on Monday at midday as there had been all weekend.
They moved down the glass hallway into the head trauma wing. Cassie
tried not to look at the people around her, all suffering losses.
When they got to the intensive care unit,
everything
seemed the same. The nurses at the station. Other staff with their blue
pajamalike uniforms. In Mitch's cubicle of a room, his body was in the
same position on the bed. His eyes were still at half-mast. Today,
however, there was a little tremor in his hand. Cassie watched it with
horror. The hand seemed to have taken on a life of its own.
Edith moved her great bulk toward the bed.
Her chubby
face held an expression of astonishment, as if she'd been ambushed by
an unexpected feeling of sorrow over the mortality of a man she claimed
she'd never liked.
"Mitch, honey. It's Edith," she said in her
loudest,
bossiest voice. "You remember Edith, don't you? Charlotte's sister.
Cassandra's aunt. I've come to see you in the hospital. You look good,
Mitch. Really good. How are you feeling, honey? A little better?"
Stupid question.
She gave him a big bright smile. "We're all
praying for
you, honey."
That would get him. Mitch hated God. Didn't
believe in
the power of prayer. The big woman's smile faded just a little as she
stood there eyeing all those tubes going in and out of him. Her face
was one big pucker of wonderment until she noticed Mitch's twitching
hand that seemed to be trying so hard to say something. This got her
going again.
"You'll be on your feet in no time," she
said softly and
with real conviction.
This wasn't the goodbye that Cassie had
envisioned on the
way over. On the other side of the bed, she held her breath, for Mitch
seemed to be coming out of it. He looked drained, but definitely alive.
Maybe that noisy machine pumping air into his lungs was actually
charging him up again like a car battery, and soon he would roar into
life again. A disheartening thought.
Cassie tried to muster some sympathy for
him, to remember
the bright moments, the good times of their twenty-six years together.
As before, she was stuck in the later years, after he'd left her for
another woman without her even knowing it. All the joy she could
remember was being the mommy of Teddy and Marsha when they'd been
babies, bathing them and changing them and cooking their favorite
foods, teaching them those ABCs and making life fun. She remembered
their hugging on the big bed, cuddling like puppies. Those long-gone
days brought tears to her eyes.
She watched in horror as Aunt Edith picked
up Mitch's
puffy hand. "Give me a little squeeze," Edith instructed him. "We're
all rooting for you, Buddy."
Not Cassie. She was imagining the lights
flashing. Code,
code.
"Look, honey, he's coming back," Edith said.
No, that was not possible. Cassie didn't
want him back.
She planned to turn off that respirator and make him history. Don't
squeeze, she prayed. No swimming back to the surface now, you bastard.
Long, suspenseful moments passed as Edith
experimented
with Mitch's hand, curling his fingers around one of hers just like
Cassie had done only yesterday.
"Can you hear me, Buddy? Give me a
squeeze," Edith coaxed.
Suddenly the finger that had been moving
around on the
sheet stopped. The hand in her grasp lay there limp as a fish fillet.
Aunt Edith extricated herself, and Cassie exhaled with a little hiccup
of thanks.
"He was always a stubborn man," Edith
remarked. "Can he
hear us or not, honey?"
"We don't know," Cassie said.
"I had a friend once. Rosalind Witte,
remember her? She
lives in Florida now. Roz's husband, Paul, had a stroke. She pushed him
around in a wheelchair for ten years before he finally passed on.
Couldn't say a word." Edith clicked her tongue.
"She kept a pencil tied to his wrist. Every
little while,
she'd put that pencil in his hand and he'd make some squiggles. She
told everybody he was writing his memoirs." Edith pointed to Mitch's
finger suddenly making circles on the sheet again. "I don't envy you,"
she whispered.
CHAPTER 16
SHAKEN BY EDITH'S OMINOUS REACTION to
Mitch's
condition, Cassie paced the hall outside the lounge, where she had
spent so many hours over the weekend. In the cluttered room, the TV was
playing loudly to an audience of some ten people, who all seemed to
belong to a distraught family Cassie hadn't seen before. Every minute
something else reminded Cassie of her mother's death. She didn't want
to sit in the lounge, in case a code was called and another family lost
someone they loved. She waited impatiently for Mark in the hall, and he
arrived, as promised, only minutes after noon. Time had slowed to a
crawl.
"Mark." She felt safe as soon as she saw
him.
"Hi, sweetheart." He kissed her cheek and
peered at her
intently right in front of everybody, thumb and index finger turning
her chin from side to side as if he hadn't examined her face just this
way only yesterday.
"Not a bad job at all," he confirmed again,
shaking his
bald head, since they were old friends and she hadn't trusted him
enough to make the referral.
"Let's go somewhere. I can't talk in
there," she said
about the lounge.
"No, no, of course not. I thought we'd have
a quick lunch
somewhere close by." Today he was wearing a different sports jacket and
different aftershave. His cheeks were smooth and moisturized. His color
was excellent.
"Lunch?" A warning bell went off.
"Yes, looks like you need some sustenance."
Mark Cohen
was a study in contrasts. There was nothing handsome about him. In
middle age, his flesh was filling in all around him. His face was
round. He was shorter than she was. His nose was a blob on his face.
But to Cassie, the well-dressed teddy bear
also had the
suave and comforting air of a professional. His gentle and sympathetic
hand on her arm, his expression of short-term deep concern for her pain
combined with absolute acceptance of the inevitability of death. His
wry expression, indeed his whole demeanor, seemed to say: "I've seen it
all a hundred times. This, too, shall pass." This message of competence
and empathy felt like the very last thing left over from the age of
Cary Grant and Jimmy Stewart.
"How are you holding up?" asked the only
man Cassie knew
who could understand and help her.
"Oh God. You wouldn't believe what's
happening. Mark, I
don't even know how to tell you this." She wished she could lower her
head onto his chubby chest and rest it there for a year or two and let
him take care of everything. His navy blazer was the very best, just
like the kind Mitch wore, with gold buttons and a pink shirt under it.
The shirt had a dazzling white collar, and cuffs that were held
together with gold golf ball cuff links. Mitch happened to have the
same ones.
Cassie couldn't help being impressed by the
close
attention to sartorial detail and personal care that some men took of
themselves. In Mark, it reminded her of the kidney infection he'd cured
twelve years ago, and the way he'd handled her breast lump scare
several years later. Mitch had left town the day of her biopsy, but
Mark had remained staunchly by her side.
"Where do you want to go?" Mark patted her
hand.
"Oh, that's sweet of you, but I can't go
out. My aunt
Edith is here with Mitch."
His face registered a moment's
disappointment. "Tomorrow,
then."
Cassie still had her very dark sunglasses
on over the
scarf tied around her head. "Oh definitely," she murmured, shaking her
head no. They'd never had lunch alone together. She absolutely adored
him, but how could she think about going out? She steered the subject
to Mitch. "Have you seen Mitch?"
"Yes, of course, early this morning." He
sniffed the air
around her. "Nice perfume, what is it?"
"Really, Mark, I don't know."
"Sublime, I think. You've been wearing it
for a long
time, haven't you? I've always liked it."
"Well, I just saw Mitch. Have you seen what
his finger is
doing?" Cassie didn't want to think about her perfume.
"Of course. I saw all of him. What about
it?"
"It was moving around on the sheet. It
looked like he was
trying to say something. Write something."
"Oh, yes. They do that sometimes. It
doesn't mean
anything." Mark was studying her intently.
"What's the matter?" She touched her cheek
and didn't
feel a thing.
He shook his head. "Nothing. Just the
change in you. You
really look different. I'm not sure I would have recognized you."
"I know I look terrible. Let's not dwell."
"Quite the contrary. You look very good.
Really good."
"For God's sake, Mark, I don't care how I
look. I want to
talk about Mitch. I think he's coming back," Cassie said wildly. "He
has motion in his hand. I saw it."
Mark raised a shoulder. "Well, random
movements. That
doesn't mean anything." He raised the shoulder again. "I don't want to
be pessimistic, Cassie. But he's still in a very deep coma—"
"I think he's coming back. I really do,"
she insisted.
"Does he respond to the things you say?
Does he seem to
know you?" Mark asked gently.
"No, but—"
"Sweetheart, he's not responding to any
outside stimuli.
We're not seeing any brain activity on the EEG," he said solemnly. "I
have to be straight with you."
"No brain activity?" Cassie asked hopefully.
Mark pressed his lips together and shook
his head. "Mitch
is a tough nut. He's hanging on, but we'd hoped for more of a rally,
some return of awareness." He massaged Cassie's hand and put his other
arm around her shoulder and squeezed that, too. "You okay?"
"No brain activity. That's—" she shook her
head. Great!
"Look, on the other hand, I've seen
patients who've been
in a vegetative state for six, seven, eight months, even years, who
just wake up one day."
"No!" Cassie didn't want to hear that.
"I know, it's rough. Are you sure you don't
want
something to eat? Starving yourself won't help him."
"No, no. Thank you, but I couldn't think
about food right
now."
"This isn't good for you. You look like
you've lost about
fifteen pounds. You've had a trauma. You're depressed."
More than he guessed. "Mark, I haven't lost
an ounce."
"I'm your doctor. I would know." He said
this with his
wry little doctor smile. Then he patted her bottom, lightly. Just a
touch, then he pressed those lips together appreciatively, and nodded.
"Ten pounds, at least."
"Mark!" Cassie was shocked by the
inappropriate gesture.
"How are you sleeping?"
"Oh, I don't know. All right, I guess." She
was irritated
by the tone, distracted.
"We don't want you getting depressed."
"Oh, for heaven's sake, let's not beat
around the bush
about depression."
"Oh?" Mark raised his eyebrows.
"It's not as if Mitch and I were that
close. I bet you
know the whole story," she said angrily. "Why don't you just come
clean."
He changed the subject. "Cassie, I checked
some things
out with Parker. He knows pretty much everything where Mitch is
concerned. Here's the insurance story. You're fine with North Fork, for
a while. But there might be a problem down the road." All of a sudden
Mark looked uncomfortable.
"Fine, you don't want to be straight with
me about his
personal life," Cassie said. Parker Higgins was Mitch's lawyer. She'd
get the truth out of him.
"Of course I do. We'll have some things to
talk about
later, but you don't have to worry about them right this minute," he
said evenly.
"Well, I want to worry about them right
this minute. I
have some decisions to make, and I need your help."
"You know you can count on me," he said
staunchly.
"Can I, Mark?" She stared at him hard
through those dark
glasses but couldn't read him.
"Of course. We'll go through it all right
now if you want
to."
She nodded. "Thank you."
He steered her to a stone bench in a little
alcove on one
side of the glass hallway that she'd never noticed before. It looked
out on a Japanese garden with three large rocks, a collection of dwarf
conifers, and a pebble path surrounded by buildings that no one could
get to. Cassie sat down on the bench. Mark sat next to her, still in
possession of her hand.
"Go ahead, shoot."
"I think I mentioned over the weekend some
of the issues
surrounding the practical side of health care. I'm sure you know that
the hospital and the insurance companies look at patients in a
different way from patients' families. Insurance companies want to
resolve the cases. The families want only the best care for their loved
ones. The hospital's challenge is to find reasonable ways to work out
the conflicts between the two."
"Mark, what are you talking about?" She
wanted to talk
about the girlfriend.
"Patients in crisis are treated one way,
Cassie. Like
Mitch when he came in. Every treatment possible is performed without
question. Terminal patients, who've had every treatment we can give
them, who are alert and aware at the end, are treated another way. They
have some control over the final days of their lives. And, finally,
patients in a persistent vegetative state are in an altogether
different category."
"I don't understand. Cut to the chase."
This got her
attention.
"Just listen for a moment. I want to give
you some
background on this. Our job as physicians is to sustain life whatever
the cost. But we can't do that in defiance of the patient's wishes . .
." Mark paused in midsentence.
Cassie gazed out at the neat little dwarf
conifers. The
Japanese didn't like messy gardens the way she did—with flowers that
waxed and waned, so slow to bud, quick to bloom, showy beyond reason
for only a few short days, then the long fade-out of wither and drying
while the season progressed and the next crop developed. Flower gardens
took so much care to look well in every season. In cultivated spaces,
the Japanese preferred their gardens spare and predictable. They stuck
with evergreens, pruning them down to a tidy shape, stunting nature for
pretty much the same view in all seasons. She knew that Mitch was no
tidy Japanese. Like her love of excess in the flower beds, he was more
the messy type. He'd opt for the long fade-out, never giving up or
letting go, as he'd never let go of her.
She felt as cold as that hospital garden
that had no
visible access. What Mark was telling her was that in her husband's
time of crisis she had a spousal right to give up for him. He couldn't
choose now, so it was up to her?
"You can't do it in defiance of the
patient's wishes. Go
on, I'm listening," she murmured.
"We're not there yet, Cassie."
"Where is ‘there,' Mark?"
"In a terminal case, we get together, the
patient and the
family, and together we discuss how the patient wants the end to be.
And they can choose, machines or no machines, hospital or home.
Patients have some control over the situation, and you'd be surprised
the kind of choices they make. A lot of people don't ever want to be
hooked up the way Mitch is. But acute care patients are another story.
In the absence of the patient, it's the insurance company and the
family—and, of course, the hospital, too—that make the decisions."
"I understand," Cassie said.
"You think so, but it can be very
difficult. There are
many feelings involved—and not least, guilt. Sometimes you think
something is best, and later have regrets. . . . I don't want to
frighten you. This is down the road."
"Oh, it's okay, scare me to death."
"Come on, I'm being serious."
"So am I."
"You wanted the bottom line. The bottom
line is we can't
keep him on the respirator forever."
"I thought you said people can stay in a
vegetative state
for months, even years."
"Yes, I said patients in a vegetative
state."
"Isn't Mitch in a vegetative state?"
"Yes. But Mitch is not in a vegetative
state on his own.
He's got considerable brain damage and he's being sustained. This is
the issue."
"Oh, of course." The brain damage helped.
And the
respirator. How could she forget? "How is the decision made to . . . um
. . . ?"
"Oh, I said that was down the road."
"How far down the road, Mark? Are we
talking days, weeks,
months. How long?" Cassie coughed to cover her impatience.
"Well, there's nothing written in stone
about it. But
once the patient is stabilized, and there's been no improvement for a
period of time. Well . . ." Mark looked away, then back. "You won't be
alone with this, Cassie."
"His father is gaga. He only has me and the
children.
What would that period of time be?"
"I meant you have me and the hospital. The
hospital is
not cold. We like to keep them as long as possible. The insurance
companies, as I said, like to move the cases along. Once the patient is
stable, they will want him to move to another hospital. Here's the
problem. You don't have that kind of coverage. I know Mitch's business
is doing very well. There's no doubt you can handle the costs privately
for some time, even indefinitely, if you choose that route."
Cassie swallowed. "What would happen if the
respirator
were turned off right now?" she asked softly.
Mark didn't answer.
"So what do we have—a week, two weeks?"
"Why don't you call Parker? I'm sure you
have a power of
attorney. You can explore the options with him."
"Yes, I'll call him." Given the situation,
Cassie was
pretty sure she didn't have a power of attorney. Mitch would not want
his life in her hands now or ever.
Then something new and awful occurred to
her. Maybe the
girlfriend had the power of attorney. She closed her eyes against rage
rising in her chest. Whenever Cassie thought about this girlfriend, she
could hardly breathe. She told herself she had to snap out of it.
Jealousy was a waste of emotion. She had to go find Aunt Edith, get rid
of her, call Parker. She needed to get to the warehouse and circle the
wagons. She wished her son, Teddy, were a little older and wiser,
because she had no idea how to circle those wagons.
Behind her sunglasses, Cassie's eyes closed
against the
chilly Japanese garden out the window and the pain that roiled like
lava in her stomach and her throat. Funny how her heart and lungs
worked well, drawing in oxygen, circulating it around her body.
Everywhere she was alive with feeling except in her numbed face.
Suddenly her stomach did a little flip, heralding another feeling that
had been dormant, long dormant. Mark had moved his hand. He'd dropped
it to her leg and was rubbing the outside of her thigh in a lazy, but
persistent circular motion. Startled, she stood up, her eyes blazing
with indignation. He couldn't see them, though. She was wearing those
sunglasses. "Mark, I've got to go."
He hauled himself to a standing position.
He was smiling.
He couldn't read her either. He thought things were going well. "How
about lunch tomorrow? We'll talk about it some more then, hmmm?"
"Mitch had a girlfriend. Who is it?"
"Ah, I wouldn't know that." Mark was caught
off guard. "He didn't share his private life with me."
"His private life? Come off it." Cassie
laughed. "I
thought I was his private life."
"You know what I mean." Uncomfortable again.
"No, I don't. He was being audited, did you
know that?"
Cassie went down the list of things she hadn't known.
"Yes. He talked about that. I suspect that
may have
contributed to this little event. The stress of having to account for
one's life, well . . ." He spread his arms out. "No one likes having to
explain. I'm sorry, Cassie."
"Thanks." She walked quickly through the
glass corridor.
Mark followed her, trying to catch up without skipping.
"A horrible man came over to assess the
house this
morning. He was sneaking around, so Edith called the police."
"Really? Who was it?"
"The IRS. It was very humiliating. Why are
they doing
this?"
"It's rough. Anything I can do to help?" He
skipped even
with her and tried to take her hand again.
"We have to stop this," she muttered,
meaning his
attentions.
"You can ask your accountant. Tax audits
are not my
department."
He didn't get it. "You don't know this
woman's name?" she
tried again. "I won't be mad if you tell me. It's not your fault."
"Ah, well, I don't know it." He pursed his
lips, looking
solid and doctorly.
"Why don't I believe you?" She heaved some
oxygen into
those lungs. Okay, she had the lawyer to talk to, the accountant. She'd
find the girlfriend, and maybe murder her for the simple pleasure of
it. She had the IRS audit to deal with. Who could she trust? No one.
She found Aunt Edith with Mitch, still cajoling him to squeeze her
fingers.
CHAPTER 17
CASSIE DROVE HOME SLOWLY, worrying in
equal amounts
about long-term care, how much it cost, and whether she should come
right out and tell Mark not to put his hands all over her. When they
were just a few blocks from home, Edith started screaming at her.
"Honey, turn here."
She always turned here. "Here" was the
gorgeous
Americana, where the North Shore rich went to buy their haute labels.
Armani, Prada, Ralph Lauren, Chanel. Hermès. It was just like
Beverly Hills or Palm Beach, a mall where shops had awnings, and
security guards watched the cars. The Americana was practically her
home. The community where Cassie lived was right behind it, hidden by
trees. Just driving past it now made her queasy. This was where Mitch's
girlfriend did her damage.
"No, don't go straight. Turn left," Edith
demanded.
"No, I'm not going shopping now, Aunt
Edith. I have to
call Mitch's lawyer," Cassie told her.
"I said stop! Can't you hear me?" Aunt
Edith didn't like
being thwarted.
Her screech was so insistent that Cassie
jammed on the
brakes when ordinarily she would have kept right on going through the
yellow light. The car halted with a jerk, throwing both women forward
into their seat belts. There went Cassie's new face.
"What's the matter with you?" Cassie cried,
terrified
that the staples in the back of her scalp had popped open and blood
would soon start pouring out into her hair, down her neck.
"I want to get you a hat," Edith said, all
sweetness now. "What's wrong with that?"
"You scared me to death, Edith."
"Well, you need a hat, Cassie, and I'm
going to get you
one. Come on, turn in. Something soft, you know, with a big brim and
maybe a veil. You can't go out looking like that, Cassie, it's
upsetting."
"Edith, I don't want a hat."
"You're no Jackie Kennedy, honey. You look
dumpy in that
scarf."
Cassie glanced at her very heavy aunt
bulging in the
white jogging suit. Look who was talking about dumpy. "I don't need
criticism right now." Cassie tried to ease the hysteria out of her
voice. Next to her two children and her sister, Julie, who may or may
not have stolen a number of her mother's most valuable possessions,
Aunt Edith was about her only living relative.
"Don't get testy with me, young lady. It's
not my fault
you lost weight and look dumpy in those clothes. You should get a few
new things. And a hat. Anybody with a brain would do that."
"I don't need a single thing." Cassie
thought her aunt
had gone right around the bend talking about shopping while Mitch was
in the hospital.
"You always say that. Now, come on,
consider your own
needs for a change. He isn't getting out of that bed any quicker if you
let yourself go."
This was the second time in an hour that
someone had made
that comment. What made them think she wanted him out of bed? The light
turned green. Cassie accelerated, and the Americana swept by them. "Do
you think I let myself go?" She couldn't help asking. It was the last
thing she'd meant to do. She hadn't meant to let herself go.
"Let's not get too introspective. Let's
just say, you
have some problems in this area."
"Edith, did you ever suspect that Mitch was
fooling
around?" Cassie broached the subject quickly before she had a chance to
change her mind. Naturally, she regretted it immediately.
"Oh, honey. I didn't suspect. I knew he
was. Didn't you?"
"You knew?" Cassie coughed on her surprise.
Was she the
only one who didn't know?
"Well, sure, honey. Why do you ask?"
"A terrible thing happened on Friday.
Uhuh-uhuh." Cassie
tried to clear her throat. "After my eye stitches were removed, Marsha
brought me this package all wrapped up in pink tissue paper. I thought
it was from her to me, so I opened it. Silk pajamas," she said grimly.
"Nice," Edith said approvingly.
"They weren't just nice, they were gorgeous
and very
expensive. The price tag was still on them. They cost over a thousand
dollars."
"My, my. That Marsha is a nice girl."
"I put them on, and that's when Mitch came
home. You know
his temper. When he saw those pajamas on me, he had his stroke."
"Honey, are you telling me those pj's
caused Mitch's
stroke?"
Cassie took a deep breath. "Not the pj's,
Aunt Edith, me
wearing them. They weren't for me, see?" There, the words were out.
Those pajamas had not been for her. She'd known it from the minute
she'd seen that price tag.
"How do you know?"
"He had a stroke, didn't he? The whole
thing was going to
come out. There was no way he could explain it. The man had a stroke to
avoid me. Just like him." Another block east and Cassie made her right
turn into the forty-year-old development, where she and Mitch had lived
their whole married life. In front of her neat colonial the mangled
post and mailbox were still on the ground. They seemed to symbolize her
ruined life.
"That's speculation, not evidence," Edith
dismissed her.
"What are you, a lawyer all of a sudden?
You said the man
was a womanizer. What's your evidence?"
"Oh, you get an instinct about people,"
Edith said,
suddenly as vague as the garden under fog. "You should get someone over
to fix that post. It's too close to the street. I've told you that a
thousand times."
"It's the regulation distance," Cassie told
her
reflexively. They had this conversation regularly.
"No, it's way too close. No one can park
there without
knocking it right over. It's the post's fault. Are you hungry, Cassie?
You need to eat something."
"I moved the post back once, don't you
remember? The
mailman refused to deliver." Cassie shook her head. It was way past the
time for Edith to give up driving. "Aunt Edith, you don't have a
license, you can't see that well. You should get someone to drive you."
She'd said it a thousand times.
Edith ignored her as usual. "Cassie, I'll
just fix you a
little lunch and we'll talk about that girl. Do you know who she is?"
"What girl?" Cassie asked. Like a bird in a
tree, Edith
jumped from topic to topic, never sticking with anything long enough to
make sense.
"Mitch's girl, of course. You need to make
sure she keeps
away from him."
"Oh, yes," Cassie agreed grimly.
"You never know with these things. These
sick old goats
give the farm away to whoever changes their diapers. You'd better be
the one to change his diapers. Cassie, are you listening to me?"
"I heard every word." Cassie parked in
front of the house
because the garage was full. She got out, looked around for signs of
IRS snooping, saw no strange vehicles on the street. Satisfied for the
moment, she went around to the passenger side to pull Edith out.
Getting Edith into a car was easy. She just
turned around
and backed in, letting herself drop to the seat with a thud that
sometimes resulted in a loud fart. Getting her out, however, took more
stages. A hand, an arm, a foot extended tentatively out the car door
that was open as far as it would go. A heavy leg. Then Edith shifted
that butt and inched out by degrees, with a few experimental heaves of
her upper body that expelled those internal gases with the authority of
a motorcycle thundering down a country road. At the same time, Cassie
hauled on her aunt's flabby arms as hard as she could. She had no idea
how her aunt accomplished this hydraulic maneuver when she was alone.
Edith kept talking as she worked her way out.
"You haven't heard from her yourself, have
you?"
"No." Cassie waited for the first sneaker
to appear. This
new idea startled her; Mitch's girlfriend in actual contact with her.
"You want me to find out about her? I'm
pretty good at
this kind of thing. There are things we can do, you know."
"No, that's okay." Cassie didn't want to
think about what
kind of things her aunt meant.
"We could get something on her," Edith
mused.
Cassie snorted. The sneaker appeared, the
leg, the thigh,
the shift. The haul. Miraculously, Edith came out without a gastric
fanfare. Proud of this, she waddled regally up the walk to the front
door. Cassie didn't want to say she already had something on the
girlfriend. Credit card fraud was a felony.
"Listen, Aunt Edith. Why don't I settle you
in front of
the TV for a few minutes while I make a call. Then I'll drive you home."
"Oh no, I can take my car. You're not
grounding me,
Cassie. That post was right in the middle of the street. You damaged my
car. You'll have to have it fixed for me."
"We'll talk about it later."
"I have to take my own car, Cassie," Edith
wailed. "I
have to have my independence."
"We'll see," Cassie told her.
But no, they wouldn't. The little stunt
this morning had
been Edith's last chance at independence. Cassie would not have on her
conscience some fatal car crash like the ones she'd seen in the
hospital. She got the front door open and led her aunt into the kitchen.
"I'll just make you a little lunch," Edith
promised. But
right away she found the clicker to the TV and turned on The Young and
the Restless. She sat down at the kitchen table and forgot about
cooking lunch for anybody.
Cassie moved quickly down the hall to
Mitch's office. As
she turned the corner, she moved like the cops in the TV shows, jumping
to stay out of doorways just in case that IRS man was in there looking
for the wine Mitch had in his cellar and other stuff he must have
stashed away.
The IRS man, however, was not at Mitch's
desk going
through his papers, so Cassie sat down there. She picked up the phone
and called Parker Higgins, the family lawyer. As she waited for the
receptionist to get through to Parky's secretary, she hit the AOL
button on Mitch's computer, then the automatic Sign On. Clearly, he
hadn't been afraid of her gaining access. Ah, Mitch had mail. A lot of
it. Cassie scanned down the ridiculous names people gave themselves:
Abscul. MAD. Hopup. Winebuff. Kringeetc. She didn't know any of these
people. Kringeetc. Who the hell could that be? Hopup? Didn't that sound
like a prostitute? Maybe Mitch didn't have just one girl. What if there
was a whole army of them and they all used a card with her name on it?
Cassie was nauseated by the thought of having to change Mitch's diapers
to stop his girlfriends from getting the farm. She wished it wouldn't
ruin her face to heave up her guts.
"Yes, this is Diana, can I help you?"
queried a woman
with a thick Long Island accent.
"This is Cassandra Sales. Is Mr. Higgins
there?"
"I'll check for you, Cassie."
"Thank you, Diana. Will you tell him it's
urgent? Mitch
is in the hospital." Cassie scanned down the list of e-mail names and
didn't recognize any of them.
Five seconds later the friend they called
Parky was on
the line talking fast in his hearty lawyer voice. "Hey, Cassie, how are
you? Long time no see, babe."
Even when she'd been young, Cassie had
never been the
babe type. "Yes, long time. I'm not so good, Parker. Mitch had a stroke
on Friday. He's in intensive care." And I had my face lifted.
"Yes, Mark called me. It's a real shocker."
"Yes." It certainly was.
"How is he doing?"
"He's not doing well. That's the reason I
called."
"Oh gosh, I'm sorry. What can I do to help?"
Gosh, indeed. "I need the papers, Parky."
"To what papers are you referring?" Parky's
voice took on
that furry-edged garden fog Cassie was beginning to recognize as the
cover for all requests for information about her husband.
"Oh, I don't know. The doctors say I need a
power of
attorney, things like that."
"What for, Cassie?" Parker sounded
sincerely puzzled.
"He's on life support."
"Oh, that's a shocker," he said more slowly
this time as
if Mark hadn't already discussed it with him. "It's hard to believe. We
had lunch together only a few weeks ago. He looked in the pink then."
Uh-huh. "What did you talk about?"
"Oh the usual things, business . . . why do
you ask,
Cassie?"
"He's left a few things to be taken care
of. The
business, his personal affairs, an audit I didn't know anything about.
Let's face it, there's a whole lot I didn't know a single thing about.
I need to go through it with you. Just to get the finances all sorted
out in my mind. And, of course, I have some decisions to make
concerning his care."
"Uh-huh. I know what you're talking about,
Cassie. But I
don't know if I can help you there."
"Can't help me where, Parker? With the care
or the
decisions or the finances?" Cassie's own voice took on an edge.
"With any of it. I hope you won't take this
personally."
"What are you talking about? Of course I
take it
personally. You're our lawyer. I need you to act in that capacity."
"Well, I'm sorry to have to be the one to
tell you this,
Cassie, but there's a little problem with that. I represent Mitchell,
as you know. That means there's a confidentiality issue here. And there
are ethical issues as well."
"I thought you represented both of us,
Parky. I don't
understand."
Parker Higgins, a smoothie from way back,
inhaled with
such ferocity, Cassie could hear the rasping breath all the way from
Garden City. "I've always represented Mitch, Cassie. Both for business
and personal. We went to school together, you know that. Our
relationship goes way back."
"So?"
"Let me stress that this is not personal.
My
responsibilities are with him and his wishes." He said this as if any
reasonable person would understand this.
But Cassie didn't understand it. She
exploded. "You're
being a dickhead, Parker. This is a life-and-death situation. You have
a responsibility to tell me, his wife, the things I need to know to
determine what kind of care he gets. It's not a hard one."
"Well, of course, if he wants me to,"
Parker stonewalled.
"I'm not sure I understand what you're
saying. You can't
tell me if there's a power of attorney, a living will, simple things
like that?"
"Well, there might be a conflict of
interest here."
"Conflict of interest? What kind of
conflict of interest?"
"The usual kind, between one person and
another."
The man was being more than a dickhead.
Cassie boiled
right over. "Between who and who?" she screamed.
"Between you and him, Cassie. Don't get
crazy on me."
Cassie's surgeon had told her to watch
happy movies and
think lovely thoughts during her weeks of recuperation to promote
healing and lessen the chance of scarring. She opened and closed her
mouth, then her puffy eyes. Both were as dry as the desert. She was
going to be scarred for life because of this, she just knew it. Getting
crazy? Getting crazy? Was he crazy? What was this about conflict of
interest, and why hadn't she heard about it before today? And by the
way, where was her loyal, personal lawyer?
"What are you trying to tell me, Parky?
We've known each
other for a long time." Her voice meek now.
"I know we have, and I have very positive
feelings for
you personally, Cassie. I think you're a wonderful woman. Just
wonderful. And I really, truly wish I could help you."
"And I really, truly think you're a callous
prick,
Parker. Your friend and client had a stroke. Don't you want to help
him?"
"I'm very sad about that. What hospital is
he in? I'll go
see him. I have an hour at five. How's that? If he gives me the okay,
I'll tell you whatever you want to know. Is that fair?"
"He's in a coma. He can't give you an
okay," Cassie told
him coldly.
"Really?"
"What do you think I'm calling you for?
Mitch is
brain-dead. He can't talk, he can't even breathe on his own. He's not
giving out okays right now. So where does that leave us? You and me?"
"Well, that's—a shocker."
I'm not crazy, Cassie told herself. I'm not
crazy. The
man in the coma had been preparing to divorce her. The deep silence
that followed confirmed her suspicion that Mitch Sales had been about
to divorce her, and he'd set her up to cheat her out of half his
assets. It was another one of those things she got in a second. It
wasn't a hard one, and it took her breath away. The two of them, Mitch
and his old college friend, Parky Higgins, and maybe this woman,
too—all of them had been cooking up a plan. She'd seen enough TV to
know the story. Mitch had traveled to Grand Cayman Island, where he'd
deposited a large sum of money in a bank out of U.S. jurisdiction and
her sight. Right here at home, he'd had taken out accounts in her name
and racked up huge bills that he would claim were hers and demand that
she take responsibility for in the divorce settlement.
Without any warning that anything of this
kind was in the
wind, he'd probably believed that she would be so stunned and
frightened and hurt and ashamed by the accusations of all those
excesses that she would have to accept his terms just to be free of
public humiliation.
And if he hadn't had his stroke, she might
have gotten
caught up in the scam, might well have ended up poor, poor, poor, just
like Mary Ann Kaufman, who couldn't even get enough money from her
deadbeat husband to pay for computer school. Or Sue Whistle, who'd
gotten a brain tumor after she was dumped by Willie and had died of a
broken heart.
Cassie knew just how this kind of thing
worked. Mary Ann
Kaufman's ex-husband was a heart surgeon worth millions who'd suddenly
gone into a downward spiral. He claimed his hands hurt so badly, he
couldn't operate. This caused him to become depressed and impotent. He
couldn't bear to be with anyone. He had to be alone. No medication but
divorce would work for him. Mary Ann loved him so much and felt so
sorry for him that she agreed to let him keep the five-bedroom house
and the cars in the divorce settlement. She moved into a studio
apartment too small for an overnight with her college-age kids and took
a job selling perfume at Lord and Taylor so he wouldn't be burdened
with her care.
And guess what happened then? Harry
immediately had a
miraculous recovery. It was a complete miracle. His hand stopped
hurting. He got over his depression and his impotence. He resumed his
booming practice, and the nurse he'd been screwing for years moved in
and redecorated Mary Ann's house. Within a year they married, and Mary
Ann's two kids went to the wedding. And Harry never had to give her a
dime.
"Cassie, are you there?"
"Yes, I'm here, Parky. And I may be wrong,
but I think
the law regards me as Mitch's wife and next of kin no matter what he
was planning down the road. But you can research that."
"Yes, of course you are, Cassie, of course.
Don't even
think about that."
"What's the woman's name?"
"Woman? I don't know what you mean."
"The woman Mitch was divorcing me for,
Parky."
"Cassie, I don't know what you're talking
about. Mitch
adores you. What are his chances for recovery?"
"Very slim, I'm afraid."
"Gee, I'm so sorry, Cassie. I'm shocked and
I'm sorry.
Are you sure?"
"You can ask Mark Cohen again. I'm sure you
did already.
Is he in on this, too? You guys together, all of you?"
"I'm sorry to cut you off, Cassie, but I'm
going into a
meeting right now. I'm going to get back to you later on this, okay?"
"Cassie. Cassie, Cassie," Edith was
screaming from the
kitchen. "I'm starving, honey. What had you planned to serve for lunch?"
CHAPTER 18
MILD-MANNERED CASSIE, who'd always been
so careful to
feed the birds in winter, who couldn't even think of killing the moles
that tunneled through her garden and ate her bulbs, who'd bought one of
those beeper boxes to keep the mice out of her basement so she wouldn't
have to catch them on sticky tape or trap them or poison them, was
wondering how to stop this unconscionable girlfriend from doing what
Cassie couldn't do: get her husband's attention from wherever he'd gone
and bring him back to life so he could leave her in ruin. She didn't
want her anywhere near Mitch or the hospital, or anything. Who was this
woman with the power to destroy her?
Cassie went through Mitch's e-mails, and it
wasn't too
hard to find the one she was looking for. Her rival signed her messages
M. The first one was dated Friday night. It read, "Still in Paris. Call
me when you get home. M knocks your socks off."
Huh? Cassie's stitches were itching
terribly. Knocks his
socks off? M's Saturday morning e-mail said, "No answer at your house
or mine. Honey, where are you? I'm worried. M knocks your socks off."
Saturday afternoon, M wrote again.
"Precious pumpkin, no
answer anywhere. What's going on? Are you all right? M knocks your
socks off."
Sunday's crop included one about Teddy. M
said, "I called
Teddy at home. He wasn't there, either. Where is everybody? PLEASE, you
know what a WORRIER I am. Ira hasn't heard from you. Parky hasn't heard
from you. Stephen and Bill haven't heard a thing. I'm frantic. The
weather in P is just gorgeous. I saw a little apartment I liked in the
16th near the park, but we'll talk about that later. I'm on my way
home. Probably ovulating on Tuesday. Hint. Hint. Can't wait to see you.
M knocks your socks off."
Apartment in the 16th? Ovulating Tuesday?
It was a funny
thing about anger. Every time Cassie thought her rage was as hot as it
could get, more reality took her deeper into it. She felt her body
would ignite with it. And Mitch must have been just as excited in his
own way, too. He must have been like that Dutch boy with his finger in
the dike. All around him the waters of his other life had been rising
around him, ensnaring him, drawing him ever deeper into the currents
that would eventually kill him. He'd gotten bolder and bolder in his
scam. The only thing that got in his way was that little thing called
the IRS.
She, his wife of twenty-six years, was
nothing. She was a
nonentity he thought he could fool as long as he wanted, then just end
at will. He must have relished the idea of keeping that flood of
knowledge back from her just by closing a door in the house. But now
the door was open, the real story was out. The IRS man, Charlie Schwab,
was searching for his millions. She was boiling with rage, and he
wasn't getting away with anything.
Parky was their lawyer. Ira Mandel was
their accountant.
Stephen and Bill were both salesmen in the company. And Teddy. Teddy
was her own son. No wonder the boy sometimes had the look of a
half-wit, a dolt who didn't know his ass from his elbow. He'd been
hiding out. What if even Teddy had been in on the conspiracy? Hurt
enlarged her and spun her out of her natural orbit. She was a volcano,
a hurricane, a tornado—one of those really big natural disasters about
to occur.
As she processed the extent of her
husband's betrayal, it
became clear to Cassie that she had no choice but to kill him. Tomorrow
morning she had to go into his ICU room and pull the plug on that
respirator. Put the man out of his misery. It would be an act of love,
a mercy killing. No one in the world could fault her, and if not she,
then Mark or a nurse would do it for her. They did it all the time;
Mark himself had told her this was one of the choices she could make.
It was a viable and legal option. No wonder Parky Higgins had acted as
he had. She got it. She finally got it. She had the motive and the
power to snuff her own husband, and snuff him she would.
CHAPTER 19
AT TWO ON MONDAY AFTERNOON, Mona Whitman
was having that sad, hurt, and lonely feeling she got whenever Mitch
gave her a hard time. She was on the phone at her desk, trying to be
enthusiastic for a buyer from Montana, but it wasn't easy. Eustace Arcs
was a rancher with a large handlebar mustache who was using Sales
Importers, Inc., to stock his new lodge in Montana, and Mitch just
loved him. Mitch had a special attraction for very rich people.
To custom-design Stace's wine cellar for
his clientele and menu around his $200,000 budget, they'd traveled to
New Zealand to fly fish with him for three horrible days last year, and
Mona herself had actually been up to her thighs in freezing water for
at least an hour. Mitch, however, who fancied himself something of a
sportsman, had reveled in every miserable minute. The promise of a
bigger account on the come, and more rich people to cultivate as new
friends with ambitions to develop their own prestigious cellars kept
him interested. Mitch was at the $890,000,000 mark in gross sales a
year. He wanted to hit the billion-dollar benchmark by 2003. It was not
out of his reach. But she herself didn't care a fig about money.
As she listened to "Stace" describe his
seven-figure restaurant renovation, she was also rehearsing her present
situation with the man she'd thought of as her fiancé for the
last two years since she'd hit her thirty-sixth birthday and started
freaking out over tiny wrinkles and her aging eggs.
Mona was a very practical girl whose bible
was The Art of War, written by Sun Tzu at the dawn of history to codify
the successful techniques of warring Chinese chieftains seeking to
establish sole rule over a vast realm of bellicose clans. Its credo
was, "Warfare is the basis of life and death, the Way to survival or
extinction. It must be thoroughly analyzed."
Mona used the book as her horoscope, her
guide, her confidant, and best friend. She analyzed it daily and
applied the strategy of the Seven Military Classics to human relations,
romantic liaisons, and company infighting. This was how she analyzed
the present situation in the hundred-year war of the worlds between her
and her intended. They had been separated for three whole days, ever
since he'd left Paris early Friday morning. The night before he'd taken
off they'd had a truly wonderful and unexpected sexual adventure. It
made Mona so confident of her success on the battlefield of marriage
that she hadn't packed up and flown back with him from Paris on a
moment's notice as he'd wanted her to.
The evening had started as the usual sort
of thing. They had gone to a new restaurant called Nouvelle Etoile,
where the tab had been nearly seven hundred dollars. She hadn't eaten
the main course or the dessert (calories). The wine was sensational,
however, and she'd had a lot of that. After chatting with the new
star's owner and chef, they'd returned to their room at the Georges V,
where the movie stars and moguls stay, although sometimes they did
prefer the Ritz. Just as Mitch was pouring his brandy nightcap, they
heard the entrance of a hooker through the connecting door to the next
room. This was an occurrence unheard of before at the V, where they'd
always thought the walls were a whole lot thicker. Lucky for them the
whole thing went on in English.
The "gentleman" next door clearly asked
what the girl's name was and if she'd eaten yet. She told him her name
was Claire, and no, she hadn't. He ordered her some smoked salmon and
champagne. Very considerate.
Mitch drank his brandy as the couple had
casual conversation and waited for the food. Mona was particularly
excited by the idea of the hooker performing next door and wondered
what she looked like and how good her technique was. Mitch was pretty
aroused himself, although he wouldn't admit it. Mitch was a large,
powerful man who dressed impeccably and had pretty simple tastes in
sex. Mona didn't like to brag, but he was in no way a management
problem. He liked to look at her in pretty underwear and pretty
outfits. He liked to watch her taking some of the items off, but not
all of them. He didn't think perfectly naked was fun either for her or
for himself. The sight of her lovely body partially clothed or fully
clothed, but with no underpants, excited him most of all.
As soon as he got an erection, which was as
soon and often as she wanted him to, he had to get into her right away.
He was in such a big hurry, he rarely took the time to take his pants
off. He unzipped and jumped her like a cowboy wrestling down a steer,
banging her enthusiastically, either from the front or back, depending
on how confident he felt. He preferred her pussy tight, which was easy
enough to provide since they never did much in the way of foreplay.
Mona was totally crazy about him and rarely had to do a thing. Her
fantasies during the four minutes it took her lover to come alternated
between Leda's rape by the swan, penetration by the huge dick of the
bull that sired the Minotaur, and being a favorite sex slave in a
steamy, sultry, torrid harem of a sheik of Araby.
On blow job nights, it was another story
altogether. Blow jobs were specialty items she doled out carefully
because they took forever. Mitch liked thinking she loved him so much
that she could joyfully suck and lick him all night and he never had to
feel the slightest bit rushed. He did not like feeling rushed. Even the
tiniest threat of pressure to get it over with could keep him on the
brink for another hour. If the deal was for orgasm, she had to go for
completion no matter how tired she got of sucking and yanking. She only
sucked him to orgasm and swallowed when a deal was on the table.
Thursday night a deal had been on the table. They were getting married
so she could be a mother before her eggs got too old.
Then a surprising thing happened in the sex
next door. It turned out not to be a meat-and-potatoes job. The john
liked to spank noisily, and pretty soon the smacks and accompanying
moans traveled through the walls like shots across the water. (He must
have done some practicing.) In any case, this idea of punishment as an
accompaniment to sex had never occurred to Mitch before, and he was
captivated by it.
He told Mona to strip to her bra, garter
belt, and stockings, which of course she did. He sat on the chair by
the desk, by the door to the room next door. He emptied the brandy
glass and pressed it against the door, the better to hear what was
going on. Mona loved her costume—gold stockings, gold bra, and a gold
garter belt. Gold was one of her best colors. Her bottom was bare.
Still in her fuck-me shoes, she knelt on the carpet without even
wondering when last it had been shampooed. In a second she was between
his knees, unzipping his Sulka Cavalry twills. Mitch was not a badly
hung man. Maybe seven inches. Maybe as much as eight. His endowment was
certainly nothing to scoff at, and she was totally crazy about him. She
always got excited just thinking about his cock. Tonight the thing was
absolutely huge with the added thrill of hearing Claire cry, "Oui, oui,
oui!" each time a slap resounded on her French fanny and thighs.
Thinking about living happily ever after
with him, Mona settled into her job with a fervor unknown to her
before. Her tongue traveled round and round the head of Mitch's cock,
darting in and out of the hole the way he liked it, while her hands
moved energetically up and down the shaft. She got it really wet but
didn't slurp. Her energy and skill got the thing throbbing almost
immediately. Mitch was huffing and puffing and gasping and moaning like
a man in absolute paradise. He made a few experimental squeezes and
claplike pats at her bottom and came like a rocket in no time flat.
This time she knew she'd be a bride before September for sure.
But then the next morning he went home to
Long Island without any warning at all. First of all, any separation
between them was extremely unusual. But even more unusual was the fact
that he hadn't spoken to her once since.
One who knows the enemy and knows himself
will not be endangered in a hundred engagements. One who does not know
the enemy but knows himself will sometimes be victorious, sometimes
meet with defeat. One who knows neither the enemy nor himself will
invariably be defeated in every engagement.
Know your enemy. Mitch was a very dependent
man parading as an independent one, so it wasn't like him to sulk for
long about anything.
Know yourself. Mona would be the first to
admit that Thursday night she might have pushed him just a little too
hard about telling Cassie she was history, but the end of the evening
had turned out so well, she was certain the two of them were chapel
bound. She certainly had not anticipated that he would overreact on the
way home. They'd been planning to stay abroad for three weeks. In
France they would do the heart of Burgundy, the Côte d'Or, the
golden slope, where some of the most pricey wines in the world were
made. Then they'd hop down to Italy, where they'd been wooing two
important producers for several years. The two stuck together, even
though they were in different regions and were just on the verge of
changing distributors and signing with them. If Mitch pulled it off,
the well-known Tuscan Chiantis and Piedmont Barolos would give them a 3
percent increase in sales.
As for the audit, Mitch always left the
audits to Ira and never had any trouble. They had sales figures for a
company of $600,000,000. Every year there was a little audit. Every
year they paid a little extra, and it was no problem. But this year,
for some reason, Mitch was worried and had changed his mind about going
to Italy. He was a big baby. All she'd wanted was for him to set a
tentative September date for their wedding. Tentative was not absolute.
And she hoped to be pregnant by then anyway. He had to get used to the
idea. She'd waited for twelve years. She wasn't waiting anymore.
It did not take a brilliant strategist to
know that this was the time for action. He hated his wife, was rarely
in the same room with her. They had no interests in common. They hadn't
been together sexually for years. She ticked the items off on her
fingers. It made no sense for him to drag his feet anymore. Every
single day of Mona's life he insulted her and her ovaries and their
child-to-be with this delay. Was there something she was missing?
He had insulted her further by calling her
selfish (after their wonderful night) when she didn't go right home
with him. Anybody would agree it was much more selfish of him to go
home early than it was for her to stay two measly days more in Paris.
They were supposed to be having fun! Now he wouldn't even let her back
down and tell him she was very sensitive to his dilemma. Very sensitive.
"One who knows when he can fight, and when
he cannot fight, will be victorious."
The last thing Mona wanted to do was hurt
Cassie. She loved Cassie. She was totally sincere when she said,
"Mitch, Cassie is the greatest, honey. You underestimate her. Believe
me she's strong enough to face reality."
She studied her nail polish as Stace's
voice drifted back into her consciousness. He was talking about
chopping down entire redwood forests for his stupid lodge and illegally
shooting the wolves that had been reproducing like crazy, killing
dozens of cows and chickens and dogs. Stace had told her it was a
felony to shoot a wolf, but what was a rancher to do when the
government was run by a bunch of tree huggers who couldn't see a
natural disaster when it hit them in the face? Mona saw Cassie the same
way and totally agreed with him.
Mona's last manicure had been three days
ago in Paris, but it wasn't a very good job. Specks of burgundy polish
flecked her cuticles. She hated that. She tuned out, then in to the
conversation again when Stace started agitating for her and Mitch to
come see his magnificent building in Brilling or wherever it was, as if
they didn't see a bazillion million-dollar restaurants right here in
the tristate area every day. Stace was such a small-town boy.
Mona sighed. She wished Mitch would just
grow up and stop going psycho on her every few months. Every time he
did his psycho thing, she felt so alone and unprotected that he had to
pay big-time to make her feel safe and secure again. And then, of
course, she never really did. "Which ruler has the Tao?" She or Mitch?
"By next week the snow should all be
melted, and we can get you up on a horse," Stace was saying.
Horses. Snow in June? Nothing could be less
appealing. Mona didn't care if Robert Redford or anybody else lived
there, she wasn't going to Montana.
"Know your Terrain." Mona had strict rules
about traveling in America. She would go to New Orleans, yes. Chicago,
yes. Anywhere in California, yes. Tucson, yes. Kansas City, yes. Miami
and Boca, definitely. But Montana, hill country, and mountains, no! She
fluffed her burgundy curls, thinking for a moment about silver Indian
jewelry and leather skirts with fringes as shown in Vogue and Elle
recently in stories about "the new West." Still a definite no!
"We're planning to come out to the ranch in
August," she lied, gazing out the internal picture window of the office
she'd been sharing with Mitch for all of eight months. His moving her
into his office was supposed to signal his readiness to leave Cassie
and marry her. Had it happened? No, it had not. Did she have a right to
be annoyed? Yes, she most certainly did. Age was terrifying her.
Thirty-eight and unmarried was Not Acceptable.
"Know victory and defeat." But still the
office was something. Her old office had been airless, tiny, and
lacking a view of the cavernous insides of the temperature-controlled
warehouse that was the second love of her life. Seeing all that primo
vino gave her the same surge of pride she felt whenever she neared
Manhattan and saw the skyline of her and Mitch's playground rise right
out of boring old Queens.
The vino was housed in a building in
Syosset that was as large as an airline hangar. When Mona had first
encountered the aisles of wine racks in the much smaller warehouse that
Mitch had owned back then, she'd been a young bookkeeper, not
beautiful, but so determined to be somebody that she'd already left her
car dealership first husband with goals of knowing people of greater
taste than those who shopped for Saturns. When she'd seen all that
wine, she was reminded of the stacks in her childhood library where
books were lined up like hundreds of soldiers waiting for their chance
to march off into readers' little hearts. Just like a certain book had
marched permanently into hers, so had Mitch.
Now, twelve years later, she no longer did
the books or read very many of them. Sales Importers, Inc., was a big
company with a big inventory in several great big warehouses. She and
Mitch dispensed taste and memories by the hundreds of thousands of
cases, in small liquor stores and large ones, to Internet suppliers and
restaurants. Some of it was cash business, strictly secret. The money
was rolling in. They traveled extensively, studying vineyards and soils
and production all over the world, tasting wine after wine. They chose
their stock carefully, and didn't bother with wines that sold under ten
dollars. Mitch liked to focus on clients who were used to good wine and
drank several bottles of it every single night. Thousands of cases from
Italy, Germany, France, Chile, Australia, South Africa, and dozens of
wineries in the United States rested on metal racks that towered
fifteen feet, twenty feet, thirty-five feet into the steel beams that
held up the roof. Security guards watched their stock at night, and two
forklifts were kept busy chugging around all day long on the cement
floor, moving orders in and out. And this was only here.
The company was doing so well that they had
nearly a hundred sales reps traveling around the country, servicing the
thousands of accounts that were solidly on the books. Mona herself did
a huge business, and Mitch was the Bordeaux futures expert, the
gambler. And they had their lobby in Washington to keep things status
quo. Mona was proud of all that she had accomplished, but all that
mattered to her really was love. She was frequently tortured by doubts
that Mitch would really keep his promise and marry her.
She made an irritated noise. Down on the
floor was that IRS guy. This was another thing that had been carefully
orchestrated. Ira had particularly advised them to be out of the
country during all their audits. He'd told them it was crucial never to
have a personal involvement with any governmental agent, especially not
an IRS agent. Ira warned them that those small-minded people were
terrorists, armed by the Feds and dangerous. You had to insulate
yourself from them, and he was the insulator. Now she could see that he
was absolutely right. This man was someone they didn't know, who was
not supposed to be here until tomorrow, and his presence made her
nervous as hell. He was walking around the precious racks as if it were
a great big gold field just waiting for him to plunder. Somehow he
looked familiar, a little like the rat Bruce, who'd dumped her in
junior high.
Where Ira was, where Teddy was, where Mitch
himself was, Mona had no idea. But here she was, all alone, holding the
fort against a threat too terrifying even to imagine. It was the story
of her life. A nuclear attack, a holocaust could not be worse
persecution than this tax thing. Here was an enemy she did not know and
could not prepare for. The whole thing was out of her hands. She tried
not to let the fact that she was not the true and actual Mrs. Mitchell
Sales, of Sales Importers, Inc., arouse what Mitch called "her paranoid
side."
"We'll take the horses and go on a pack
trip," Stace was saying.
"That sounds wonderful," Mona murmured,
allowing herself a moment's amusement at Stace's thinking he was
important enough to lure her out to the middle of the country—where she
was not sure planes even landed—with the promise of a large dumb animal
to sit on. She already had one of those right here.
"What about those auctions in Italy you
were telling me about? We still doing that?" he demanded.
"Oh, yes, the auctions in Verona. We have
it all planned." Mona said this in her sweetest voice, even though she
and Mitch had already been and done their buying at the auctions in
Verona. The auctions were at the end of March.
The IRS agent disappeared in the racks. A
minute later he rounded a corner, and a forklift about to make a pickup
at waist level almost pronged him in the groin. His wild scramble to
get away caused her to giggle.
"What's funny? Is Mitch there? I want to
say hey."
Mona tuned back into Stace for the last
time. Well, he wasn't the only one who wanted to say hey to Mitch. The
man was not picking up his e-mails, not picking up his cell phone. If
she didn't know for a fact that Cassie was a dodo, she might think
something was up.
"Well, honey, I wish I could put you on
with Mitch, but you know I'm handling all the details of the Italy trip
myself. You can certainly tell me all your special requests." She
tapped her fingers on the desk. Time to hang up.
"I just want to say hey."
"Well, of course, you want to say hey. And
Mitch wants to say hey, too, but you know, Mitch. Always on the run.
How about I have him call you as soon as he comes in?"
Finally Stace was ready to hang up, and
Mona's jet lag dizziness hit. She checked her watch. Mitch was really
making her sweat. She hadn't planned to come in today. She'd planned to
touch base with him and make up last night, then sleep late, and have a
beauty afternoon with a salt rub, a massage, a manicure, and her hair
colored in the afternoon. But he hadn't come in. She checked her
e-mails again, then dialed his cell.
"Hello?"
"Ah—" Mona hesitated. It was Cassie.
It is essential for a general to be
tranquil and obscure, upright and self-disciplined, and able to stupefy
the eyes and ears of the officers and troops, keeping them ignorant.
"Hello, Mona. Mitch isn't here right now."
"Cassie, sweetheart. How are you? I was
just going to call you."
"Really, why?" That bland, blank voice
always set Mona's teeth on edge.
"Why? What kind of question is that? I miss
you, of course, silly. Haven't seen you in months and months. And Mitch
is off the radar screen, too. He didn't come in this morning. Know
where he is? I've got clients looking for him."
Cassie didn't answer, and Mona went on
super alert. She had special powers and respected them. Every reader
she'd ever consulted had said the same thing. She was acutely sensitive
to auras. She could tell a stranger's future. She especially knew who
were the winners and losers by their smallest gestures. She could also
tell what people were thinking about her.
Mona was so sensitive, in fact, that
sometimes her body felt like one giant vibrating nerve. She'd read that
rocks and stones and beer cans and bottles that looked solid were
really filled with cells that were moving all the time. She was like
those cells in matter. She might look like a fragile flower with
trembling petals, but really she was the cells in stone. The puppet
master of everything; nothing could break or outlast her. She was never
lost, whatever challenge she took on. Never. She never lost.
"Are you okay, Cassie? You sound kind of
stressed," she said warily.
"Well, I am stressed," Cassie replied
tartly.
"Where are you? Why are you talking on
Mitch's cell phone?"
"I'll tell you in a few minutes, Mona. Just
stay where you are." Cassie broke the connection.
CHAPTER 20
MONA GOT UP AND MARCHED straight to the
bathroom. She
surveyed herself in the mirror. She looked pretty good for someone who
felt old and ugly no matter what she did. She gave herself a happy
little smile and touched up her makeup. Then she galloped down the
metal stairway to the floor, where one of her four-inch spike fuck-me
shoes suddenly caught on a tiny invisible crack in the cement. Her
chronically weak right ankle gave way under her.
"Ow!"
The IRS agent, lurking in the stacks,
reached out and
caught her deftly, preventing her from falling on the hard floor just
as she'd hoped he would. No man or boy had ever been able to resist her
except the one from junior high and the ones who were gay.
"Oh my," she cried.
"You okay?" The man's very nice blue eyes
lit up only for
a second at the sight of her pretty legs, then switched right to
concern.
She gazed at him, sizing him up. The eyes
were deep blue,
like the Mediterranean. Gentle, she could tell. He was attractive, nice
build. Nice mouth. His suit was not expensive, though, and she figured
him for one of life's losers. From her contact with many men, Mona knew
that the jerk who'd let her down in seventh grade could definitely be
hers now.
This assessment of the IRS agent made her
feel a lot
better about life in general. She did not touch his IRS agent biceps to
test for muscle. She was nothing if not subtle. She forgot that she was
supposed to be out of town for governmental agents and thought this
not-bad-looking man might do her some good. She could turn him. You
could never have too many IRS agents on your side. "Internal
spies—employ people who hold government positions."
"Thank you. I'm so embarrassed. That was so
clumsy." She
tried to stand on her terrible turned ankle. She did not touch him with
such subtlety, only an expert would know she had. The whole thing about
men was that you had to know how to go about winning them. Nothing
overt, ever.
"Did I hurt you?" She detected a little
excitement on his
side and let her ankle flop over again, but once again did not cave
enough to encourage him.
"Oh no." He created more space between
them. "Ha-ha,
there you go."
"Oh, thank you." Mona gave him a worshipful
glance. "What's your name? I'm supposed to know you, right? I know I
know you."
"Charles Schwab," he said, keeping his gaze
at eye level.
He had as much confidence in the effect of his name as Mona did of her
looks.
Mona gave out a great whoop of joy and
grabbed her chest.
She'd made a mistake and underestimated him. "Oh, I've seen you on TV.
Really, I had no idea you were a client. Are you buying for your firm?
How exciting. Who's your account executive? I can't believe we've never
met."
"Sort of." He showed her his I.D., then
passed her an
Internal Revenue Service card with his name on it. A pretty blush
warmed her tan. She hadn't underestimated him. She always knew
everything.
"Oh my, I'm really getting off on the wrong
foot with
you, aren't I? Revenue agent, what a joke on me," she murmured.
"No, ma'am. It's no joke."
"I mean, I thought you guys were all toads.
Oops. I
didn't mean that." Mona noticed that the man's eyes went as cold as a
hit man's.
But Schwab laughed pleasantly. "A lot of
people think
we're a lot worse than toads."
"Well, I'm Mona Whitman. Are we getting
audited again?"
"Yes, indeed."
She gave him a teasing frown. "Well, I'm a
little hurt
about this, if you'd like to know the truth. Every year it's something
and every year we come out clean. There are so many compliances in our
business. It's, like, the most regulated business on earth. But you
know that." She heaved a great sigh. "Frankly I thought by now we'd be
getting a medal from you people."
She paused for breath.
"And then, after doing everything right, to
have to face
such scrutiny. What went wrong this time? Ira, our accountant, answered
every single question you asked. It took him months to get all that
paper together. No one thinks about all those trees we have to cut
down. The whole thing just upsets me so much." She gave Schwab a
tremulous, searching smile. "Why us?"
He smiled back, almost knocking her out
with his white
teeth.
"Frankly, I'm just the concept person. I
consult for the
restaurants. I bet you didn't know they need designers to plan their
cellars and menus. I love the company so much. That's why this hurts,
you know?" She massaged her foot with one hand, then slid her shoe back
on. "That's a lot better."
Schwab was silent, so Mona took this as a
sign to keep
talking.
"I thought the IRS was getting nicer these
days. Didn't I
read that in the Times? Are you persecuting Mitch just because he's
successful? Or what?"
"How's that ankle?"
"It's terrible. I'll probably never walk
straight again.
But what can you do, right? Listen, is there something I can help you
with? Mitch isn't here right now, and neither is Ira. They were
expecting you tomorrow."
"Yeah, it's too bad about his stroke."
"Ira had a stroke?" Mona grabbed her chest
a second time.
"No, Mr. Sales did."
"Oh no, you're mistaken," she said
confidently.
"I was with his wife this morning. She told
me."
"She told you?" Mona's face froze.
"Yes, when we were over at the house."
Mona snorted. "Oh dear, I'm so sorry you
had to meet her.
Was it terrible for you?"
"It was unusual."
"I'll bet." Mona knew that silly Cassie
must have been
terrorized by a visit from the IRS and unable to deal with the stress,
so she'd blurted out this ridiculous, transparent lie because she
couldn't think of an effective strategy like Mona.
Schwab let out a laugh. "She called the
police on me.
Four squad cars, guns, and everything."
Mona erupted into tinkling laughter
herself. "That's
priceless. Cassie's a dear in her own way, but she's been a real
financial drain. It's like a sickness, a big burden on him. Poor man.
Mitch has been a real saint to put up with her." Mona raised her
eyebrows. "A wife like that, Mr. Schwab, can ruin a man. But very sweet
as a person."
"Are you telling me that Mr. Sales didn't
have a stroke?"
Mona laughed again. "No, no. Of course not.
This is the
first I've heard of it. I just spoke to Cassie a few minutes ago, and
she didn't mention a thing about it to me."
Mona took special note that there were
brown spots on
Charles Schwab's shirt cuffs. His hat looked as if it had fleas. The
blue eyes that she'd thought were sweet only moments ago were marbles
now. He was not thinking of making time with her.
"That's good news," he murmured.
"Poor Cassie, you really can't believe
anything she says.
If someone's not with her every minute, she forgets to take her
medicine. It's very sad. Can I have Ira call you tomorrow?"
"No need. We have a meeting scheduled."
Mona thought she might just lead Schwab out
to his car. "It's just that nobody who knows anything is here right
now, and I have
to—"
"That's no problem. I don't need anyone. I
was just
looking around, getting the lay of the land."
"I'm concerned that you're being ignored."
"No, no, not at all. I like to get the feel
for a place
and the people. Some people think it's absolutely all in the paper, but
you'd be surprised how helpful impressions can be. You, for example,
have been very helpful."
"I have? I'll walk you to your car," Mona
said happily.
"Not with that ankle, you won't."
"No, it's fine, really. You know, you
remind me of my
first boyfriend. It's just amazing." Actually, the handsome Bruce had
never given Mona the time of day, but she had loved him with all her
heart. Probably still did. She gazed at Schwab. "He was the
best-looking boy I ever met."
"No kidding." Charlie tipped his hat
without losing his
crooked grin.
"When you come back will you teach me about
audits? I
don't know a thing about the business side."
"I know. You're the concept person." He
smiled. Clearly
the man was very attracted to her.
Mona thought this encounter was going
extremely well.
What a break that Cassie had called the cops. Giving herself the
benefit of the doubt here, even she couldn't have thought of a better
stunt than that. Schwab grinned as they walked out into the parking
lot, where he remarked, "You look like you're doing okay with that
ankle."
"Oh, it hurts like mad, but what can you
do? Hey, maybe
I'll see you tomorrow. Does your wife also work for the IRS?"
Charlie IRS Schwab actually stopped short
and looked at
her as if no one in the world had ever asked him that question. Mona
put her hand to her mouth in surprise. She couldn't believe she'd said
such a thing. She never made mistakes like that.
Schwab didn't reply. He gave her a little
wave, got into
a beaten-up black Buick, and drove off. Trembling, Mona drew her own
cell phone out of her pocket and dialed Mitch's number. This time
Cassie didn't pick up.
CHAPTER 21
MONA KNEW SHE WAS ABOUT to have an
asthma attack.
Asthma attacks were terrifying. First the wheezing, then the throat
closing up. Choking and gasping for air. Water filling her lungs and
static filling her brain. Panic that she might have a heart attack,
too. She could just see herself collapsing in the parking lot with no
one there to save her. Well, maybe someone would save her. There were
no windows in the warehouse, but surely someone would save her.
As a child, Mona had barely survived many
asthma attacks.
In fact, it was her first bad attack when she was only three that had
caused her mother—who disappeared for long stretches of time—to take
her to the hospital, leave her there, and not come back for her for
nine whole years. During all those years, each time she had an attack
her bitch of a grandmother (who was so rich) and her aunts (who didn't
like her one bit and always hinted she was illegitimate) would scold
her and tell her to get a grip until she was almost at death's door.
They always let her get really sick before they'd finally bundle her up
and take her to the emergency room. Death's door every time. No wonder
she was insecure.
She felt so sad and lonely and panicked
right now, she
could hardly breathe. Mitch always knew what to do when she felt an
attack coming on. He'd calm her right down, then he'd yell at someone
to get her a warm drink and tell her a joke to distract her while they
waited for it. Usually the joke was something about balls and chains,
how he had two. Mitch was a big kidder, and she loved him so much that
she hadn't had a single full-blown attack in all the years she'd known
him. Only little mini ones that all had to do with Cassie.
As she stood in the gap in the parking lot
made by
Mitch's missing Mercedes, she scratched the first mosquito bite of the
season. It was in the middle of her knee and starting to swell like a
huge hive. Maybe it was a hive. She was an allergic person. She panted
a little, experimenting with her wheeze and heartbeat. Her brain was as
clear as Evian, however. Of course it made total sense. For Mitch not
to call her, he had to be really sick. And since the first day they'd
met, he'd never been too sick to call her.
She took control of her panic, found her
car key, and
unlocked the door of her little red Jaguar. She slid in, grimacing a
little at the blistering heat of the tan leather seat and the sunbaked
stale air. She fanned herself with the take-out menu of a Chinese
restaurant she used when Mitch was at home with Cassie, and dialed Ira
Mandel's number on the car phone.
"Local spies. Employ people from the local
district."
Cissy, the receptionist, answered on the
first ring. "Mandel and Blathar."
"Cissy, it's Mona. How are you doing,
honey?"
"I'm doing just fine, Miss Whitman. He's
not here right
now."
"Who isn't there?"
"Ira isn't here, and Teddy isn't, either."
"Do you know where they are, Cissy? This is
very
important."
"No, I don't."
"This is so urgent, it's really life and
death."
"I still don't know, Miss Whitman."
"Cissy, honey, how could you not know where
they are? You
know everything."
"I don't know everything, Miss Whitman."
"Of course, you do. You sit right there by
the door and
they always tell you what to say before they go out."
"Well, they didn't this time."
"Now, Cissy. Who's on your side, huh? Who
buys you
perfume in Paris? And I got you some more of that kind you like. I have
it right here in my bag. And you know what else? I brought you a
Pashmina scarf and a Prada bag."
"Miss Whitman, you shouldn't do that."
Cissy's voice
quavered. She was a pushover.
"Well, friends are friends. How about you
don't tell me
and I just suggest possibilities."
No answer.
"Did they go out to lunch?"
"Nope."
"Are they in the conference room?"
"Nope."
"Are they in a meeting somewhere?"
"Uh-uh."
"How about the hospital? Are they at the
hospital?"
"Well, now that you mention that, Miss
Whitman, I think
maybe they did go to the hospital. Mr. Mandel was very upset."
"How is Mr. Sales doing?"
"I'm so sorry, Miss Whitman. I don't think
he's so good."
"Thank you, honey. You're just the
greatest. I'm going to
get those little gifts to you right away."
"No, no, don't even think about it," Cissy
said quickly. "I don't want to lose my job."
"Oh, you won't lose your job. And I won't
forget you,
okay? Friends are friends, right?"
Mona's blood thundered in her ears as she
hung up. Now
she could feel her breath rattle. Asthma, for sure, the one time Mitch
wasn't there to calm her down and save her. Tears came and ruined her
mascara. Mitch, the one true love of her life, really was in the
hospital, and no one had told her. So cruel. So cold of the family to
ignore her like this. Teddy was her friend. She couldn't bear it. Mitch
must be so upset without her beside him. The hurt feeling, the terrible
burden for her terrible young life that she carried like a heavy
boulder, grew and grew. The betrayal was terrible. No one had told her.
They were trying to keep things from her. Mona's mind began to race.
If large numbers of trees move, they are
approaching. If
there are many visible obstacles in the heavy grass, it is to make us
suspicious. If the birds take flight, there is an ambush. If the
animals are afraid, enemy forces are mounting an attack.
It was perfectly clear to her that Cassie,
the enemy,
must have fed her husband rat poison because she found out Mitch was
leaving her. Mona clutched her chest. She and Mitch were getting
married. They had a new house all ready. She'd stopped taking the pill.
Any day she'd be pregnant. Only the date, only telling Cassie—that one
last dreadful little detail—had been holding them up. Once he told
Cassie, there would be no more pretending.
Now Mona knew that Mitch had not been so
angry with her,
after all. He must have gone home to tell Cassie the marriage was over,
and the spoiled, selfish, infantile woman had put rat poison in his
coffee. Another wheeze tickled her throat at the thought of Cassie
murdering her husband. Tearful and sweaty in her jaunty red sports car,
she dialed Mark Cohen's number.
"It is subtle, subtle! There are no areas
in which one
does not employ spies."
"Doctor's office."
"Marta, it's Mona. I just got back from
Paris and heard
about Mitch. This is terrible. I didn't know anything about it. When
did it happen?" She could barely control her voice. This was no act.
She was distraught.
"Friday."
"Friday! Friday!"
"Yes, sometime in the afternoon."
"Oh my God, where is he? I have to see him."
"He's at North Fork. But he's in intensive
care. He can't
have visitors."
"Oh my God!" Mona shook her head. Her
burgundy curls
bounced on her shoulders. "Intensive care. I had no idea. Is Mark
there?"
"He's with a patient."
"What happened? Tell me everything."
"He had a stroke, Mona."
"Oh Jesus, a stroke." Mona was silent for a
moment. Could
a person get a stroke from rat poison?
"Mona, are you there?"
"I'm just so upset. Would you tell Mark to
call me right
away? On my cell." Mona hung up. She felt horrible, more than horrible.
But she couldn't go back into the warehouse with the news. Everybody
would panic, and she had to keep her mind on Mitch.
She decided to go see him and keep mum to
everyone else.
She dialed her assistant, Carol. "Honey, I'm taking off. I'll see you
tomorrow. Anything comes up, call me on my cell." She tried to keep
good cheer in her voice.
She turned and caught her reflection in the
rearview
mirror. Her weeping had really messed her up. Mascara was all over the
place, and little rivulets snaked through her foundation. She
definitely couldn't go to the hospital looking like this. She had to be
strong for Mitch. She had to look really good, like an angel from
heaven, to bring him back to her. To look that good she had to go home.
She grabbed her sunglasses and put them on, hit the ignition. The car
growled to life. As she started to back out, she saw the black Mercedes
in the rearview mirror. Oh shit. It was on the service road, heading
this way. For a tiny second her heart spiked. Mitch had done it again:
The whole thing was a big joke. He was fine, after all. No stroke. Then
she saw that Mitch wasn't the driver, and she kept going.
She agonized all the way home. How could
this be
happening to her? It was like cancer, the atom bomb striking. The
Nazis. Something out of a spy movie or a thriller. Her lifelong enemy
had done something to him. He'd been fine, perfectly fine, on Friday.
First the audit, now the stroke. It was too much. Now in the mirror,
she saw the Mercedes behind her. It looked as if Cassie was following
her home. Too fucking much.
The major configurations of terrain are
accessible,
suspended, stalemated, constricted, precipitous, and expansive.
Mona lived in a town house complex in
Roslyn. She'd lived
there for ten years with the profound belief that any minute she was
going to marry. She'd been frugal to a fault. She had two completely
inadequate floors. Downstairs, a tiny kitchen and small living
room/dining area. Upstairs, a bedroom and den. Full bath and powder
room. There were hardly any closets at all. The only way to make the
place work for her was to give away her clothes after three or four
wearings. She did not like her neighbors, who were either old, very
young with children, or middle-aged, divorced, and desperate. The old
people wanted to talk. The young couples had noisy children who left
toys on the sidewalks for people to trip over. And the divorced women
wanted to go on trips with her. Mitch didn't like them, either, and
never came there. Not only that, the garage was not attached. It was
cut into the hill behind the house. She didn't like to use it.
Today only one thing went right. She found
a parking spot
out front and hurried into the house. She hadn't seen the Mercedes for
the last two blocks but slammed the door and double locked it anyway.
She didn't want to see Cassie no matter what.
As soon as Mona was inside her second-rate
house, her
whole history did a number on her impossible situation. She felt even
more terrible that she hadn't been informed immediately of Mitch's
illness. She was his partner, as important to the company as he was.
Didn't anybody realize that? She was so careful and meticulous about
everything. Everything was arranged just so. It wasn't right for Teddy
not to tell her this, her friend Mark, their accountant Ira. This had
to be some kind of conspiracy to keep her isolated and in the dark.
Once inside the house, she focused on an
old complaint,
her lack of help and closets. With the millions in business she brought
in, she should have a full-time staff to take care of her house and
clothes. When she'd arrived home yesterday afternoon, no one was there
to carry the heavy suitcases upstairs, so she'd been forced to unpack
downstairs in the living room. As usual, she'd laid everything out on
the sofa, on the floor, in a very precise way. Her stuff was all over
the place. The suits and coats and dresses and tops and shoes and
purses from her trip were in piles, carefully sorted for the cleaners
and the laundry whether she'd worn them or not. She was too upset to
appreciate the profusion of pale colors and expensive fabrics strewn
all over the white, top-of-the-line wool, mile-high shag carpet and
white silk sofa and different patterned white silk throw pillows with
gold bullion fringe.
A wheeze clutched at her throat. She felt
sick. She felt
hurt. She felt like a tiger with a sick cub she had to save. She felt
the hot breath of the crazy, unloved wife and the IRS Nazis coming to
take away everything she cared about in life. All those feelings were
roiling around in a single wounded bird. It was just too much.
The cheap doorbell of her second-rate house
sounded its
half-assed dingdong. At the same time the doorknocker clanged against
its fake brass plate. Mona's heart almost stopped. Shit. The enemy had
actually dared to follow her right into her private home. "As for
constricted configurations, if we occupy them first we must fully
deploy throughout them in order to await the enemy."
She raced up the stairs. Peeled off her
skirt, threw on a
pair of baggy black pants and a blue work shirt. Grabbed her hair and
pulled it back into a ponytail. In the bathroom she scrubbed at the
dissolving makeup with a washrag until only her healthy tan showed.
The doorbell and knocker continued to sound
as she flew
in bare feet down the stairs. In the living room, wheezing and
coughing, she grabbed clothes, flung what she could back into the
cases, jammed the cases into the closet. She was throwing the rest of
the stuff into the powder room when Cassie started shouting through the
door.
"For heaven's sake, Mona, open the damn
door. I know
you're in there."
"Cassie, honey, is it you?"
"Of course, it's me. Who else?"
Simulated chaos is given birth from
control. The
illusion of fear is given from strength. Order and disorder are a
question of numbers.
Mona closed the powder room door. Without
her shoes she
looked a whole lot shorter. Without her makeup, hardly dazzling at all.
She was wheezing steadily. She held a handkerchief to her mouth. She
was coughing, trying to clear the phlegm beginning to clog her bronchi.
She flung the door open and faced the helpless, nonworking weakling who
all these years had been the only obstacle to her happiness.
CHAPTER 22
MONA'S EYES POPPED at the change in
Cassie. She stood
outside only a few seconds, wearing a scarf and sunglasses à la
Audrey Hepburn. The disguise was pretty good for someone who didn't
know what to look for. Mona knew right away what major event had
occurred in Cassie's life, however, and from all appearances it was
extremely recently. She took a moment to study her. The big, dark
shades hid Cassie's eyes, but not the telltale red cheeks and yellowing
jawline. Gone was the soft chin, the folds by the sides of Cassie's
mouth, and the pale, trusting manner that had distinguished her rival.
Mona was prepared for everything in life, but she was unprepared for
this. Self-improvement was the very last thing she would have expected
from Cassie.
Cassie had been at least four inches
shorter and many
pounds plumper than Mona the last time she'd seen her. She looked
thinner and taller now. In fact, she looked like a completely different
person as she pushed her way into the house.
Whenever possible victory should be
achieved by
diplomatic coercion, thwarting the enemy's plans and alliances, and
frustrating his strategy.
Mute but for her wheezing, Mona let her in.
Luckily, she
had been careful almost to a fault about making changes in her life
every step of the way. Therefore at this moment, in this place, she had
the moral advantage of having absolutely nothing to hide, and Cassie
had the moral disadvantage of being out of her mind with fury.
"You fucking bitch. You will not get away
with this."
Cassie stopped in the middle of the living
room. As cold
as an ice statue at an Italian wedding, she assessed Mona's white sofa,
white rug. White silk throw pillows with the gold bullion fringe. White
curtains with the gold braid and balls. Glass coffee table with
expensive brass base. Everything white and gold. Cassie's survey halted
at each of three silk flower arrangements: roses, lilies, orchids. Each
arrangement was white and each one was in a gold filigree vase. There
was not a live plant, not a silver candlestick, not an extra
embellishment anywhere. Also, the house was as neat as if no one really
lived there, which 90 percent of the time was true. Mona had pretty
much moved to her new address. Still, the place looked exactly the same
as it always had. And the new owner would take possession in three
weeks' time. The young couple had bought it "as is."
"Cassie, Cassie. What is it? What's wrong?"
Mona was
shocked to see Cassie so aggressively angry, so she decided to counter
hostility with love and understanding. She went right over to her
lifelong enemy to give her a warm embrace.
Cassie jumped back, stiffening like a cobra.
No wonder Mitch found Cassie to be a cold
bitch. "Tell
me, what is it? What's wrong?" Mona said, not letting it bother her.
"I told you to stay where you were, Mona.
Why did you
drive away?" Cassie spat at her just like an alley cat.
"What?" Mona coughed.
"I told you on the phone to stay where you
were. I wanted
to talk to you. You are despicable. You are a—"
"Stop, Cassie. Don't upset yourself." Mona
wheezed and
hacked, just like Mimi in the last scene of La Bohème, Mitch's
favorite opera.
Cassie's witchlike expression didn't
change. "I hope you
choke to death," she said coldly.
"Cassie, please." Mona coughed
uncontrollably some more,
sounding bad and feeling very hurt. Any sign of weakness historically
had generated sympathy from Cassie. This response was spiteful and
totally unlike her. She put the handkerchief to her mouth and tried to
spit a little blood. As she inspected the blob of sputum that came out,
Cassie came alive with a shriek.
"Oh my God, you've had your face lifted!
Jesus Christ, I
don't believe it." Cassie flapped her arms like a whooping crane trying
to fly. "I don't believe this. Jesus Christ. I don't believe this. When
did this happen?"
This was an incendiary attack, just
unforgivable. "What
are you talking about, Cassie, you're flipping your lid," Mona retorted.
"Everything that comes out of your mouth is
total shit,
you damn freak. You've had your face done!" Cassie spit out. She took a
moment to examine and absorb it, then gasped. "And your boobs!"
"I don't know what you're talking about."
Mona chose to
effect sadness at such a misunderstanding. She took a step back,
shrinking into her work shirt, the only piece of clothing she owned
from Old Navy. She did the turn well, acting as if Cassie were the
hurtful aggressor and that every harsh word unsettled and grieved her.
"Cassie stop this, please."
"What did you do, everything? Nose, eyes,
chin, neck? Oh
my God. Every goddamn thing. Who paid for this, my husband, who doesn't
believe in plastic surgery!" Cassie was shrieking and stamping her feet
now, completely out of control. "You fucking, fucking bitch. And you're
only, what, not even fucking forty?"
"Somebody must be telling you stories,
Cassie."
"Don't you dare walk away from me. You
fucking bitch. So
this is why you haven't shown your face in my house for three whole
years."
"I need my inhaler, Cassie." Mona actually
hoped she
would choke nearly to death and show Cassie what an unreasonable bitch
she was being.
Cassie blocked the way, screaming some
more. "I would not
have believed that you of all people—ugly, fawning bitch—would try to
take everything I have. Not in a million years. Look at that face. You
have a new nose. New lips!"
"I don't know what you're talking about. I
was at your
house only last month."
"Not when I was there," Cassie screamed.
Mona inched past her. She knew that people
were
frequently truly nuts, they really were. She dealt every day with wine
nuts who weren't careful about temperature, drank six bottles of a
case, then claimed the whole lot was "off" and wanted a full refund.
Clearly, she had underestimated Cassie. Mitch was right: The woman was
disturbed, a mental case. This was her second incident today. Maybe she
was having a psychotic break.
Mona wanted to call the police and document
the event.
She reached her purse that was hanging by its expensive strap on the
kitchen door. But neither her inhaler nor cell phone were in it.
"You and my husband. You and my company.
You and my
credit cards. And just look at this"—Cassie pointed her finger at Mona
like a loaded gun—"the dowdy frump with the receding chin, the bad
skin, and the big nose, a fucking swan." Cassie was positively frothing
at the mouth. "How dare you? How dare you? You little fuck! Goddamn it,
Mona. That's my husband's handkerchief, too."
"Oh please, take it." Mona held out the
sodden
handkerchief.
"I will not touch anything you've touched,"
Cassie
screamed.
Where were the cops when you needed one?
Mona was
beginning to think Cassie's craziness was an intentional malicious act
to drown her. Literally. Because fluid was just filling up her
bronchial tubes and throat. She knew that people died this way. Once
you started coughing, you could not stop. The hacking went on and on.
The pain was terrible. You could crack your ribs coughing. She sucked
some air. "Cassie, you're"—she gasped for oxygen—"you're upsetting
yourself for nothing."
"I'm upset for everything, you bitch. Don't
you
understand yet? Mitch had a stroke. Everything's come out. You will be
punished. You will go to jail!"
Mona's response was an artistic gurgle.
"He's in the hospital, and he's not going
to make it. You
don't get my husband, or anything else, understand? It's over."
Sure, sure, it was over, but not the way
Cassie thought.
Mona pointed at the kitchen. "Okay if I get some water?"
"No, it is not. I'm on to you. Don't even
think about
trying anything."
"Trying what? Stop this, Cassie, I can't
breathe. Do you
want to kill me?"
"Did you really think you would get away
with leaving me
broke!" Cassie just wouldn't stop.
"I don't know what you're talking about.
You're hurt.
You're imagining things. You're recovering from surgery. You need a
doctor."
Cassie sucked air. "I'll kill you. I will
kill you."
Mona shook her head sadly. "Oh Cassie,
Cassie, it's not
smart to threaten me. It's not smart. Stop and think for a moment. I
know you're lonely and sad right now. I know how you feel. For years
I've been urging Mitch to spend more time with you. I begged him. Every
day I told him. All work and no play makes a dull husband. Would he
listen? No, but he was working for you all the time. And now he's had a
stroke."
Mona's tone changed to curiosity. She
couldn't help
herself. "Let me see your face. You've had a lot of work done, Cassie."
"I was in a car accident," Cassie spat back.
"Well, good for you. I'm proud of you. Gee
Cassie, all
that liposuction under your chin. How much did they take, a quart?"
Cassie's eyes were hidden behind the
shades, but Mona
knew she'd made a hit. She shook her ponytail, holding on to her lead.
"Don't think I'm not hurt by the way you're acting. After all I've done
for your family. You know I've loved you like a sister. I wouldn't hurt
you or Mitch for anything in the whole world. Or the kids." Mona said
all this between gagging and coughing.
"Since when is stealing not hurting?"
Cassie screamed.
"I need my inhaler, Cassie." Mona broke the
inhaler
impasse. "Fine. I'll die on the spot. And you will have two deaths on
your conscience." She threw herself on the sofa, panted and gurgled.
She gasped for air and choked.
"Two? Two?" Cassie screamed. "I've never
hurt a single
soul in all my life. I never shoplifted a Chiclet, stole somebody's
man, never had any fun." She stamped her foot. "I should have. God
knows I should have."
"What did you do to Mitch?" Mona cried.
"Nothing, he keeled over. All I did was
watch."
"So you watched, how awful. Poor Mitch, all
alone," Mona
wailed.
"He's not alone. He's with me, and guess
what? Every
goddamned thing you bought is going back."
That was it. Mona had had it up to here.
The maniac had
to be stopped right now. Her lovely body was racked with great heaving,
hawking coughs. She hacked up some more globs into Mitch's
handkerchief. It was gross, but finally she hit pay dirt. A streak of
blood.
"Cassie, listen please. I know you're
upset, but listen
carefully. I need to go to the emergency room. I need Adrenalin. Do you
understand?"
"Pooh, everybody knows you're a big faker.
Where's the
stuff you bought?"
"I don't know what's happened to you, but
you're going to
find out you have made a very big mistake. You're wrong about
everything. Don't have another death on your conscience. I need a
hospital now. Are you going to be a murderer?"
Cassie paused, but only for a second. "Get
in the car,"
she said angrily.
CHAPTER 23
MONA SUFFERED TERRIBLY in the car. She
was flooded
with fluid. It came out of her nose and her eyes and clogged her lungs.
Her lungs actually itched. Whoever heard of itching lungs? She knew she
could die before she got to the emergency room. And right in the middle
of this catastrophe, selfish Cassie would not give up her rage. Mona
had never seen anything like Cassie on a rampage. She was really pissed
off. It seemed to Mona that she was driving two miles an hour on
purpose just so Mona would expire before they got to the hospital. Then
she drove right by.
"You're crazy. What are you doing? You
passed the
hospital," Mona cried.
"I did?" Cassie said.
"Where are you going?"
"To the walk-in."
"The walk-in?" Mona was horrified. She
didn't want a
walk-in clinic. She wanted to go to North Fork, where Mitch was. "Why?"
"It's faster," Cassie replied, driving the
Mercedes one
mile an hour. She'd actually slowed down.
Mona made a few death rattles. "Please,
Cassie. Take me
to North Fork," she pleaded.
"It takes too long. All those people
waiting with their
headaches and broken arms. This will be faster." Cassie drove to the
walk-in on Forest Avenue. When they got there, Cassie speeded up.
"Cassie, there's the walk-in."
"Okay, okay." Cassie slowed down and pulled
into the
parking lot. "You're here. You're not going to die, you faker. You
never do. Get out."
Uh-oh. Mona realized she had a problem. She
had only
Cassandra Sales credit cards in her wallet. She could not use one of
those in front of Cassie. She'd wanted to make a scene to document the
danger to which Cassie in her evil jealousy had subjected her. But if
she collapsed in the waiting room, Cassie might take over the
situation, get her credit cards out of her purse and see them. For a
second Mona was stymied. She always anticipated everything, but she
hadn't anticipated this. She hadn't changed the cards when she came
back from Paris.
Never mind. She stayed in the car, trying
to catch her
breath. "Leave me here," she said. "I'll go in alone."
"No, no, I want to go with you." Cassie got
out of the
car and came around to the passenger side.
"Please Cassie, you're scaring me."
"Oh yeah? Well, keep away from my husband.
He deserves to
die in peace." She opened the door.
"I don't know what's happened to you," Mona
sputtered.
"Figure it out, Mona. I found out what you
did to me."
For a second Mona thought Cassie was actually going to hit her. She
cringed in the car seat.
"Get out." Mona's show of fear caused
Cassie to stand
aside.
Mona crawled out of the car.
"Go get your Adrenalin," Cassie told her.
"I'd be very
surprised if you really need it."
Mona dragged herself into the horrid
walk-in. She felt
triumphant. Cassie drove away, but she was still the weakling. Cassie
had responded to the cues and spared her rival. Therefore, Cassie was
the one defeated. Mona hated her. As soon as she was inside the
building, she found her inhaler. She took it out of her purse and used
it. Inhalers were magic. They really were. Her inhaler cleared her
bronchial tubes in seconds. She coughed up the dangerous phlegm and
spit it out. Her lungs cleared. By the time the nurse called her name,
she was feeling a lot better. She didn't think she needed to see the
doctor after all. But she was careful to have the visit documented by
the receptionist just for the record anyway.
A nice old gentleman who'd recently been
widowed drove
her home. All the way he told her about his high blood pressure. Then,
just before he let her off where she directed, several doors down from
where she lived, he asked her out for a date.
CHAPTER 24
CHARLIE SCHWAB DROVE HOME to his regular
Monday night tennis date with Taj Rau, the proud owner of five blue
Lincoln Town Cars in the APlus Car Service. Only ten years in America
and already a total success in his world, Taj had taken up tennis—the
better to nag his nine-year-old daughter, Sonia, whom he fully expected
to be the next Venus Williams as soon as she could serve into the right
box. Charlie was bolstering Taj's own lessons with a weekly hitting
session that included vicious volley, lob to the moon, quadrant
splitting, slice and spin. Working on the finer points of the game,
however, was a waste of time since Rau lacked any hand-eye coordination
whatsoever.
Mostly Charlie was supporting his
neighbor's dream to be a real American in possession of a sport, sports
equipment, clothes, and a club of his own, with all the outrageous
monthly expenses the endeavor necessitated. Every bill was a joy to
him. Every weakness on the part of his U.S. government agent neighbor
thrilled him even more. He nagged Charlie about his beat-up car almost
as much as he nagged Sonia about her tennis and Taj Jr. about the awful
music he played so loud, it made him want to cry, and the oversized
pants that were falling off his skinny rear end.
Charlie's old Buick was coughing again. For
the last week the muffler had been attached to the underside of the car
in a complicated way that involved a piece of laundry rope provided by
his father, Ogden. But now the laundry rope had come loose, and the
muffler was sparking along on the highway to a chorus of honking from
other drivers to let him know about it. As if he didn't know about it.
His car was a sore point with everyone. Disgruntled taxpayers were
always doing things to it, and he couldn't get the Service to
compensate him for the damages. Still, as long as the car got bashed
and he didn't, he was cool. A car was just the means to get around.
But it was not the car or the ridiculous
tennis game that was on Charlie's mind right now. He was in a state of
obsessional seething over the events of the day. In almost equal
measures, Charlie loved his job, prided himself on his work as a top
snooper, and was dogged by the profound humiliation of knowing that his
private life was a flop. On the occupation front, all the news was
good. He was productive and, as long as he didn't step on anyone's
toes, he had job security.
He was such a fine detective, in fact, that
the Brooklyn District Director, Mel Arrighi, was always telling him he
should transfer to the special agent branch and top the ranks there. As
a special agent, he'd have a lot more power in the field. He'd have
bigger cases, mob related, drug related. He'd get more juice. He'd be
on the road all the time. That was a plus. And life would be exciting.
That was another plus. Special agents who worked for the Treasury and
the Justice Departments had almost unlimited power stalking their prey,
much more power than FBI agents.
But Charlie couldn't do it. He had to stay
close to home for Ogden. He hopped around the tristate area with no
problem, but treks to God-knew-where every single week would be too
stressful for his father. Charles Schwab was one of 120,000 employees
of the IRS. As a revenue agent, he was part of the main snooping body
in the federal tax force. Revenue agents carried out routine audits and
tax examinations. When they suspected tax evasion or fraud, they worked
with special agents and the CID to build the cases that the Justice
Department would prosecute. His was a safe path for a careful person
who had sustained a couple of losses so great that even an accountant
such as he could not calculate the damage.
Charlie's special skills involved the
alchemy of turning disappeared assets into found ones. Over the years
he'd learned the ten thousand ways that people shaded the truth, used
their stories like sleds in the snow, slid all over the place, hid
their assets, schemed, played with the numbers. He knew how honest
people shielded their money from taxes in relatively innocent ways, and
how dishonest people schemed to cheat the old U.S.A. any way they
could. At work, digging through mountains of paper, he felt like a
detective. When he was out in the field he wore a hat and thought of
himself as a Columbo. He took pride in his juice "finds." He was a
doggedly persistent man, untrusting, unyielding, obsessional about the
details.
He loved playing tennis, but only two times
a week. He cooked imaginative meals four times a week for his father,
went out two times, and one night a week he hung out at the bars in Bay
View. His car had gone completely to hell. He was bored, he was lonely,
but his world was safe. He worked mostly with accountants, usually men.
A few were women, but they were not good-looking. Likewise, the large
force of female revenue agents were not generally hired for their looks
or personality. His supervisor, Gayle Katz, had never married and cared
only about her cat. Charlie rarely had the opportunity to see, much
less get to know, any of the high-profile women whose lives he examined
through their documents. Even when he evaluated women's houses or
yachts, their assets of all kinds, they themselves were in the
background, shadowy and inaccessible. When they came on to him, it was
always to cover something up.
Although Charlie fantasized about
excitement every day of his life, longing for something more that he
couldn't really name, he actually counted on the status quo. He didn't
want to fall in love and risk his life like last time. Years ago he'd
married young to an unremarkable girl of ordinary attractions he'd
thought he loved well enough to last a lifetime. Her name was Ingrid,
and he'd never in a million years thought she would leave him. They'd
had a baby. The baby died when it was two weeks old. Soon after that,
Ingrid left him for a podiatrist she'd consulted a year earlier about
her bunions. Ingrid's sudden departure raised a doubt in Charlie's mind
that the baby he'd anticipated with such excitement and loved with all
his heart had really been his. After both mother and child were gone,
it was too late to investigate. Charlie went on to investigate other
puzzles.
His personal tragedy occurred so long ago
that torment had long since been replaced with cynicism about the
opposite sex. Just as really bad dental experiences leave behind
perpetual anxiety about all practitioners in the field, Charlie's
experience with Ingrid left him skittish about women. His name and
occupation were an added catastrophe. It was always the same thing:
When women thought he was the financial giant, they threw themselves at
him. Literally. The bodies flew at him the way Mona's had when she'd
tripped on nothing and tried to fall into his arms, breathing hard with
mint-freshened breath.
Then everything changed the second they
found out he was not the "real" Charles Schwab. As soon as he told them
he was a revenue agent with the IRS, he suddenly became the "fake"
Charles Schwab, less than a nothing, a poisonous toad. A dangerous
enemy. But this had not always been the case. Once the "real" Charles
Schwab had been an unknown and the "fake" Charles Schwab had been young
and handsome. And it was not completely true that Charlie was a total
loser now. He just felt like one. The Beech Avenue strip of bars in
Long Beach was near Kennedy Airport and the place where the
stewardesses came for R and R. He dabbled with them easily enough,
especially since the next flight out was only a few hours, or a day,
away. He didn't like to stick with anybody longer than that, couldn't
really stand prolonged encounters. He liked the getting-to-know-you
part. But he became nervous when anyone tried to stake a claim on him.
He didn't think he'd ever meet someone he really liked.
Charlie was still smoldering and obsessing
about his humiliating experiences with the strange duo of Cassie Sales
and Mona Whitman. He drove east toward his house in Long Beach. He
didn't know what was up with the two women, but something definitely
was. Cassie had looked crazy to him even before Mona had tipped him
off. With the sunglasses and the scarf on her head at eight in the
morning? Come on. And the story about the stroke? Please. Cassie was a
borderline personality like Livia in The Sopranos.
As for the latter, he could still see her
soft, tanned inner thighs, almost feel her breasts close to his chest.
And smell her perfume. She must have managed to touch him somewhere.
The perfume was clinging to his jacket. It made him want to laugh. She
was sexy like an Italian, bringing out the big guns for him as if he
could be swayed by anything she had to offer. Her little patter about
compliances didn't fool him one bit. Something was up at that place. He
had an insider's eye view, and his own. The warehouse was too big even
for the volume of sales on their returns. Any lamebrain auditor who had
a chance to see the place would pick up the fact that they were moving
more product than they reported. Obviously, Mitchell Sales hadn't been
expecting visitors. But why should he? Only about 1 percent of tax
returns got audited, and of those usually the audit was limited to a
single transaction, and the query on behalf of the service was done,
mercifully, by mail.
Charlie kept thinking about the curvaceous
Mona Whitman and the way she'd said, "IRS agents are toads." It annoyed
him, it really did.
If she'd done anything wrong, he'd hang her
out to dry; crazy Cassie, too. He was distracted by the sight of young
Taj out in front of the only yellow house on the street on an
all-white-house street. He was washing one of the three robin's egg
blue limos parked along the curb. The music pounding out of his boom
box sounded like Spanish rap again. He'd done something new to his
hair. One side was gone. The other was green. Along this portion of
Lake Avenue the air was filled with the pungent aromas of Indian
cooking. And Ogden was on the lawn, jumping up and down.
"You okay, you okay. Taking it easy. Taking
it easy." Taj Sr., wearing a white warm-up suit with red and blue
chevrons on the legs, was chattering excitedly and banging the old man
on the back, desperate to get down just a little lower whatever he'd
given Ogden to eat that had caught in his faulty esophagus.
"Ah, Charlie home," Taj screamed.
Ogden's face cleared and he stopped
jumping. "Hi, son," he called. He loped into the street between two
limos to meet Charlie at the car. Just then, Taj Jr., engrossed in the
joy of the moment and the beat of the music, let out a whoop. He
twirled around with the spurting hose as his microphone and dance
partner and sprayed the old man in the chest. Revenue Agent Charlie
Schwab was home.
CHAPTER 25
THE ART OF WAR was on Mona's mind when
she got home
from the walk-in. She was not afraid for herself. She was terrified for
Mitch. Anyone who reacted to rejection in such an insane fashion as
Cassie did was more dangerous than she'd ever imagined. Mona was
breathing freely, but she was scared enough of Cassie to decamp. Mitch
had been right when he'd told her Cassie was a toxic person. Even
before Mona had opened her front door, she'd known she had to get out
of there. Cassie turned out to be more than just a toxic,
passive-aggressive, secret ball breaker. Cassie was a genuine killer.
No wonder Mitch had been apprehensive about leaving her.
Cassie's driving Mona around for all of
fifteen minutes
while Mona faked an asthma attack was a nonevent compared with her
murdering her vulnerable husband on life support in the hospital just
because he wanted to leave her. Mona would not let Cassie hurt either
one of them. She unlocked her front door, glanced quickly around in
case Cassie had returned, then raced upstairs for her makeup case. She
found it in the bathroom still packed for the trip to Paris. She stowed
it in the car. Then Mona raced upstairs again and foraged around in the
closet long enough to locate two pairs of Hermès alligator pumps
and two alligator purses in red and purple. Mona believed she didn't
care about things. She was a frugal person. Even as she stowed away the
expensive accessories, she told herself she'd give up everything she
had with the snap of her fingers to save her honey. She grabbed the few
bills that had accumulated since Friday and left the junk mail on the
table. That was it. She was traveling light, hurrying to save her man.
Three minutes from start to finish, she
double-locked the
front door, checked the street for Cassie and the Mercedes, dove into
her car, and took off. She was still wearing the work shirt and black
pants she had donned for Cassie, but she had another outfit for the
hospital at her new house. She headed down the hill to Roslyn Harbor,
then turned onto Northern Boulevard, heading east toward Matinecock. At
Wheatley Plaza, Mona turned north again on Glen Cove Road and drove
past all the new stores that proved Glen Cove was coming up in the
world.
Sometimes she liked to travel on Hegeman's
Lane, then
take Chicken Valley Road through the horse farms and grand estates,
backtracking to Duck Pond Road. But today she went the shorter way,
down Glen Cove and across Duck Pond.
Mona was in a hurry. She skimmed along Duck
Pond, which
was visually and fragrantly at its best in spring, but she didn't
respond to any of its attractions. All she could think of was Mitch in
peril. The stone house he'd named Le Refuge, with its natural stone
swimming pool, tennis court, guest house, pond, waterfall, and five-car
garage, was halfway across Duck Pond, sited on ten delightfully
landscaped acres that Cassie had always particularly admired on garden
tours of the area.
Mona caught a glimpse of her roof and
chimneys from the
road. The old-timers in the area called the house Chimneys because
there were so many of them. Ten in all. She turned in at the brand-new
wrought-iron gates with the crossed swords, shields, grapes, wine
barrels, and Sales logo in gold. The graceful S of the driveway and
towering oaks that lined it were over ninety years old. Seeing it now
almost broke Mona's heart. The house had been built just before World
War I, and getting it before it ever appeared on the market had been a
major coup. She had especially admired the lawns—acres of green
garnished in spring by huge clumps of daffodils.
The daffodils were finished now. The
flowers were
withered and dry. The spindly leaves, too, had a limp, bedraggled look.
Later in the season, variegated hosta would wreathe each tree with
white and green that would spike with purple flowers in the summer.
Mona knew all about how gardens should look, because she'd been
listening to Cassie talk about plants and fucking trees ad nauseam for
many years. Mona had a gift for listening and picking things up. She
rounded the circle, pulled up by the front door, and turned off the
engine.
In the last six months she'd almost always
come here with
Mitch—to discuss decorating plans, to supervise the painting and
wallpapering, the hanging of the drapes, positioning the furniture, and
to make wonderful love. The first night they'd stayed there, back in
March, Mitch had made a fire in the bedroom. They'd sat in front of it
wrapped in new silk dressing gowns, eating beluga caviar off a spoon
and sipping '90 Grande Dame Champagne from Baccarat flutes. When the
caviar was gone, she'd taken out the Kama Sutra massage oil and rubbed
Mitch's hands and feet, trying to envision and articulate every bone.
Then she'd moved on, to his neck and shoulders. She'd rubbed and pulled
his arms straight out of their sockets as hard as she could. He'd lain
on his back moaning happily, attended to like the prince he was meant
to be.
She'd drizzled the sweet oil down the hair
on his chest
and massaged it into his thickening waist, between his strong legs, up
behind his balls. His eyes had been half closed as he'd watched her
work on him, twitching her robe open from time to time for a better
view of her breasts. She remembered it as if it were yesterday. He'd
built the fire high. It had crackled and roared up the fireplace,
drawing the smoke up and out of the room like a real champion. Candles
had flickered all around them. On her knees, Mona had poured oil into
her hands, warmed it between her palms, and gone to work on his
towering cock.
"Ohhhhh, Mama," he'd moaned.
A glass had toppled over on her new satin
quilt, spilling
champagne as he'd shifted his big body, but neither of them had minded.
He'd risen up from the floor, flipped her over, and plunged that slick
sucker home in one muscular thrust that had hurt like hell. Mona had
treasured the fierce burn in her furnace that had lasted for hours. She
clicked her tongue.
The baptism of the bedroom was on her mind
as she got out
of the car. There were no workers or decorators to greet her today, not
even a housekeeper to open the door. Grand and lifeless, the house was
frightening. She'd never imagined having to stay there alone. She
opened the heavy wooden door and deactivated the alarm system. Then she
switched on the huge hall chandelier and sconces that glittered with
enough crystal to dazzle a Las Vegas hotel owner. "Oh Mama," she
muttered.
The hall galley had a pink marble floor and
pink marble
columns; the staircase was deeply carved mahogany, dark as bittersweet
chocolate and shiny with new polish. Struggling through her misery for
a breath of good air, Mona trudged up to the master suite at the top of
the stairs. It consisted of a honey-colored, wood-paneled study,
dressing room, and bathroom for Mitch, and a large, lovely bedroom
overlooking the pond with a four-poster bed, dressing room, and a large
bathroom for her. She headed straight for the bath.
An hour and a half later, Mona infiltrated
the Head
Trauma ICU at North Fork Hospital without incident. She was wearing a
dashing turquoise Dior suit with a short jacket that nipped in at the
waist and plunged low in the neckline. A touch of crisp white eyelet
showed at her cleavage. The fact that it wasn't clear whether she was
wearing a blouse or bra invited second glances. The suit skirt was
pegged so tightly, she could hardly get in and out of the Jag much less
hobble down the long hospital corridor from one wing to another. Every
single thing was a misery to her, but her burnished shoulder-length
curls and Nicole Kidman-esque finely sculpted features drew many
admiring glances and not a single difficult question. She was
thirty-eight but looked every bit as fresh as Mitch's
twenty-five-year-old daughter, Marsha.
With very little effort, she located
Mitch's room. There,
all alone, she faced her lifeless intended and the bank of noisy
machines for the first time. "Holy shit," she murmured.
One of Mitch's eyes was closed, the other
was open just a
slit. Frowning at the tubes and plastic bags collecting his revolting
bodily fluids, Mona suddenly had the thought that she had overdressed
for the occasion.
"Baby? I'm here." She moved with
trepidation closer to
the bed, tilting her head one way and then the other.
"Who knocks your socks off?" she queried
softly. Like
Grace Kelly trying to get Cary Grant's attention in To Catch a Thief,
she struck a seductive pose in the lovely Dior suit, then answered the
question.
"Mona does." Mona tried to keep her feet
moving. But she
was afraid to get any closer than the sick man's feet in case what
Mitch had was catching. Mona was an asthmatic, a very allergic person.
She couldn't afford to take any chances. From the foot of the bed, she
leaned over to display her famous cleavage.
"Mona's here for you. Honey, wake up. I've
come to take
you home." She held her breath.
Mitch didn't move a muscle. Not a hair.
Nothing. Maybe
his hand twitched a little. Mona's lips twitched; her eyelid, too. This
was more than scary. It occurred to her that the machine making all the
noise was actually breathing for him or making his heart beat, one or
the other, maybe both. She didn't know anything about these things.
She straightened up and looked around for a
little
support here. A doctor, a nurse. A chair. It was disgusting. There
wasn't a chair to sit on. Not even a stool! The place was a hellhole.
Her heart started beating faster. That wasn't good for her asthma. She
wasn't supposed to get upset, and having Mitch in a place like this was
a complete disgrace. He'd hate it. The room had a fucking picture
window in it. How much could she do to cheer him up with the whole
world watching? She looked closer at the machinery. Was that big white
one breathing for him, or what? She looked around for an answer, but
none was forthcoming. She was very afraid.
"Honey, can you hear me?" she whispered.
No answer.
"Oh Mitch, do you have any idea what's
going on?" She
took a step closer. His face was bloodless. His eyes were pretty much
closed. She had to get those eyes open.
"Cassie's on the rampage. You have to get
out of here.
Listen, wake up. I'm not kidding here. Oh baby, I love you so much.
Don't leave me."
It seemed pretty hopeless. No part of Mitch
moved except
the lid of one of his eyes. For a second it looked as if he winked at
her. She turned to the window, seeking help. When she turned back to
him she was certain that he winked at her again. Fat lot of good that
was going to do.
"Wake up, honey," she urged. "You have to
get out of
here. Did Cassie hurt you, baby? Tell Mona."
Nothing but the winking. It was terrible to
watch.
"Honey, I mean it. This is serious. Wake
UP!" Mona tried
and tried, but no matter what she did, Mitch refused to get up and walk
out.
CHAPTER 26
"YOU HAVE TO MAKE A DECISION about the
car," Ogden
announced at breakfast the next day.
Ogden Schwab had been a handsome man in his
youth, tall
and slender with sharp blue eyes and wavy brown hair. But now he was
very thin, almost emaciated, because of his swallowing problem caused
by a disease called acalasia, which interrupts the usual smooth
undulations of the esophagus, so the food just stalls midway to the
stomach. Every swallow is touch and go. No one but the Rau family had
bothered to nag him about anything since his wife Trudy had died
thirteen years ago, so his clothes didn't always match either the
season or each other. Likewise, the bath issue. Back in the 1950s a
doctor had told him that he shouldn't bathe every day because of his
dry skin. None of the thousands of advances in skin care products since
then had been the slightest bit effective in persuading him that it was
now safe to go into the water.
He was spry at seventy-six, though, and
never let his
little peculiarities stop him from making himself useful in every way
he could. He kept up with politics and the stock market on CNN, and
took a keen interest in the affairs of his son, Charlie.
"What do you say, son?"
"About what?" Charlie poured himself some
of the nasty
coffee that was one of his father's many morning rituals. This
important one he couldn't seem to get right no matter what he tried.
Every day there was a major complication with the coffee process. Ogden
would set up the machine wrong, so that the little drip hole that
should be closed was open. Whenever the carafe was not in place—which
was often—hot water flooded the filter and kept right on going. The
coffee poured out on the hot plate and hissed like an angry cat.
Alternatively, if the hole was stuck in the closed position, the
grounds became a tidal wave of sludge that poured over the top,
flooding the counter. Whenever coffee actually made it into the carafe,
it tasted like a mouthful of dirt. Today the coffee was the color of
tea. Maybe it was tea.
"About getting a new car from Taj."
"What's wrong with my old one?" Charlie
asked. He wasn't
in the mood for car talk after last night. During their game, he'd
encouraged Taj to brush up, brush up, with his racket in hopes that it
would eventually connect with enough spin to get the ball over the net.
Taj was always leaping around the court energetically chasing down the
balls, but he had no force behind his swing at all. Who would have
guessed that yesterday he'd acquired a new power racket that could make
any hopeless child a Safin? Taj had brushed up on the ball just when
Charlie wasn't looking and hit him in the eye. Then he wanted to sell
him a car because his old one was such a piece of shit.
Charlie looked so ridiculous with today's
bruise that
he'd made a huge sartorial effort with a brown tweed suit, a yellow and
blue tie over a blue shirt, and rust-colored suede shoes. All from his
happiest days, before he'd ever thought of marrying Ingrid: the
seventies.
"You've got to get that muffler fixed.
You're gonna get a
violation for that. Then jail, mark my words."
"Oh, I don't think so."
"Oh yes, mark my words," Ogden insisted.
Charlie had been marking his words for a
long time. Odgen
always predicted the worst. Now he spooned a bite of oatmeal and grated
apple into his mouth, then forgot to work on it for a while. His face
took on the odd, comic expression of surprise he always got when a
swallow wasn't going well.
"Drink," Charlie commanded.
Odgen pounded some water. When that didn't
do the trick,
he got up and jumped up and down a few times. He was wearing Charlie's
Yankees sweatshirt and a winter parka with the hood up over pajama
bottoms. He looked weird and needed a bath, but Charlie didn't like to
bother him about things like that when every bite was a
life-threatening peril. Still, the outfit was pretty funny and reminded
him of the Sales lady who'd called the cops on him. He smiled at the
thought of the crazy woman who was as bad as his dad.
"What's so funny? You laughing at me?"
Ogden's face
cleared, and he sat down.
"No, of course not. I was thinking about a
girl I met
yesterday."
"You met a girl?" Ogden's eyes lit up.
"Not a girl, really. I'm working on a case
of a wine
importer. Perfectly run-of-the-mill tax returns. Nothing out of the
ordinary. It's a big operation, but not one of the giants. The guy
reports good profit, doesn't take huge deductions, and pays pretty much
what it looks like he should. But . . . you okay, Dad?"
Ogden nodded. "So you think this is an ATF
case," he
said, nodding sagely. He was so proud when his son worked the big cases
that made it to the newspapers.
Charlie laughed. "Well, not ATF, yet, Dad."
But he
wouldn't be a bit surprised if it came to that.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and
Firearms did
rigorously control the many regulations that had to be met when
distributors moved alcohol in and out of the country, and even from
state to state and buyer to buyer. Regulations were so strict in New
York that a private collector could not sell to another private
collector unless the buyer happened to have a retailer's license. It
was a whole big thing. Every case of wine and liquor had to be tagged
and checked and reported and rechecked. Still, it was just amazing how
much stuff disappeared one way or another, off trucks and out of
warehouses. These cases were never reported either stolen or sold, just
disappeared.
"So, how did you meet the girl?" Ogden
asked.
Charlie was still thinking agency protocol.
"This case
may have some connection to OC."
"Organized Crime, wow," Ogden said.
"So both Justice and local would be
involved. The whole
enchilada." Charlie's heart soared just thinking about it. His
supervisor, Gayle, had given him the case, advising him not to tell
anyone at Sales what the IRS was actually investigating. And it was
perfectly legal to keep mum. The IRS didn't have any obligation to tell
anyone what they were up to.
Gayle also told him definitely not to
inform D.C. or the
district special agents branch, or even ATF, what he might be on to.
Her feeling, and he agreed, was that the CID would be all over it,
taking over the case from the get-go. That way, Revenue wouldn't get
the credit for bringing it in. Neither of them wanted that. He'd open
the doors as soon as he had something solid. That was the deal.
"Are they mob girls?" Ogden asked, back on
the girls. The
possibility of his son's meeting hot girls impressed him hugely. "Got
to watch out for those mob girls, Charlie. Those guys will kill you for
sure if you touch one of their girls."
"Could be." One of them could be. The Mona
one. Could be
a mob girl, no doubt about it. Charlie had already been thinking about
turning her. "Do you want to hear about the tip?" he asked to distract
his father.
"Yeah, yeah, tell me about the hit." Ogden
took a bite of
cereal.
"Tip, Dad. Not hit. You okay?" Charlie gave
him a sharp
look.
Ogden's eyes watered. He got up and hopped
hard on one
foot. "Go on," he ordered, waving away his distress as soon as the
crisis was over.
"We get a tip that this Sales guy has been
moving out
cases of his best wine. Some of it disappears into his own secret
cellar. Really good stuff. This he reports stolen and takes a tax loss.
Sometimes his insurance will reimburse him for the loss, so he's
getting it both ways. The story is, the guy also gets paid in cash for
at least part of many of his restaurant accounts, and totally in cash
for some of his restaurant accounts that aren't on the books at all.
That would definitely be ‘way in' for local."
"A way into the mob?" Ogden said
delightedly. "Oh, that's
great, Charlie. Tell me about the girls."
"One of them was about your age." The one
who crashed
into the mailbox, but Charlie didn't want to go into that now.
"A mob girl, my age? What does she look
like?" Excitedly,
Ogden took a large bite of cereal and Charlie braced himself for
disaster.
"Got to go," he said quickly. Sometimes he
could take his
father's eating travails and sometimes he couldn't. Today, no.
But surprisingly, Ogden swallowed just fine
this time. "Already? You didn't eat your breakfast," he complained.
This was Ogden's favorite time of the day.
The morning
news, the newspaper, browbeating Charlie about getting out and enjoying
life more, meeting girls, maybe getting married again. He wanted to
debate Taj's offer to sell Charlie one of his gently used,
four-year-old light blue Lincoln Town Cars for an overpriced
twenty-five thousand. Or at least borrow one for a few weeks while he
got the Buick repaired by one of Taj's mechanic relatives. Preferably
the one who put the car in this condition in the first place. Charlie
was too excited by his new case to linger.
"You take it easy, Dad," he said. He patted
the old guy
on the shoulder, then worried about the parka. "You okay? You want me
to turn up the heat?"
"No, the place is boiling. I don't know how
you stand it
this hot."
"It wouldn't be so hot if you took your
coat off,"
Charlie told him.
"And freeze to death?" Ogden took an
indignant bite of
apple and oatmeal. Charlie went out the back door before its fate was
decided.
The spring sunshine was intense and the air
was fresh as
he went to inspect the Buick. This time, Ogden had tied the muffler up
with something that looked like piano wire, so now the trunk couldn't
be opened without a wire clipper. Charlie shook his head. At that
moment a robin yanked a worm out of the lawn and took flight with it.
He turned to watch it and quickly surveyed his yard in the process. He
had an acre in this pleasant old neighborhood close to the beach, a lot
of space. Along his fence were rosebushes, inside it a lawn with a
gazebo in the center. He noticed that the hydrangeas around the house
and gazebo were showing signs of life. The rosebushes were filling in
and budding nicely. He was proud of his yard, but it was nothing
compared with the much smaller Sales place. Charlie had been
particularly impressed by the orchid house in the middle of the
backyard. He wondered if it might be hiding something in plain view,
and wanted to see it again.
CHAPTER 27
MONA WAS IN MARK COHEN'S OFFICE at eight
Tuesday
morning. She was wearing a very conservative lightweight black
gabardine pantsuit, a purple turtleneck cashmere sweater that matched
her purple alligator bag, and very high-heeled purple alligator shoes.
She had not slept well in Le Refuge. Anxiety about Mitch's condition
had roiled the acid in her stomach and the suspicions in her head. He
had been perfectly well when he'd left her in Paris, and now all he
could do was wink.
During the night she went over every single
one of her
discussions with Mitch on the subject of marriage, divorce, and
beneficiaries. Since he'd been so ardent about protecting the future of
his precious children, the talks had always centered around protecting
them, not her. Over a period of years, however, she'd managed to
persuade him that she was more likely to take good care of Marsha and
Teddy (both of whom she truly did adore) than Cassie, who had no idea
about money. She'd assured him that even after they married, the
children would still get everything in the end. She had no parents, no
sibling, no family but his; after all, who else could it go to? What
Mitch had done was throw in a condition that put her in jeopardy now.
The condition was that if Mona had already passed on at the time of his
death, the assets would go directly to his children. Mona knew that
Teddy would never in a million years harm her, but Marsha was another
story. Would Marsha and Cassie kill her? Would they kill her to cut her
out of Mitch's will? she asked herself. Yes, they would.
During the long night Mona had kept her
expensive new
drapes open. She couldn't bear being shut in at the best of times, but
now she was afraid of being murdered in her sleep. The house was
equipped with two sets of lights. Some came on at dusk and went off at
eleven, like the runway lights along the driveway and the spotlights in
the trees. Others were strategically placed in the eaves of the vast
roof and were equipped with motion detectors that flashed on a battery
of powerful sodium lamps every time a cat or squirrel ran across their
field of vision. The lights were activated four times.
Each time darkest night had become day in
her bedroom,
Mona sat up in a panic, thinking that Cassie's hit man had come to kill
her. She was sorry she'd misplaced the pistol Mitch had bought her in
Florida a few years ago. She was sorry that she'd left the telltale
Jaguar out in the driveway. The property's five-car garage was about an
acre away, down a hill. Same damn thing as Roslyn. She'd moved up in
the world and still didn't have an attached garage.
Dr. Cohen's office in Manhasset was near
the hospital in
the kind of modern four-story medical building with an elevator that
spoke for the blind. "You have pressed two. Elevator doors close," it
told Mona when she got in and pushed the button.
"You have arrived on the second floor. On
this floor are
the suites of Drs. Cohen, Garfeld, Saperstein, and Gelfman. Have a good
visit," it recited.
Mona's blood pressure was way up. She
entered the
doctor's office wheezing badly. "Marta, I have to see him right away,"
she cried.
Marta was the sort of invisible woman well
past middle
age that Mona and Cassie alike had a total horror of becoming. She was
plump and had pale, crepey skin that she overblushed and overpowdered.
Her boyish haircut was steely gray. She was all business; and no matter
how nice Mona was to her, Mona knew this difficult, jealous old woman
was going to refuse to like her.
"Mona, you should have called first. He's
fully booked
all day. I know you're upset about Mr. Sales, but—" she started in on
her now.
"I'm not just upset, Marta, I'm ill. I had
a very bad
night. I have crushing chest pains, and my left arm is numb. I guess
I'm having a heart attack."
"Oh, for heaven's sake, why didn't you
call?"
"Some people believe consideration comes
first, even with
doctors. I didn't want to worry him. Or you." Mona checked the waiting
room. Two half-blind old people (clearly the ones for whom the elevator
had been given that wonderful upbeat voice) sat next to their walkers.
Other than that, the place looked pretty empty to her. She coughed up a
mouthful of phlegm. "And my asthma is kicking up, I need a shot of
Adrenalin."
"Oh, for heaven's sake. Come in here right
away." Marta
took Mona into an examining room and left her there.
Mona weighed herself just for the hell of
it. In spite of
Paris, she'd lost a pound. Gratified, she quickly climbed up on the
table and crossed her legs. In less than a minute Mark raced in with
her chart under his arm, looking appropriately concerned.
"Mona. What's this about chest pains?"
Mona was wheezing terribly. "This is so
terrible about
Mitch." She took his hand for support.
"Take your time." He went to the sink and
filled a tiny
cup with water.
"I'm just so sorry to bother you, Mark. I
know how busy
you are and how much you have on your mind."
"This is what I'm here for, Mona. I called
you last
night, but you didn't pick up." He handed her the cup.
She took a moment to sip from it. "Well, I
couldn't.
Cassie followed me home! Mark, I was so terrified. She threatened my
life. I had to leave and check into a hotel."
"What?"
Mona burst into tears. "What happened to
Mitch?"
"He had a stroke." Mark gave her a handful
of tissues and
took her pulse. Then, with a flick of his wrist, he indicated that she
take off her black jacket so he could listen to her heart.
"How could he have a stroke? He was fine
Friday." She
took off her jacket, hopeful that this would lead to a hug. He must
have pushed his little button, because just at the moment he flicked
his fingers at the eyelet blouse, the nurse came in. Off came the
blouse. He didn't even look at the bra or cleavage as he used his
stethoscope to listen to her chest and back.
"Have you been using your inhaler?"
"Of course."
"How often?"
"Four or five times a day. It isn't
working."
"Have you been taking the Aminophyllin?"
"It makes me nauseated. Mark, how could he
have a stroke?
Everything was going so well."
"Sometimes the stress of a divorce can do
it." He let the
stethoscope drop on his chest. "Your asthma needs attention, Mona.
That's probably why you're having chest pains. But we'll do an EKG and
Crow enzymes. And of course you need new pulmonary tests. I want to do
it while you're in crisis."
Mona grabbed his hand again. "Did he tell
you we are
getting married?" The nurse, Irene, looked on from the door, placid as
a cow.
Mark went on unfazed. "And he was ignoring
his high blood
pressure."
"What high blood pressure?" Mona cried.
"He called me from Paris a week ago. He had
headaches,
felt dizzy. I warned him that he was playing with fire and told him to
come right home. He waited until Friday. That's not good."
Mona gasped. Her fiancé was sick?
This was news to
her.
He turned to Irene and ticked off the
procedures Mona was
getting, including a shot of Adrenalin. As soon as she was gone, he
turned to leave. Mona was crushed. After all the gifts she'd given his
silly wife, the dinners they'd had together. The patients she'd
referred him! Getting this kind of short shrift was unconscionable.
"Mark, wait! I'm very concerned about
Mitch. I need to
discuss this with you."
He stood with his hand on the doorknob, his
face as
neutral as a blancmange.
"What's his prognosis?" she asked softly,
softening
toward him immediately, her breathing now deep and even. She was
falling apart. She needed a hug, any idiot could see that.
He shook his head. "Wait and see," he
murmured.
"Mark, I'd like you to consider moving him."
His expression didn't change. "He's on life
support,
Mona. He can't be moved."
"But I'm afraid for his life." Mona was so
upset at the
cold reception she was getting, she almost forgot to cough.
"We're all afraid for his life," he said,
cool as could
be.
"Mitch and I were getting married, Mark. I
may even be
pregnant. I missed my period this week. Just think about it. Cassie
doesn't exactly have his best interests at heart here. I'm worried that
she wants him to kick off."
He shook his head, opening the door just a
little to
indicate his wish to leave.
"I'm dying here, Mark. Whose side are you
on?" Mona cried.
"I'm not getting between you two on this,
Mona. I'm his
doctor. I'm doing the best I can for him."
"What if the best for him is not the best
for her?"
"This is too much for me, Mona. I'm just a
doctor. Please
call me later for the results on your tests, I think you're going to be
okay."
"Mark, could we have lunch and talk about
it then?"
"I won't have results by lunchtime, Mona."
"And I bought a little something for—honey,
we've always
been so close. . . ." What was his damn wife's name, Candy, Sandy?
"Mark, I'm all alone with this. There's
only you."
Mark peered out the crack in the door,
poised to bolt.
Mona jumped off the table and went to him.
"Please don't get distant with me because
of this Cassie
thing. You know I love her with all my heart, and no one could be more
sorry than I am about the way she's behaving. But we have to face this
together. She's hurt him. She wants to kill him. And you know I don't
want anything to happen to him because of me, Mark, and I don't want
you dragged into a big legal thing."
She lowered her head to his shoulder. It
wasn't that easy
a trick since he was much shorter than she was. His white coat was
starched and fresh. His closely shaved cheeks smelled delicious.
Quickly he closed the door against spies from the outside.
"You're amazing," she breathed. "The
greatest."
When she went downstairs a few minutes
later, there was a
little smile on her face. She was certain Mark was on her side.
CHAPTER 28
CHARLIE SCHWAB HAD CHOSEN the Sales
warehouse in
Syosset as the site for his audit. It was an unusual move, since audits
were typically held in the accountant's office or in the IRS branch
office. He'd chosen the Long Island location because the juice he was
looking for would not be in Ira Mandel's Manhattan office, and he
didn't want to travel into the city every day for an indefinite period
in any case. He was also strapped for time. Gayle was ruthless about
keeping their cases quick and productive. Move fast and move on, was
her motto.
A limited audit to clear up a teeny
question about one
detail of a transaction that had been recorded some years ago might
require a stack of paper several feet deep and take a full day. To
examine the books of a business like Sales Importers with a lot of
product moving in from many countries and moving out to thousands of
highly active monthly accounts in numerous states for even one year
could take weeks. Full audits of big holding companies and
conglomerates typically took months. It all depended on how much time
was being covered, how much paperwork had to be examined, and how
compulsive an investigator was. Charlie was very compulsive indeed, but
he could also move as fast as the wind.
In the middle of traffic he mused that the
Bureau of
Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms would definitely want in on this case.
It was a big one, and ATF got involved at the drop of a hat. Charlie
worried about the risk he personally was taking. He hoped that he
wouldn't be making too many enemies by following his boss's
instructions to do the grunt work alone. He didn't want to upset
himself thinking about office politics, so he contemplated the question
of spies instead.
Because the possibility of finding
uncollected revenues
was ever present for the IRS, no one cared who informers were. The tax
force relied on spies for tips. They also relied on newspaper articles
about all sorts of events, both criminal and civil. Charlie himself had
a large collection of obits of prominent and wealthy people who had
died in the region. These obits helped them decide which estates to
target with an audit. On the spy front, suffice it to say there were a
lot them. Spurned spouses. Fired employees. The discriminated against,
for one reason or another. The IRS was an equal opportunity tip taker.
In the Sales organization someone was
holding a grudge, a
big one, and stood to win a nice bonus if the assertions proved
correct. Sooner or later he'd find out who it was, or maybe he
wouldn't. Didn't matter to him. Charlie concluded his thoughts and
pulled up in the Sales parking lot. The red Jaguar was there, and he
felt a little glow with the intuitive feeling that Mona would be useful.
Inside, past the reception area, several
banquet tables
had been set up in an empty space near the bathrooms. Documents were
stacked on the tables along with bottled water, sodas, a coffee urn,
and bakery goods. Boxes filled with supporting documents were piled
around and under the tables. One table had four folding chairs set up.
The first thing Charlie noticed about the setup, aside from its lack of
comfort, was that no one could possibly read there. It was dark as a
cave.
Ira Mandel was sitting at the food table
eating a bagel
with cream cheese. Never one of Charlie's favorites, Ira was a short
man with an easy smile and forgettable features. He looked a little
sleazy this morning in his shiny blue Italian suit and silver tie. As
soon as he saw Charlie, he put the bagel down and stood up, licking his
fingertips one by one. When he finished licking the hand, he held it
out to Charlie, who pretended not to see it.
"Ira," Charlie said neutrally.
Ira did not appear in the least put off by
the snub. "Nice to see you, Charles. This is my associate, Ted Sales."
A young lug stepped out of the shadows.
"How do," Charles said pleasantly. The
youngster looked
like an overly large twelve-year-old, very nervous in a tan suit and
red tie. Small eyes and mouth.
"Sir," he said formally, then bit down on
his lower lip,
losing it altogether.
"Any relationship?" Charlie asked him.
Ted seemed terrified by the question. "Sir?"
"Your name. Sales."
"Oh." Ted glanced at Ira before answering.
"Yes, yes, he's Mitchell Sales's son. Very
bright young
man, wants to be an accountant."
"Good for him," Charlie applauded. "Let's
get going."
"Please. Be my guest. Have some breakfast,
will you? I
have something I want to go over with you before we start."
Just up the steel staircase a picture
window showed where
the main offices were. From where he stood, Charlie had a clear view of
Mona Whitman leaning over the desk with her backside to him. Ira
followed his gaze.
"What can I get you?" he asked.
"What?" Charlie blinked.
"Breakfast," Ira prompted.
"Oh yes. Thank you, I've already eaten."
Charlie sat down
at the table and took out his equipment. Calculator, laptop, pens.
Pads. Altoids.
Over his head, Ira glanced at Ted. "Pull up
a chair,
Teddy."
Oh, now he was Teddy. Charlie ignored the
scraping sound
as Teddy pulled up his chair. He was minding his own business, paying
no attention to anything but his own notes when quick steps on the
cement floor let him know that the decorative Mona had arrived.
"Teddy! I didn't know you were here yet.
Isn't this
terrible? I tried and tried to call you. How are you holding up,
darling?" She rushed over to him and threw herself into his arms.
Since Teddy didn't have the manners to rise
for her, she
ended up almost in his lap.
"Hi, Mona." Teddy's reaction was a mixture
of confusion
and alarm.
Ira lifted his eyes heavenward. Charlie
wondered what the
story there was. Mona regained her balance and stepped back to examine
the young man's face.
"I feel so bad for you. How are you doing,
honey?"
"I have a girlfriend," Teddy said with a
shy grin.
"No kidding, that's wonderful. Who's the
lucky girl?"
"She's a nurse," Teddy said proudly.
"A nurse, she's a nurse?" Mona cried. "What
kind of a
nurse?"
"Operating room. Isn't that cool?"
Mona's attention wandered over to the
accountant.
"Ira, sweetheart. Hello." She clicked her
tongue. "Terrible thing, isn't this?" Instead of embracing him, she
made a
little face. "Oh, don't be mad. I have no intention of butting in, I
promise. I was just going to the ladies'. How do you like the little
spread I put out? That's whitefish salad, right there. Your favorite,
Teddy. Ira, could I have just a word with you?"
"Of course, Mona."
Then she registered Charles Schwab sitting
at the table
very busily tapping on his laptop, totally ignoring her. "Oh my
goodness, Mr. Schwab. I didn't know you were here."
He glanced up at the sound of his name. She
gave him a
big smile as if they were old friends. No one could say he didn't have
manners. Charlie jumped to his feet, wondering what it would take to
turn her. "Miss Whitman, how's that ankle of yours?" he said cheerfully.
"Still aching something terrible. What
happened to you?"
She raised her hand and came closer to touch the bruise on his forehead.
"A little tennis mishap. It's nothing."
"You play tennis, too? You're amazing. Did
Ira tell you
about our problem?"
Ira frowned furiously at her. "Thank you
for the food,
Mona. No, we haven't gotten that far yet."
Charlie divided his attention between them.
And what was
the story there?
"Oh, well, sorry to interrupt. Is there
anything else I
can do for you?" She smiled brightly.
Charlie held up his hand. "Light," he said.
"What?"
"We need some light."
"Oh." She put a hand to her mouth like a
little girl
who'd made a big mistake. "Oops. Of course you do. I'll take care of it
right away."
But she didn't. Charlie returned to his
laptop, and Teddy
squirmed in his chair during the short hiatus while Mona had a private
conversation with Ira. Finally Ira returned to the banquet table, and
Mona went into the ladies'.
"Are you sure you won't have some coffee?"
he offered a
second time.
In such situations, Charlie was always
reminded of a
colleague of his who'd gotten very sick from rat poison served in a
cappuccino during an audit. "Yes, but thanks anyway," he said.
"Well, then, we can get right to it. Here's
our
situation. I want to alert you to a personal tragedy. Mitchell Sales
had a stroke over the weekend. He's in extremely serious condition in
intensive care, and we're concerned that he won't make it."
Charlie was digesting this information when
the
distracting sound of a flushing toilet came from behind the door markedLADIES
. "That's a real shame," he replied. They were back on the stroke. He
lifted one shoulder in what he thought was a sympathetic shrug.
Ira took it the wrong way. "Now don't get
me wrong," he
said belligerently. "We're perfectly prepared to go through with the
audit right now. This is for your convenience only."
"I don't see how it changes the situation,"
Charlie
replied blandly.
"Of course, you know perfectly well in a
private company
it would make all the difference," Ira argued.
Charlie shrugged with both shoulders. "I
don't see how.
Any adjustment that we might ask for would have to be complied with in
any case."
"Oh for God's sake, Charlie, my man, the
company CEO is
dangerously ill."
"You weren't expecting him to participate
at this point,
were you?" Charlie stuck to his guns. He wasn't anybody's man.
"Well, no, but his illness—"
"You told me Mr. Sales had no intention of
being present."
"True, but—"
Mona emerged from the bathroom and made a
cute little
face of contrition for interrupting again. "I'll just see about those
lights for you." Now her jacket was unbuttoned. The little white thing
underneath revealed her tiny waist. Charlie's eyes followed her as she
walked away. He knew designer dresses when he saw them and wondered
what the story was here.
"Look," Ira said. "I'd like a postponement
for a few
weeks. Is that an unreasonable request?"
Charlie sat back in his metal folding chair
and pulled on
his ear. From the moment the stroke had returned to the table, he had
decided that an official delay was an excellent idea. It would give him
time to do some background checking on the wine distribution business
in general, and Sales's operations in particular. He wanted to check
out the Sales house, talk some more with the wife, find out what the
story was there. But he let Ira pompously argue his position. He always
enjoyed hearing the arguments of the clearly guilty before giving them
something that might lead them to think they had him in their pocket;
they'd won the first battle.
CHAPTER 29
CHARLIE SCHWAB CAME OUT INTO THE
SUNSHINE and plopped
his hat on his head. The warehouse was climate controlled to the
temperature of an estate cave, Teddy had told him when he was leaving.
That was the reason it was so cold. Outside, he paused while his skin
warmed up and his eyes adjusted to the light.
"I don't know what's wrong with this
thing," Mona
complained. She was click, click, clicking that fancy key door opener
and not getting the response she wanted from the Jaguar.
Schwab saw her in the parking lot and
waved. She stepped
away from the car feigning surprise to see him. "Mr. Schwab, are you
finished already?"
"Not even begun," he said.
"Oh?"
"There's been a postponement." He smiled.
"Wow, you're amazing!" She took the two
steps to where
he'd paused by the row of short fir trees with dwarf conifers between
them that separated the building space from the parking lot, grabbed
his hand, and shook it warmly. "That's very handsome of you."
Then she blushed for using the word
"handsome." She'd
meant that he himself, not just the gesture, was handsome, and wanted
to make sure that that was how he'd understood it.
"No, not at all," he said smoothly.
"I know this will mean a lot to Mitch. The
stroke has
really knocked him for a loop."
"I can imagine." Schwab was neutral.
"You know, I'm glad you're here, because I
wanted to
clarify things with you. When we talked yesterday, I had no idea Mitch
was really—that he really—" Mona stopped and lifted a crumpled
handkerchief to her eyes. "I just wanted to set the record straight,"
she said, dabbing her eyes.
"What do you mean?" Schwab tilted his head
to one side.
"I'm sorry." She flapped her hands
delicately as if to
rid herself of these embarrassing rushes of feeling. "I'm just all
alone with all this. Isn't it funny I had no idea about the stroke when
we met yesterday? I didn't find out about it until last night. I
was—flabbergasted—to say the least." She shook her head. When he made
no remark, she explained further.
"What I mean is, Cassie is like that boy
who cries wolf,
you know? She lies so much that no one believes her. Yesterday morning
she told you Mitch had had a stroke, but she didn't tell the rest of
us. Here at the warehouse we didn't know a thing about it. Isn't that
awful?"
Schwab did not comment.
"She just has no idea how to manage
anything."
"I understand."
"And she doesn't want you to know about
her, of course."
Mona tossed her head. "And then I kept thinking and thinking about you.
It was so strange. It was like destiny when we met like that. . . .
What were you doing at Cassie's house, anyway?"
"Just looking around." Schwab shrugged.
"That's so thorough. Do all IRS agents do
that?" Mona
gave him an interested look, but he didn't help her out.
"Do what?" He tilted his head to one side
again, his
attitude watchful.
"You said you were looking around. What are
you looking
for?" Her wide, lovely eyes were frankly curious. She was giving him
her full range of expression, but he wasn't responding. She found him
heavy going.
"Whatever there is" was his answer to this
question.
Mona persevered. "That sounds so
mysterious. I mean, I'm
into the wine and the customers. I don't get the business end at all.
All of this is way beyond me."
"It's pretty simple, really," he said. "I
bet you know
all about it."
She almost brushed his tennis arm. "I bet I
don't."
He smiled.
"You don't say much, do you?" she murmured.
He moved his chin a little, but didn't
answer.
She inhaled, started to say something, then
stopped. "Well, I know I'm supposed to keep out of it . . ."
"I understand," he murmured.
"I just, I thought, well, is there any way
I could be of
help to you?"
Finally his smile broadened a little.
"Maybe."
"What with Mitch out like this, I guess I'm
going to have
to learn what's what. Maybe I could facilitate in some way." She said
this as if it were a surprise even to herself.
"Well, that might be very helpful," Schwab
said.
"Of course, Mitch is the complete business
genius. He
pretty much runs the show," she said quickly. "But I'm the spirit of
the enterprise. I love the wines, you know. They have such a life of
their own, like characters. Do you like wine?"
Schwab became sheepish at the question.
"Oh, I don't know
much about it."
Mona clapped her hands. "A beer man, I bet.
I could teach
you, and you could teach me about taxes. Wouldn't that be the greatest?
You know, I could make you the envy of all your friends. Wine is very
in, you know, and we deal only in the best."
"No kidding." Schwab seemed to ponder this
question.
Mona had the oddest sensation. Here was
this attractive
(but not well-dressed) man who seemed intelligent and should be
attracted to her. But his eyes were cold, and he was a lot of work. She
didn't get it. Most men were not so much work. She was doing everything
exactly right. She let the silence hang there for a few moments while
she examined him further, trying to size him up. Maybe he was a gay IRS
agent. Maybe he spent all his time watching sports and didn't have any
conversation. Or he was married. That would account for the blush and
awkwardness. Some men were faithful. A few.
She smiled. On the other hand, a lot of
people were
getting divorced these days. Maybe this Schwab's total lack of finesse
was his newness to the dating game.
"Would you like to have lunch sometime?"
she ventured.
"Well, that would be nice," he murmured.
"Are you allowed to fraternize with the
enemy?" she
joked, taking it a little further.
"I have no enemies," he replied quickly,
his blue eyes
wary, wary.
"Oh, yes. You work for the government. Your
job is to
make people's lives miserable." Mona shook her finger at him, enjoying
this. "I hope you're one of the reasonable ones. You'll be reasonable
with poor Mitch, won't you?"
He laughed at the word "reasonable." "I'm
always
reasonable."
"That's good, because I know Mitchell Sales
wouldn't do
anything wrong. I've worked for him all my adult life."
"It doesn't look like that's been very
long," Schwab said.
"Thank you, but I'm older than I look."
He lifted a shoulder, noncommittal.
"So, we'll have lunch. That's great," she
murmured. She
was going to go a tiny bit further, but didn't have time.
Suddenly he was on the move, a little
nervous, a little
excited. Hurrying on to the next part of his day. It was a male
reaction Mona was very used to. They always got nervous when they liked
a girl.
AN HOUR LATER Mona was having lunch with
Mitch's lawyer,
Parker Higgins, at the American Grill, in Garden City. Parker had been
one of those tall, good-looking boys who was just so cool, everyone had
always known he'd get ahead in life. He and Mitch had gone to Hofstra
together. Even before that they'd known each other in high school. His
offices were on the boardroom floor of a ten-story building that used
to be a bank. He owned it and the one just like it directly across the
street.
Parker was as tall as Mitch, quite a bit
heavier now,
with a deep tan from weekly visits to a tanning parlor where he also
got intimate massages. Mona knew this as she knew almost everything.
Mitch talked. Parker had less hair than Mitch, but wore a lot of gold
to compensate. He wore thick gold chains around his neck and wrist, a
gold Panther watch, and the same large eighteen-karat gold golf ball
cuff links that Mitch and Mark wore, though only Mark played golf. And
he was very shaken by Mitch's stroke. He was wearing a black tie.
Mona was doing everything she could to
engage Parker in a
useful conversation, but all he wanted to do was talk about old times.
They'd been served their two grilled chicken Caesar salads and two
glasses of iced tea. While he waited for the salads to arrive, Parker
had wolfed down the entire bread basket. When his salad arrived, he
wolfed that down. Mona hadn't touched the mound of limp, overdressed
lettuce loaded with thick croutons from a box and whole anchovies that
were so salty and prickly with tiny bones, her mouth rebelled just at
the thought of them. Parker loved this place with the fake palm trees
and trellises on the wall with fake ivy all over them.
"That six months we backpacked around in
Europe after
college was the best time of my life," Parker was saying for about the
tenth time. Next would come the stories of drinking and Mitch's falling
for the wine and how he'd borrowed ten thousand dollars from Cassie's
father to start his business. Mona hated that story.
"I know, must have been the greatest." It
was getting
really hot in there, so she unbuttoned her jacket. "Parker, I know how
busy you are, and I really need to go over some things with you."
"Of course you do," he said, still mooning
over hostels
he wouldn't dream of even entering, much less staying in now.
"You've been to see Mitch, yes?" She knew
he had.
"Yes. This is really a shocker. One day in
the pink of
health, and the next day—grim reaper. It doesn't look good. Mark told
me he's brain-dead." Parker shook his head and glanced around for a
waiter.
Mona guessed that he figured he'd been
"good" for all of
thirty minutes and now could no longer resist having a drink.
"We'll have a Bloody Mary over here,"
Parker called
across the room to a girl who wasn't paying attention. "You?" he asked
Mona.
Did she know people, or what? "Not right
now," she
murmured about the drink. "Look, Parker. Mitch is not brain-dead. He
spoke to me clearly. Very clearly. He's on the mend. I swear it. Please
don't write him off," she begged.
"That'll be two Marys!" he yelled.
When he turned back to her, her famous pout
was on her
face, and her famous wheeze was beginning in the back of her throat.
"You know I'm all alone with this, Parker."
Her voice
caught. This was no act. She was dying here. What kind of asshole was
he? They'd traveled to Italy together. They'd chartered that sailing
boat in the Greek Isles. She'd been completely nauseated the whole
time. They'd swum with fucking dolphins in Mexico. Wasn't all that the
best time of his life?
His eyes were on the bar, yearning for
those Marys.
"Come on, have a heart, Parker. Don't back
out on me now.
There's no one but you," Mona said.
Parker heaved a deep sigh. "This is a
shocker, Mona, no
question about it."
Mona talked to her invisible audience. See
what she had
to put up with! A complete narcissist. All he could think about was
himself. A genuine tear filled her eye. "What about the will, Parker?
Not that I want you to reveal confidences. But you know what Mitch's
intentions were. Did he sign his new will, or what?"
Now he gave her a frank stare. "Look, Mona.
I'm going to
do the same with you that I did with Cassie, and Teddy, and Marsha." He
made the motion of a zipper being closed across his mouth.
"What the dickens is that?" She maintained
her sweetness.
She was not going to fall apart.
"My lips are sealed."
"How can your fucking lips be sealed,
Parker? You know
what your friend wanted. Did he get it done? That's all I'm asking."
"You're not eating your salad," Parker said.
"It's a yes-or-no question. You could even
nod or shake
your head. What's the big deal?" The tears welled into puddles, and
Parker looked away. He was not one who responded well to emotion.
"Parker, please."
"I know how upset you are, Mona," he said
softly,
squirming for that drink.
"We were getting married. We were having a
family
together. You know this, Parker. I may be pregnant already. I need you
on my side. Don't let this wonderful man go," she cried. "I love him so
much. He's my whole life. What do I care about anything else? Puh, I
spit on everything else."
"Mona, please, it's not in my hands."
"Don't give me that shit, Parker. A man's
life is in your
hands."
"Mona!"
"Sorry, sorry. You know I think the world
of you." She
controlled herself. She brought the sweetness back, leaned over the
table so he could see her lovely breasts. "Parker?"
He was too busy thinking about death to
look at them.
"Parker, speak to me."
"I think the world of you, too, Mona. You
know that." But
where were those drinks? "Ah, thank you."
The two Bloody Marys finally arrived. One
was placed in
front of Mona. Parker raised his glass to her, clinked the ice, and
downed the drink in a few greedy swallows.
Mona pushed hers across the table toward
him.
"Thanks, I'll just have a sip," he said.
This one he
drank more slowly.
"Parker, you know I'll keep you as my
attorney. You stand
to keep Sales as a client—you know what I mean. Help me out, and I'll
help you out." She watched him chew on celery, this man who all his
life had despised vegetables.
"What about the power of attorney? Surely
you can tell me
that," she wheedled.
Parker finished the second Bloody. "Okay,
Mona, he didn't
sign it."
Mona gasped. "He didn't sign it?"
Parker shook his head.
"There's no power of attorney?"
"Nope."
"Well, who's in charge, then?"
"He is."
"He's in a coma, Parker."
"Yes."
Mona gasped again. For sure she was going
to die with her
beloved. "Why didn't he sign the fucking power?" she wailed.
"You know Mitch. Superstitious. He'd
planned to when he
got back." Parker shrugged.
"Oh shit. So he didn't sign the will,
either, did he?"
Parker shook his head "no" to the will.
Mona's blood pounded in her ears. The love
of her life
just couldn't let go. The story of her fucking life. She had to get a
handle on this, couldn't let Mitch die. How could she save him? She
watched Parker point at the empty glass for another drink. The waiter
nodded. Alcohol might help. Mona knew about the girl in the massage
parlor, and there were a few other things Parker wouldn't want his wife
to know. He was a weak man, putty in her hands. She thought of Mitch
hooked up to life support. What had his last will provided? They'd been
together twelve years, but she had no idea.
Parker shook his head, waiting for his
third Mary.
"What about a living will? What about a
health care
proxy?" Mona demanded.
He shook his head again.
Mona perked up. "Well, that's good. If he
has no living
will, doesn't that mean Cassie can't kill him? You are aware Cassie
intends to kill him, aren't you, Parker?"
"No, Mona. She's not like that."
"Yes, Parker, she is. She's been stalking
me. She tried
to kill me just yesterday. You know my loyalty to the family. I love
the woman to pieces, but let's face it, she's over the edge. And quite
frankly, if she hurts Mitch, I'll have your ass."
"Oh, Mona, don't talk like that. You know
you're no
toughy."
"Of course not, but I love him so much.
He's my whole
life. Except for you, he's all I've got. Is the power prepared?"
"Huh?" The lawyer blinked in confusion.
"The document giving the power of attorney
to me, Parker.
Remember?"
"No." Now Parker shook his head firmly. He
wasn't going
there.
"You remember, Parker. I was here when we
discussed it.
We can sign it now."
Parker rolled his eyes and called for the
check. "I have
a meeting at two." Typical male fade away. It made her want to puke.
This kind of thing might work with other people, but it wouldn't work
with her.
"Of course, no problem," she said
graciously, and reached
for her purse. She'd let it go now, but it wasn't over, not by a long
shot. As soon as Parker was reminded that Cassie could cause him a good
deal of trouble if Mitch died, he'd fall into line, she was sure he
would.
CHAPTER 30
EVERY DAY, wearing a scarf and her
daughter's huge sunglasses, Cassie went to the hospital during the
visiting hours of eleven to four to visit her husband in intensive
care. On days five, six, and seven after his event he was no better and
no worse than he had been on days one through four. He was stable and
as uncommunicative as ever. As she stood by his side watching the
machine breathe for him, she chewed on the inside of her mouth until it
was raw. She wished she could make contact and have it out with him
just once.
Then on Friday, a full week after Mitch had
his stroke, Cassie received a letter from Carl Flauber, a lawyer whose
name she had never seen before. Carl Flauber wrote to inform her that
he was representing Ms. Mona Whitman in the case of Whitman versus
Sales. He had obtained an Order of Protection from a judge in Nassau
County against Mrs. Cassandra Sales to keep her more than five hundred
yards away from Ms. Whitman. In addition, he was preparing a civil suit
against Mrs. Sales for harassing Ms. Whitman in her home Monday, June
3rd, and for kidnapping and driving Ms. Whitman around for two hours
while she was having an acute asthma attack, thus recklessly
endangering her life. Ms. Whitman was seeking ten million dollars in
damages for injuries incurred during the incident. In addition, Carl
Flauber advised Cassie that if the life support for Mitchell Sales was
terminated prematurely, Ms. Whitman would sue the hospital and doctors
for malpractice and Cassie for wrongful death.
Cassie read and reread this letter and
chewed some more on the inside of her lips. She folded and unfolded the
single sheet so many times in the next few hours that the creases wore
thin. It was both absurd and masterful and felt a little like being
checkmated in the game of life. The situation reminded her of Nino
Palucci's case. A year ago, Rosa Palucci's son, Nino, hired a limo to
take him and some friends into the city for an evening of safe
drinking. The driver followed them into a friend's apartment where a
party was in progress and attacked Nino, knocking him down. While
attempting to get the man out of the apartment, Nino punched him in the
nose. The limo driver called 911. When the cops arrived, they arrested
Nino for assault. The limo driver pressed charges, and when Nino
refused to plead guilty to a misdemeanor, the judge and jury convicted
him. At his sentencing the judge changed his mind about sending Nino to
jail for a year. He got a suspended sentence, but had to pay a fine of
five thousand dollars to the complainant. Defending the case cost the
Paluccis twenty-five thousand dollars, and the limo driver, flushed
with success, filed a civil suit for an additional hundred thousand
dollars in damages for post-traumatic stress disorder. Nino was
twenty-three, white, and had never been in trouble before.
Cassie Sales was fifty and had never been
in trouble before, except unknowingly as a wronged wife. Now she was in
the wrong in every respect. She had been wrong to drive to Mona's house
and scream at her. She had been wrong to let Mona get in her car. She
had been wrong to engage with the enemy in any way. She had learned a
lot since then. She did not answer the letter.
That day she had the very last stitches
removed from her scalp. When the last one was out, she felt if not
entirely whole, at least human. For the first time she looked at
herself in the mirror in the surgeon's office and actually saw that the
sagging skin and complacent chubbiness of the constantly nibbling
caterer were gone. She now resembled an earlier version of herself, an
attractive person of indeterminate age with an oval face (just a little
on the full side because her cheeks and jaw were still swollen), nice
strong chin, bee-stung lips. No wrinkles at all. While her skin was
still quite pink in places, the area around her eyes had passed the
telltale blue-and-yellow stage. At the two-week mark, the period of
pain was over. The tightness and numbness that remained made Cassie
feel as if she had the armor of a gladiator. From the doctor's office
she went to the hairdresser, where everyone said she looked amazing.
There she had her hair color adjusted from the horrendous daffodil to a
tasteful golden honey, and then she was in condition to drive to Garden
City to confront Mitch's lawyer and best friend, Parker Higgins.
At quarter to two, without first calling
ahead, Cassie arrived at the mirrored building Parker owned and where
he had his office. She announced herself to the receptionist, and he
had the good sense not to make a fuss about seeing her on no notice at
all. He fit her in at two. As soon as she walked into his
glass-and-chrome office and sat in one of his leather-and-chrome
chairs, she could see that he'd imbibed a martini or two at lunch. He
lurched across the room to kiss her fondly on the cheek. She tried not
to wince in pain.
"Cassie, what a nice surprise. You look
wonderful. Have you lost weight?" He gave her a puzzled look as if to
make sure it was really her.
"Thank you for seeing me without an
appointment," she replied.
"No need to thank me. I'm delighted."
Parker's attitude seemed to have changed since his visit to Mitch. He
threw his bulk into the chair next to Cassie's and raised an eyebrow
that was so thick, it extended from one side of his forehead right over
to the other without a break. He was black Irish, and generally a
delightful kind of guy.
"I thought it would be a good idea to sit
down and go over a few things with you," Cassie murmured, thinking with
some satisfaction that he'd lost a lot of hair and had run to fat since
they'd last met.
"Of course, no problem. I hope I didn't
leave you with the wrong impression when we talked the other day. I was
caught by surprise."
"I understand," Cassie murmured, her voice
smooth as the color of her hair. She couldn't help noticing that he
wasn't offering her coffee, or even a glass of water.
"You look different, Cassie." Parker
frowned, trying to figure out what was so different about her.
She was wearing an old navy and white
designer knockoff that had been in her closet since the eighties. The
skirt was short, and the blouse was a tiny shell of pink silk. The size
six was almost loose in the butt. It fit her perfectly, which was a
nice feeling.
"Parker, I'm in an interesting situation in
which you have the better of me," she said with a self-deprecatory
smile.
"Oh, please, don't demean yourself. You're
a fine, wonderful woman," he protested. He opened his manicured hands.
"You'll get over this. You'll find someone else and get married."
"I'm already married. I'm married to Mitch.
And whatever he intended for the future, he can't cut me out of his
will without a divorce. New York State Law."
"Oh ho ho, Cassie! There's no question of
that. Whatever happens, you're going to be all right, I promise you."
"That's nice to hear. But with everything
that's happened, how can you give me assurances like that? How am I
protected?"
Parker shifted uncomfortably in his chair.
"Well, I understand what you're saying. Men can be little more than
monkeys sometimes. They age, they make fools of themselves—"
"They die," Cassie finished the sentence
for him. "What I want to discuss with you is your involvement with Mona
and the deals that were made with her."
"I have no involvement with Mona." Parker's
tongue suddenly failed him. He slurred over the sentence, hardly able
to get the word "Mona" out at all.
"Well, good for you, because Mona is suing
me for ten million dollars," Cassie told him, still very smooth. She
plucked a thread off her skirt.
"What?" Parker's mouth turned into a little
O of surprise.
"She has an order of protection against me."
Parker was either dumbfounded, or a good
actor. "Cassie, this is very serious. Why?"
"I'm just wondering, did you give her the
name of a lawyer to use against me?" Cassie had no sunglasses on now.
She looked him in the eye and could see he was shocked.
"Good God no! Do you think I'm crazy?" he
cried.
"We'll leave that for another time." She
crossed her legs the other way.
He watched her anxiously, trying to figure
out what was going on. "You appear to be misinformed," he said after a
beat.
"Oh well, that's true. No one informed me
that Mona opened charge accounts in my name and charged up a storm,
nearly a million dollars. I gather the idea was to leave me with the
debt at the time of the divorce settlement."
Parker's wet lips that had been pursed in
shock now dropped open altogether. "What?"
"Mitch and his girlfriend bought a house
and furnished it on credit acquired in my name. I don't know the law in
this area, but I would say either it's my house and my furnishings or
else a fraud has been perpetrated against me."
Parker heaved in some air. "Ah, Cassie. All
this is news to me."
"You didn't know about the house?" she
demanded.
"Well, Mitch didn't share his private life
with me."
"Yes, he did," she countered. "He consulted
you about everything."
"I may have heard something about a house,"
Parker admitted. "Mona bought a house; Mitch could have helped her with
credit."
"Parker, I'm not going to ask you about
details at this time. I just want to make it clear that I have
documentation on purchases of silver, china, jewelry, furnishings, and
a bunch of other stuff that Mona made in my name."
"Wow, are you sure, Cassie? This doesn't
sound like the Mona I know."
Cassie made an impatient,
who-are-you-kidding? noise. "Who's in on this? Mitch, Mona, you, Ira,
and who else—everybody?"
"Cassie, there's no conspiracy here, I
promise you. You're overreacting." He opened his nice big hands with
black hair all over the backs. Women get so worked up, he seemed to be
saying.
"You know Mitch was divorcing me. That was
the reason you wouldn't talk to me on Monday," Cassie said softly.
"Just take it easy, you're going to get
through this just fine. Are you going to trust me, or not?" Parker
asked.
"You must really think I'm an idiot. A
forgery of my signature is on every receipt. Whose idea was this?
Yours, hers?"
"Look, slow down and consider your
accusation. Just consider it. Proof is the issue here. I'm not taking
sides, I'm just saying that you can make things very difficult for
yourself taking on an enemy as litigious as Mona."
"Parker, she's already sued me. I have
nothing to lose." Cassie wondered how much he had to lose.
His hands did a little dance, soothing the
air around her. "She's threatened to sue, Cassie. It's not the same
thing. She's a negotiator. She's negotiating, that's all. Don't take it
personally. There's a lot at stake here."
"Well, I'd like her to sue me. We could
have discovery and then everything would come out in court."
"Cassie, Cassie, think of the cost. Think
of what's at stake here. We're in the middle of an IRS investigation.
You don't want things to get muddled, do you?" Parker was very alarmed.
"Muddled?"
"She'll claim he gave her everything, then
when you lose, there will be gift tax to pay." Parker clenched and
unclenched his fingers, drunk no more. "You see. Culpability can get
mixed up, and other things could come out."
The ground was shifting under Cassie again.
She knew he meant Mitch's moving cash out of the country, but what was
this gift tax thing?
"I'm your friend. I've always been your
friend. I'll help you find a way out of this. Trust me, will you?"
Parker urged.
Suddenly queasy, Cassie rose to go. "I'll
think about it." As she put her sunglasses back on, she wondered how
many ways his actions were unethical and whether he could be disbarred
for conflict of interest.
CASSIE DID NOT DRIVE to the hospital to
see how Mitch was doing as she had planned. It was clear that she and
Mona were in a deadly game of chess, and she had a disturbing
premonition about the files and the credit card receipts with her
signature on them in Mitch's office, as well as all those folders in
the computer dating back years that she hadn't had time to go through.
If Mona felt strong enough to threaten to sue her, then she wasn't
afraid of prosecution. And if she wasn't afraid of prosecution, then
she must have some plan for acquiring the evidence.
The sun was high in mid afternoon as Cassie
raced home. Even with the air conditioner on in the Mercedes, she was
uncomfortably hot, sweating in the straw hat and sunglasses she wore to
protect her new face against dangerous ultraviolet rays. She was
sweating in the pseudo fancy nubbly suit and pink silk blouse she
hadn't fit into in years. She was sweating buckets. When she got home,
she was alarmed by the battered black Buick that was parked in front.
CHAPTER 31
CASSIE DROVE PAST THE BUICK, puzzled by
the trunk
wired closed. Maybe there was a body in it, maybe her files. Chewing on
her lip, she crunched onto the only drive in the neighborhood whose
asphalt was covered with gravel, a landscape feature that she'd always
thought gave her home a nice little rural touch. She pushed the
automatic garage door opener in the Mercedes, and the garage door
rumbled up. Inside, the Porche was resting comfortably all alone, but
something didn't feel right. A strange car was parked outside, and even
her garage was giving her the willies. She didn't want to risk getting
caught in a dark space by a burglar, so she backed slowly out again. It
seemed that every action she took now was a reaction to a threat. She
had to plan every move like a strategist in a war. It was all new and
frightening. After twenty-six years of playing everything in her life
so safe, she was now teetering on a tightrope over a chasm.
Shivering, she stopped the car just outside
the garage,
turned off the engine, and got out. The Mercedes door was heavy. Solid
steel. She had to push hard for it to close with a solid thunk. More
creepy feelings prevented her from entering the house through the front
door. Everything was a potential threat. Everything. Heart beating, she
went around to the gate. There she let out her breath. The owner of the
shabby black Buick was Charles Schwab, back in her yard again. More
precisely, he was in her greenhouse. She recognized his shape and crew
cut through the glass.
Shaking her head, a little angry now, she
entered her
Eden. She strode across the patch of lawn that was surrounded by
borders planted thickly with dwarf lilies, half of which were
ambrosially in bloom. She moved quickly past the patio, where the pool
sparkled and the geraniums had yet to be potted. She walked under the
arbor, heavily weighted with leaf and rosebudded vines that any day
would burst open in a riot of color.
Mr. Schwab was turned away from her,
leaning on the
bench, apparently in deep contemplation of a particularly showy double
spray of monarch butterfly–sized, yellow phalaenopsis. She turned the
handle of the greenhouse and startled him.
"Wow, what a specimen!" he exclaimed
without missing a
beat as he turned his head and saw her in the doorway in her nubbly
tweed suit with the short skirt and pink blouse, her sun hat and
glasses.
"Hello Mr. J. P. Morgan," she said, "fancy
meeting you
here."
"Very funny," he replied. "It's Charles
Schwab."
"Oh yeah, Schwab. I knew the name had
something to do
with money. What can I do for you, Mr. Schwab?" All of Cassie's own
code buttons were flashing. She was scared of this guy Schwab, and at
the same time she was not scared of him at all. It was funny. She was
aware he could do her a lot of harm, and somehow he still managed to
remind her of a cute guy in high school. No one in particular, he was
just the type she used to like. The one with the shy smile who wasn't
really shy once you got to know him.
"Nice outfit. You can call me Charlie if
you want." He
turned around all the way to get a better view.
Click. High school. Cassie blinked. The
feeling of the
past in the present was strong. She shivered in the heat. "Thank you.
What are you doing in my greenhouse, Charlie? Interested in gardening?"
"Girls are supposed to like it when you
compliment them
on their outfits." There was the smile.
Click. Cassie was back there, eighteen,
attracted to a
guy, hoping he would ask her to dance. Click. She was fifty, married to
a comatose man who hadn't loved her in years.
Puzzled, she ducked her face into the shade
of her hat. "Checking out my orchids?"
"Yes, I hope you don't mind. Very
impressive. They really
are."
"Sublimation," Cassie quipped.
"No kidding, which one is that?"
"All of them. Orchids are amazing. I don't
even think of
them as flowers. They're more like exotic creatures." She smiled.
Just their names alone set Cassie dreaming:
phalaenopis,
dendrobium, cattleya, paphiopedlium. She dreamed of them at night—their
colors, their shapes, delicate and extravagant, like butterflies and
moths and bees and tigers, firebirds, fish, with beauty unmatched by
any other species on earth. Each orchid small or large, in bunches like
vandas or sprays like dancing oncidium, felt to Cassie like stirrings
of the senses she'd lost, teasingly sensual yet entirely accessible.
Her substitute for sex. The globes of the paphs were like full, round
testicles of athletes, the cats like richly dressed court ladies in
heat.
"They're very splendid," Schwab said,
neutral on the
subject of sublimation.
"So, what are you really doing in my
greenhouse?" She
knew his job was to catch her husband at tax evasion, embezzlement,
everything Mitch enjoyed doing.
"I love these orchids. I didn't know
orchids smelled like
this. What do you call this one?"
"That's a cattleya. It's called Hawaiian
sunset."
Charlie tilted his head at it, sniffed,
stuck out his
bottom lip to examine it more comprehensively. The two large flowers
were elaborately frilled purple and orange, outrageously scented.
"Hmm, of course, tropical sunset," he
murmured. "Very
nice. This one smells, too." He pointed at a large oncidium with two
dancing sprays of mothlike blooms in brown, pink, and lavender.
"That one smells like chocolate. Isn't it
amazing? It's
an oncidium." Cassie couldn't help being proud of her babies. Not
everybody could do even easy orchids like these.
"Amazing. You have quite a talent for
this." He looked
her over some more. "How are things going?"
Click. The question felt personal. Click.
She shook her
head.
"That's a not good?"
"That's a not good." She lifted a shoulder,
feeling like
eighteen. Feeling like a hundred, both at the same time.
He rubbed at an ink stain on one of his
fingers. "I'm
sorry to hear it. Your husband's still in intensive care?"
"Oh yes, still out of it." She scratched an
eyebrow,
chewed on the inside of her tortured lip. She was still reeling over
the events of the week, the doctors and lawyers. And she was shaken
that she could also feel like a teenager in spite of it all. She was
hanging back in the doorway because the greenhouse was too small a
space for two people who weren't close friends. Nervous. She was very
nervous because of the dangerous stranger in her space.
Charlie bent his knees a little to peek
under the brim of
her hat. "Does that mean you're still not serving coffee?"
She laughed.
"I noticed that you have one of those fancy
cappuccino
makers in there." He pointed at the house and her wonderful kitchen.
"Does it work?"
"Were you peering through the windows
again, or have you
been inside?" Cassie asked anxiously.
"Just peeping. I saw the car was gone. The
alarm button
is on. I didn't want to mess with it." He smiled his disingenuous smile
that made it clear he knew how to disengage burglar alarms when he
wanted to. "I thought I'd hang out for a few minutes and see if you
came back."
"Thanks, I appreciate the courtesy."
It was his turn to laugh.
"Actually, I came back because I had a
feeling someone
was here," Cassie told him. It just wasn't who she'd expected. "Sure,
it works. It works very well." She backed out of the door to let him
out. "Come on in the house, I'd like some coffee myself."
All the dancing moths on Cassie's oncidium
jumped into
her stomach as she led the IRS agent into the minefield of her house.
She had no clear idea what Mitch had hidden there or what the agent was
looking for. But she had a strange, upsetting feeling that he wasn't
here only about taxes. He was here about her.
She opened the door and turned off the
burglar alarm that
she'd used only rarely up to now. Then she went about grinding beans,
setting up the machine, getting out the milk for frothing while Schwab
looked around.
"Nice Viking, Sub-Zero. What a pot
collection!" He took
it all in.
"Don't get too excited. It's all fifteen
years old,"
Cassie informed him.
"Age doesn't matter with quality items," he
replied,
touching another nerve.
"Some maybe. Do you like to cook?"
"I fool around a little. I cook for my dad."
"That's nice."
"Not really. He has special needs. He has a
problem
swallowing." Charlie checked out the cupboards of dishes, good ones.
"Really? That sounds unusual." The coffee
machine started
chunking and spitting, getting its job done. It was a big and fancy
one, but it took a while.
"It's a rare condition," Charlie said.
"That's a shame," Cassie thought of the
soft food groups.
Purees, soups, ice cream. Puddings, soufflés. She didn't want to
ask if Charlie lived with his dad or vice versa. Or if his wife lived
there, too. He was the one who was investigating her.
"He's been living with me for thirteen
years, since my
mother died." He answered her unasked question easily, pulling out a
chair and plopping down at her table as if he'd been drinking coffee
there for years. "I don't like to talk about it. Must be your kitchen
that got me going." That smile again.
Click. "I know what it's like. My mother
died first, too.
Widowers can have a lot of trouble if they don't remarry." Cassie kept
it conversational.
"Everybody has a lot of trouble if they
don't remarry.
But I agree with you about geezers. My dad is a handful."
Cassie thought of Edith and nodded. Then a
big thing
happened in a tiny beat without her deliberating about it at all. She'd
met a man she might have liked if she'd known him in high school. His
investigation of her felt like a date, so she led with a strength.
She'd skipped breakfast and missed lunch, and wanted something to eat
with her coffee. There was nothing in the house, so she preheated the
oven to four hundred and began to assemble scones. She filled a
measuring cup with flour, added salt, sugar, baking powder, then cut
butter into it, sprinkling in enough milk to create a small lump of
soft dough. She patted the lump out on her granite countertop and
kneaded in a handful of currents and some candied orange peel. Then she
cut out eight tiny biscuits with a shot glass and frothed the rest of
the milk while they were baking.
By the time perfect scones came out of the
oven, Cassie
had set the table with her own strawberry jam and cappuccino in big
cups, and her visitor was speechless with wonder.
"Tell me about gift tax," she said
matter-of-factly, as
if this kind of hat trick was an everyday occurrence, which it was.
"This is just the most amazing thing I've
ever seen,"
Charlie said, lifting a tiny browned scone to his nose to sniff, as he
had the orchid. "You just did that?" He snapped his fingers.
"Well, we needed a grain food group," she
explained.
"Wow, a competent woman."
She sipped the coffee. That was not bad,
either. "Well,
thanks. It's not as great as it looks."
"Yes, it is. It's better than it looks," he
murmured.
She snorted. "The picture of perfect
domesticity, I mean."
"Oh?" He tilted his head in that way he had.
"My comatose husband has a girlfriend."
Cassie took a
scone and broke off a tiny piece. "I didn't know he was planning to
divorce me until the stroke. When I found out he and this girl had been
together for years, I got upset, drove over to her house, and yelled at
her, so she's suing me for ten million dollars. You came as a surprise
on the same day." She sucked her lip into her mouth. "Actually, I'm a
nervous wreck."
"Well, you could have fooled me." Charlie
drank some
coffee and put the cup down. "This is the best coffee I've ever tasted.
The best scones. About you, this says it all. It really does. You have
a lot of style."
Her lip trembled. "Thank you."
"And I've seen it all. This is the oldest
story in the
world. I've lived it myself. What do you want to know about gift tax?"
CHAPTER 32
ON SATURDAYS CHARLIE SCHWAB HAD A
SCHEDULE. In the
morning he spent three hours working at his office. It was quiet there,
and he liked to get out of the house, where Ogden always wanted to do
father-son stuff together, like play Scrabble or poker and gamble with
spare change. After work he had an hour and a half of real tennis at
the indoor courts on Ocean Road with his friend Harvey—also a revenue
agent—who was once ranked 143 on the tennis circuit and never got over
it.
After tennis, in which the score was always
6–4, 4–6,
6–5, with the two men taking turns at winning, they made the short hop
across the street for lunch at Steven's Fish House. The one who lost
did the grumbling, and they both had the same lunch year-round. Clam
roll, fully loaded. Couple of beers. If the kitchen didn't have clams,
they'd have an oyster roll fully loaded. After that, goodbye to Harvey.
Charlie did the weekly food shopping for Ogden to reduce the risk of
the Rau family giving him things he shouldn't eat. Chickpea fritters,
onion kulcha, deep-fried pastries, vegetable tandoori. Everything big
enough to choke a horse, not to mention a man who had trouble with
applesauce. Then he'd go home with the groceries and play around in the
kitchen whipping up some really yummy soft foods.
This Saturday he expected the usual. He'd
spent his
workweek sniffing around the Sales situation, giving some thought to
Mona Whitman and Cassie Sales. At first, he'd thought that since Cassie
was the man's wife, she had to be in on it. He figured he could get her
to open up easily enough. His plan had been to get down into the cellar
and inventory the valuable wines their informant claimed was hidden
there. The private cellar was only a small piece of the puzzle. What
could Sales have down there, a few hundred cases? But it could serve as
the "way in," the discrepancy in documenting that would justify a wider
investigation.
Their informant, via a number of anonymous
letters on
Sales stationery, had revealed that Mitchell Sales personally was
taking in a lot of cash off the books. If that was the case, he had to
be laundering the money somehow, or else getting it out of the
country—maybe into a numbered account in Switzerland or offshore. Maybe
both. The wife would certainly know about that.
On Thursday when he was in Newark auditing
a dry-cleaning
chain—ironically enough, also a company that took in a lot of
cash—Charlie had checked out a second Sales warehouse in New Jersey. It
had been described in various documents as a depot, just a staging area
of about 1,500 square feet. The warehouse at the address listed,
however, turned out to be more on the order of 165,000 square feet,
almost as large as the Long Island warehouse. Pay dirt indeed. He had
been considering the ways to go with it. They could track the truckers,
go through the garbage for the paperwork on the deliveries. Check the
files in the computers inside there. Lot of things they could do.
But yesterday the picture had changed for
him. He'd
searched the greenhouse at the Sales home, looking for a safe or a
false floor in which Sales could be hiding gems or cash. He'd found
only magical orchids—gorgeous, but probably not worth more than a
hundred dollars each. During his three-hour talk with Cassie Sales over
the coffee and the biscuits she'd made, then over fruit and a tiny
glass of very good sherry, she'd filled him in on the wine distribution
business as she understood it, and he'd explained gift tax.
Maybe he'd been smitten over the coffee and
homemade
baked goods, maybe it was the sherry and grapes. But he believed her
story about the girlfriend. If Cassie had only just learned about the
girlfriend, as she claimed, it didn't seem likely that she was the
informant. In any case, he hadn't had the heart to question her about
the wine cellar in the basement or the offshore accounts. It seemed
pretty clear that whatever he did, this beautiful, classy, and very
nice lady stood to lose a great deal from his uncovering her husband's
business dealings. So he'd done something unusual, he'd backed off.
Charlie was in a deep brooding state when
he stepped out
of the district office building in Brooklyn after finishing up his work
for the morning. Coming outside he was momentarily blinded by the
dazzling mid-June sunlight. Then, just as earlier in the week in
similar circumstances, he saw Mona Whitman leaning against her car. It
was seventy-eight degrees warm. The sky was robin's egg blue, and there
were no clouds floating around up there where heaven was supposed to
be. Mona was wearing sunglasses, tight pants, high heels, and a little
sweater that didn't hide her magnificent chest.
"Charles Schwab. Hi." She waved and called
out to him. "I
think I found something that might help you."
"No kidding." He walked over to see what it
was.
"Wow, you look different on the weekend,"
she said
admiringly.
He was dressed in the cut-offs and white
T-shirt he
always wore for tennis. None of that fancy stuff for him. The T-shirt
he was wearing had a few holes in the ribbing around the neckline. Mona
pointed at the bulging Bloomingdale's shopping bag sitting on the car
beside her.
"What's in the bag, money?" Charlie joked.
"I wish. How are you?" She said this as if
they were best
friends who'd been apart for too long.
"Okay. How's Mr. Sales doing?"
"Oh, he's coming along just fine." Mona
glanced down at
her feet. "Have you been working on our case on a fabulous day like
this?"
Charlie's smile broadened.
"What's funny?"
"Everybody thinks theirs is the only case
we ever work
on. I have others, you know." He was thinking, bingo the girlfriend, no
wonder Cassie lost it.
"Everybody says you work too hard." Mona
was flirting.
"Who'd say that?" Charlie scratched his
head.
"Oh, you think you're the only one who
finds out things
about people." She laughed. She had a very pleasant laugh that Charlie
found chilling.
She could be an informer. She could be a
spy for the
other side. The first person who'd ever smashed his windshield had been
a woman. Charlie never forgot he had to watch himself. He glanced at
his watch. By now Harvey would be on his way to Indoor Tennis. He had
to go.
"Harvey, right?" Mona said coyly.
Charlie raised his eyebrows. This woman
actually knew
where he was on Saturday morning, where he was going. Not good.
"You'd be surprised how much I know about
you." So she
read minds, too. Very cute.
"I know, you've got to go." She pushed
herself off the
car and reached for the shopping bag, offered it over. "Here."
"What's this?" He looked inside. It was
full of paper.
She waved her hand at it. "Sales records."
Her giggle was
like a birdsong. "Sales records for Sales's sales. I thought you might
find them useful."
Great. This was the kind of thing his
mother used to do.
Bring him the tax stuff in a shopping bag. Of course, he'd loved his
mother. He nodded at Mona, tilted his head to one side. Mona certainly
wasn't anything like her. His tongue poked at the side of his cheek. He
got the feeling she was like the car bomb Rau had found attached to his
poor muffler last month. He didn't know who'd planted that.
"Are you always this hard work?" She
shifted hips.
He clicked the tongue. Tsk, tsk, tsk. She
was good.
"Well, I'll be getting along then." The
door was locked.
She fumbled with her car key. After a short struggle, in which he
watched her shake with the huge effort of pressing the remote, she
twirled around like a dancer.
"I mean, I'm all alone with this. Poor
Mitch is in the
hospital, and his wife wants to pull the plug on him. It's so
upsetting. I never thought she'd go so far. First the terrible
financial drain. Now this. The truth is, I don't know what to do." She
blurted all this with a great spurt of emotion.
Charlie didn't respond. He knew a good act
when he saw
one.
"I thought we could talk about it over that
lunch. After
your tennis game, I mean," she amended quickly.
"Fine." Charlie nodded. Maybe she was
asking him out for
a date. Maybe she was coming on to him. Maybe she was a spy or the
informer or the girlfriend or all of the above. He held on to the
shopping bag filled with papers. Could be something, could be nothing.
Whatever Mona had for him, though, she activated Charlie's alarm system.
"That's a yes, right?" Mona said, clapping
her hands,
triumphant in a win.
TWO HOURS LATER, after Harvey had beaten
Charlie 6–4 in
the first set and 6–2 in the second and was out of the picture, Charlie
and Mona were sitting at one of the picnic tables ordering clam rolls
at Steven's.
"Thank you for meeting me," Mona said,
triumph still
written all over her. "This is really a cute place. Do you come here
with your father?"
"I'd guess this isn't the sort of place you
come to,"
Charlie said. He was pretty sweaty even though he'd let Harvey beat
him. He hadn't showered because there was no shower at Indoor. It was
just a bubble. He was sure he stank, but didn't care. He was working
now.
Mona laughed and held up the menu. She
pointed at the
page of beer choices and only two wines, house red and house white.
"I'd say you're right. But I love it," she added quickly. "I just love
working-class places."
"No kidding." Charlie hid his grimace. It
was clear she
thought he was a blue-collar worker.
"No kidding," she returned quickly. "My
grandmother was a
Rockefeller, but my mother was a hippie before stoned and cults were
fashionable. But enough of that. Tell me about your life." She propped
her elbow on the table and nestled her chin in her hand as if suddenly
he'd metamorphosed into the kind of fascinating high WASP captain of
industry she liked.
He talked for quite a while about
absolutely nothing that
could help her, watching to see if her eyes glazed over. They didn't.
She gazed at him with rapture throughout his long, complicated, and
excruciatingly dull monologue about the tax structure.
"How about a woman? Is there a lucky woman
in your life?"
she asked when he'd finished.
"Oh, sure." He was working on the clam roll.
Her little face fell. "I bet you have a
girlfriend."
"Ummm." Chew, chew, chew. Swallow. Great
clam roll with
lots of sauce oozing out all over him.
"What's she like?"
"What about you? Are you attached?" he
asked with his
mouth full.
"Attached? Oh no, there's no one, just
Mitch. I mean,
I've really devoted my entire life to the business. I was married for a
while, but it didn't work out. Soooo, I just took my name back and
Mitch's family as my own. Cassie and the children are like my own flesh
and blood. That's why her behavior is so . . . painful." She pressed
her lips together to keep the tears back.
Charlie wiped his mouth with the paper
napkin and pushed
his plate away. So she'd devoted her life to Mitch. She was the
girlfriend who was suing Cassie for a cool ten mil.
"Maybe you should think about having a
family of your
own," he said, gazing back at her with interest. "I bet it would be
pretty easy to get a husband if you wanted to."
"Do you really think so?" She seemed to
doubt it.
Charlie nodded, amused that this wily woman
of
self-proclaimed excellent pedigree was trying to get him to believe she
was insecure. She worked on it a little more.
After lunch, she offered him a ride in her
car. She gave
him the keys, and he actually got a huge kick out of driving a car he
could never own himself. He followed the road out to Long Beach, where
they got out of the car to look at the water. So far she hadn't told
him a single useful thing, but neither had he. They were playing it
very cagey.
On Long Beach itself, there was a five-mile
boardwalk.
Mona said she loved hiking, but couldn't exactly walk in the shoes she
had on. So, they stood in the breeze for a while and contemplated the
beach and the ocean. Beautiful. People were out there in their bathing
suits, sitting on the sand, walking, playing volleyball. For a moment
Charlie thought that it would be nice to be part of a couple, to have a
classy, competent woman in his life who wasn't a transient he couldn't
wait to get rid of at the end of an evening or early the next morning.
Someone he could cook and eat with, talk to, relax with.
As he was thinking this, Mona took his hand
and held it
tight. "You're amazing," she told him with eyes as big and deep as the
ocean in front of them.
CHAPTER 33
AT FIVE O'CLOCK CHARLIE DROVE HOME to
change his
clothes for a drink at Mona Whitman's house. He felt he'd hit pay dirt
with the invitation to come to her home. Usually their residences were
the last places taxpayers wanted agents to go. Whatever Mona wanted him
to see there, however, Charlie knew he would learn a lot. In the last
few days he was working overtime for the service, being more popular
and having more dates than he'd had in months. He was doing fieldwork,
and the field was coming to him. The only question was how much sowing
he would have to do, and what kind of harvest he would get for his
efforts.
The Sales case wasn't numbered for criminal
investigation
yet. As far as the district director and the regional commissioner were
concerned, he was still doing background for a routine audit. But he
could smell fear emanating from every corner of the case. There was so
much quaking going on, he'd begun to think conspiracy. He had his eye
on a bigger target now, Ira Mandel, accountant, adviser, and
third-party record keeper to many high-profile taxpayers. If he was a
rotten apple at Sales, he was a rotten apple elsewhere, too.
Mitchell Sales might be in the hospital,
but the case of
Sales Importers was spiraling on its own. Inside the company there was
an informer, teasing, teasing, and not yet out of the closet. Whoever
it was could get immunity if he or she came forward voluntarily with
information leading to a conviction. Often, however, informants did not
come forward and identify themselves, not for anything, even high fink
fees.
Most people didn't know that the government
paid up to 10
percent on recovered revenues in evasion cases. If the numbers were up
there in the hundreds of thousands—or the millions—the fees could add
up. But of the 1,200 plus informants who came forward every year, only
a small minority attempted to get their money. Charlie had six cases
right now with fink fees no one wanted to claim. It turned out that a
lot of people ratted to get even but feared disclosure because getting
even could go both ways.
The IRS picked different professions to
target with
audits every year. A few years ago when it was dentists, a nurse had
tipped the service off to an oral surgeon she worked for who had
several offices. He'd been cooking his books for fifteen years. She got
her ten-thousand-dollar fink fee, but was blackballed and never got
another job in a doctor's office again.
Charlie pondered Mona Whitman. He had his
eye on her.
Mona was a third party, and all third parties counted. According to
Mona's own testimony, she was not a third-party professional record
keeper, like Ira Mandel, or Mitch's various lawyers, banks, customers,
and creditors. But as a partner in his business, as a friend, and maybe
girlfriend, Mona was a non-record-keeping third party. She had intimate
knowledge of his and the company's dealings and as such could quite
possibly be a coconspirator in his activities. A conviction as a
coconspirator in an evasion case would garner her a prison sentence up
to five years and a $250,000 fine in addition to any unrecorded, unpaid
additional income she had. Prosecution was a discretionary action that
the Treasury requested and the Justice Department carried out.
All the way home to Lynbrook, in addition
to feeling
regret at being back in his own noisy, undistinguished car, Charlie
pondered the question of how to protect Cassie Sales. From Long Beach
it was not a long way. He drove down Lake Avenue, checking the rearview
mirror every few minutes to make sure the Jaguar was not behind him. He
didn't trust Mona Whitman and her own investigative techniques. His
house came into view and he sighed with relief. No Jag behind him. No
Jag was out front, either.
Lynbrook had a number of great old houses
like his with
its wraparound porch ringed with late-blooming peach azalea (showing
now) and blue hydrangea that would flower later in the summer. The
property border picket fence was covered with climbing roses, one or
two flowers of which were already in bloom. He and his father tended
the property with loving care, and though it was nothing compared with
Cassie's, Charlie thought the property wasn't too bad at all. His real
estate friend, Carol, who was heavier than she should be and whom he
didn't find as attractive as she found him, was always telling him he
could sell it in a heartbeat. On an early summer day like today, he
thought it was probably true. But after owning the place for
twenty-five years, even with the first $250,000 tax free, the capital
gains tax would still take a big chunk. He didn't see how he could ever
sell.
Upstairs, Charlie showered quickly, then
hesitated in the
closet for a long time, considering his wardrobe. Nothing he had was up
to the tight pants and sweater Mona Whitman had been wearing. Finally
he decided on a houndstooth jacket, a yellow shirt, and khaki trousers.
Then he drove northeast to the other side of Long Island, where his
possible informant, the girlfriend who probably had not a drop of blue
blood in her veins and who was suing the wife he liked, said she lived.
ROSLYN WAS A WHOLE OTHER STORY from Long
Beach and
Lynbrook. Roslyn had a nice town park with a duck pond, real ducks, and
many gracious old white houses with porches and peaked roofs and green
shutters that were larger and finer versions of Charlie's. In this
neighborhood, they'd be triple the price, too. Charlie drove down the
hill into Roslyn Harbor, an even cuter little town without a grocery
store that looked like it belonged on Cape Cod, or out in the Hamptons.
Then he swung back up the hill taking a little tour of the neighborhood.
Halfway up the hill, before he reached
Roslyn Heights, he
saw the red Jag parked on the street. In light of the flashy car,
Mona's place was nothing special, just a tiny brick attached town
house, one of dozens in a complex called Beech Tree Hill that lined
both sides of the street. From the outside, there appeared to be no
special features. The long squat row of brick structures had small
windows, nonexistent landscaping, no balconies or sun porches, and rows
of ugly garages behind them. Compared with Cassie Sales's pretty house
and superb gardens, it was a tenement. Charlie parked the Buick behind
the Jag and got out.
As he started to approach the house, he had
his second
flash of the day to the car bomb on his muffler that hadn't detonated
as planned. He didn't enjoy having feelings of paranoia, but frankly
this didn't look like the kind of place where a girl like Mona Whitman
would live. He had a sudden fear of being set up. The alarm bell
clanged so loudly, he almost turned around to get back in the car. But
Mona had seen him from the window and had come out her front door to
welcome him before he could get away.
"That was fast. I didn't even have time to
wash my face.
Come on in," she said.
Too late. Charlie gave her a lame smile and
hoped for the
best. Inside, he was reassured by the furnishings. This was her taste
all right. Everything was white, white, white. Neat. He'd seen enough
places to know there wasn't a speck of dust anywhere. He could tell
without even running his fingers along the moldings. Immediately he was
struck by the fact that there were no photos, no souvenir-like things.
No books, no stereo. And then he knew she didn't really live here.
Girls were messy. Even neat girls were messy. They had stuff from high
school, from college. They had Valentine-shaped chocolate boxes from
ten years ago in which they kept little odds and ends. They had stuffed
animals. They had knicks and knacks. Mona had nothing.
"It's not much. Not a beautiful place like
yours," she
said, looking around at it critically.
"Mine?"
"You have a lovely home," Mona chirped,
"but I wasn't so
lucky. I had no inheritance. I started with nothing."
So she had followed him to his lovely home.
"Well, this
is just great!" he said, approving the house. "Very nice."
"Come on in, don't be shy."
Charlie wasn't shy. He just didn't like
being manipulated.
She held out her arms to the place. "Come
on, tell me the
truth. What do you think of it, really?"
"Very nice." But Charlie knew she didn't
live there.
"Well, let's just say I worked hard for it,
and I did it
on my own. Face it, it's not very impressive, considering the lifetime
of work I put in. There are no closets at all, and real entertaining is
out of the question."
"Well, it's small, but elegant. You've done
a nice job
with it." Well, maybe there was another story. Maybe Sales had been
cheating on her, too. Planned to dump her, buy her out, return to his
wife. And she was getting even by informing on him.
"No, it's tiny," Mona insisted angrily, one
hand tapping
furiously at her hip.
Then suddenly her mood changed. She dropped
the annoyance
about the house and sat on the sofa. "Seeing somebody so ill makes you
want to celebrate life," she said, perky again. "Know what I mean?"
"Oh yes, definitely." Charlie took a seat
himself. Right
about now he was thinking about a drink. Someplace safe, far from here.
"Mitch was such a strong, vital man. Now
he's on life
support. It just makes you reconsider everything."
He nodded. He was thinking, give me the
juice, babe, so I
can bail out of here.
"You know, seize the day," she murmured.
She was getting
emotional, and he was yearning to be somewhere else with a different
kind of woman altogether. He wanted her to squeal, not throw herself at
him.
"I loved them so much, and now I'm totally
out of the
loop. I'm so afraid." Tears puddled in her eyes.
"What are you afraid of?" he asked. He knew
what he was
afraid of.
"Oh, murder is such a terrible thing," she
moaned.
"Murder?" Oh, now they were on murder. He
hoped she
didn't mean his.
"I'm not going to burden you with it,
Charles."
"Go ahead, burden me," he said
magnanimously.
"No, no. I promised you a drink, and a
drink is what
you'll get. I have something I know you'll like." Mona jumped up and
ran into the kitchen, which was only a few feet away. She returned with
some delicate crystal champagne glasses and a bottle of pink champagne
on a silver tray. "You know, Charles, there's no one else. I feel like
you're all I have now." She popped the cork and poured expertly, handed
him a glass, then raised hers.
"Oh, I'm sure that's not the case," he
demurred.
"Yes, that woman is going to murder Mitch.
She's going to
take everything I have in the world. Would you let someone get away
with murder, Charles?"
"Of course not," Charlie said.
"Good. Have some more. This is a very good
vintage." Mona
finished her glass of champagne and poured herself another.
"So give me what you've got," Charlie said.
"Uh-oh. I'm having an asthma attack. I need
my inhaler."
Mona was suddenly coughing uncontrollably, her chest heaving with the
effort of breathing.
What now? Charlie thought he'd seen
everything in his
years of service, but he'd never seen this.
"Would you run upstairs and get it for me?
It's in the
drawer in the bedside table," she pleaded.
Good God. He was being tested today.
Charlie charged up
the stairs into her bedroom, then stopped short at the sight of the
frilly white bed. He opened the bedside drawer. Inside was something
called Kama Sutra massage oil, a number of smelly candles, and an
asthma inhaler. Ventolin. That was it. He grabbed it. Then, before
going downstairs, he stopped to examine the bathroom. In the medicine
cabinet he found several bottles of NyQuil, aspirin, Motrin, Tampax,
toothpaste, toothbrush, a hair dryer. Not a lot else. No birth control
pills, no condoms, nothing of an intimate nature. She may have stayed
here from time to time, but this woman didn't live here. He took a leak
and washed his hands, checked himself in the mirror. He looked pretty
good, if he did say so himself. He went back downstairs, ready to go.
The woman wasn't spilling, and he wasn't hanging around to find out
what the game was.
"Do you know how to give a back rub,
Charles?" she asked,
wheezing on the sofa when he trotted down the stairs.
"No, not really." He was out of there for
sure.
"Could you just give me a little back rub,
just so I can
relax? I know I'll feel better in a minute. Then we can talk."
"Here's your inhaler."
"Charles, you're the greatest. The absolute
greatest."
"Thanks for the champagne. Feel better
now." He wouldn't
sit down.
Mona's face went into a pout. "Are you
going already? We
haven't had a chance to talk," she complained.
"Yeah, well, my dad isn't feeling well. But
thanks, I had
a really nice day. I'll go through those papers you gave me. And if you
have anything else you want to share with me, don't hesitate to call."
Then he fled.
CHAPTER 34
MONA CALLED IRA FROM HER OFFICE in the
warehouse
several times the following week. He was still having a fit over her
behavior at the audit meeting. He didn't seem to understand that she
knew what she was doing. All the men in her life were being difficult.
He simply wouldn't concentrate on what she was telling him.
"Mona, let me try to explain something very
basic to you.
The IRS doesn't have to tell you they're investigating you, got that?
They can investigate you in secret," he told her heatedly.
"Ira, I don't know what you're referring
to," she said,
irritated that he couldn't stick to the subject. "I'm talking about
Cassie. I'm trying to get through to you. There are going to be
consequences if she doesn't leave me alone."
"Look, I understand the situation, but you
have to sit
tight here. You can't do anything. You can't make friends with IRS
agents. Do you read me?"
"I would do no such thing. It's not my
fault if he's
coming on to me. The guy calls me every day."
"This is very upsetting to hear," Ira said
angrily. "You
have to be careful. You don't want to get him angry at you."
"I told him I can't have a relationship
right now, but
men just like me. I don't know what it is."
"Mona, he doesn't like you. He's working a
case."
"I know. Sexual harassment is a terrible
thing. If it
goes any further, I'll just have to make a complaint."
"Don't you do that!" Ira screamed.
He was losing it, a very small-minded man.
Mona changed
the subject. "Look, Ira. You don't know what's happening here. Cassie
is coming in and having checks cut. I can't have that. Do you
understand me. I cannot have that."
"Look, she's not getting what's due her.
Her regular
checks aren't coming in. She can't pay the doctor bills."
"She's a very extravagant person, Ira. She
should
economize, not try to take advantage of the situation."
"I'm not arguing with you about this again,
Mona. You
can't cut the owner's wife off when her husband has doctor bills. You
don't have that kind of power."
"I don't know what you're talking about,
Ira. This woman
spends like an Arab."
"Mona! You're giving me an ulcer!"
"I have an ulcer myself. And I have asthma.
I've never
been in such terrible condition in my life. Look at what she's doing to
me, Ira. She tried to kill me, now she's trying to eliminate Mitch. She
comes into the building and talks shit about me. I know she intends to
take over as soon as he's gone. I can't have that. You have to talk to
her. You can't let this go anymore."
"Mona, she has doctor bills."
"I don't want her around here," Mona said.
"Then make sure she has the money she
needs. Don't make
me step in here. I'm only the accountant."
"Oh, you're much more than the accountant,"
Mona said.
"Hey! Don't start with me. You know I don't
know the half
of what Mitch gets up to. And believe me, I don't want to know. I know
what I know, and that's it."
"But I'm all alone with this, Ira. What am
I going to do
about the money I need? Tell me that. I'm stuck here in this big house.
I can't carry it. Cassie is a murderer—" She could go on and on.
"Mona, did you know that IRS agents
routinely go to banks
for canceled checks to prove people are spending money they claimed
they'd never earned? If you mess around with Charlie Schwab and he
starts looking closely at you and finds out where you live and how you
live, he might just think some of your deductions are a little on the
high side. He might question your salary, how you're paying for that
big house. He might start looking for safe-deposit boxes. Do you have
any safe-deposit boxes full of cash that I don't know about?" Ira said
furiously.
"No, of course not. I'm shocked to hear you
suggest such
a thing." Mona tapped her fingers on the desk.
"I don't want to find out down the road
you've got cash
all over the place."
"I said I don't." Mona checked her nail
polish. Why was
he acting like such a pig after all the things she'd done for him?
"Then don't start spending it, you hear me?
Don't involve
me. And don't engage Cassie in your war. I'm telling you, she could do
a lot of damage."
"I wouldn't hurt her for the world, Ira.
I'll listen to
you, Ira. I want you to know I think you're very special. You're all I
have. I won't forget it."
Mona hung up and dialed Charlie Schwab's
number. She left
another message for him when his voice mail answered. She was a woman
with a great deal of confidence in her ability to turn any situation
around. In spite of their first-date fiasco, and the fact that he
hadn't called to thank her for her gifts, she was convinced he liked
her.
CHAPTER 35
CHARLIE WAS NOT IN HIS OFFICE the many
times Mona
called him there to apologize for her asthma attack and to thank him
for the most wonderful day of her entire life. He was not at home when
the baskets of gourmet soft foods were delivered for his father, or the
new wardrobe from Polo and Armani and several other expensive stores
arrived at the house for him. Since he hadn't acquired any new clothes
in the last decade or so, he couldn't resist trying on the suit, four
jackets, and coordinated trousers that had been magically altered to
fit him—he couldn't imagine how or when.
He opened the door of the closet in his
room where his
mirror was and turned this way and that to see what Ralph Lauren did
for him. He was stunned to see that good clothes made a difference.
Very nice; he got the point that he had not been well enough dressed in
his own style for even a mob girl like her. He got the point and he was
stung. Not only was he the fake Charles Schwab, but he was no snappy
dresser. Now he could see that snappy dressing improved his image. He
felt like a jerk for not having thought about it before.
He felt like a jerk having to pack up the
outrageous
sartorial bribes and take them back to the stores from which they were
labeled and he thought they had come. He was further bamboozled when no
salesperson in the stores where he tried to return the stuff could find
a record of any purchases made in Mona's name, or addressed to him.
That meant a big investigation would be required to figure out how
she'd done it. He took the boxes home and conferred with Gayle on the
subject late in the week. After he told her the story, his boss's face
flamed with rage.
"If you touched that woman, I'll have your
ass, Schwab"
was her response. She fell into some kind of instant jealous fit about
it.
Charlie stood in front of her desk and
swore up and down
that he hadn't touched Mona Whitman, and he hadn't even taken a sip of
her champagne.
"I don't want a hint of collusion or
harassment or
anything like that down the road." Her fingers dug into her thick curly
dyed black hair, and a light dusting of dandruff drifted down onto her
desk.
Charlie pretended not to notice it. "Don't
worry about
it, Gayle. It's not going to happen. What do you want me to do?"
"Did the stuff come with a card? A letter?
Anything we
can use against her?"
"Nope. Nothing at all. The woman is very
smart. As far as
I know, Santa sent it. But I can dig. Who knows, she might have had it
sent from out of state. You ready to number this one? The woman knew
what side I dress on, for Christ's sake."
Gayle shook her head. "What the hell are
you talking
about?"
"The inseam."
The face of the woman who, as far as he
knew, loved only
her cat, froze with understanding. "Jesus, spare me the dirty details,
Charlie. And don't number the account yet. Find the juice first, then
we'll number and let go of it."
"Okay, if that's the way you want it."
Charlie shrugged,
thinking of Cassie. "How do you want me to handle it?"
"Your usual will do nicely. Just hurry it
up. I don't
want to get stuck in this."
"How about the clothes?" he asked
innocently.
"If their source can't come back to bite
you on the ass,
do what you want with them. Toss 'em, wear 'em, bring them into the
office and display them. I don't care. As far as I'm concerned, I don't
know anything about any clothes. But everybody knows I have a faulty
memory," she said, waving him off.
CHAPTER 36
CASSIE SPENT HER DAYS VISITING MITCH in
the hospital and with lawyers for the hospital, with Mark Cohen, and
with Ira Mandel. It turned out at the best of times it wasn't so easy
to turn off the respirator of a brain-dead person. No one-two-three
procedure at all. Despite the hundreds of thousands of dollars that the
insurance company officials quickly informed Cassie it took to keep
Mitch ensconced in his glass cocoon day after day, no one at the
hospital would give the okay to let him go.
In those meetings, just like in the
conspiracy that had gone on for years before the stroke, no principal
in the matter mentioned the circumstances of the situation. The
girlfriend wanted the vegetable intact because New York State
recognized his wife as his heir. The wife wanted the husband dead so
she could move on. The IRS matter was now on the back burner. The
life-and-death debate centered around the malpractice issue. An army of
doctors and lawyers were mobilized to analyze and consult on the
potential lethality of Mona Whitman versus the world on the
viability-of-Mitchell Sales-as-a-human issue. In other words, was he
brain-dead, or not?
In her first meeting with Ira in his office
on Fifty-sixth Street in Manhattan, Cassie did not waste her time
complaining about Mona's potential lawsuit involving Cassie's alleged
harassment and kidnapping. She now knew such a suit could not even be
filed, much less won, without a police report and witnesses.
"All I want is justice," she told Ira,
pounding the long mahogany table in his boardroom.
"Cassie, baby, I know just how you feel,"
he replied, all neutrality. "You look wonderful. I don't know how you
do it. Did you lose weight, change your hair?"
Cassie was wearing a simple black linen
sheath. She had on big fake gold earrings. New copper-tinged sunglasses
dangled from her hand. The old Cassie had disappeared. No one
recognized her anymore. Friends failed to recognize her at the
supermarket, at the post office, on all her daily rounds. No one
recognized her at the bank or Sales Importers, where she went to check
things out and get money. Not only that, all the people who hadn't been
looking at her for fifteen years were turning their heads when she
walked by. The big irony was that the only person who was oblivious to
her new face and figure was her husband. The "refreshed" face that was
supposed to have rekindled Mitch's love and tolerance for her, have
them dancing cheek to cheek on cruise ships and energetically leaping
over streams holding hands like the geriatric lovers in Centrum
commercials left him absolutely cold. But then, he was in a coma.
Cassie smiled.
"I might have lost a few pounds, Ira, over
the years. But you haven't seen me in such a long time. How would you
know? Your loyalties seem to have shifted in the last few years."
"No way, Cassie. I've always had the
greatest respect for you." Ira gave her an oily smile.
Cassie thought it was amazing how men could
think women were so stupid. She'd just repeated for the fourteenth time
all the things that Mona had done to her, and he was acting as if they
were having a walk in the park.
"I want justice. I want those credit card
bills paid off and the cards canceled now. This is not a difficult
problem."
Ira sat across from her. There was a thin
sheen of moisture on his forehead. "Actually, Cassie, this is a
difficult problem. I didn't know anything about this debt of yours
until you brought it up."
"It's not a debt of mine," Cassie said
slowly. "It's a debt in my name. I want the bills paid and my name
cleared."
"I'm not sure how you expect me to do that."
"Somebody has the money to pay those debts.
You told me Mitch was very rich. Mona must have money, too."
"Yes, but these things take time. It will
have to be done in some kind of settlement, down the road. We have to
think of the tax consequences."
"Ira, I don't want it done down the road."
"But you're going to have to wait a little
while, stay calm, and be mature about this."
"Mature?" Cassie didn't like the sound of
that.
"Well, look at it this way. Your
inheritance will cover the debts and then some. I feel certain that if
you behave in a dignified manner and don't excite further interest from
the IRS, you'll probably be able to keep your house and sustain your
lifestyle." He said this looking her right in the eye as if maintaining
her modest lifestyle was Cassie's only wish.
"Isn't peace and a reasonable settlement
with the greater enemy, without nasty lawsuits, the best justice for us
all?" he finished.
Cassie stared at him coldly. "No, Ira, I
don't think that's the best justice for us all." She kept her dignity
but only just. She was the injured party, the wronged wife. She wasn't
accepting the debt. No. Period. End of story. She wasn't accepting it.
Now she could see how people were driven to
murder. She could just imagine how the fifty-something Jean Harris had
been driven to shoot her lover when she'd found out he'd stolen her
diet cookbook and left her for a younger woman.
Mona, the disgusting pig. The girl who'd
never been as pretty as she in the first place had been knocking her
husband's socks off for years. With just her ass and simpering smile,
she'd found a way to steal Cassie's man, her purchasing power, her
dignity, her very identity. And then Mona changed herself to fit it.
She'd influenced their friends and their doctors, their lawyer, their
accountant. Now everyone was telling Cassie to be mature.
She opened her mouth to let him have it,
but Ira held up his hand. "Stop, think for a moment, Cassie. Think
about the consequences of what you're saying." There it was again. That
little think.
"Ira, listen to me carefully. I will not
accept the debt. Mona is a thief. I'm not going to let her get away
with this."
"Cassie, Cassie, Cassie." Ira shook his
head. "Don't get vindictive. You're in a precarious situation here.
Think of your future. Don't hurt yourself now."
"I am thinking of my future, Ira."
"Then be reasonable. Be smart. Smile
through your tears, honey. How about a cup of coffee? Huh? Make you
feel better."
"I'm not smiling through my tears, Ira,"
Cassie told him angrily. "I don't want coffee." I want revenge, she
didn't say.
"I understand, you want to play hardball.
Then let me be perfectly clear. Any action you take now could sink the
boat, you got that? Mitch did a few things I didn't know anything
about, and I still don't. We're all in trouble, okay." Ira shook his
fist at her. "You girls are driving me crazy."
"What?"
"Forget I said that." He became instantly
soothing. "Look, I'm telling you as a friend to trust me on this. Give
me the receipts and whatever else you have. I'll find a way to take
care of you, you have my word on it."
You girls are driving me crazy? Give him
the receipts?
"Okay. Fine." Once again, Cassie understood
the situation perfectly. She could no more trust him than she could
trust that snake Parker Higgins. She put on one of those new fake
smiles of compliance she'd learned recently and said goodbye. She was
grateful that she'd already gotten the incriminating files and receipts
out of the house and into a safe-deposit box.
CHAPTER 37
WHILE THE HOSPITAL ADMINISTRATORS and
their lawyers
were having yet another meeting that they claimed would be their last
and final meeting to decide the fate of Mitchell Sales, Cassie was
contemplating her garden from her spot at the kitchen table. Without a
power of attorney, she had not a single thing to do but wait for all
the people who had control over her life to finish doing what they had
to do. She herself was stuck. She couldn't move on. She had nothing to
do but weep and brood.
She had been settling in for a good cry
when Charlie
Schwab walked through the gate into her yard. She saw him through the
cracks in her laced fingers that she'd put over her eyes to catch her
tears. Right away she saw that he had changed in the ten days since
she'd last seen him. She hastily dropped her hands to get a better
look. He was wearing a neat navy suit, a French blue shirt bright
enough to knock a person's eyes out, and a tomato red tie, the kind of
outfit Mitch would wear. His brush-cut hair had grown out some and
almost looked as if it had been styled. Somehow he'd passed from the
high school stage to a place a lot closer to middle age, where she was.
The IRS agent, whose personal interest in her she wasn't supposed to
excite, turned out to be a dish.
She hadn't been expecting visitors, though.
She herself
was wearing only a little makeup, white shorts, and a black T-shirt.
Luckily there was nothing wrong with her legs. She opened the back door
and called out, "You're back."
"Yep, like the proverbial bad penny. You
look very cute.
Did you change your hair or something?" He examined her curiously.
"Not really. What's up?"
He strode toward the house. "Oh, I enjoyed
our talk. I
was thinking about some of the things you said and thought I'd stop in
to inquire how your husband is doing."
"Not dead yet," Cassie murmured. But he
could have found
that out from Ira. "How is the case going?"
"It's . . . unusual, that's for sure."
Schwab pinched his
lips together and dipped his chin.
"Have you discovered something?" she asked.
"No, no," he said quickly.
"You haven't found the house and car and
jewelry and
clothes his girlfriend charged to me? Oops." The very cat Cassie wasn't
supposed to let out of the bag just jumped out of the bag. What a
relief.
"Ah, there's the reason for the gift tax
questions you
asked." Charlie's newly coiffed head tilted to one side.
"You're very quick."
"It's what I get paid for. Your husband
didn't file gift
taxes. I checked."
Cassie nodded. Ira told her that if she
made an issue of
the credit card debt, Mona would certainly claim the items were gifts.
The IRS would require the filing of gift tax returns, and that would
add another 25, 28 percent to the bills in Cassie's name that had to be
paid by somebody no matter what. Over the million point. So much for
exciting IRS interest. "I guess it was pretty stupid to tell you," she
said.
"Never mind, I guessed anyway." He pointed
to the picket
fence, the arbor, and pergola over the patio, each covered with several
varieties of climbing roses all twined together so that the pinks,
blushes, and lavenders all appeared to be growing on the same bush. He
changed the subject. "You're a hell of a gardener. How did you get your
roses to do that? I can barely get one color to grow on mine."
"Oh, it's easy. Plant two varieties close
together and
they twine. You seem unusually interested in flowers. Do you garden
yourself?" He hadn't answered this question the last time she'd asked
it.
"Oh, I wouldn't call it gardening. But I
know a lily
border when I see one. My father is the expert. He studies the
catalogs."
"Do you think I overdo it on the lilies?"
She glanced
over at the profusion of dwarf Asiatics in her lawn borders.
"No, they look great. Can I come in?"
"Oh sure. Why not? Maybe you can enlighten
me some more.
This tax stuff is very complicated." Cassie felt a powerful urge to
scratch at the crusty spots in her scalp where the stitches had been.
It was an effort to restrain herself from digging her nails in and
ripping her mask off.
"Tell me about it," he said.
She smiled, but didn't think she really
should. "You want
some coffee or a drink?"
"We could start with coffee," he said.
Cassie just happened to have some. They
went into the
house, where she frothed milk and poured. This time she had too much on
her mind to bake anything. She put some grapes on the table. Plump
green ones, added a few strawberries. They looked nice together.
Charles Schwab took a seat and sampled his
coffee. "Great. Thanks. What would you like to know?"
Cassie took her place opposite him. "All
right, here's a
big one. What happens if my husband dies? Do you still have to audit?"
"Ah." Charlie put his cup down. "That's a
good question.
In that case, more departments will become involved. The business audit
will progress, but his estate will be affected as well. An estate issue
puts you much more in the picture. The liability will be yours. But a
different department in the Service would be handling it, if that's
what you're asking."
"What department are you?"
"I'm a revenue agent. I just look at the
routine audits.
When I find something out of the ordinary, the big guns take over."
"I gather you're looking for something out
of the
ordinary." Cassie played with her spoon.
Charlie nodded. "There have been some
possibly illegal
conversions made."
Cassie gave in and scratched her head.
Illegal
conversions. What were they?
"I'm a finder," Schwab said, gazing at her
curiously. "What's wrong?"
"I'm a loser," she blurted.
He laughed uneasily. "No, no, far from
that. You're a
stunning woman." He blew air out of his mouth. "Really. I fell for you
the first time I saw you. I'm sure men tell you that all the time."
Cassie had been thinking along a different
line. She'd
been thinking finders keepers, losers weepers—she'd meant she was a
loser and a weeper. She shivered at the compliment.
"Hey, I didn't mean to offend you." All ten
of Schwab's
fingers tapped restlessly on her kitchen table. He did that thing with
his chin. Little tiny thing. His knee was bobbing. He looked like a
horse about to bolt.
"Does everybody get nervous around you?"
she asked.
"Pretty much," he admitted.
Cassie had a feeling that something
momentous was
happening, but she didn't know what it was. He had a nervous knee and
rapping fingers, but she liked his eyes. She wished he would sit still
long enough for her to tell him the story about Mitch and Mona and what
they'd done to her. But she didn't think it would help her case.
Ira told her that Mitch had given half of
his company
away (implying more gift tax on that as well) and had sheltered the
other half in another company, a limited liability company, whatever
that was, to impact taxes somehow. When she called to ask Parker who
owned this new shelter company in Delaware, he implied it wasn't her.
Cassie's cheeks prickled with something
that wasn't
exactly feeling. Her ears and scalp itched. She was aware of herself as
a remade woman with a facade that changed the way people saw her but
not yet the way she saw herself. With this attractive man sitting at
her kitchen table she felt an old, powerful feeling stir, like a giant
teasing at the locked door in her basement. She couldn't help smiling
as yearning rose in her body like steam off the heated pool on a chilly
day. Her old life was over. She would never be reconciled with Mitch.
He would never say he was sorry. She was almost free, a woman who
hadn't been kissed in such a long time, she couldn't even remember what
it felt like.
She took a deep breath, wishing she had
Charlie's ear,
his shoulder to lean on. She knew it was his job to disarm her and
dipped her own chin, ashamed of herself for falling for it.
"What?" Schwab asked.
"Nothing."
"No, no. You were about to say something."
The moment passed. "Tell me about
conversions," she said.
The knee stopped bobbing. He relaxed. "It
has to do with
money laundering. Do you know what that is?"
"Oh yeah. Mafia stuff." Cassie pressed her
lips together.
"The mob doesn't have a lock on it."
Charlie laughed. "People who aren't connected do it, too."
"You said you were a finder. I know where
some things
could be found," she said softly. She could give him Mona's house. That
was in Mona's name. Unearned income? And the Jaguar? Unearned, too. She
bet Mona was not much of a declarer.
"Here?" Schwab glanced around again.
"No, no. Not here," Cassie said quickly.
"I see." Schwab popped a grape in his
mouth. "What about
your wine cellar?" he asked.
"How do you know about that?"
"A little bird told me."
"Humph. Is that a conversion, too?"
He popped another grape. "These are good.
It may be."
"How?"
"Let's say expensive merchandise is lost or
stolen, in
transit or from the warehouse. Taxpayer may report the loss and take a
deduction. But the merchandise is actually moved to another location,
where it becomes a personal, not a business, asset that can be sold
privately under the table without capital gains."
Cassie inhaled sharply. "You think the wine
downstairs is
that?"
"I can check it out."
"Could I say no?"
Charlie shook his head slowly. "Not really."
"How bad will it hurt me?"
"Honestly, I don't know."
"Is there anything I can do to help myself?"
"You could help me."
Now his cute smile made her queasy. It
wasn't a big leap
to guess where he was going with this. "How would helping you help me?"
"I know how the system works. I could help
you with the
angles. You think about it." He rose to go. "By the way, I really want
to compliment you on the way you're holding up. Believe me, I know how
the stress gets to people."
"I'm on Thorazine," Cassie told him,
deadpan,
disappointed that he was leaving.
"Really?" He stopped short.
"No, that was a smart remark."
"Ha-ha. It was a good one, I'll remember
it." He headed
for the door.
"Thank you."
He was gone as suddenly as he had come, and
Cassie sighed
at the confusion he'd stirred up. She couldn't tell the good guys from
the bad guys anymore. Parker Higgins and Ira Mandel had threatened.
Charlie hadn't threatened. It was a nice change. And Cassie had always
liked blue eyes. She felt the opposite of the relief she'd had whenever
Mitch drove off.
After Charlie was out of the house, an
undercurrent of
excitement hung around for a while. She'd been getting better about
chewing her lip, but now she started gnawing on it again. She wondered
if he was married, if his wife was pretty, if she knocked his socks off.
CHAPTER 38
"NO, YOU MAY NOT BRING YOUR GIRLFRIEND,"
Cassie told
Teddy on the phone. She was using her reasonable voice, and it took all
her energy to maintain it. It was the Friday of the Fourth of July
weekend, and due diligence in Mitch's case was completed. The ethics
committee of the hospital had concluded that the brain of Mitchell
Sales had died a month ago, and it would no longer serve any useful
purpose to sustain his body on life support.
"Teddy, are you there?" she demanded.
"Mommm, why can't Lorraine come? I thought
you liked
Lorraine." Teddy was whining in his office at Ira Mandel's accounting
firm, where in addition to his basic job of bookkeeping, he was
studying a bunch of difficult courses like calculus and linear
programming at night and on the weekend to pass the two-and-a-half-day
CPA examination of accounting, auditing, taxation, and other very
sophisticated stuff. Ira had told her that only 10 percent of
candidates passed, but he believed that Teddy would be one of them. For
accountants, apparently, the CPA certificate was everything.
"Liking Lorraine is not the point, Teddy, I
want to talk
to you and Marsha alone," Cassie told him. She was parked in her place
at the kitchen table with an untouched cup of coffee in front of her.
Today was their father's final day on this
earth. She
wanted her children in the same room with her when she told them.
"Mommm, Marsha's bringing Tom, isn't she?
You're making
lunch for him."
"It's just us, Teddy. And maybe Aunt Edith.
I haven't
decided."
"Aunt Edith! Why not Lorraine?"
"Aunt Edith is family, Teddy. Lorraine is
not."
"Lorraine's my girlfriend. Don't you like
my girlfriend?"
Teddy demanded.
Cassie didn't want to scream her
frustration and rage at
Teddy into the phone. Lorraine was a hospital pickup! She was heavy.
Cassie had nothing against heavy in general, but heavy like Lorraine on
a person so young would mean the thirty-year-old Lorraine would be
massive. She had no control over what she put in her mouth. In
addition, Lorraine didn't have much going on between her ears. Lorraine
was not cultured. She had an accent. A terrible accent. Worse than the
Bronx, Brooklyn, and Queens all put together. This was the problem with
Long Island. Her fingernails and toenails were long and painted blue or
green or black. Cassie couldn't imagine how she was able to function in
a hospital with nails like those. Plus, she didn't know how to cook.
She ordered take-out on a regular basis. What kind of life would that
be for someone like Teddy? Cassie didn't simply dislike Lorraine, she
loathed her. Call her a snob. Call her shallow. Except for the weight,
Mona had been just like her!
"Mommm," Teddy whined.
Cassie took a deep breath. She didn't want
to say she
hated Lorraine and feared that the fat, callow girl would transform her
son the way the ugly, tasteless, fawning, scheming doormat, Mona, had
transformed her husband.
"Teddy, I'm on my way out now. I want to
see you at the
house at noon. Leave now if you have to." Cassie ended the call, stood
up, and moved to the sink to dump the coffee down the drain.
An hour and a half later, Cassie told Teddy
and Marsha
that their father was scheduled to die any minute, and Teddy suddenly
stopped agitating for lunch.
"Are you going with me?" she asked. She'd
hoped that they
would act as a family, but it was up to them. When she dropped the
news, they were sitting outside on the patio in a tight little circle
around the wrought-iron table they'd always used for picnics. Cassie
had asked Teddy to put up the umbrella to shade her face. As soon as he
did, a cloud drifted over the sun, and the shade around them deepened
to twilight.
For once the contentious children were too
stunned to
squabble. Teddy and Marsha divided their attention between each other
and her. Around them was the fragrant backyard that had been their
childhood haven: perfect green grass in the small lawn. Blooming lilies
in all the borders. They were thinking the same thing. Mitchell Sales,
their daddy, the end. Their mood was gloomy.
It wasn't as if they weren't prepared.
Still, death
coming on them like this, during a lunch break, was so final, there
seemed nothing to say. Teddy studied a worm that had fallen into the
pool. The worm must have died yesterday, because already it had faded
to tan, bleached by the chlorine. He switched his attention to his
shoes. They were the same Italian loafers his boss, Ira Mandel, wore.
Suddenly Marsha, who'd taken the day off from her internship in the
women's jail on Riker's Island, began weeping quietly.
"Tom didn't tell me Daddy was dying today.
Does he know?"
She was wearing her jail outfit: black pants, black T-shirt. No makeup.
She looked pretty good except for the tears streaking her face.
Cassie felt sorry for her. Until now,
Marsha had been
detached, almost as if the double catastrophe of her mother's crazy
face-lift and her father's crazy stroke both occurring practically at
the same time was a kind of parental acting out that would eventually
come to a peaceful end as hers always had. Now it wasn't clear whether
the loss of her father or the fear of death itself was getting to her.
When Cassie was her age, she'd already been
married for
several years and had a little girl. She'd thought she was a grown-up,
had life all figured out. She watched Teddy's knee bobbing, his foot
shaking. It seemed as if his whole body was in motion. These days,
twenty-three was infancy, and twenty-five was not much older. Marsha
worked with unwed teenage mothers, inmates in prison. What did she know
about any of that?
"I don't know, honey. We haven't spoken,"
she murmured.
"But he's been great, hasn't he?" Marsha
sought approval
for the skinny young neurologist she never would have liked had her
father not been felled by his specialty.
Cassie shook her head.
"Don't you think he's great, Mom?" Marsha
persisted.
"He's great, Marsha, but what about Daddy?"
Cassie asked.
Marsha sneaked another look at Teddy. He
glared back at
her.
"I don't know about you, but I don't want
to watch the
bastard croak," Teddy said harshly.
"Teddy, he's your father!" Marsha snarled,
her mood
shifting from sorrow to barking indignation in an instant.
"Fuck you, Marsha," Teddy tossed off.
"Fuck me, Teddy. You're the one he loved.
You were
Daddy's boy."
"Oh right, Daddy's boy." Teddy snorted.
"The least you could do is stand by him
now. . . . You
were everything to him." Marsha shifted into that bratty singsong voice
that always drove Teddy nuts.
Teddy made the noise of a fart. The two of
them balled
their fingers into fists, and sibling rivalry erupted into a fight.
Cassie was glad she'd isolated herself from them in the last few weeks
since she'd found out Teddy was friends with Mona. The hole in her
chest opened up. Her own kids had no thought of standing by her.
"Oh? Oh? Who went with him everywhere?"
Marsha taunted.
"Oh Marsha, you had it easy. He left you
alone," Teddy
parried.
"He wouldn't let me do anything I wanted,"
she whined.
Teddy made more farting noises. "Like what
did you want?"
"I wanted to be a pilot. I wanted to fly,"
she said
plaintively.
"Oh shit, not that again." He kicked a clay
pot with a
perky red geranium in it. The pot went over, crushing the biggest
bloom. Cassie was shocked.
"Daddy said girls can't fly," Marsha
sniffed, still
smarting over the ancient injury.
"Who'd want to fly? Those things go down
all the time."
Unable to move, Cassie clicked her tongue at the downed geranium. Why
had she brought them here? She hated her kids.
"You're all against me," Marsha's voice
regressed to age
ten.
"No, sweetheart. No, don't think that way.
He loved you,"
Cassie defended by rote, assuring her daughter even now that her father
had loved her.
"He said I'd get PMS and crash the plane,"
Marsha wept.
"I know, honey."
Teddy didn't want to hear any more of this.
"I'm telling
you, you had it easy. Daddy followed me everywhere, even into the
bathroom."
"So what?"
"What's twenty-five times eighty. Quick,
Teddy, multiply,
don't think. He'd stick his finger in my chest, yell at me to pee and
multiply like a man."
"No one cares, Teddy," Marsha said. She was
so cold, the
tears could have frozen on her cheeks.
"Marsha, that's not true." Cassie jumped to
Teddy's
defense. She couldn't help defending. It was her nature. "I care," she
said.
"I never knew which to do first. If I peed,
he'd scream
at me for missing. Every single day! In college he was still grilling
me at the urinal."
"You flunked all your fucking tests, you
dope," Marsha
snickered at the direct hit.
"I didn't want to do it, you bitch. Did it
ever occur to
you he made me do it? He wouldn't let me fail!" Now Teddy was in tears,
and Cassie was shocked even more. What was the matter with them?
"He took you into the business, didn't he?"
Marsha spat
out.
"Making me work for fucking Ira, you think
that's a
treat? The shit that goes down there, you wouldn't believe." Teddy
kicked another pot. Over it went. This one broke, scattering pot shards
and dirt.
"What shit?" Cassie asked, distracted for a
moment by
business.
Teddy looked away. "Nothing."
"What shit?" Marsha demanded.
"I said, nothing."
"You know everything, Teddy. Give," Marsha
hissed.
Teddy shook his head.
The opening Cassie had been waiting for had
finally come.
She licked her lips. "Teddy, you were Daddy's boy. And you were Mona's
boy. That's hurt Marsha and me a lot. Did you ever think about that?"
"I didn't mean to." Teddy shook his head.
He didn't want
to go there.
"Teddy, your loyalty to the family has been
tested. We
know where you stand," Marsha said bitterly.
Ah, now it was coming out.
"She was always very nice to me," he said
defensively.
"Oh come on, they were fucking in the
bathroom," Marsha
retorted angrily.
Cassie reeled. "What?"
"I didn't know that." Teddy looked guiltily
at his mother.
"Oh come off it. You had to know it. They
couldn't keep
their fucking hands off each other. I've known it since I was thirteen.
Oops." Marsha glanced at her mother. "Sorry."
"Asshole!" Teddy barked.
"You didn't tell me." Cassie stared at her
daughter.
"Oh, you know Daddy. He always denied
everything." It was
Marsha's turn to look away.
"Marsha!" Cassie grabbed her daughter's arm.
"He gave away my piano, Mom."
"I know, but Marsha!"
"He gave it away. Just like that. I said I
knew what he
was doing, and that day I came home and it was gone." Marsha shook her
head. "He didn't think I'd ever be good."
Cassie nodded sadly. Marsha had cried for
weeks. Cassie
had been dumb enough to think it was about the piano.
"Every time I complained about Mona, he
grounded me. He
said I was a big fat pig and he'd never buy me a car. When I was in
high school, he told me if I told you any lies about Mona, he'd cut me
out of his will."
Teddy held his palms up in denial. "I
didn't know about
this. I really—"
"Of course you fucking knew." Marsha rolled
her eyes.
"I thought she was a nice lady. She always
defended me
when he was a shit." Teddy was breathing heavily now, sweating. The
front of his shirt was soaked. He looked at the dead worm at the bottom
of the pool, almost white.
The sun came out again, blindingly bright.
Cassie
blinked. No one suggested they hurry to the hospital. She wondered if
her children were afraid the family that bore Mitch's name would
terminate when he did. The family's strength and power to protect and
keep them safe had disappeared a long time ago, and she felt guilty.
She'd always believed she was the only one to suffer in the marriage.
It never occurred to her that Mitch had abused his children, too. All
this time she'd just stood by. She'd let him.
"That's why I gave you the pajamas that
day, why I was so
mad at you for getting a face-lift," Marsha was saying.
"What?" Cassie was reeling again.
"I knew it wouldn't make any difference. He
was in love
with Mona. I thought you'd figure it out. Daddy never gave you anything
like that."
Cassie's mouth fell open. "Marsha!"
"I couldn't tell you, Mom. I just couldn't.
I'm sorry."
Marsha sniffed, then leaned over and put her head on Cassie's shoulder.
"I love you so much, Mom, I couldn't."
Cassie gulped. "Marsha, would you like to
see your piano
now?"
Marsha lifted her head. "My piano?"
"Well, Daddy bought Mona a house—" Cassie
began.
"Teddy, do you know about this?" Marsha
interrupted.
"What do you think I am?" Teddy asked
miserably.
"I think you're a little fuck," Marsha
announced.
Teddy opened his mouth and closed it.
"Teddy, you knew about this, didn't you?"
Cassie said.
"She paid for the house, Mom," Teddy said
in Mona's
defense.
"Teddy, she did not pay for the house. I'd
like to show
you the house." Cassie got to her feet and smoothed her skirt. Mitch
was dying, and no one wanted to say goodbye. Fine.
"Now? Isn't that a little crass?"
"Suddenly you have qualms, Marsha?"
"No, I just . . ." Marsha glared at her
brother. "Fuck."
"Get in the car, kids. Don't fight anymore.
I want to
show you the little surprise your father and Mona had planned for me."
The two exchanged uneasy glances. "Do we
have to?" Teddy
whined.
"Yes."
Groaning, Marsha got up from the table and
threw her
backpack over her shoulder. Teddy's stomach rumbled loudly because it
was way past one and he was used to eating a big lunch. They trudged
into the garage.
"Where's the Volvo?" Teddy demanded when he
saw only the
Porsche and the Mercedes.
"I've upgraded." Cassie got into the
Mercedes and slammed
the door, thinking about her pathetic old Volvo that used to live
outside in the driveway. All she'd gotten for the damn thing was a
thousand dollars. How had money become so important? She was positively
drowning in thoughts she'd never had before. She'd never cared that
much about money, never thought about it. Except she'd always thought
she'd be rewarded for sticking with Mitch and someday she'd have a lot
of it.
"Do you think Daddy's dead yet?" Teddy
whimpered.
Marsha punched him in the arm. "Shut up,
Teddy."
Marsha took shotgun in the passenger seat
next to her
mother. Teddy sat in the back. Neither said anything as they drove out
of their pleasant development to Northern Boulevard, then turned east
to Glen Cove, and finally across Duck Pond Road.
"She was moving here?" Marsha was surprised.
Cassie slowed the car to a stop in front of
the garish
giant black and gold painted gates with the Sales logo of grape
bunches, wine barrels, fleurs-de-lis, and crossed fucking swords.LE
REFUGE was painted in gold on a green estate sign.
"Holy moly." Teddy whistled.
"That's the ugliest fucking thing I have
ever seen,"
Marsha pronounced judgment on the gates.
Now Cassie was sure she was doing the right
thing. She
wanted her children on her side. She wanted them to feel Mona's evil,
to know who their father had been. She pulled into the approach and
kept quiet as the luxury car she hadn't been allowed to drive until now
cruised up the hill, passing the majestic oaks lining the drive. Her
gut tightened just as it had the first and second times she'd come to
the place where her husband was planning to live when he left her. The
house hadn't been difficult to find. The address was on all those ABC
Carpet and Home delivery slips.
"Holy moly," Teddy said again when the
castle came into
view.
They covered the last thousand feet or so
of driveway and
stopped in front, right next to the sporty red Jag parked there.
"This is the ugliest house I have ever
seen. Look at that
turret," Marsha pronounced judgment on the house, craning her neck for
a better look.
"Mom, she's here," Teddy said uneasily.
"She won't show herself," Cassie said.
"But what if she does?"
"Go key the car, Teddy. I always hated the
bitch," Marsha
commanded.
"What's that?" Cassie asked.
"You know, make scratches all over it with
a house key,"
Marsha said.
Teddy giggled nervously. "You really want
me to?"
"I'll stand behind you in case she's
watching," Marsha
promised.
"Go key it yourself," Teddy said.
Cassie killed the engine and got out of the
car. "Come
on, kids. I want you to see something."
"I don't want to see any more. It's a
horrible house,
terrible taste. Key the car, Teddy, and let's go." Marsha's lips were
tight. "That bastard." About her dad.
"Get out, Teddy," Cassie ordered.
"I don't want to key the car, Mom. What if
she calls the
cops?"
"Get out, Teddy. You're not keying
anything."
Teddy groaned and dragged himself out of
the backseat. "Okay, okay."
They all got out and stretched. The stone
house had two
turrets and huge leaded windows in the living room and dining rooms.
French doors beckoned to patios without furniture. In spite of the Jag
out front, it had a forlorn and empty look about it. They walked slowly
around the house, and Marsha's breath caught at the view down to the
pool, the guest house, and tennis court. She was dead silent when she
walked back to the French doors and pressed her nose to the glass.
"Jesus." Her Steinway piano, unmistakable
with its cherry
case, and complete with the matching leather tufted seat, was angled in
a corner next to an antique harp. A rococo chair was placed behind the
harp to create the illusion that someone actually played it. Maybe a
decorator's joke, because it was missing several of its strings.
The furniture that held the place of honor
in front of
the cavernous fireplace, however, was not Marsha's piano. It was the
Napoleon III settee and two armchairs with women's breasts and animals'
claws that had been Cassie's mother's. At the time of her death, Cassie
had wanted to put the furniture in storage for Marsha, or even herself
someday. But Mitch had said no. He'd called the pieces "horrors," and
like the piano, they, too, had disappeared. A quarter of a century ago,
he claimed to have given them to Planned Parenthood with the rest of
Cassie's mother's junk. Compounding the insult, he'd complained that
he'd gotten only a small deduction. But he hadn't given it away. He'd
stored the pieces in one of his temperature-controlled warehouses and
kept the secret just to hurt her. Then they resurfaced, and Mona had
them reupholstered.
Teddy put a hand on Cassie's shoulder. "I'm
sorry, Mom."
Cassie was moved by her son's sudden
compassion. She let
her head fall to his shoulder, and he patted it. The three of them
closed ranks for a group hug, the first in a long, long time.
"Look on the bright side, maybe she'll move
when he
dies," he muttered.
"Ira says she won't have the money to keep
it up." Cassie
blew her nose and pulled herself together. She was ready to go now. Her
children had seen the betrayal, and now she had cremation arrangements
to make.
"Well, yes, she does have money," Teddy
corrected.
"What are you talking about, Teddy? I told
you the will
is unchanged. We'll have something. And, of course, I'll have the life
insurance."
Marsha's face flushed an angry red. "He
gave her my
piano."
"Mona has the life insurance," Teddy said,
deadpan.
"No, Teddy, you're mistaken. I'm the
beneficiary on
Daddy's life insurance."
Teddy pressed his lips together. "Uh-uh."
"What?" Cassie clutched her heart.
"He changed it years ago. There were new
papers. I
checked. When he dies, she gets the life insurance. Mom!"
Cassie's knees buckled. Oh, shit. She'd
worked so hard to
allow him to die just so Mona would get the life insurance and half the
company? Mona won? She won?
"Mom!"
Cassie was sitting on the ground. She
didn't know how
she'd gotten there. Her chest was heaving. Both kids were trying to
haul her to her feet. Mona was peering out at them from an upstairs
window. Cassie didn't see her. She had only one thought. She had to
stop the termination. "Get me to the hospital," she gasped. "Hurry."
CHAPTER 39
RUNNING, they were running through the
hospital
entrance, Cassie in the lead, stumbling along in her black sheath and
heels. It was two-thirty in the afternoon. Outpatients, doctors, staff,
visitors crowded the lobby. Cassie was panting, weeping. All the
betrayals were too much, just too much.
Mark had told her that the Mitch they all
knew and loved
had gone the day of his stroke. As they had prepared for his end, Mark
had assured her, cool as could be, that Mitch's spirit was at peace and
no one was home inside of him anymore. But the truth was, Mitch had
never had the slack appearance of serenity. With the tubes in his mouth
and nose, one eye at half-mast, the grimace on his face, and finger
scrabbling desperately at the sheet as if he had something urgent to
impart, Mitch had been all along the picture of a tortured man.
Cassie stumbled through the halls to save
him. Why should
he be released and find peace so easily when she had to live on?
Correctly assuming that a catastrophe had occurred, people moved aside
as she plowed through. Marsha came next in her prison garb, with a
backpack hanging open over one shoulder. Teddy shuffled along after
them, looking embarrassed. Cassie had given him quite the
tongue-lashing for not having told her about the life insurance before,
weeks before.
"It's not my fault," he was talking to
himself, getting
more agitated the more he said it. They crossed the lobby and entered
the glass corridor, passed the contemplation garden with its rocks and
pebbles and evergreens that remained exactly the same in every season.
"Mom," Marsha cried, trying to catch
Cassie's arm. "Mom,
you're going to fall."
"This is crazy," Teddy muttered to himself.
"I didn't do
anything wrong."
"Teddy, shut up," Marsha flung over her
shoulder.
Cassie was the first to pass through the
arch to the wing
that housed the Head Trauma Intensive Care Unit. She charged on, then
stopped short, clutching her chest when she saw the curtains drawn over
Mitch's picture window.
"Oh God, Marsha. It's over."
Marsha caught her mother's arm, but
Cassie's knees gave
way. Her body twisted as she fell, and her whole side convulsed with
excruciating pain. She was lying on the floor again and didn't know how
she'd gotten there. Startled, she saw the ceiling. Then she began to
cry.
"Mom!" Marsha dropped to her knees.
Cassie had tried to protect her face when
she'd gone
down. And now her hands clenched over her eyes to halt the deluge of
tears. "Oh God, oh God. It's over."
"Mom, are you all right?"
Cassie's body curled into a fetal position
around her
pain, and a deeper, keening wail rose from her chest. She heard the
sound, a wild animal's cry, and was unaware that her grief had turned
into a primal scream. The stress of the last month's revelations and
her struggle for balance after a lifetime of denial finally felled her.
Her vigil and fight with Mona for control of Mitch's mind and body was
finally over, and she collapsed. Mitch was gone, and Cassie was
overwhelmed with grief.
She'd shown her children his sins against
them, proven
all the lies, if not to the lawyers at least to them. In the end, he'd
won all the little battles and lost the big one. And now Cassie felt as
if she'd been gutted. She was a widow, but not the way she'd hoped. Not
a widow with honor—a widow who'd been adored in life and respected in
death. She was a middle-aged woman crushed by the loss of love she'd
never dared to acknowledge.
Marsha was on her knees, crooning to her
softly. "It's
okay. I'm here."
Teddy joined her. "I'm sorry, Mom," he
said. "I'm really
sorry."
Cassie couldn't respond. She wanted to be
there on the
bed, instead of Mitch, with a sheet over her head. Dead not for a few
minutes, but dead for all time. "I don't give a shit anymore," she
muttered.
"Oh, come on, Mom, don't say that."
The head nurse rushed out of the monitoring
station,
calling two orderlies over. The three of them pushed Marsha and Teddy
out of the way. Cassie was sobbing again. Down the corridor, sailing in
like a massive ship's prow, was Aunt Edith.
"Oh my God, am I too late?" Edith screamed.
She was
dressed in a black and gold caftan with large jet beads bouncing around
the neck. In the crook of her arm she carried a large round black
patent leather pocketbook from the fifties that banged against her
knees as she hurried along. Up to her elbows were long black cotton
evening gloves, also from the postwar period. She was dressed to the
nines to watch her hated nephew-in-law meet his maker.
"You okay, Mrs. Sales?" the nurse asked
Cassie.
"Oh no." Cassie groaned at the sight of her
aunt hurrying
toward them.
"Take a minute. It's fine. How about some
water?"
Cassie shook her head. No water. She could
see Aunt Edith
running toward her, sliding on the polished floor. She could see Aunt
Edith slipping, going down like an elephant, breaking an arm and
shattering a hip. She could see her moving in and needing many
fat-filled meals a day brought to her on trays. She could see herself
wheeling Edith around in a wheelchair and Edith never leaving the
premises for the rest of her life. She could see the two of them having
their little treats—a cheap cruise to the Bahamas, a fancy dinner out
at Bryant and Cooper. Two old women trying to enjoy themselves on a
tiny budget.
"Can you sit up?" The head nurse was
talking to her.
Cassie clutched her side, deep in her
fantasy of a
disastrous future and a terrible death of her own. She couldn't say,
"Quick, catch my aunt, she's going to fall." Couldn't say a word.
The nurse and two orderlies had her out of
her fetal
position and sitting up before she knew it. They quieted her in seconds
and got her to her feet in a way that indicated they'd done this kind
of thing a thousand times before.
Aunt Edith covered the distance on the
slippery floor
without mishap. She enveloped Cassie in a massive hug, then gave her
the kind of big, smacking wet kisses on the cheek that over the decades
had always made Cassie and Mitch and the kids cringe whenever she
approached.
"My condolences, sweetheart," she said,
wetting Cassie's
face some more like some big, overfriendly dog that wouldn't get off
one's lap.
Marsha put an arm around her mother's
shoulder and handed
over a package of tissues.
"No, no, don't—" turn off that machine,
Cassie tried to
say.
"It's okay, he's not alone. The doctor is
with him," the
nurse interrupted her.
"Dr. Wellfleet?" Marsha asked hopefully,
putting a hand
to her hair.
"No, Dr. Cohen."
"Mark?" Cassie was stunned. "Mark is in
there?" Mark, who
just ordered tests and read results and never did a single thing that
was wet or doctorly. Mark was in there, participating in an actual
procedure. A termination of life? Inconceivable.
"Yes. They're working on your husband now."
"What! No, no." It was then that Cassie
realized it
wasn't done. It wasn't too late. They were killing her husband now.
They were doing it now. "I have to talk to him. I need to go in!" she
cried. "Wait!"
"Just one moment, Mrs. Sales. They're
working on him."
"You don't understand. I changed my mind."
"Wait a second, honey, let them get him
cleaned up."
"No, no."
"Please, I must insist."
Cassie wouldn't be stopped. She pushed past
them and
opened the door of the room. Then she couldn't grasp what she was
seeing.
"Don't come in, please," Mark said without
turning around.
Mark, another doctor in a white coat, and
two nurses were
standing around Mitch's bed. They were watching him intently. In a room
that used to be filled with many sounds, it was now eerily quiet. But
they hadn't pulled up the sheet.
Cassie stepped closer and almost fell down
again when she
realized what had happened. The bed was tilted up. Mitch was in a
sitting position. The tubes were out of his nose and throat. There was
vomit on his hospital gown. A crooked grin on his face. He was very
much alive and breathing on his own. When Cassie entered the circle
around him, one of Mitch's eyes made a distinct motion. It was one that
she'd begged for that very first day but hadn't seen before. She was
horrified to see it now. Mitch winked at her.
CHAPTER 40
ON SATURDAY MORNING, Mitch's condition
was downgraded to stable, and he was moved to a private room. Monday
was the designated holiday, so Tuesday the hospital arranged for him to
be transported to a rehab facility. Since Mitch's insurance wouldn't
cover the $5,000-a-day, round-the-clock therapy and care that he
needed, the rehab facility wouldn't accept him without an advance
payment of $150,000 to cover his first month's stay.
Mark Cohen was elated. He was in a state of
absolute ecstasy. He personally had saved one of his best friends. Only
twice in his thirty-five years as an internist had he seen a brain-dead
patient recover after spending a month on a respirator. He was God,
walking on air. Everybody was talking about his miracle, for he had
been at Mitch's side when the respirator was turned off. Three clicks
to turn the machine off and the room was silent except for one
snuffling young nurse who always cried when someone died—didn't matter
who it was. Since Mitch's family wasn't there, Mark was the one to hold
his hand and whisper into his ear.
"I'm with you, buddy. You take care now."
Mitch's hand had slipped out of Mark's, and
Mark had let him go. But when Mitch's death rattle quickly turned into
the sound of someone gagging on his own vomit, Mark and the attending
physician removed the tubes from the patient's nose and mouth. Mitch's
chest heaved. He coughed a few times. They cleared his throat of vomit
and mucus. After a few seconds he began breathing on his own, and they
all cheered.
Cassie, on the other hand, went into free
fall. Mitch had told her time and again throughout their marriage that
she would never have to worry about money, and for the last month all
she had done was worry about money. Money, money, money. It was enough
to make a person crazy. Friday she had even been prepared to kill for
it. But since Mitch survived the attempt on his life, the odyssey
wasn't over. Money was still the central issue of her life.
There was $3,000 in Mitch's account, and
about the same amount in hers. Whatever Cassie said and did, she could
not shake his doctor's deep belief that Mitch was a very rich man.
Mark's fees for managing the case were in excess of $30,000. She
shuddered to think what Mark would charge for raising Mitch from the
dead. Not only that, the Sales family insurance covered only 80 percent
of the hospital bills, which in Mitch's case were especially excessive
because they'd given him the best of everything.
Cassie called Parker Higgins to ask for a
power of attorney to access Mitch's assets so she could pay the
ridiculous amount the rehab facility demanded before they would take
him. Parker suggested she bring Mitch home for a few days while he
worked on it. Cassie suspected that Mona was behind his hesitation to
give her the power to decide how the case should be handled. What if
Mitch recovered only partially, lived for a long time, and Cassie
refused to relinquish the control forever? Cassie knew that the
spineless Parker was buying time, waiting to see which way the wind
blew.
Therefore, on Wednesday, the actual Fourth
of July that year, exactly thirty-five days after Mitchell Sales went
into intensive care with a massive stroke, he came home. His return was
mandated by his diligent lawyer and the vicissitudes of managed care.
Many people live their whole lives without having a single wish come
true. In less than two months Cassandra Sales had had three wishes come
true. First, she became beautiful, noticeable, and desirable again
after a sleep as long as Snow White's. Second, her boring life would
never be the same. And third, her husband was alive, so his girlfriend
could not collect his life insurance. None of it helped her one bit.
The only bright spot in the whole story was that Cassie vowed never to
pay another of his life insurance premiums again. If he lived only a
few months, the policy would lapse. The few hundred thousand of cash
surrender values would revert to Mitch's estate. Mona would be left out
in the cold. This was the kind of thing Cassie had sunk to wishing for
now. She did not have a clue how much the company with her name on it
was worth. Not a clue.
IT WAS A VERY DRAMATIC MOMENT when Mitch
Sales left North Fork Hospital, for he didn't walk out. Neither was he
driven the five miles home in his black Mercedes. His brand-new
wheelchair did travel in the trunk of the luxury car, but he himself
returned home the way he'd come, in an ambulance.
His condition was exactly the same as it
had been when he was on the respirator, except that now all his vital
organs were functioning well on their own. He still could not talk. He
could not move. It was impossible to know if he understood anything
that was said to him, or what was going on around him. He did not react
to music, to needle pricks, or to any other physical stimulation. He
didn't respond to simple commands or expressions of affection. He could
sit up, but only when carefully propped. He could receive food in his
mouth and swallow, but only baby food. There was a slight tremor in one
of his hands, but he could not use it for holding anything, or for
writing. He was wearing adult diapers. His mouth was open, and he
drooled.
The day before his return, Cassie, Teddy,
and Marsha moved the filing cabinets, the desk, the desk chair, and
computer out of his office on the first floor and into the dining room.
Marsha vacuumed away all the office dust that had been accumulating
since the dawn of time, and Cassie washed the moldings and floor. Her
housekeeper had still not returned from Peru. Late Wednesday afternoon,
a rented hospital bed, a stool for the shower, and a bunch of other
hospital equipment, including sheets and pads, an oxygen tank, blood
pressure monitor, and diapers, were delivered and moved in.
"It's only for a few days," Cassie told
herself, stunned and unbelieving.
Each breath she took was like inhaling
fire. After all this, Mitch was coming home an invalid consigned to her
care. And Teddy's girlfriend, Lorraine Forchette, who was about as
French as a flapjack, was coming home with him. At Teddy's urging she'd
decided to devote a week of her vacation time to caring for his daddy.
They all arrived at the house at the same
time. Cassie and Marsha in the Mercedes. Teddy in the Porsche, which
he'd used to collect Lorraine in Rockville Centre, where she lived.
Marsha was annoyed that Teddy was showing off with the purloined car,
but held her tongue on the matter. Cassie was annoyed by the way Teddy
had manipulated Lorraine into their house, but she was holding her
tongue, too. They sat in the Mercedes for a moment, watching Teddy help
Lorraine out of the car. Then he went back to wrestle her mammoth
suitcase out of the trunk.
"Oh my God," Marsha murmured. "Someone
needs to talk to her about that."
Lorraine's hair was too orange and too
curly. Her hips and bosom and thighs were way too ample for the outfit
of pink shorts and halter she was wearing. Not only that, she had on
high, wedged sandals with straps wrapped Roman style around her thick
ankles and calves. Her toenails were painted orange to match her hair.
Her resemblance to a young and chubby Mona was unmistakable.
"I just love your house" was the first
thing she called out, oblivious to the sudden presence of neighbors and
the ambulance pulling into the driveway. Then, more imperiously,
"Teddy, take my luggage inside. I want to get Daddy settled."
Marsha and Cassie exchanged startled
glances. Daddy?
"Hi, guys," Lorraine chirped when the
ambulance driver emerged and trotted around to open the back doors
where, inside, the attendant was caring for the patient.
"How are we doing in there?" she chirped
some more.
Cassie didn't hear the exchange that
followed. She held her daughter's hand while the two ambulance people
took their time moving Mitch out. Teddy came over to the Mercedes to
get the wheelchair.
"I'm going to push him. Where do you think
he'll want to sit?" Teddy's mood was very up.
"Teddy, he's too sick for that." Cassie
jumped out of the car. Mitch wasn't joining the family.
"Oh, come on. Pop the trunk, Mom. I want to
push him."
She couldn't believe they were having this
discussion. The man had just come out of intensive care. She wasn't
going to have him drooling in the living room. She popped the trunk.
"We're going to put Daddy to bed, Teddy."
"Oh, do we have to?" Teddy pulled the
wheelchair out, then struggled, trying to figure out how to get it
open. "Ah, got it."
"Yes, we have to. He can't visit," Cassie
insisted.
"But he needs stimulation, Mom."
"Fine, turn on the TV."
"There's no TV in that room. Hey, this is
neat." Teddy experimented with the wheelchair, rolling it this way and
that, not so easily on the gravel. "I'm sure Daddy will like this."
"Daddy's a vegetable," Marsha chimed in,
taking her mother's side for once.
"No, he's not. He winked at me yesterday."
"Teddy, he's a carrot."
Cassie put her hand to her splitting
headache. Her kids were regressing again.
"Look, Mom, I'm an XKE." Teddy tipped the
chair all the way back, making the rmmmm, rmmm sound of a sports car
engine.
Just then Carol Carnahan appeared on the
lawn with a casserole.
"Stop it, Teddy," Cassie hissed. She waved
at Carol.
Carol hurried over and bestowed a careful
kiss on Cassie's cheek. "The girls are organizing casseroles for you,
honey. For the next ten days, at least. Then we'll see how it goes.
After all you've put up with over the years, you deserve it."
"What?" Cassie's cheeks burned.
"Tonight's tuna noodle. I made it myself,
with fresh tuna instead of canned. How's he doing?"
Cassie shook her head. "Carol, that's so
nice of you."
"Hi, Daddy," Lorraine burbled loudly as the
gurney with Mitch strapped on it was lifted out of the ambulance.
"Remember me? I'm Lorraine."
An hour later, Mitch was settled in his
room. Cassie, Marsha, and Aunt Edith were sitting on the patio, bucking
themselves up with unbelievably velvety Château Petrus '45 from
the cellar. And Teddy and Lorraine were in the pool, bobbing around in
neon inner tubes. Lorraine was in the pink one. Teddy was in the purple
one, each chugging beer from a can. Every few minutes, not looking a
bit like Venus emerging from her scallop shell, Lorraine got out of the
pool in her pink bikini to check on the patient. Fifteen minutes, like
clockwork. She was a very responsible girl. Edith was enchanted by her
professionalism and weight.
"Isn't it wonderful that Teddy found
himself such a lovely, normal kind of girl?" she remarked.
"Wonderful," Cassie said, rather pleased
with herself. This was the first time she'd ever taken a single bottle
from Mitch's cellar without his express permission. He didn't approve
of her drinking, and now she knew why. Wine eased her anxiety, let her
be warm and giggly. She didn't think it was so bad to take the rare
Pomerol, because even though it was a special Bordeaux, one of the wine
auctions' particular darlings because there was so little of it around,
Pomerols weren't classed among the great red wines of Bordeaux, like
the Château Latour, Château Margaux, Château
Haut-Brion, Château Lafite-Rothchild, etc., etc., etc., not in
1855, when quality control was first established in France, or in 1973,
like Château Mouton-Rothchild, the only new addition ever made.
So the Pomerol was not better than the best, really, by objective
standards. Still, it was earthy and deep and almost mystical in the way
it made her think about burgeoning cocks, specifically Charlie
Schwab's. The first bottle disappeared quickly, and she went down into
the cellar for a few more.
After a while a pretty tipsy Marsha got up
to dress for her date with Tom Wellfleet. By eight o'clock the two of
them had left for dinner at L'Endroit. After Edith and Cassie and Teddy
and Lorraine finished Carol Carnahan's tuna noodle casserole, Teddy
ordered several take-out pizzas. They ate them in the kitchen while
Cassie drove Edith home. When she returned forty minutes later, she
noted that the two of them were fooling around outside on one of the
deck chairs. Totally sober now, she went into the makeshift hospital
room to check on Mitch.
He was raised up slightly in the hospital
bed, resting against two down pillows. The lights were on, clearly
illuminating his thin hair, very long now and white at the roots. His
stubbly cheeks that hadn't been relieved of his grizzled beard in many
weeks. His open mouth was blowing bubbles. She could see his yellow
teeth and wet chin. As in the hospital all month, he didn't register
her presence now. But unlike all those other times, tonight she had no
interest in getting his attention. She studied him coldly, watching his
chest heave as he breathed noisily on his own. Apparently it wasn't so
easy staying alive. He was struggling. Stubborn bastard.
She noted that Lorraine had dressed him in
a pair of his own expensive Sulka pajamas and had made an attempt to
neaten his hair. He smelled as if he needed a diaper change, but
despite what Edith said, Cassie's contract didn't call for such a
service.
"I'm going upstairs now," she told him
solemnly. "I'm going to drink a whole bottle of '89 Domaine
Romanee-Conti all by myself. I know for you it wouldn't be ready. But
my sources say the Grands Echezeaux is about perfect now—spicy, firm,
with a taste of berries, minerals, and oak. In California, they may
cheat and add too much oak—‘oaky, oaky,' as you would say—in the
Cabernets and Merlots to enhance mediocre grapes. But not in France,
right, Mitch?" She paused for a breath, then went on.
"Listen, if you have to stay here for any
length of time, I swear to God that I'm going to start dating. I'm
going to have sex whenever I want it, wherever I want it. I'm going to
drink this cellar down to nothing. I'm going to travel, and I'm going
to leave you with a nurse. When I'm here, I'm going to dust you like a
piece of furniture. And when I go out, I'm going to leave you in your
wheelchair facing the wall. Welcome home, you son of a bitch."
MITCH MAY OR MAY NOT HAVE HEARD HER, may
or may not have registered what she said. But the rest of his evening
didn't go well. At two in the morning Teddy and Lorraine were necking
out by the pool. They'd turned off the lights outside so no one could
watch them, but they could easily see the glow from the soft light in
the office, where Mitch's hospital bed had been cranked down so he
could go to sleep. Lorraine had wanted to turn that light off, too, but
Teddy had wanted it on so his dad wouldn't feel disoriented if he woke
up in the middle of the night.
"Do you think he knows he's home?" Teddy
wondered.
"Of course, honey, don't you worry; he's
happy as a clam."
They were lying on a single chaise and it
wasn't easy to stay balanced. Teddy was skinny and rested on one hip.
Lorraine was tilted toward his chest, her breasts straining to free
themselves from the bikini top that barely covered her nipples.
"Kiss my neck, honey," she said.
Teddy leaned forward and touched his lips
to Lorraine's floral-scented shoulder. It was soft and round, and damp
from the swim they'd taken. He was in terrible pain from all the time
she was taking to warm up, and wanted to move along down to the
business end of the operation.
"That's nice, a little higher. Okay, that's
good, just like that." She threw her head back and received his kisses
on her neck where she wanted them. "Like butterflies, that's right."
His arm was draped over her hips and he
felt the wonderful curves of her belly, overflowing from the binding
band of her tight bikini bottom. All around was the roll he loved to
squeeze. But he wanted it all to spill out. He wanted in there, where
he knew it was going to be heaven. He pretended some innocent roaming,
then began to inch his fingers inside the band.
"No, no."
His hand jumped away at the barking
command. She sounded a lot like his sister.
"Not yet, honey. I'm not wet yet."
He lost it for a moment, felt himself
deflating.
"There, okay, that's nice. Go ahead."
He struggled with a completely unfamiliar
closing on the bikini top, then felt a surge of pure joy when suddenly
the two skinny straps parted, the front fell off, and her heavy breasts
swung free. "Ohhh," he moaned as he put his face into the glorious orbs
and nuzzled away. His little man sprang back to life.
"Hey, take it easy. One at a time, lover.
Ohh," Lorraine squeaked. "Oh, that's great. Yes, circle the tongue.
That's too hard. Yeah, like that. Now the other."
Teddy was hanging off the edge of the
chaise. His shoulder, wedged against the arm of the chair, was what
kept him from toppling off. Lorraine was leaning closer.
"Yeah. That's good, lower."
He was panting, in the region of her belly
button. He peeled the bottom down just a little, felt the pelt. Oh,
God. If only she'd shut up and stop trying to make him her perfect
lover . . . hurrah, his hand was in. Ooooo, that was good.
"Ow! Honey, you have a hangnail," Lorraine
yelped.
Two fifteen-minute nursing periods passed
as Teddy had to go back to square one with his erection killing him.
Then it took another fifteen minutes to peel her bottom off, get his
condom on just the way she thought it should be, then securely plant
himself inside her in exactly the position she liked it. He did not
consider it a bad experience when he came almost instantly. In fact, he
thought it was a great big plus that he was spared getting any more
instruction since he was pretty sure he already knew what to do.
"I always teach my boyfriends how to be my
perfect lover," she confided, not seeming to hold a grudge, this time
anyway. She reached for a towel and another beer. Then she settled in
for a natter and a recap of the plays. He dozed beside her.
Back in the house, Cassie had long since
fallen into a deep, drunken slumber. During the poolside frolic,
Mitchell Sales heard the mumblings outside and began having trouble
breathing.
He made some sounds like "Heel . . ." Too
soft to be heard above the gentle drone of the air conditioner in his
room. He became further agitated when no one responded to his distress.
This was not like the hospital, where the monitor had been on him day
and night.
"Heel . . ." He tried to move, but had no
control of himself at all. He couldn't sit, and when his body
convulsed, he fell over against the bars of his bed. Outside, while
Lorraine was lecturing on the proper pressure a tongue should exert on
a nipple, Mitch stopped struggling. When she looked in on him nearly an
hour later, his body had already begun to cool.
CHAPTER 41
THE GRAY-HAIRED OFFICER FROM THE POLICE
DEPARTMENT who
came to question Cassie early the next morning was a paunchy man in a
uniform that may have fit him five or ten years ago but wasn't looking
so good on him now. She kept thinking that if Mitch were alive to see
it, he would be disdainful of the man's chest and tummy tugging at his
shirt buttons, getting in the way of all his cop paraphernalia so that
if he had to pull his gun on her he probably wouldn't be able to reach
it. Deputy Sheriff Lou Archer sat on the stiff, Federal-style sofa in
Cassie's living room, cradling his belly and smelling of cigarettes,
coffee, and Dunkin' Donuts. It was nine in the morning, and he'd been
in the house since eight. Cassie tried not to look at his gun and
notebook and handcuffs because they made her hands shake.
Outside, the sun had come up on another
magnificent
summer day. The fifth of July. The pool sparkled. The brilliantly
colored lilies and roses perfumed the air. Cassie was all alone in the
house, and everything that could be wrong with the world was wrong with
the world.
"Tell me once again in your own words what
happened last
night, Mrs. Sales," the deputy commanded. Then he licked the tip of his
pen as if a different answer would be forthcoming on this, his fourth,
foray into the subject.
Cassie faced him in the wing chair, hanging
on to the
arms as if she were on a turbulent flight thirty thousand feet over a
bottomless ocean. She'd been staggering from room to room since around
six-thirtyA .M., when Teddy and Lorraine
woke her from her profound, alcohol-induced sleep to tell her that her
husband had died in his sleep.
For the last thirty-six days she had been
up and down on
a roller coaster of feelings about her husband and herself, about her
stolen identity, about sickness and health, children and death. Now her
eyes were red-veined and puffy. They just didn't want to stay open for
any more reality. Her head throbbed continuously. After all the effort
that had been made to save him, Mitch had died in his sleep. She
couldn't take it in herself, much less form an appropriate response to
a detective's interrogation. She had her first paralyzing hangover in a
quarter of a century and could hardly form a coherent sentence.
Three times Cassie had tried to explain
that her husband
had been released from the hospital late yesterday afternoon after
spending a month in intensive care recovering from a stroke. His
condition had been so precarious then that he'd returned home in an
ambulance and was immediately put to bed by his nurse, Lorraine
Forchette. During the night, between one of the regular fifteen-minute
checks Miss Forchette made on him, he must have suffered another stroke
and died in his sleep. It was a family tragedy, but nothing more
sinister than that.
The deputy sheriff, however, didn't see it
that way. He
wanted to know why she'd brought her husband home in such vulnerable
condition. Cassie peered at him blearily. She thought that was a pretty
good question, but didn't want to get into the issue of managed care.
Then he wanted to know why a professional
nurse hadn't
been hired to look after him; and here, Cassie had to take issue.
"Lorraine Forchette is a professional
nurse. She works at
North Fork Hospital," she protested.
The clincher came on the fourth go-round.
Cassie heard it
through a fog. Deputy Archer wanted to know why a physician hadn't
signed the death certificate before the body was removed to a funeral
home instead of afterward. Some legal question or other that Cassie
didn't know anything about. She'd had nothing to do with it. Her hands
started shaking. For reasons as yet unexplained, when his father died,
Teddy had called Mark Cohen and Martini's Funeral Home instead of
waking her and calling 911 as he should have. Cassie had no idea why.
Since Mark immediately concluded on the
phone that
Mitch's was a natural death, the funeral home had sent a hearse to take
his remains away. From what Cassie gathered from the sheriff, this was
a shady and illegal thing to do.
"Martini's came in the middle of the
night?" the
detective demanded yet again.
"No, it was morning. You can call and ask
Mr. Martini
himself."
"Did you arrange this yourself?"
Cassie shook her head. Teddy had done it.
She guessed
he'd thought the body was spooky and wanted it out of the house. In any
case, when Teddy and Lorraine finally got her awake, she couldn't sit
up much less understand what they were talking about. So, it turned out
that the remains of the man who'd been her husband for twenty-six years
were removed before she knew he'd died. The whole thing gave her a
terrible feeling. Terrible. She'd been left out of Mitch's life and now
she was left out of his death.
Teddy had stood by her bed and informed her
that he was
the man of the family now, and he'd take care of everything from now
on. But all she'd been able to do was hang over the side of the bed and
gag. If she hadn't felt so miserable, she might have reacted with the
rage she felt now. Who was Teddy to decide he was the man of the family
when she'd told him weeks ago that she was the man of the family?
Cassie wasn't sure yet if Teddy was a fucking incompetent who
mismanaged every damn thing he touched, or if something sinister had
happened and Mona had somehow gotten to him and triumphed over
everyone. What if Mitch was actually alive and winking at all of them
over on Duck Pond Road? She stared at the detective, wondering what she
could do to make him go away so she could lie down.
"I understand you were drinking heavily,"
he said,
referring to his notes.
Cassie squinted at the white specks on the
sheriff's
broad shoulders and chest and realized it was not doughnut sugar as
she'd thought at first. Waves of nausea crashed over her like the tide
coming in on a rocky shore. Oceans. Now all her thoughts were of
oceans. She wanted to go down to the sea again, and see those waves
just one more time before she died.
"I wouldn't say I was drinking heavily. I
had a glass of
wine," she said slowly. Or two.
"Celebrating?" the sheriff said with a
voice that was
heavy on the irony.
Cassie blinked raw sandpapery eyes. Her
sick feeling of
hangover was quickly escalating into hysteria. She didn't want to weep
in front of the policeman who was sounding very much as if he suspected
that she or Teddy, or Teddy's awful nurse girlfriend, had put a pillow
over her husband's head so they could collect his life insurance and
live happily ever after in the Cayman Islands with his tax shelter.
Actually, her own disorganized musings had
spewed up the
same crazy idea, only with Teddy as the perpetrator instead of herself.
But why would he do such a terrible thing—to save her from a life of
misery? She didn't think he cared enough. To help Mona get rich? She
shook her throbbing head. Teddy wouldn't! Even extremely paranoid and
terrified, Cassie didn't want to believe he'd murder his own father.
She couldn't help it, she started lying.
"I was glad my husband was home. We were
together as a
family again. Could we finish this some other time?" she asked weakly.
She didn't know what to do. If she called
Parker Higgins,
Mona would know. If Mona knew, she'd use the sudden death to discredit
and threaten, even prosecute, her. She was frightened. The whole thing
did look somewhat suspicious, even to her. Cassie held back her tears.
And there was no one to corroborate her story or make the detective go
away, because this was the moment her idiot son and his dangerous
girlfriend had chosen to take off for Martini's to identify Mitch's
body so he could be cremated on the spot. Wasn't that . . . strange?
They'd taken the Porsche to the funeral
home, and Cassie
guessed that after picking out an expensive urn, they would probably
stop at the International House of Pancakes for a hearty breakfast on
the way home. She was so scared.
Deputy Archer sighed deeply. "We're
treating this as a
suspicious death," he told her.
She chewed on her bottom lip. "But why? My
husband was a
very sick man. It's been touch and go for more than a month. His doctor
can tell you that. No one expected him to live this long. And it hasn't
been a quality month." She shut her mouth. What was she saying?
"Still, we're going to have to investigate.
Autopsy the
body. The whole nine yards." Archer shrugged apologetically.
Cassie gasped. "Autopsy? Why?"
"To determine if he suffered another
stroke, as you
allege, or if something else happened to him."
"I'm not alleging anything. Why are you
taking it like
this?" Cassie looked around wildly. Help, where was help?
The detective shrugged again as though
unwilling to put
into his own words the kinds of things people did to hurry things along
when their relatives were terminally ill and the stakes were high. He
closed his notebook and assessed her affect. Was she upset? Was she a
grieving widow?
"Are you going to give us lie detector
tests?" Cassie
asked miserably. How would Teddy and Lorraine do on that?
"Oh, well, we'll have to see about that,
won't we?"
Cassie felt as if she were trapped in a sea
cave with the
tide coming in. Would an autopsy show if someone had put a pillow over
Mitch's head, if her own son was a murderer? What would Mark say about
this? He'd signed the death certificate. What would Parker say? He was
the family lawyer. She tried to remember if she'd told the fat cop that
Mitch's remains would be ashes by noon. She wondered if it was against
the law to say nothing about that now. She could always pretend later
that she didn't know. She couldn't control her terror. The front
doorbell rang, and she jumped a foot.
"Someone's at the door," Archer said.
Cassie swallowed a mouthful of saliva. I'm
going to
heave, she thought. I'm going to barf on the spot. She'd seen all this
on TV a hundred times. The bell rang again. She studiously ignored it.
She was convinced that outside her door were the cameras, the reporters
waiting to tell the story that she was O. J. Simpson, Susan Smith, the
Ramseys, Amy Fisher, Jean Harris, right here in quiet Manhasset.
If she opened that door, her bloated,
bleary face would
appear on every channel. The images would be on the five o'clock news
and the six o'clock news. At six-thirty, they'd be on the national
news. She knew just how the story would play. Cassie Sales, wife of
prominent wine importer, who'd bankrupted the family with her excessive
spending, early this morning had boldly murdered her invalid husband to
prevent him from leaving her for his mistress—the surgical wonder Mona
Whitman, his partner in their thriving business. Just like Jean Harris,
she'd be a dead duck.
Mona's final check and mate.
Cassie wanted to vomit. The doorbell rang a
third time.
Finally Archer got up to see who was out there, then shocked her by
opening the door.
"Hey, Schwab, right on schedule. You boys
certainly don't
let any grass grow under your feet. Come on in while the juice is hot."
He lowered his voice, but Cassie had no trouble hearing what he said
next.
"As far as I know, only the body's gotten
out of here.
But the death occurred sometime in the earlyA .M.,
and we weren't notified until eight this morning. That gave them a few
hours to clean the place out. It's pretty late in the day. Who knows
what you'll come up with now—"
"Jeez, the old man is dead? This is news to
me." Charles
Schwab came into the front hall.
Cassie put a hand to her mouth and bailed
out of the wing
chair, plunging without a parachute. She staggered into the powder room
and dropped to her knees in front of the toilet. "Oh God. Take me now,"
she moaned. "Just take me into that good night. I'm ready to go."
But God must have been busy with other
things. The sound
of her vomiting traveled to the living room, where the sheriff and the
revenue agent stood talking about sting operations. Seven minutes
later, when Cassie staggered out of the bathroom feeling a little
better, the living room was empty. She heard some banging around in the
kitchen and stumbled into the dining room, where she immediately
bumbled into one of the filing cabinets she and Teddy had stuffed in
there just yesterday. She gasped. All of Mitch's records, right in
plain view with Charlie in the house. Terror clutched at her again.
Various branches of the government were
crawling all over
the place, and she had no idea what to do or how to stop them. As she
tried to scramble out of the maze and get into the kitchen, her hip
caught the edge of Mitch's desk.
"Ow." She rubbed the spot and kept moving.
When she
reached the other side of the dining room, her foot caught on a
computer wire. She fell through the swinging door and crashed into the
open overhead door of a kitchen cabinet. The flat front of the door hit
her in the forehead and stopped her cold.
"Oh God." Her legs turned to rubber and
collapsed under
her. She hit the floor and closed her eyes.
CHAPTER 42
CASSIE OPENED HER EYES to the smell of
coffee. "Oh
no," she groaned. She'd hoped she was dead.
"How are you doing?" Charlie Schwab's blue
eyes were
laughing at her.
She swallowed down a new wave of nausea.
"I'm having a
bad day," she murmured.
"I heard your husband died last night,"
Charlie said with
some show of concern.
"Uh-huh. That sheriff tell you?" Cassie
considered
standing up.
Schwab nodded. "I'm sorry for your loss."
"Well, thanks. That cop thinks I killed
him. Where is he,
searching the garbage for poisoned hypodermic needles?"
Schwab laughed suddenly. "You're a funny
girl."
"Oh really?" Cassie snorted. She touched
the little bump
on her forehead where she'd gone into the door.
"Looks like you tied one on last night."
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"Strong odor of alcohol. You know, you
sweat it out of
your pores. Unmistakable, believe me, I know."
"Ugh." Humiliated, Cassie dragged herself
to her knees,
then to her feet. The coffee cup and saucer he'd handed her rattled
dangerously in her hand. Charlie grabbed the cup out of her hand.
"Where's that cop?" She peered around,
looking for him.
"Oh, he left."
"He left? Really?" Cassie brightened.
"Well, I told him he could go, I'd take
over from here."
"You? Take over from here?" The ridiculous
feeling of
always knowing less than everybody else overcame Cassie. She stumbled
over to a kitchen chair and sat down with her back to the ascending
sun. The radiance of morning killed. "Oh God, I can't take this."
"You okay there?" Schwab asked.
"No." Cassie put her cheek down on the
table and tried
breathing slowly enough to make the room stand still.
"Go on, drink up." Schwab put the cup down
in front of
her.
"There isn't any," she mumbled.
"No, I made some more. How about some
aspirin? Where is
it?"
"In the drawer there somewhere." She waved
her hand
vaguely. "One of those drawers."
He found the bottle of Bufferin, tossed out
two, and
handed them over.
"I'm not drunk," Cassie insisted. "I'm just
a little
nervous."
"Take them anyway. They'll help."
She picked up her head and swallowed the
aspirin. "You're
really some sort of cop, aren't you? People who do audits don't come
into your house and take over police investigations."
"Well, you know. In the Service we can do
pretty much
anything we want."
Cassie shook her head. "Which branch of the
Service are
we talking about now?"
"We bring in whatever branch we need." He
appeared
serious. He wasn't laughing now.
"You're scaring me."
"That's my job. Would you like to know
about some of our
powers?"
"Maybe some other time."
"I'll tell you anyway. We can get your bank
records
without you even knowing it. Anything we ask for is ours. My supervisor
has given me carte blanche on this case. I can do anything I want."
Cassie's heart thudded. "You checked my
bank account?"
He nodded.
"But there's nothing in it."
He nodded some more. "No juice there."
"Well, you were looking in the wrong place.
The juice is
in the refrigerator." She really was cross-eyed with all this IRS spy
stuff.
"Most people put it in the bank." The
twinkle was back.
She didn't know what he was talking about.
"They put the
juice in the bank?"
"Uh-huh. In safe-deposit boxes. You know
what I mean,
undeclared income." He repeated it patiently, watching her face
closely. "We talked about this before. The IRS looks for undeclared
income. I'm a finder, remember."
"I don't have any of that kind of goddamn
juice. Could I
have a few more of those aspirin?" Now she was in a cold sweat. She
knew she must stink unbelievably. Alcohol, vomit. Fear. And she was
just a spouse. Imagine the fear real crooks felt.
"No need to get testy." Schwab got the
bottle for her and
sat down again. "You can also find it in their canceled checks.
Purchases. The whole lifestyle. I like to get the big picture before I
form an impression."
Cassie swallowed two more aspirin and
waited for her
brains to tighten up. They felt loose, like unset Jell-O. "My husband
died last night. He handled the income and the taxes. I've told you
this a million times. I didn't even see his body. Understand?"
"No. Explain me."
"Explain you? Okay. Everybody takes care of
things for
me. My son took care of my husband's body for me. I never even saw it."
She tried to get that across. This was the reason she was in so much
trouble. No one let her do anything. She couldn't take control of her
own life.
"I met him at the warehouse, seemed like a
nice young
man," Charlie said about Teddy. Neutral, Cassie liked that. He didn't
say her son was an asshole.
"Well, looks can be deceiving," she
murmured.
Charlie laughed again. "Maybe he was trying
to protect
you."
"Well, that's wrong. I don't want other
people to mess me
up. I can do it just fine by myself." She shook her head again.
"You certainly can." Schwab put his elbows
on the table
and leaned forward. "You know what else the IRS can do? We can give you
summonses to appear anytime we want. We can search your house and seize
your property. Your car, your house. Garnish your wages."
"I told you already. No wages. I've always
volunteered."
"And speaking of garbage, we can go through
your
garbage," Charlie added.
"Be my guest." Cassie waved her hand.
"We can take all your records and
documents. We can tap
your phones. Want to know what else we can do?"
"I'm very afraid already."
He laughed. "You should be. Do you know why
we have these
powers?"
Cassie heaved a sigh. He wasn't going away.
"So you can
hurt us?"
"Private taxpayers fund about sixty-one
percent of the
country's budget." Charlie poured himself more coffee, then liberally
added milk. He'd learned to make it, but didn't know how to froth. That
gave her some satisfaction.
"Did you know that corporate taxpayers fund
only about
eleven percent of the budget?" he asked, pointing the spoon at her.
"Uh-uh." Could she take a nap now?
"That's why the wage earner, the
small-business taxpayer,
is so important to us. You're our all."
"That's interesting." Cassie had always
wanted to be
somebody's all.
"Paying taxes is completely voluntary, but
we have to
ensure people don't think it's a joke. We want them to comply. That's
the reason we scare you."
She nodded, eager to please. "Believe me, I
want those
taxpayers to comply. If I had my way we'd all comply a whole lot more."
"You're very funny, did you know that?"
"This is not a funny situation; I'm really
scared," she
confessed. Voluntary tax payments, who was he kidding?
"But I liked that one about Thorazine. I
told it to my
supervisor. My dad, too. They both liked it."
"Your dad and your supervisor." Cassie
frowned. Where was
this going?
"Did you know what we can do to a taxpayer
who tries to
resist or complain?" Schwab asked.
"Charlie, my husband died today. Could you
give me a
break?"
"You people! All you want is breaks. Come
on, guess. What
can we do to taxpayers who resist or complain?" Now Schwab waved his
hands. "What?"
Cassie guessed. "Kill us?"
"Ha-ha. That's good. Another good one." He
slapped his
knee.
"I wasn't being funny. Are you going to
kill me? Just let
me know. I had a bad night. I want to wash my face and brush my teeth
before I go."
"No, I'm not going to kill you," he said, a
little testy
himself now. "It's nothing personal. Personally, I like you. I more
than like you. I think you're a very lovely lady. In fact, if the
situation were different, I'd ask you for a date."
"Look, forget the date," she said quickly.
"Just kill me
quick."
"Oh come on, you don't mean that." His
laugh was a touch
strained now.
"Oh, yes. Go ahead, kill me. I bet you have
a gun. Shoot
me now." Cassie kept at it.
Schwab glanced around the room, then mugged
a little for
her. "You're a funny girl. You're kidding, right?"
"No, go ahead, kill me. You have all these
powers. Why
stop at seizing property? Shoot me. No one will complain."
Charlie wagged a finger at her. "I bet you
didn't know
that a lot of people try to kill us. This is a very hazardous line of
work."
"Don't turn things around, damn it! I don't
give a shit
about your problems. Just do what you have to do." Cassie put a finger
to her head. "Boom."
"Let's not get competitive. I'm not
kidding, I do get
hate notes every day. People send me things you wouldn't believe. I've
had the windshield of my car smashed three times. They put water and
sugar in my gas tank. I can't keep a decent car. You name it. People do
it to me."
Cassie was exasperated. "Well, you must be
very good at
your job," she said.
He nodded. "I go for quality."
"That's just great. When are you going to
shoot me?"
He clicked his tongue, disgusted. "I told
you I'm not
going to shoot you."
"That's too bad." Cassie wanted a bath. A
bubble bath.
She needed to sleep for eternity. She didn't want to think about death
or taxes. Ever. She wanted to be obliterated. The idea of making calls
to tell people that Mitch was gone was terrifying. She didn't want to
do it, didn't want to think about it. Schwab startled her out of her
thoughts.
"I bet you didn't know that informers make
ten percent of
the government's take."
Of course she didn't know that. How would
she know that?
Cassie's eyes glazed over. "I can't take any more of this right now."
"I'm going to level with you. Someone gave
us a tip about
your husband."
"Oh no." He was going to keep at it.
"An anonymous person," he said, teasing now.
"Really?" That was interesting. Cassie's
eyes cleared.
The fog in front of her turned into the attractive man with a strong
chin and humorous blue eyes. Today he had another really nice outfit
on. Cassie had the thought that Mitch would appreciate that. The man
who'd come to bury them both was wearing good clothes. Schwab always
came early in the morning. What about that? Suddenly she was trying to
form an impression. He had a ratty car because people poured things
into its gas tank. The big picture. What did he want from her?
"Usually informers just want revenge. They
don't collect.
The only way they can collect the money is to help gather the necessary
information to take to Justice."
Cassie squeezed her eyes shut, trying to
follow. Who was
they? What was justice? The word reminded her of Mitch again. She
opened her eyes and glanced at her watch. Eleven o'clock on the dot. It
seemed as if she and her husband were still in some kind of contact.
Mitch was scheduled to slide down that chute at Martini's crematorium
at eleven o'clock. Teddy and Lorraine were probably there to send him
off. Cassie thought about the juice in the wine cellar. She wanted a
drink but told herself, no juice until dark.
"So tell me about justice," she said,
working hard to
hold her head up.
"The Justice Department decides whether to
institute
criminal proceedings on evasion and fraud cases. Evasion can be hard to
prove, since the taxpayer can always claim he was just trying to avoid
paying taxes, which is legal. Evading taxes, however, is not legal."
"You just lost me, Charlie."
He smiled. "What's not crystal?"
"Avoidance is legal, evasion is illegal.
What's the
difference?" Cassie's eyes crossed.
"The Service expects people to pad their
business
expenses, and shelter their income. It's avoiding taxes on reported
income. The taxpayer reports income. If we happen to disagree about the
deductions on reported income, adjustments are made. The taxpayer pays
more. That's it.
"What makes a criminal case is when the
taxpayer does not
report income and uses illegal means of sheltering it, like taking it
out of the country, cooking the books, reporting losses in phony
companies, that kind of thing. The Treasury has to prove intent in
fraud cases. Are you following me?"
"You have to prove intent in fraud cases,"
Cassie mumbled.
"About a third of fraud cases are
prosecuted and
convicted."
"Uh-huh." Cassie propped her head in her
hand to keep it
from flopping over.
"Convicted felons pay penalties and fines,
and they go up
the river. Deals can always be made, though, and people can plea down.
Got it?"
"I'm not pleading down."
"Now, in evasion cases—that's just hiding
income, as I
explained—Treasury can be satisfied with penalties, fines, and, of
course, full collection of the unpaid revenues. What do you say?"
Cassie hesitated. "I'd really like a bath
and a nap."
"I mean about helping us." He gave her a
big, friendly
grin.
"What?" This caught her by surprise.
"You told me you'd think about it. Haven't
you been
listening? I might be able to get you immunity."
"From what?" she said numbly.
"Well, I found your box," he said tilting
his head
engagingly.
Cassie blinked. The safe-deposit box with
the receipts of
Mona's extravagant lifestyle in it? What did that have to do with
anything? Outside, a car horn honked. Sounded like Aunt Edith. But
maybe it was Teddy and Lorraine returning from Martini's. They had
tasks, telephone calls to make, official mourning to do. She wanted
that hospital bed out of the office and Mitch's personal belongings
removed from the house—the old magazines, the ancient computers. She
wanted some more of that nice juice in the cellar, and she wanted this
maniac to go away. The receipts in the box weren't even hers. What
crime had she committed? No crime.
"I know this may sound evasive to you, but
could you come
back tomorrow?" she asked. She needed to do a little research.
Charlie shook his head. "By tomorrow there
could be
nothing left."
CHAPTER 43
ILOVEDHIMIHATEDHIM.
ShouldIhelphimShouldInothelphim?
Cassie's brain was whirling again. But now it was whirling around two
men instead of one. The dead one whom she wished she could mourn, and
the living one who wanted her to inform for the IRS. The breathing one
was sexy. Even when he was threatening her she found him pretty
devastating. But right now the dead one was going up in smoke and she
didn't want confusion. She wanted the whirl to stop, and the world to
be simple. There was no chance of that, so she left Charlie doing
whatever he did when he was alone with other people's stuff, and went
upstairs to bathe and dress.
As she climbed the stairs, she wished for a
quiet moment
in which to experience some emotion appropriate to the occasion.
Whatever happened to basic values? A human being who happened to be a
close relative had just passed on. She wanted that to be the primary
event. She was still deeply caught in the myth of marriage and didn't
want to give it up until the very last moment. Let me love Mitch for
just a few moments one last time, so I can feel the loss, so I can
mourn, she told herself.
She'd tried to pinpoint her feelings about
the marriage a
million times since Mitch had become ill, and she'd been hopeful until
the day he'd keeled over. What she thought of now was the excitement
with which she'd anticipated the arrival in the mail of each of her
orchids. They came from Florida, California, Hawaii, the Philippines,
Thailand. So many exotic places. She always ordered them in spike. When
they arrived, she watched impatiently for the spikes to bud, and the
buds to flower. The day a new plant fully unfurled its first bloom, her
personal achievement felt as remarkable as the bloom itself, as if each
were her very own creation.
Orchid societies preached the simplicity of
orchids, and
the growers all promised on the Web that the blooming-age specimens
they offered for sale would definitely bloom. But the truth was,
orchids were not so very easy. They were like the male member: not
particularly attractive when dormant, unpredictable producers or
unproducers, all according to whim. Orchids were pretty much Cassie's
metaphor for life.
Sometimes she'd be busy outside or involved
with some
benefit she was planning. She'd look away for a week or two and when
she'd look back, a bud would have appeared on a dormant-looking
cattleya where none had been due for months. Propelling itself out of
its green sheath, much more like an animal with a distinct personality
than just a pretty flower, the magnificent botanical creature would
burst upon Cassie's little scene silently but with a scent and a
splendor that almost stopped her heart with joy. Every time an
unexpected gift: happiness.
Other orchids, like her expensive and large
cymbidium,
would refuse, absolutely refuse, to spike no matter how carefully she
treated them, gave them the environment and nourishment she thought
they wanted, watched over, and tried to love them. Ugly, barren things,
taking up space in the greenhouse and not giving a single pleasure
back. Mitch's member, his whole self, had been like that from the day
he'd shifted to Mona. And to think that Cassie hadn't wanted to hurt
his feelings by complaining.
When Cassie reached the top of the stairs,
she realized
that even though the remains of her husband were going up in smoke, she
still couldn't help thinking orchids. Maybe this was a problem of hers.
She could hope, but not love. Inside her room, she noticed the empty
bottle of red wine by her bed and threw it in the wastebasket. Didn't
want to appear to be a drunk, even to herself.
Old habits die hard. She was a tidy person.
She made the
bed. As she made the bed, she couldn't help suspecting again that there
might be another trick in here somewhere. Maybe Mitch wasn't really
(really) dead. Maybe he was hiding and would rise up like Jesus, but
not to go to heaven. This frightening thought led her back to Charlie.
Surely the government had better things to do than send a cute bully to
intrude and torment her with feelings of lust just when she was working
so hard to have a noble feeling.
Cassie muttered to herself. Shouldn't she
be allowed a
tiny respite in this, her time of loss? For a moment, just a moment,
please, couldn't she be spared from having to consider betrayal and
money. (Lust.) Money and betrayal. Was that all there was to life?
Wasn't there a certain lack of sensitivity being exhibited by the
government here?
She asked herself, why should she help
Charlie? If he had
so many branches, shouldn't he be able to get the big picture for
himself? And, by the way, who was the snitch who'd informed on Mitch?
She peeled off her clothes and eased into the hot bath. She reminded
herself that on Charlie's second visit to her she'd only said she'd
think about it. She remembered the occasion well. She'd been in the
kitchen. He'd been out in the greenhouse. She'd gone out to talk to
him. On that occasion he hadn't mentioned juice or informers. He'd
talked lilies and conversions. God help her, she'd been attracted to
him then. She'd decided then that she would give him Mona's house and
the Jaguar. She'd forgotten that the Jaguar was supposed to be hers, so
maybe she could claim it now. Take the car back and drive it herself.
Maybe she could take back all the things that were supposed to be hers.
This was a new and exciting thought.
But now Charlie wasn't talking conversions,
he was
talking immunity. And still, Cassie thought that even though he had the
power to break and send her to prison, he really liked her and wouldn't
do that.
The hot water eased her headache and
soothed old and new
bruises. It was hard to stay focused on the subject. She was feeling
better now. Under the water, her body looked pretty good. Hips and
thighs could be worse. Her not-bad breasts still looked nice and full,
hardly older than Marsha's. They floated alluringly in the bubbles. She
kept her feet in the waterfall under the tap. She didn't have bad feet,
either. Not that anyone cared about feet. Cassie let her head sink deep
into the water, then scrambled rich shampoo into her hair.
"Personally, I think you're a very lovely
lady," he'd
said with his special little smile. "If the situation were different .
. ."
Cassie massaged her scalp cautiously,
exploring those
terrifying little ridges on which she'd learned only postsurgery that
no hair would ever grow back. If anyone with a brain ever played with
her hair, he'd know in a second what they were. Did that mean she could
never let anyone play with her hair? Her gut churned with anxiety.
And what did "very lovely lady" mean in
this context,
anyway? Did very lovely lady mean the sort of woman slightly past her
prime who did good works like she did? Prayed regularly to God to keep
them good, went to yoga at the Y, and did group casseroles for friends
whose husbands had strokes. Did very lovely lady imply repressed, but
sexy, as when Mark Cohen had called her a very lovely lady? Cassie
suspected that Mark would actually get off on performing services of an
intimate nature for her while charging her very high fees and thinking
he was doing her a favor.
Cassie was not attracted to her married
doctor. On the
other hand, she was intrigued by her personal IRS stalker. Oh, the
irony of the legacy her husband had left her. She rinsed her hair and
squeezed on some conditioner and massaged it in. She got out of the tub
and massaged everything she could think of with BabySoft, then
considered her wardrobe, a depressing collection of marked-down mostly
conservative Anne Klein and Liz Claiborne separates dating back to the
stone age. Little jackets and skirts (not too short) and slacks (not
too tight) and camp shirts, none of which did much for anyone but
didn't wear out, and never went out of style. And were now way too big.
Pink, baby soft, and fragrant, Cassie was thinking Anna Sui. Marsha had
left behind her little black vamp dress that was skimpy but not too
pushy about it, calf length. And her nice black sandals with a little
heel. She put on a robe and snuck down the hall to borrow her
daughter's clothes.
WHILE CASSIE WAS DOING HER BATH THING long
before the
cremation process would be over, Teddy came through the front door
calling, "Mom? Mom."
Charlie was sitting in the dining room with
two years of
Mitch's American Express bills spread out on the dining room table in
front of him. The record confirmed what Mona had told him over a drink
in a fancy Italian restaurant in Manhattan last week (during which
she'd denied having sent him any gifts): that Cassie was a major
spender, using company assets to her own advantage à la Leona
Helmsley. Charlie discovered the glamorous Mr. and Mrs. Sales trips all
over the world and purchases therein. They presented a different
picture of Cassie from the one Cassie presented. By then, he'd begun
his investigation of the company. He located three Mona Whitman
safe-deposit boxes. Unlike Cassie's, which had only receipts, Mona had
cash in hers. A lot of cash. That had made him more hopeful about
Cassie. Now he saw a not unusual situation. Often an unfaithful husband
paid his wife off in booty for accepting the girlfriend, who got the
cash. He was disappointed by what he saw. He would rather have had
Cassie as thoroughly betrayed as he had been.
"Mom, where are you?" Teddy cried.
Charlie glanced up with no hint of
uneasiness. "She's
upstairs taking a bath."
Teddy ducked into the room and yelped when
he saw who was
speaking. "What are you doing here?"
"Hi. Teddy, right?"
Teddy stared. At the open filing cabinet,
the piles of
statements. He pinched his nose with thumb and index finger as if a
dike had started leaking there.
"I'm Charlie," Charlie said.
"I know who you are."
"I'm sorry about your dad."
Teddy frowned. "Where's my mother? Did she
let you in?"
"She's waiting for you. The police were
here. Where have
you been?"
"The police were here? Why?" Teddy sucked
air.
"Police sometimes see sudden deaths as
suspicious
deaths," Charlie said mildly. "They had a few questions."
"Oh, no! Someone asked Mom questions?"
Teddy stood frozen
in the doorway.
"Yes, someone did."
"What did she say?"
Charlie shrugged. "I wasn't here. You'll
have to ask her."
"Is she all right?"
"Oh, she's a little under the weather, but
that's not
surprising. She just lost her husband."
Teddy shuffled his feet in what Charlie
interpreted as a
guilty manner. He always knew when people were guilty. The twitching
and quivering always took over. Eyes, lips, chin, hands. "What happened
last night?" he asked.
Teddy's left eyelid did a little dance.
"Poor Mom. I'm
really sorry." He shook his head, then honed in on Charlie, the enemy.
"What are you doing here, anyway?" he asked, frowning at the files.
"You know what I'm doing here."
"Me?" Now Teddy's eyebrow jumped up in
alarm.
"You seem like a nice, honest kind of guy,"
Charlie said. "Very likable. The kind of guy the government can trust."
"No." Teddy turned and walked out of the
room, muttering, "I don't want to hear this." Then he came back into
the doorway a
second later. "Let's get one thing straight. I don't know anything
about this." He fanned his hands out at the piles on the table.
"Nothing."
"It's just amazing how no one in this
family knows
anything," Charlie remarked. "Except the someone who knows everything.
I'm guessing that would be you."
"No."
"Yes, Teddy, you know it all."
Teddy squirmed. "Look, I want my mom
protected. That's
all I want. I may be guilty, but she hasn't done anything wrong. Can
you protect her?" Teddy said.
"Aw," Charlie said, tapping his chin.
"I don't care what happens to me." Teddy's
tongue rolled
around in his head. His mouth twitched. He was in way over his head.
"Maybe I should call a lawyer or something," he said finally.
"Good idea, sure. I think you should. But
let's talk
options a little first. You said you want to help your mom."
"Well," Teddy hesitated. He wasn't sure
what to do.
Charlie was engaging him in some pretty heavy conversation. He was
shaking pretty badly by the time the front door slammed.
"Tedddddie! You fucking idiot. What have
you done now?" A
very pretty girl came into the dining room and charged Teddy, arms
flailing.
"Hey. Marsha, stop it." Teddy hardly had
the strength to
put his hands up to defend himself.
"You fucking killed Daddy. Are you crazy?"
She tried to
knee him in the groin.
"What are you talking about? I didn't kill
him. He died,
end of story. Stop that!"
"You didn't call me, you creep! You fucking
creep." The
knee went up. She couldn't get to his balls. "Goddamn it."
"Hey! Stop that." Charlie was on his feet.
He moved
around the table, pulled the girl away from Teddy, and took a punch on
the chest for his trouble.
Marsha tried to punch him again, then
stopped, confused
by the stranger. "Who's this?"
Teddy shook his head. "Marsha, you just
punched a Fed."
"Jesus." She was crying, trying to catch
her breath. She
hiccuped a few times, wouldn't meet Charlie's eye. "What's he doing
here?"
"Are you all right? You look like your
mom." Charlie was
perfectly affable, but made a note to check out her savings account.
This girl was trouble.
Marsha ignored him, snuffling back her
tears. "Jesus, why
didn't you call me, Teddy?"
Teddy shook his head. She'd left them to
stay over at her
boyfriend's.
"For God's sake, you're no help. Where's
Lorraine? I want
to know what happened," Marsha raged.
"I took her home." Teddy shuffled his feet.
"Praise the Lord. Is anybody else here?"
Clearly she
didn't count the Fed.
"Mom is upstairs." Teddy glanced at
Charlie. "This is
Charlie Schwab. He's with the IRS."
Marsha tossed her head in his direction,
gave him a sharp
once-over. Then she became aware of the nonedible spread on the table.
Her forehead furrowed. "I'm sorry I hit you. I was aiming for my
brother."
Very nice, she apologized. Charlie was
impressed. Maybe
he wouldn't arrest her for assault. "No offense taken," he murmured. He
was acting like a prince.
"What happened, Teddy?" Marsha was back on
the attack. "I
leave you for five minutes and Daddy dies. What's the matter with you?"
Teddy shuffled his feet. "You took off for
dinner and
never came back, you and your M.D. boyfriend. Huh, how about that?"
Teddy countered.
"You and that nitbrain were in charge. You
were supposed
to take care of him."
"We did. It's not my fault." Teddy looked
guilty as hell.
"Come on. Did you leave, or what?"
Teddy's eye and mouth twitched at the same
time. "Where
were you all night, big mouth?" he said miserably.
Then Marsha got it. They'd been too busy to
remember what
they were there to do. Her eyes widened. "You forgot him. You were
fucking, you and that fat nurse," she screamed. "Your fucking killed
Daddy. Oh shit."
Charlie got it, too. Now he could see the
scene, how it
had played. Marsha was out. Cassie had been drinking. With all that
grape in the cellar, she was probably a big wino. Big. Teddy and his
girlfriend, in charge of the patient, had been fooling around somewhere
out of sight. Mitchell Sales had another stroke. Charlie guessed he
might have died anyway. But maybe not. No wonder the shuffling feet.
The kid must think he killed his father just to get laid. Ouch.
Footsteps sounded on the parquet landing.
Cassie the
probable wino clacked down the stairs.
"Oh God. Mommy," Marsha cried wildly.
She hurried out of the room to meet her
mother at the
bottom of the stairs. "Oh God, I just heard about Daddy. I'm so sorry."
Cassie didn't say anything as she brushed
past her and
came into the dining room. She sent a stunned look in her son's
direction, then turned to embrace her daughter. For a minute they
rocked together, and she stroked the girl's hair. Then she said, "It's
okay, honey. Whatever happens, it's okay."
Charlie was made uneasy by the intimacy of
the two women.
Their hugging hit him like a charge from a jumper cable. They looked
alike. One was dark-haired and one light-haired, but both were slender
and graceful, both easy on the eye, though the younger one had quite a
mouth on her. Cassie's tenderness to her child knifed the old injury
right through him. His little girl would have been a woman now.
"Mommy, I love you." Finally Marsha pulled
away. Then she
stared at her mother with horror. "You're wearing my dress!" she said.
CHAPTER 44
FIVE MINUTES LATER Cassie closed the
door to the
dining room and settled her children around the kitchen table. "Look,
there's something I have to do right now." She didn't look at Teddy,
but she knew he had tears in his eyes.
"What's that man doing here?" Marsha said
softly.
"Listen to me, Marsha. You and Teddy are
going to have to
go through my address book and start calling people."
"Mom, talk to me. What's going on?" Marsha
kept her voice
low, but she wasn't backing down.
"I told you, he's an IRS agent," Teddy said
unhappily.
"Marsha, I want you to call Parker Higgins
and tell him
your father died." Cassie leaned forward. She didn't have a lot of time
and wanted them to pay attention.
"I can call him," Teddy protested.
"You call Ira. Divide up the list."
"An IRS agent? Mom, what are you doing?"
Marsha asked.
"I'm taking Charlie to see Mona's house,"
she replied.
"Why?" Marsha was shocked.
"Because it's juice. Now, do what I tell
you for once."
"Mom, don't go psycho on us. The IRS is
like explosive
stuff." Marsha gave her mother one of her superior looks, and Cassie
exploded.
"I don't want to hear that from you ever
again! I've
never been psycho, not for one second in my whole life. I've been
stupid. I've been in denial, but psycho, never!" Cassie realized she
was getting loud and lowered her voice. Leaned forward, tried to take
control of the plane. Up, up, up, get that cockpit up, she coached
herself.
"Now, listen to me. The two of you have to
rely on me
now. Teddy, I understand what happened last night. Marsha took off, and
you were doing your own thing." That was a nice way of putting it.
Cassie's lips were set hard against her teeth, but she said it without
a trace of irony. They'd been doing their own thing, and their father
had died on their watch. It was over. Fact of life.
Marsha gripped her mother's arm. "Mom, calm
down."
"I'm perfectly calm. He had Daddy's body
removed before I
was even up, Marsha. Did he call you at Tom's place? No, he did not.
Then he took off with that girl and left me here to be interrogated by
the police. That cop wanted to arrest me for murder. What were you
thinking?" she hissed at her son.
Teddy looked like a fifteen-year-old caught
out doing
everything he wasn't supposed to do. "I was just trying to help. I'm
really sorry, Mom."
"Sorry!"
"He was already dead when she went to check
on him. I
swear," Teddy said.
Cassie didn't want to pursue it now. The
girl was not in
the house. Good, she didn't want to pursue that, either. Suddenly she
felt sick again. She turned her attention to the grain running through
the wood in the kitchen table. She'd wiped it clean before she'd gone
upstairs to change. Tidy was her middle name. "Is there anything else
you want to tell me before I go?" she asked softly.
Teddy took a deep breath. "Well . . ."
"What, Teddy?" Marsha demanded. "What now?"
"Gently, gently." Cassie pointed at the
dining room door. "I swear to God he must think we're nuts."
"Who cares? We are nuts," Marsha muttered.
"Shhh. Marsha!" Cassie told herself she was
perfectly
calm.
"Don't shhh me. Daddy's dead, and nothing
changes around
here except now you're wearing my clothes."
"Well, they're better than mine," Cassie
pointed out.
"I sent the letter," Teddy blurted.
"What letter?" Marsha gave him the idiot
look. For once,
Teddy ignored it.
"Mom, I'm really sorry. He was going to
marry her. She
told me a thousand times that everybody underestimates you, that you'd
be okay. She promised me a better life." He squirmed in his chair,
crumbling like a cookie.
"Mona promised you a better life than
what?" Cassie's
brain spun back into its whirl. In an instant she lost her perfect calm.
"She promised she'd always take care of
me." Teddy pulled
on his fingers until his knuckles cracked. "I had to stop it, that's
all."
Mona had promised Teddy a better life?
Cassie swallowed
bile as a terrible thought struck her: Had Mona been sleeping with her
son, too? She shivered in the sun-drenched kitchen. This was the stuff
of soap operas. Teddy was their informer. He had nailed his own father.
She was speechless.
"What are you talking about? What did you
do?" Marsha
demanded. She didn't have a clue.
Teddy was telling his story and paying no
attention to
her. "He was always teaching me lessons. It was time to teach him one."
"For God's sake what did he do?" Marsha
turned to her
mother, and still Teddy wouldn't acknowledge her.
"Mom, I gave him the second set of books."
Cassie's life took another unexpected turn.
She was
spinning, spinning. Dizzy, dizzy. Where would it stop? "What second set
of books?" she asked faintly.
"It was how he taught me accounting. Not
even Ira knows."
For the first time Teddy glanced guiltily at his sister. "He and Mona
cooked the books. Daddy showed me how they did it. Easy as pie. The
official set was prepared for Ira, the other for them. He told me
everybody did it. He was proud of it. He thought only idiots were
honest."
Cassie put her hand to her mouth. She
pointed to the
dining room. "You gave him the books?"
"Well, they were disks, really. He was in
here. He would
have found them, anyway, and I didn't want to be like that kid in The
Sopranos."
Cassie frowned. Sopranos? Was that an opera?
"He loved that show. Loved it. He thought
he was Tony. I
was Tony Jr."
"Oh God!" Now Marsha got something. "He
thought he was
Tony Soprano, Mom."
No wonder she'd always hated that show.
Cassie waved her
hand impatiently. She was still on the cooked books. Teddy gave the
juice to the finder. "When did you do that, Teddy?" she demanded.
"Just now. He pretty much promised none of
us would go to
jail. You're not mad, are you?"
"Ha. They rape boys like you in jail,"
Marsha crowed. "I
hope you get buggered, you crook."
"Marsha!" Cassie said, shocked.
"Well, he is a crook, isn't he?"
"Mom, do you forgive me?" Suddenly Teddy
was begging, a
little kid all over again. "I did it for you," he said. "And her." He
pointed at his sister. "She may be a total jerk, but Mona wasn't going
to give her a nickel. It wasn't fair."
CHAPTER 45
SO THIS WAS WHERE THE PATH of Cassie
Sales's little uneventful life had led. She was in the Mercedes with
Charlie Schwab, heading toward Mona's Refuge at just past noon on the
day after Independence Day, which happened to be her first of single
life in twenty-six years. She was very aware of looking like a vamp
from a spy novel. She was wearing Marsha's black wrap dress, Marsha's
big dark sunglasses, and Marsha's skimpy sandals. Her stomach was
heaving, still in rebellion from the wine she'd drunk last night
against a backdrop of exploding fireworks that had set the dogs in the
neighborhood howling for hours just about the time Mitch had died alone.
All along she'd thought that her teenage
daughter had been just your basic malcontent with multiple pierces and
pink hair, and her son was a dolt, a puppet of his overbearing father.
Now she realized that her children had minds of their own, and there
had been a reason behind everything they did to annoy her. It amazed
her how devious the mind was. It turned out that her son was actually
tempted by prison because his father had deserved to be there, and her
daughter wanted to work with women in prison because she and her mother
had been in one. That was Cassie's interpretation.
Oddly, she was relieved that they had some
depth. The three of them were eccentric, but possibly not certifiably
crazy. In any case, like Teddy, she was setting the record straight
regardless of the consequences. What did any of it matter now but the
truth? It was only after she'd gotten into the car and taken the wheel
that she remembered she hadn't asked Teddy if the cremation had taken
place on schedule so no autopsy could be done of the body. Whatever had
or hadn't happened to Mitch in the night, she didn't want anyone to
know. So much for true truth.
It was too late to find out now. She became
distracted on Duck Pond by how many worlds apart it was from Manhasset,
where Teddy and Marsha had gone to public schools. Here was real
privilege. Here were the horse farms, the Old Brookville Winery, with
its greening suburban vineyard. Here was the estate where a rival
importer far more wealthy than Mitch lived behind his iron gates. Here
was the old money, the turn-of-the-century banking and oil money to
which Mitch and Mona had aspired with their designer clothes, their
trips, and their ever improving accents. The road that led to Le Refuge
was nearly untraveled at noon on a weekday.
Cassie wondered where Mona was, if she knew
yet that Mitch was dead. What would she do when she found out what the
IRS had in store for her? She was amazed that she felt drained and
elated at the same time. The infiltration of the enemy beside her was
almost complete. Soon there would be nothing he didn't know. It was
thrilling. He knew of the juice in all its forms, but not where it all
was. Now she would show him everything she knew. Her body was
electrified, almost singing in its new form. In the back of her mind,
she had a feeling that even though Teddy had started the ball rolling
on the revelations, Mona was probably behind Charlie's intense interest
in her. He'd kept on her tail, followed her while her husband was sick,
was dying, died, all the time as if she were the one doing wrong. And
all the time Mona was the real thief.
"How are you doing?" Charlie interrupted
her thoughts.
Cassie was hoping Mona would be tortured by
her prison guards, raped, brutalized, tattooed. She was disappointed
that it turned out that Charlie had only his own self-interest at
heart, after all. She realized that for some inexplicable reason she'd
actually been counting on his liking her not for the juice but for
herself.
"Did you find any other safe-deposit boxes
on your quest?" she asked, glancing at him in the passenger seat. He
looked quite meek and tame for a person who had the power of immunity
to grant or withhold.
"Yes." Charlie nodded solemnly. "I did."
"Full of juice?" Cassie asked. Still, the
whole thing was thrilling. She'd never forget it for the rest of her
life.
"Yes. Full of juice."
"May I ask whose?" Mona's, she bet. Mitch's
was in the Cayman Islands. Maybe Switzerland, too, for all she knew.
She almost laughed out loud. He'd find it. He'd find it all.
"Maybe later. What are we going to see,
Cassie?"
"A house," she told him, proud to have
something to throw in the pot. "A nice one."
"Ah."
"Did you seize the contents of my
safe-deposit box? Or did you leave it?" And what did she have? Nothing.
"Seized, so it wouldn't get away," Charlie
said with no hint of an apology.
Cassie blew air out of her mouth. "That's
legal?"
"Good things don't happen to people who
protest IRS actions." He opened his window and, like a dog, put his
nose to the wind.
"Huh. Did you look at the contents of my
box?" she asked. What did he think?
"Beautiful day, isn't it? I did give them a
cursory examination. Why?"
"Did you notice anything unusual about what
I had in there?" Cassie passed a car traveling in the opposite
direction at much more than the legal speed limit. It was a Range
Rover. A blond woman with sunglasses like Cassie's was driving. A small
child was strapped in the backseat. Both looked smiling and happy.
"You spend a lot and don't pay for
anything." Charlie drew his head back into the car and tilted his head
quizzically at her in that way he had. Cassie wondered if she still
smelled of throw-up even after her bath.
"Isn't that kind of thing unusual?" she
asked, trying not to be unnerved.
"Well"—he exercised his neck, circling his
head one way and then the other—"it's not that unusual. More people
than you'd think live off their credit cards."
"But wouldn't you say this is a lot of debt
to carry?"
"I did wonder why you kept the receipts
locked away. Surely your husband knew about them." Now he started with
the tilting again, as if his head were so heavy with information, he
could hardly hold it up. "But maybe not," he concluded. "People live
mysterious lives."
Cassie couldn't resist a bitter laugh.
"Yes. I saw the file for the first time after my husband had his
stroke. I was looking for a living will. Imagine my surprise when I
found a whole other me."
"Amazing," Charlie said wonderingly.
"It was so bizarre. I thought it had to be
a mistake. I didn't have those cards. Mitch knew I didn't have those
cards. I thought maybe the people in the computer had stolen my
identity. Or I had a mental disease, one of those multiple
personalities that does things you don't know about. Take that Jaguar.
I just couldn't remember buying it or where I kept it. Quite a step up
from losing your car in a parking lot, wouldn't you say?" Cassie
hiccuped on another laugh.
"Uh-huh, very strange," Charlie agreed.
"The Jag wasn't in my garage. Those
curtains with the custom fringe from France, not in my house. As you
said, amazing. The dishes and jewelry. Never saw 'em. I said to myself,
who's this Cassie buying all this stuff, and where is it?"
"Hmmm," Charlie murmured.
"Guess what happened when I tried to cancel
the cards and stop this leak."
"How about, denied."
"How'd you know?" Cassie turned to him,
surprised.
"You're not the primary cardholder, am I
right?"
"Who would have thought I couldn't cancel
the cards with my own name on them? Know what else? This morning I
called and told customer service the primary cardholder was dead. They
told me they'd need a letter to that effect from his lawyer. When I
told them the cards had been stolen, they promised to send new ones
right out, so I gave up. Ah, here we are."
Cassie made a little sound of triumph and
turned in at the iron gates with the Sales logo. She drove up the drive
to the stone house. Beside her she could feel Charlie tense as soon as
he saw the place in its entirety. It was then that she realized she'd
been right: He'd never believed a single word she'd said.
"Voilà, the new house of my
husband's partner, Mona Whitman, aka Cassandra Sales." From the front,
all looked quiet as Cassie slowed to a stop.
"The little devil." Charlie whistled, and
before Cassie had time to kill the engine, he was out of the car taking
pictures with the camera that five weeks ago she'd thought was a gun.
"Wait a minute, where are you going?" she
asked.
"Going inside. Let's do an inventory and
see what items come up. This is interesting."
"But there must be an alarm." Cassie opened
the door and inched one leg out of the car. This made her nervous. How
many things could go wrong in one day? He might be setting her up for
some kind of fall. She was immune now, but what if she went in the
house? Would she stop being immune on a B and E? She'd seen this on Law
and Order.
"So it goes off. What's the worst thing
that could happen? The cops could come." She was scared, but Charlie
laughed. He was excited now and headed toward the back of the house,
firing off rounds of photos as he went.
Cassie wanted to see for herself what was
inside the house, but the police had already questioned her once today.
She didn't want to get in any deeper. She hitched the sunglasses up
higher on her nose, as if she could disguise herself. All her life
she'd been afraid of going out on that limb. Afraid to look an
attractive man in the eye. Afraid to be bold and have an extramarital
orgasm. What the hell, she was going inside.
For once, however, Cassie's fears were for
nothing. The house was wide open. Where the service road led, there was
a brick-walled courtyard. Inside was a station wagon and a medium-sized
van withMOVING DEPOT stenciled on the side. The back
doors of the van were gaping wide, and furniture and boxes were
scattered all over the tarmac, ready for loading. Looked like Mona was
moving, but Cassie knew she was only packing up the juice. The
glassed-in mudroom door was propped open for easy access, and Cassie
followed Charlie in.
Inside, the huge kitchen and pantry were in
complete disarray. Silver and dishes were laid out on the counters in
preparation of packing. Two movers were smoking, talking, and wrapping
Tiffany china in recycled paper. They didn't bother to look up when
Cassie came in.
"Is Miss Whitman around?" she asked.
The packer with the black handkerchief tied
around his head said, "She'll be back after lunch, who's asking?"
"I'm her sister," Cassie said. She picked
up a huge crystal candlestick and wondered how much it had cost her.
"Charlie?" she called.
"In here."
Cassie moved into the dining room, where
two men were struggling to take down heavy curtains dripping with
beaded fringe. Charlie held his cell phone to his mouth. He was talking
excitedly, watching the maneuver with one hand on a hip. Cassie moved
into the living room, where her mother's Napoleonic settee and side
chairs were now covered in gold brocaded velvet. Seeing them there like
sentries in front of the fireplace was a kick in the gut. There was
Marsha's piano with its leather stool. What warehouse or secret love
nest had they been in all these years? The library was through an
archway that could be closed with sliding doors. In there, the shelves
were filled with leather-bound books, leather furniture, and more
velvet curtains.
Cassie stepped into the large entry gallery
and eyed the chandelier with all that crystal. She studied the mahogany
staircase with its heavy carving of pineapples, the symbol of
fertility. This was not the house she would have chosen for herself.
She hesitated for a moment, then climbed the stairs and found her
rival's bedroom. Here, she stopped. Like everywhere else in this place,
nothing was white, nothing simple. This room was red, red, red, like
the library and the dining room. Red satin and velvet and taffeta,
different textures. Not bad if you liked Victorian bordello. Cassie
moved to the closet where the juice was, but the door was locked. She
wanted to see that jewelry. "Charlie," she called out.
"Right behind you," he said.
Didn't take him thirty seconds to get the
door open. He was good at B and E; must have gone to break-in school as
part of his training. The jewelry box was locked, but he didn't have
any trouble with that, either. Inside, nestled among ropes of pearls
and gold chains and diamond tennis bracelets were the Cassie credit
cards, bundled together with a few new receipts and a rubber band.
Bingo. Charlie stepped back and took some photos. Then he pocketed the
cards and moved on, taking notes on a PalmPilot.
CHAPTER 46
MONA SAT IN PARKER HIGGINS'S RECEPTION
ROOM and waited
for twenty of the longest minutes of her whole life. During that time
she went to the bathroom twice to check on her makeup. Twice she
marched down the hall to see his stupid new secretary, whose name she
couldn't remember at the moment.
"He's on the phone, Miss Whitman." The girl
did not seem
impressed by Mona's outfit, her importance to the firm, or her
sweetness. She wasn't helpful at all.
Mona was terribly upset and felt her throat
closing up.
Parker had never kept her waiting before. Now that Mitch was not behind
her with his old-boy friendship and special one-two punch, even the
$187,500 certified check for her house (which had cost her only
$89,250) in her purse and the new $4,300 Chanel summer suit on her body
didn't make her feel as powerful as she really was. The suit was a
lovely powder blue—signature Chanel—with a tight skirt that stopped way
above her knees, elbow-length sleeves, and a prim white collar and
cuffs. She'd bought it in Paris a month ago, and this was her first
opportunity to wear it.
Still, Mona knew she didn't look her best.
She hadn't
slept last night, what with the fireworks going off for the second time
that week at all three golf clubs that circled her house; the pressure
to pack up the contents of the house for storage in New Jersey in the
morning; and her terrifying fears for Mitch under his wife's evil care.
She was truly shocked by Parker's lack of sensitivity to Mitch's wishes
and his allowing Cassie to take him home. In his fragile condition,
Cassie could influence him in a dozen different ways, even make him
forget his own name.
Mona was so worried about these dangers
that she'd taken
extra time to dress carefully for the closing on her house. She had not
wanted to go to the closing. If all this hadn't happened, she never
would have bothered. She would have signed all the documents in advance
and let the money be transferred to her savings account. But with that
dickbrain functionary Schwab breathing down her neck, she was afraid to
put the money in her own account just in case she really needed it.
She'd decided to put it in the account she'd taken out in her mother's
name in a bank in New Jersey years ago, near the warehouse where she'd
arranged to store her furniture. Mona had opened a number of accounts
over the years in her mother's name that her mother didn't know
anything about because she was so ridiculously poor at this point, the
IRS would never in a million years think of auditing her.
Mona had consulted The Art of War last
night and this
morning as well, but there was nothing new in it about terrain or
anything else that would really help her now that Cassie had discovered
her new house and its contents, and the dickbrain was not responding to
her personally the way she wanted him to. All she could do was retreat
to higher ground and regroup her army. Shit maneuvers. As Mona waited
for her audience with the lawyer, her hands were shaking with anger at
Cassie and Parker and Schwab, and at poor Mitch, too, for not having
taken care of things the way he'd promised.
"Mr. Higgins can see you now." That damn
girl finally
came to get her. When she turned around to lead the way, Mona noticed
that she had a fat ass even though she was still a very young person,
and also that she had a run in the right heel of her panty hose.
Mona took her time checking her lipstick in
her pocket
mirror, then rose gracefully and walked around the building to Parker's
corner office, swinging her hips. "Warfare is the way of deception,"
she counseled herself.
She was going to feel good and be sweet no
matter what.
She was going to offer Parker continued Sales business and secrecy
about his private disgusting predilections. If he showed any signs of
affection for her, any innuendo of desire at all, she would do her
usual thing. Lead him on today. Feign shock at his moves on her
tomorrow. The day after that she'd send him gifts and tell him to give
her time to think about their relationship. In four days time she'd
tell him he had always been her true ideal, her one and only love. And
it would be true. He was a wealthy lawyer. He was not bad looking,
liked having a good time. Unlike Mitch, he was a careful man with a
great deal of real estate. Although he wasn't as classy as Mitch,
forming an alliance with him wouldn't be moving down the social ladder
in any way. Mona always did the unexpected thing.
The Art of War. She was always nice when
about to advance
herself in a way that hurt someone else. She didn't think of hurting as
hurting, only as survival. Her plan was to strike a deal, then give
Parker the blow job of his life (a few weeks from now, because right at
the moment she'd rather die than have him think she was that kind of
girl). She might promise to let him have anal intercourse with her, but
she would not do it. She might do it to him if she absolutely had to.
She'd read about such things in lesbo porn and had it all worked out
how she'd play it.
If he showed no sign of affection or
loyalty to her, she
would call his wife and tell her he fucked hookers in the ass every
Thursday at six-fifteen. And Sundays when he played poker with the guys
he always got a massage and blow job afterward to cheer himself up for
his losses. She would sue him for malpractice and a whole bunch of
other things.
"Oh, Mona, have a seat," Parker said as
soon as she
stepped through the door onto his thick beige carpet. He said it
without seeing her. He had swung his chair around to look at the view
of Old Country Road, which hadn't been country in either of their
lifetimes. The windows of his building were mirrored so that no one
could see in; but from the inside looking out, there was no doubt it
was another perfect summer day in the Garden City business district.
He hadn't risen and crossed the carpet as
he usually did.
Or given her the admiring looks and the hug she needed more than food.
Mona was taken aback by his slight.
"Parker!" She stood waiting for him to
acknowledge her
properly before she sat down. She enjoyed being looked at. She dressed
to be looked at. She was not prepared to have that looking stop.
"Mona, sit down."
"This is so hard for me, Parker. Aren't you
going to give
me a hug?" Mona said in her lost-little-girl voice. "You're the only
one who can help me, the only one I ever cared about."
Parker did not swing his chair around, but
she heard his
sigh. "Oh, come now, Mona. Remember who you're talking to."
Her lips tightened. She and Parker had been
friends for a
long time, but she would bring him down in a second if she had to. Her
breath came hard with her intense feelings of loss as she flashed to
the men in her life who'd fallen for her instantly. Like her gymnastics
coach when she was nine. She'd worked hard to be the very best gymnast
and her coach had loved her so much, too. Their affair began when she
was twelve, while she was still living with her grandmother. Davey used
to pick her up at school, and then he'd do her in the backseat of his
station wagon. Those had been wonderful days. As an adorable little
girl whose mommy was a hippie traveling far away in cloud-cuckoo-land
and whose grandmother was busy playing bridge, Mona had been able to
win anybody, get anything she wanted. Coach Davey had taught her so
many things she'd never even imagined. He had taken pictures of her in
the summer running in a field, trailing a long scarf behind her like a
kite. Her grandmother had loved her so much that her aunts had been
jealous of her.
But then when she was thirteen her mother
came back
again, and she had to leave paradise for a dump in fucking Albany. It
was six years before her grandmother would have her back on Long Island
again. Then another disappointment. Jerry, her first husband, would
have done anything for her, but he was a mediocrity, a nothing. He was
married now and had four kids, lived in a maison ordinaire in
Scarsdale. And, of course, there was Mitch, for whom she'd waited all
these years and who had to have a stroke before they'd had their chance
to marry.
Mona tapped her foot, waiting for
recognition.
Occasionally, however, there were men who, for reasons Mona could not
understand, were reserved, almost suspicious of her. She could feel it
in their eyes. Schwab, who had seemed so accommodating and nice at
first. Parker, who blew hot and cold with the wind. Teddy, who wouldn't
even speak to her anymore. She never forgot the slights, never, and
would bring them all down, one by one.
"Parker, sweetheart. Come say hello to me.
This is a
terrible blow."
She stopped tapping and posed, bringing one
knee in front
of the other to slim her profile even more, but he didn't swing around
to see it.
"Sit down, Mona."
Mona gave up and sat down, pouting at his
back. "Why
didn't you consult me before letting him go home with that fucking
bitch?" she murmured in what she was certain was a soft tone.
"Watch that, now." Parker swung around
angrily, and Mona
could see that his eyes were red. Oh God, he'd been drinking.
She put on a fast, sad smile. "Oh Parker, I
thought we
understood each other. Mitch trusted only me. He wanted me to be his
power, his rock. How could you leave me out of such a decision?"
For Mona, the eyes were everything, the
mirror of the
soul. Parker's eyes were unfocused and runny. He was a weak man who
could be slain. She would slay him. Her eyes smiled like President
Bush's frosty executioner's smile.
He sighed, shaking his head. "You don't
understand. I am
a lawyer. I can only act according to my client's instructions."
"I am your client, too, Parker," she
reminded him, making
some noise with her breathing. "I care for you, and I want to help you,
be your most important client, your most lucrative client."
"Don't twist what I'm saying, Mona. We're
talking about
Mitch now. Mitch did not give you power of attorney, so you did not
have any legal right to make decisions concerning his treatment or his
end of the business."
"Parker, I want to get a few things
straight." Mona still
spoke softly, but there was more than ice in her eyes now.
Parker held up his hand. "Me first."
"Parker, don't interrupt me. I am the woman
he loves and
his business partner and the beneficiary of his will. I think I have
the right to determine where he convalesces."
"No, you didn't."
"Parker! My asthma. Don't upset me." She
dropped her
chin, coughing weakly.
"Someone else had his power of attorney,"
Parker said
sharply.
Her head shot up. "Who?"
"I did."
Mona glared. She'd come to him that day and
he'd said
nothing about it. "I don't believe it," she retorted.
"Well, believe it."
"You never mentioned it."
"Look, I didn't want to get into a dispute
with you." He
shrugged.
The man dared to shrug at her. This was a
near-death
experience for Mona. "Does Cassie know?" she demanded.
"This was confidential. I was trying to
avoid a war
between you two women. You're impossible, both of you. And now you're
going to have to behave yourself, Mona. I really mean it. You're not
top dog anymore."
Mona's heart almost failed her. "How could
you insult me
like this? You know I'm the most unselfish person in the world. I never
think of myself. I'd rather walk away than fight with Cassie. I love
the woman. Just ask Mitch how—" Mona would have gone on, but Parker
interrupted her again.
"I'm sorry for your loss, Mona. I'm sorry
for all our
loss. We all loved Mitch. We're all going to miss him. . . ."
"What are you talking about?" Mona stared.
Was she
missing something?
"Mitch died last night in his sleep. I just
heard a few
minutes ago."
"Oh." Mona was staring so hard, her eyes
teared. The room
swam. She almost fell over but decided not to take the chance. Mitch
died at home with Cassie? At that awful house with Cassie hanging over
him? Her eyes flooded and overflowed. Poor Mitch, he would have hated
that.
She took a minute to absorb. Her lover, her
husband-to-be, was gone. There would be no wedding, no golden dress, no
honeymoon. Mona gulped back her grief and wiped her eyes with her index
finger. Well. Mitch had been an absolute vegetable. She never could
have cared for him herself. Perhaps God had spared her a terrible
decade of marriage to a cripple. Maybe her one true love was yet to
come. She blotted her face with the lace-edged handkerchief stuck in
her sleeve and started thinking revenge. The lawsuit she would file
against Cassie. Wrongful death. Criminal negligence. There were a
million things she could do. She blew her nose.
She needed to get home and make sure the
house was clean,
the credit cards were flushed. She had to call the insurance company
and get them to pay up. If she went ahead and filed a wrongful-death
suit against Cassie, could that jeopardize her collecting? Hmmm. She
realized Parker hadn't said a single thing.
"Parker, the will, I'd like to see it," she
told him.
He nodded. "I'll get a copy for you, but
you're not
mentioned in it."
Then the bomb struck, and her jaw dropped,
literally, as
Parker explained. It was the very last thing she'd expected.
"This was the arrangement Mitch made when
he reorganized
the company five years ago. Sales Importers, Inc., of which you are a
minority stockholder, is owned by a Delaware corporation called Amity
Holdings. The stockholders of Amity are Marsha, Teddy, me, and Mark,"
Parker said, deadpan.
"You own me?" Mona was flabbergasted.
"You are a shareholder of Sales. So is
Cassie. But
neither of you own the company."
"This can't be true, Parker. Mitch always
told me Cassie
had nothing," Mona cried.
Parker shrugged again. "Well, that's a
small
exaggeration. You know Mitch. He tended to think whatever he wanted was
already his. In fact, Cassie's father had invested heavily in the
company at its inception with the stipulation that Cassie hold
twenty-five percent of Sales in her own name. Mitch's condition on that
score was that Cassie not be able to hold any power over his head. He
felt it would hurt the marriage, and apparently her father had agreed.
So the stock certificates and the agreement have always been kept here
with me." Parker said this with a smile that Mona had never seen
before. He was relishing this. Relishing it. Cassie's father must not
have told her before he died. Mitch hadn't told her, and Parker hadn't
told her. All these years Cassie hadn't known she could be a player,
and Mona had had no idea that the playing field had been rigged against
her from the start. Mona finally saw the true truth: The two stinkers,
Mitch and Parker, had been in it for themselves. They were homos.
Mona's eyes started to tear again. She
couldn't help it.
Mitch and Parker had gone to fucking college with each other, and the
bottom line was, they were men. They only trusted each other. Mona's
spine stiffened with resolve. She was going to sue Parker for
malpractice for sure. She might even do a class action with Cassie.
They'd take Parker and Ira to the cleaners. They'd make millions. Who
knew, maybe even billions. It was not impossible.
"Is there anything else you'd like to
know?" Parker said,
swiveling from side to side, suddenly the most clearly evil bastard in
the whole wide world.
Mona wanted to wipe the supercilious look
right off his
fat face. Amity Holdings, what kind of joke was that? She yearned to
say something truly devastating, to threaten and have a tantrum, trash
his place, break those big mirrored windows and throw him out to his
death. Even blow up the whole building. She longed to reveal all the
things she could do to him. But . . . it wasn't her style. She was a
lady. She was a princess, a princess in distress at the moment, but a
princess nonetheless. And she would act like one no matter what.
No wonder she'd been nervous and paranoid
all these
years. No wonder she'd worried every single day of her life. She'd been
a doll to him and everybody else, and they were all nothing but pigs in
shit, just like her mother, who'd left her so many times, and Davey,
who'd exploited her for his own gain, and her grandmother, who'd sent
her away and hadn't let her come back for six long years. But by then
she was almost dead, too old to help her at all. And then that adviser
in her senior class in high school, who left his wife for her but
turned out to have no money at all, so she had to come to New York to
be with Granny instead. And stupid, stupid Jerry, who wouldn't set his
sights high enough.
Mona hated Parker Higgins so much, she
smiled at him
kindly. She would kill him slowly. His wife would turn off to him. His
friends would shun him. He'd lose his business. He wouldn't know what
happened. The room blurred, came back in focus. She needed water. Just
a sip.
"Mona, are you okay? How about a cup of
coffee?"
"No, no. I'll be fine in a minute," she
said, not wanting
to touch a single thing in this poisonous place or be the slightest bit
of a bother.
CHAPTER 47
CHARLIE NOTIFIED HIS BRANCH OFFICE, and
Special Agent
Marshall Dahl and his supervisor Angelo Carini promised to join them at
Le Refuge as soon as they had finished lunch. Mel Arrighi was on his
way. D.C. was notified. Cassie was in a hurry to get away before any of
them got there, but she wasn't leaving without her credit cards.
She followed Charlie as he traveled from
room to room,
taking photos. "Charlie, give me those cards."
"What cards?"
"I saw you put them in your pocket. They're
my cards."
"Nah."
"Charlie, I saw you."
"Well, if I have them, which I'm not saying
I do, they're
safe with me. Thanks for your help. You can go home now," Charlie told
her breezily.
"Thanks for my help. I can go home now! I
broke your
fucking case." Cassie's voice rose.
"And the Bureau appreciates it. We really
do." Charlie
turned to her with a big grin and snapped her photo.
She gasped. "What are you doing?"
"You're a very lovely woman. Thank you," he
said solemnly.
"Wait a minute. Mona was taking off with
all this stuff
she'd bought in my name."
"Looks like it," he agreed, a happy man.
"I need some assurances. Some waiver or
something,"
Cassie went on.
He laughed.
"Look, I did a little checking with my
not-so-honest
lawyer last week about this house. The house is in Mona's name. She
paid four million in cash. The other three came from a mortgage. I'd
suggest you find out where that cash came from. If it came from Sales
Importers, Inc., that would be what kind of income, would you say? If
it came from the air, you'd probably like to know that, too. Either
way, it's not right, not correct. You never believed me about anything.
Give me my cards."
"I always believed you," Charlie said. But
he was working
now, on top of the world. He knew how Mitch's huge AmEx bills he'd been
studying this morning had been paid off without the incoming cash, or
the expenses, appearing on his personal or company tax returns. Some
offshore bank was automatically paying them. As Charlie saw it, Mitch
must have been regularly transferring money to banks out of the country
through perfectly legal international credit cards. You weren't
supposed to take more than a few thousand dollars out of the country
without reporting it. But traveling executives in big international
companies did it all the time. Cash was moved to banks that wouldn't
report it, and international credit card companies did not reveal the
money going out unless the IRS requested the transactions documenting
it. They didn't routinely go through credit card receipts.
Mitch had accessed the money the same way
he had moved
it. He'd charged trips and luxury items abroad and paid for them with
international cards. Once he got cooperation from the card companies,
Charlie would have no trouble tracking it. This did not explain why the
technique hadn't been used with the items in this house, unless Cassie
was right and she'd been targeted by the two of them all along. He
loved it. Mona's purchase of the house had put her at risk. Mitch could
easily have purchased it quite legally himself. But the motive must
have been divorce. He couldn't appear to have any money, of course.
This was quite a feat for a man with so much money. Charlie looked at
Cassie and wondered what kind of man would leave a beautiful lady like
her.
"You didn't believe me. I know you." Cassie
was heating
up to a good scream. He put his hand on her arm to calm her down.
"Of course. I always believed you. I was
attracted to you
from the minute you called the cops on me."
"I hate you," she said.
Undisturbed, he removed his hand from her
arm and changed
rolls of film in his camera. "Fine. But you'd better go home now. I'll
get in touch with you later on this."
"I don't want you to get in touch with me
later. I want
those cards in my possession. They have to be canceled," Cassie
insisted.
Charlie regarded her with awe. Her cheating
husband was
dead. The IRS was descending with its big guns on the $600 million
company of which she was most certainly part owner. The entity with all
its tentacles would be opened up and examined with exquisite detail,
far greater than any techniques used for a body on the autopsy table.
No matter how much the Feds took in fines and unreported back taxes,
however, Cassie would still be a rich woman someday. But all she cared
about was clearing her name of what amounted (in this massive case) to
a rather piddling credit card debt. What a woman!
"I want those cards canceled." Cassie
stamped her foot.
She had no idea how much money was involved
here, and he
was enchanted. "I'll cancel them," he promised. With the new roll in
the camera, he snapped another photo of her. "You're adorable when
you're angry."
"That's a ridiculous thing to say."
"Well, you don't know me," he said.
"Well, you don't know Mona. You don't know
what she can
do."
"She can't do anything to me."
"She can hurt anybody. She can twist things
around.
Please. Give me the cards."
He shook his head. "Uh-uh. What are you
going to do with
them? You can't prove you got them here."
"I'm going to get an honest lawyer," Cassie
told him.
Charlie snickered. "Surely a contradiction
in terms. And
right here you have better than a lawyer." He tapped his chest.
"Charlie, you're going to hurt me, I know
it," she said
sadly.
Something about her tone, like the
unselfconscious
embrace she'd given her daughter earlier, stabbed him in a place where
he'd long thought he'd lost feeling. The emotion stopped him short. He
dropped the arm holding his camera and stared at her, wondering at the
very idea. Hurt her? How could he?
"Oh come on, not everybody's bad. The IRS
are good guys."
She shook her head. "What's going to happen
to my son?"
"He's a great guy, an honest man is worth
his weight in
diamonds. We reward people like him."
"Charlie, that's another lie. Give me the
cards."
"Nope." He went back to taking pictures.
When he turned
around again, she was gone.
AT TWO O'CLOCK, Mona and four IRS
operatives in two cars
showed up at the same time. By then, the curtain hangers in the station
wagon were gone, and the Moving Depot packers had unpacked everything
and left it out on the counters and tables. All the furniture that had
been outside was back inside. And the van was gone, too.
Mona arrived first and opened the front
door of her house
to find Charlie sitting on the stairs in the gallery. She almost
fainted when she saw him.
"Hi," he said.
"What are you doing here?" she said.
"I could ask you the same question. I
thought you lived
in Roslyn Heights."
"Well, I do. I'm just here checking on this
place for
Mitch."
"I thought he died today."
"Oh no. I had no idea." She glanced toward
the door.
"Looks to me like you're moving."
"Um, I, ah, just stopped by. I don't know
anything about
this."
"I found those credit cards you were
telling me about."
Mona looked at him dumbly. "I don't know
what you're
taking about."
"The ones that furnished this house, bought
your Jaguar,
your clothes, etc."
She shook her head. "You're mistaken. Mitch
may have
given me a few items. Gifts. I had nothing to do with it. I can prove
it. I can prove everything." She was pale, shaky on her feet. She
coughed, then whimpered. "I've had a shock," she murmured. "I didn't
know poor Mitch was dead."
"My condolences."
"Charlie, can you help me clear this up? I
have no one.
No one, but you," she repeated. "You're an important man. You can help
me if you want to."
"I'll help you," Charlie promised.
Mona's face was white. She tried to arrange
her body in
an attractive way, but her feet weren't behaving themselves. She made a
little misstep with one foot and nearly toppled off her stiletto heels.
Then she recovered. "You didn't know Mitch. He was a little naive about
things. He bought this house. A shelter. Everything. Gifts." She opened
her arms to take it all in. The abundance.
"Absolutely, we'll clear it all up,"
Charlie said.
Mona fixed him with a devastated
expression, then moved
into the living room, the dining room. Looking for the movers, he
thought. Nothing was missing, and no one was around. "What's going on?"
she asked finally.
"We're seizing the house," he told her.
CHAPTER 48
BY TEN O'CLOCK, Cassie was standing at
the front door
saying good night to the last of her condolence callers. Marsha had
finished putting the dirty glasses and cups in the dishwasher, the
leftover casseroles in the refrigerator, and was now bundling
everything made with sugar, flour, and butter in the garbage. The
platters of half-eaten quick breads, cookies, pies, and coffee cakes
filled nearly a whole garbage bag.
"What are you doing?" Tom cried.
"Mom shouldn't eat any of that," she
explained to him. "I
know she's depressed, and I don't want her getting fat again."
"Sweetheart, at a time like this, fat is
the least of her
problems."
"Uh-uh. You don't understand. She needs to
be protected
from herself."
"Honey, but this is unkind. She should eat
if she wants
to."
"Oh no. This is tit for tat. You know what
she used to do
to me? She threw away all my trick-or-treat candy. Every single piece,
right in the garbage, year after year. I used to forage for it in the
middle of the night. Believe me, I'm only thinking of her best
interests."
"Then you should stay here with her
tonight." Tom leaned
against the counter, looking grave.
"Absolutely. She's lost without me. Look
what happened
last night. I'll never forgive myself. Sweetheart, why don't you go
home. I'll call you in a little while." She turned to give him a hug.
"I'll stay here with you, if you want me
to," he
murmured, squeezing her bottom. "Don't want you foraging, either."
She laughed. "I don't do that anymore."
"Are you going to be that kind of mother?
Hiding the
sweets?"
"No, it doesn't work at that age."
"I think I'll stay."
"No, no. You'd hate it. Two gloomy girls.
And my bed is
so tiny." She nuzzled his neck.
"I'd be happy in a closet with you," he
whispered.
Cassie came into the kitchen yawning, and
the couple
pulled apart quickly. "I'm beat," she said, ignoring the clinch.
"Where's Teddy?" Marsha asked, repairing
her hair.
"He took Edith home." Cassie glanced around
the kitchen. "You did it all," she said, surprised.
"Of course." Marsha closed the garbage bag
quickly and
tied the top to hide the goodies inside. "Is he coming back?"
Cassie shook her head. "I told him to go
home and get
some sleep. Is the coffee gone?"
"No more coffee for you. What about the
monster? Honey,
would you take this outside?" Marsha handed Tom the garbage bag and
pointed the way. He went out the back door with it.
Cassie raised her eyebrows at the
obedience. "Which
monster?"
"The Lorraine monster."
Cassie shook her head. "Let's not go into
it now, Marsha.
Teddy says she's history. I'd really like a cup of coffee." She opened
a pantry door, looking for the bag of beans.
"No, Mom! You need your rest." Marsha
closed the door and
kept on about Lorraine. "Do you believe him?"
"Who?" Cassie rolled her eyes heavenward on
the coffee
issue. They were so resistant to letting her make her own choices.
Okay, she'd wait until Marsha and Tom were gone, then she'd drink
whatever she wanted. Tom came back into the house.
"You know I'm talking about Teddy! He's
gotten us into
all this trouble. Mom, I'm just so—"
"Shhh, Marsha, not now." Cassie indicated
Tom with her
head.
"Oh, Tom knows everything."
Tom frowned at Marsha and chose this moment
to interject. "Mrs. Sales, I know Dr. Cohen and his wife were here
earlier. Did he
take care of all your needs?"
"I beg your pardon?" Cassie glared at him.
It distressed
her that Marsha told him everything. Now she had to worry about gold
diggers, too. And this particular question of Tom's seemed to imply he
knew that Mark was a creepy womanizer who'd exploit anyone. Mark had
patted her ass four times, each time she'd come his way with the tray
of coffee and dessert for the throng of mourners who'd probably come
for the fabulous grape and foie gras she hadn't served. Almost a
billion-dollar company, she'd had no idea.
"Do you need anything, you know, to sleep?"
Tom asked,
trying to clarify.
Cassie didn't think she'd ever sleep again.
The serious
young man was holding Marsha's hand in a decidedly possessive way, and
she didn't know whether to be happy for her daughter or not. He looked
too austere for Marsha. On the other hand, he had put out the garbage
when asked, and he certainly seemed remorseful about the way things had
turned out. Mark had been pretty miserable, too, even though he'd been
game for action. He'd whispered in Cassie's ear the little fact that
Mitch had promised the hospital a million dollars a year for the next
ten years, and wanted to know if she was going to honor that pledge.
Cassie had almost laughed in his face. Mark
had released
the patient, and he'd died instantly. Parker Higgins had been so upset
about the way the situation had been handled that he'd visited the
liquor cabinet enough times to require three people to carry him to his
car and his wife to drive him home. He had good reason to be concerned.
He'd lied about everything.
"No, I don't need a thing. Good night, I'm
fine." Cassie
tried to shoo Marsha down the hall to the living room and out the front
door.
"No, Mom. I'm staying, really. Tom will
stay, too, won't
you Tom?"
"Of course," Tom said staunchly.
Cassie didn't want Tom to stay. She didn't
want either of
them. She'd been good all day. No stimulants or tranquilizers. The
fortified wines that were so favored by the English and could last
virtually forever, along with Mitch's finest liqueurs, were in the bar.
Literally hundreds of dollars a bottle. Cassie knew that several
bottles of 1908 Cossart Baul Madeira were in there, and two bottles of
1970 Taylor Fladgate Porto, in addition to a lot of other really costly
stuff.
The bar had been open to all who knew where
to find it
and couldn't resist helping themselves. But Cassie hadn't wanted to
break out any of the famous cases of wine, mostly the famous reds, the
Rhones, Burgundies, Bordeaux from France, the Chianti Classico Riservas
from Italy; some famous Spaniards, among them Gran Coronas Black Label
and Bodegas Montecillo; the French Champagnes, more than two dozen
cases of those, mostly '90 and '93. A fine selection of whites and
dessert wines, Rieslings, and Zinfindels Cassie knew next to nothing
about. The ancient Portos and Madeiras. And, just for sport, the
garagists, the new boutiquers, start-ups from old wine families,
children taking a few acres of their own and making overblown wines in
the California style in very small quantities in Médoc, in
Graves on the right bank of the Garonne River, with names like La
Mondotte, La Gomerie, Gracia, Grand Murailles. And other newcomers from
France, Italy, Spain, Chile, and Argentina. Mitch always had to have
the latest, most prestigious thing, wines too expensive for most people
to even think of drinking.
All those beauties were in the cellar, from
about $300 a
bottle to $500, right up to $6,500 a bottle. She didn't serve them
because she wasn't really sure to whom those bottles belonged or what
she should do with them. But she also resented the fact that everybody
who'd come to mourn Mitch had asked which wines she was going to serve
for the occasion. It was something he would have cared about, planned
meticulously.
Cassie wouldn't consider breaking them out.
There had
always been such hope for her in that cellar, the promise of many
joyous occasions in those bottles down there. Mitch had purchased the
magnums of 1990 pink Cristal Champagne at about $400 a bottle in
anticipation of Marsha's wedding. They were worth a lot more now. She
knew the very best in the cellar were the two cases of 1945 Chateau
Petrus Pomerol, the legendary vintage of Bordeaux that marked the year
of Mitch's birth and the first production of wine following World War
II. He'd lectured her the day he'd acquired it how the '45 Petrus had
been blessed with some formidable tannins that had encouraged a
particularly fine evolution of flavors. As advertised, the Bordeaux had
aged magnificently, tasted of summer fruit, licorice, smoke, and
truffles. She'd had some last night. Cassie also knew that the wine
would be drinkable only for the next few years. Those aged Bordeaux had
almost a Port-like richness that, properly cellared, could be kept as
long as sixty years. Mitch had always claimed he was saving this one
for his sixtieth birthday party. Unfortunately for him, his number came
up short.
In any case, Cassie had carried off her
first day of
callers cold turkey. No vino. But now she thought maybe she'd have a
little sip of something. She gave her daughter a reassuring hug and a
little push to get her going.
"Marsha, you've done so much already. I'm
fine, really."
She wanted to open another one of those off-the-wall Pomerols, or maybe
a good heavy Côtes du Rhône. She loved the reds, the
deepest, plummiest, earthiest ones, made with the top-quality grapes,
Grenache, Mourvedre, Syrah, Cinsault, to be drunk with foods like the
ripest cheese, foie gras, truffle-stuffed chicken or squab, venison
with wild mushrooms, beef ribs and rice. Roast quail.
"No, Mom. I left you last night," Marsha
said. "I can't
leave you again. I can't. It would be—"
"Honey, I'm so tired."
"But what if you feel bad later?" Marsha
argued.
Cassie clicked her tongue. "Sweetheart, do
you know how
many nights I've been alone in the last, say, ten years?" And never had
a sip, not a slice of wild boar, very little smoked salmon. It was
terrible to think about it.
"I know, but this is different."
"Uh-uh. Tom, honey, you're a doctor. Tell
my baby I know
what's right for me. Take her home. I think she needs comfort right now
more than I do."
"Yes, ma'am." The man Cassie thought was a
prig almost
saluted, and Cassie was moved to give him a kiss. Maybe he'd be all
right, after all.
She got them out the front door with many
protestations
of love on Marsha's part. She'd had quite a bit to drink, but Cassie
appreciated it, anyway. Then suddenly they were gone. She appreciated
that even more. She closed and leaned against the door with a sigh. Ha.
Now the precious grape. Sex would have been first on her list, but one
had to work with what one had. Almost guiltily, she headed around the
house to lock all the doors and windows. She felt as if she were going
to perform some secret self-abusing sex act. She was going to open the
bottles and savor the wine alone. Get dead drunk a second night in a
row.
In the kitchen, however, something outside
caught her
attention. She stopped short and hit the light switch, holding her
breath until she saw what it was. From the shadows, she watched the
other monster climb out of a deck chair and head for the garbage. The
words "unstoppable," "unflagging," "indefatigable" came to mind. She
switched on the spotlight that had been rigged to discourage the
scavenging raccoons. It exposed Charlie Schwab's hunkered form. He
jumped sheepishly to his feet.
"Cassie, you scared me to death."
"Jesus, Charlie, you don't have to eat
leftovers. If
you're so hungry, why didn't you come in when I was serving?" she asked.
"No, no. This is not what it looks like."
"Yes, it is," she said. Cool, Cassie had
gotten very cool
in her responses. "What's in there, anyway? Let's see what you're
looking for. All the missing millions?"
Cassie crossed the patio to the corner of
the garage,
where the garbage cans were neatly housed in a wooden cabinet. "Oh my
God, baked goods!" Cassie stared at the bag of food, stunned by
Marsha's treachery. And wastefulness! Then she opened the other cans
one by one to see if anything else had gotten there without her
knowledge. Oh yes, two cans full of empty soft drink, single malts,
port, oh yes, the Madeira, vodka, and Perrier bottles; one and a half
cans containing Mitch's National Geographic and Gourmet collections
going back twenty-five years. Four old computers, broken printers, and
other worn-out gadgets that Mitch had intended to save forever.
"Do you have a shredder here?" Charlie
asked.
"No. What's with you? Do you always work
this hard?
Doesn't your wife complain?"
"I'm not married."
"Figures." Wow! Cassie's heart soared. No
wife. She was
actually truly excited by the news, even as she realized that what
interested Charlie in the garbage were Mitch's old computers. It hit
her that that's where her husband may have hidden his foreign bank
account numbers.
"When does the garbage truck come?"
"Not till Friday."
"Good." Charlie had his briefcase with him.
Cassie wasn't good enough at this spy
stuff. She should
have thought of this sooner. "What's in the bag?" she asked.
"Price lists."
"Oh, gee." She shook her head. This guy was
a maniac. "There's not enough in two hundred cases of wine to make up
your
missing millions," she said. A few hundred thousand, maybe.
"You never know." Charlie smiled. "You
could hide
anything in those cases. Cash, diamonds, cocaine." He shrugged.
"Oh please. Now he's a drug dealer. Why are
you doing
this tonight? Do you really think I'm like Mona, that I'd move anything
today?"
He pointed at the computers.
She pointed at the National Geographics. "I
was just
cleaning up. Really."
"Well, you might have thrown out something
important.
Sorry, Cassie. I really am."
"Oh, go to hell." He was here for the spy
stuff.
Disgusted, she turned and went into the house, wanting to kick herself
for not thinking of those computers first. Numbered accounts. If she'd
had a brain, she could have found them herself. Cash in the cases,
she'd never thought of that, either.
He followed her in, the suddenly unmarried
man. "Was it a
rough night?"
"Yes, Charlie, it was a rough night.
Everybody loved him.
I'm really tired."
"Me too." Charlie sat down at the table in
the kitchen.
Cassie pressed her lips together. "Really
tired, Charlie.
I can't do this tonight."
"Me too," he repeated. He got up for a
moment and she
thought he was going to leave after all. Her first real prospect in
thirty years was taking a powder. Suddenly she felt terrified, let
down, as if she'd messed up an important date. But he just took off his
jacket, hung it on the back of his chair. Loosened his tie, unbuttoned
the button-down collar of his shirt, pulled the tie over his head, and
stuffed it into his jacket pocket. Charlie was pretty obsessional.
Almost as an afterthought, he unbuttoned the first two buttons of his
shirt, too, then sat down again.
What was going on? Cassie was barefoot now.
She was
wearing black silk pants, a little black sleeveless knit top. Nothing
too dressy. Her old Sublime perfume. Her plain gold wedding ring. She
felt a little sick, wanted that wine, the food Marsha had put in the
refrigerator. She didn't want to think about cash or stock or company
woes, or anything else. She wanted to go to bed with her spy. The
thought struck her suddenly: Sex was her very first choice.
Charlie had something else in mind, though.
From his
briefcase he pulled out the stack of credit cards he'd taken from
Mona's jewelry box. He removed the rubber band and examined the
receipts folded around them. Barneys, Bergdorf's, Armani, Sulka. He
smiled, then picked up the phone.
"What are you doing now, Charlie?" Cassie's
heart was
beating in her cheeks again. She had these ideas. They made her stomach
ache and her head spin.
"What's Mitch's date of birth?" he asked,
producing his
PalmPilot.
"Eight, eighteen, forty-five." She was
nothing if not
obedient. Touch me, she thought.
"Social Security number?"
"034-98-8441."
"Mother's maiden name?"
"Charles." She blushed.
"No kidding?" Charlie laughed. He responded
to a few
prompts and finally spoke to a human. "Oh yes, hello, Rita, this is
Mitchell Sales, account 3458–93–67–0112. Uh-huh. Charles. 8441. Zip
code . . ." He turned to Cassie. "Darling, what's our zip?"
Cassie gave him the zip code of the
warehouse. Her heart
was beating, beating. The spy had called her "darling." She liked it.
Him. Really liked him. She could smell the starch in his shirt, still
there after the long day. She wanted to taste him, to kiss the blue
eyes. What was she thinking?
Charlie passed Mitch's privileged
information along to
Rita at American Express. "Uh-huh. Thank you. I'd like to close down
the account . . . no, no. There's no problem, Rita, none at all. I just
don't want any more charges to the account until it's paid off. Thank
you. I know it's a revolving account. I still want to close it." He put
the black American Express Centurion card on the table and picked up
the platinum one.
"Yes, Rita, there is something else you can
do for me. I
have another AmEx account. Yes, that's it. I want to close that
account, too." A few minutes later he put the platinum card on the
table. He went through the exercise with all the major credit cards,
speaking to Ronnie, Roberta, James, Alfred, Betty, Sandra, and Tim.
While he was working, Cassie ran downstairs
to the cellar
for a bottle of wine, which she promptly opened. She took out two
balloon glasses. Huge ones. The wine was supposed to breathe for a
while, but she couldn't help herself. She poured some into both
glasses, swirled hers, stuck her whole face into it, and breathed deep.
The passion of her whole long-lost life filled her with its bouquet.
Gimme that wine, she thought, just like Bob Marley. She couldn't wait a
second longer. She took a sip, rolled it over her tongue and around her
mouth, allowing the complex flavors to fill her palate. She swallowed
and savored. The plummy earthiness lingered on. Wow. This was a big
wine. Next to her was a big man, too. Both were very good vintages. She
nodded at his glass and he sampled, nodded.
"Good, huh." She continued sipping and
swirling and
savoring while Charlie worked. She marveled at the way men could get
away with anything. Anything at all. She hadn't even been able to
change her own telephone number. Mitch had been the account holder of
that, too.
Charlie poured himself his second glass and
made a pile
of department store cards with customer service departments that were
open only between nine and five. "Tomorrow," he promised her. "Feel
better now?"
"Very impressive. Thank you. Tomorrow?
Really?" Cassie
was inflamed, seriously aroused, by the wine, the show of power, and
goodwill.
"See, I'm not such a bad guy." He gave her
one of his
smiles, patted her hand, left his hand over hers, raised an eyebrow.
Was it all right?
Sure. She turned her hand over so their
palms met. Sure,
it was all right. He had a warm hand, strong, with long, slender
fingers. He laced their fingers together, and heat flamed through her.
Oh my, where did that huge feeling come from?
"What?" he asked.
Cassie shook her head, wondering if he knew
that she
hadn't kissed another man since Mick Jagger couldn't get Satisfaction,
since the Beatles had left Abbey Road. Oh, God. She wanted to slide
down onto the kitchen floor where she'd been with this man in his blue
oxford button-down shirt only . . . this morning in quite a different
situation. Her face was hot, her eyes wide. "Oh my."
Was it the wine? She'd drunk only one
glass. She could
see his chest hairs, light brown, curling out of his shirt, the hollow
at the bottom of his throat. His shoulders and arms, very . . .
attractive. She was like a teenager, burning up. Worse. She was over
fifty like a teenager, burning up. A frown appeared on her brand-new
forehead.
His blue eyes questioned. "I don't know
what it is about
you. I really like you."
"I'm old, probably older than you," she
wanted to say but
held her tongue. Don't go there, she told herself.
"It's always so hard to leave you. Right
from the first
day we met, I hated to leave. What is it about you?" He sat back and
looked at her, trying to figure it out.
Well, that day she'd had a black eye,
stitches, had been
covered with bruises, and was ugly beyond belief. He was kidding,
right? She licked her lips, nervous.
"I don't know what it was," he murmured.
Their knees
touched and the heat spread upward. Uh-oh.
The sound escaped Cassie's lips. She
clamped them inside
her teeth to keep silent.
"You're so cute. And funny! This is very
good wine. I've
never tasted anything like it. Have you always been so sexy? It's, I
don't know, really getting to me. Maybe I'd better . . ."
Cassie released her lips from their prison,
licked them,
leaned over, and gave him a kiss. A little one. It caught him by
surprise, hit him on the chin. The next one was better centered, soft,
but quick.
"Uh-oh," he said, but took the lead on the
third one. It
was exploratory, went on for a while.
Cassie was stunned. She had no idea kisses
could be like
that, so full, so deep, and hungry. Wow. She closed her eyes and forgot
herself as his hands became soft, fingers and palms grazing her neck,
her chest. The backs of his hands skimming her breasts and sides. He
touched a little, here and there, just a little, not letting her grab
him and hold too tight the way she wanted to. She had to say he was
thorough in his exploration of her fully clothed body, sitting at the
table spread with the credit cards. They kissed for a long time,
tasting of Pomerol. Not saying anything. Feeling each other up. Knees
encroaching between knees. Cassie would have moved faster, but Charlie
was thorough. Oh, he was thorough.
Then they did slide down, but not on the
kitchen floor.
Together they got up and moved toward the stairs, but didn't make it
up. Cassie didn't know how it happened, where the volcano of feelings
came from. They were halfway up the stairs, then sliding down on the
stairs, him on top of her while she was wild to unbutton his shirt, to
get to that bare chest and the bulge in his pants. This wasn't like
her. Her sweater was over her head, her silk pants around her ankles.
She was moving under him, fully alive and overcome by burgeoning the
likes of which she'd never thought she'd see again.
"Wow." But he was the one to say it first.
And the volcano kept on; they were panting
and the lava
was flowing. It didn't stop. They slid down to the first floor,
scrambling out of their clothes, feeling each other's arms and legs,
chest and backs and insides. Old, old feelings returned, but all new.
That thing of making two people one.
"Let me try it," Cassie murmured when he
rolled over on
his back on the carpet, still burgeoning beyond belief in front of the
Federal sofa where no love had ever been made before. "You're very big.
Did anybody ever tell you?"
"It's a feature," he admitted.
"Nice. Let's see if I can do it." She was
enthusiastic,
she was curious. She climbed on, panting with excitement.
"Wow. You're so natural, Cassie!" Charlie
groaned and
gripped her back and bottom. "Oh my God, darling, you can do to me
whatever you want."
TWO HOURS LATER, when they were so sore,
they could
hardly stand, Cassie realized she was starving and went into the
kitchen to put their first real meal together. She pulled a few items
from the refrigerator and the pantry. She arranged a thick slab of
Petrossian's best truffled foie gras on a platter with tiny cornichons
and sour cherries. She took a handful of walnuts and toasted them for a
few seconds in a hot skillet to bring out the oils and flavor. She
brought out the cheeses.
Marsha had bought seven. A Brillat Savarin,
Mitch's
favorite triple cream, best served with ripe figs and pink champagne.
Cassie thought if this was what killed him, just today she, too, would
ingest the poison.
Ah, Marsha had bought her own two favorite
blues, the
rich blue-streaked French Saga and the highly molded English Stilton
(best served with a bottle of Chateauneuf-du-Pape). For simplicity,
Marsha had chosen Morbier, the semisoft mountain shepherd's cow's milk
cheese with its stripe of edible ash running through the center (best
served with a Mâcon-Villages). For diversity, the Mimolette, one
of the few cheeses of France with color. Only a tiny piece of the
orange ball with the nutty flavor was left, not enough, Cassie thought,
to merit opening a bottle of Beaujolais to go with it. And last, a
Coulommiers, not so easy to find outside of gourmet shops. The
Brie-ish, soft-ripening cheese from the Ile-de-France region was yummy.
When fully ripened, it had an even larger taste than a Camembert. Best
served with ripe South of France peaches or plums. Marsha hadn't bought
any of those, but there were grapes. There were slices of pumpernickel
with raisins, Carr's water biscuits, and apples.
She set the kitchen table simply, for two,
then went down
to the cellar for the wine. The cases were stacked on metal shelves in
a room about the size of the living room. It was separated from the
furnace and water heater by the laundry room. The cellar was
temperature controlled and usually locked. But Charlie hadn't been
about to resist. He was sitting on an upended empty crate, naked but
for his shirt, checking the case names against one of the many price
lists he'd collected from the Internet and other sources. It was quite
a sight.
"A few of these seem to be missing," he
said, pointing to
the opened case of Château Petrus Pomerol '45, clearly not
familiar enough with wines to recognize the label.
"Yes." Cassie kissed his ear.
"Sold?"
"No, drunk."
"Who would drink a $6,500-a-bottle wine?"
he wondered.
She straightened up, ruffling his hair.
"You would,
honey. Grab a few more. Dinner's ready."
The party was over. The party was just
begun.
EPILOGUE
TEDDY SALES PASSED HIS ACCOUNTANCY
TESTS on the second
try, when he was just twenty-five. He joined the IRS office in
Washington, D.C., where his mother, Cassandra Schwab, has become
something of a national celebrity, teaching orchid cultivation and
flower arranging on her own cable TV show and Web site, and where his
stepfather is, well, the Charles Schwab of the Treasury Department.
Edith Edison, otherwise known as Aunt
Edith, was the only
person able to persuade Ogden Schwab to have his esophagus shortened to
end his lifelong difficulty with swallowing. The surgery was a success,
and he promptly gained nearly thirty pounds. Edith lost double that
amount, and the two have become a popular pair in the Orlando
retirement village where they share a bungalow on a golf course.
Marsha Sales married Dr. Thomas
Wellfleet in a big
wedding at the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan, but did not finish social work
school as she'd planned. During the course of the many civil suits that
she, her mother, and brother filed against Mona Whitman and Parker
Higgins, she discovered she had an uncanny talent for law and strategic
planning. Working with her brother and Ira Mandel, she piloted Sales
Importers, Inc., through its difficulties with the IRS. Amity Holdings
recently sold Sales Importers for an unpublicized amount to a longtime
rival with an Italian name in Florida, one of the so-called top ten
distributors in the country. Marsha is due to enter law school in the
fall.
Under the threat of a five-year prison
sentence, Mona
Whitman entered the Witness Protection Program and informed on the many
restaurant owners with connections to organized crime who were her
former customers. Although she made full restitution, including
damages, to Cassandra Sales for the credit card fraud, Mona's tax and
civil lawsuits have yet to be resolved. She is not expected to see any
proceeds from the sale of Le Refuge, her shares of Sales Importers,
Inc., or the contents of her safe-deposit boxes for many years to come.
Under the name Margie Mitchell, she's living a quiet life in Lubbock,
Texas, where she's working on a serious relationship with a widower in
the oil business.