Camilla T. Crespi - The Breakfast Club Murder

C
AMILLA
T. C
RESPI

FIVE STAR
A part of Gale, Cengage Learning

Copyright © 2014 by Camilla T. Crespi.

Five Star™ Publishing, a part of Gale, Cengage Learning.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination, or, if real, used fictitiously.

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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Crespi, Camilla T.

Dying The breakfast club murder / Camilla T. Crespi. — First edition.

    pages cm

ISBN 978-1-4328-2805-9 (hardcover) — ISBN 1-4328-2805-3 (hardcover)

eISBN-13: 978-1-4328-2958-2 eISBN-10: 1-4328-2958-0

1. Wives—Crimes against—Fiction. 2. Divorced mothers—Fiction. 3. Caterers and catering—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3553.R435B74 2014

813′.54—dc23                                   2013038374

First Edition. First Printing: February 2014

This title is available as an e-book.

ISBN-13: 978-1-4328-2958-2 ISBN-10: 1-4328-2958-0

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1  2  3  4  5  6  7  18  17  16  15  14

I thank Denise Dailey and Augusta Gross for their excellent advice; Judy Moskowitz for listening and encouraging me; Annette Meyers for introducing me to Five Star; Stuart, my husband, for his patience; and Diane M. Piron-Gelman for her meticulous editing.

The Park Avenue doorman stepped out into the windswept rain and blew his whistle while the tall couple waited in the comfort of the wood-paneled lobby.

Tomorrow, Saturday, Robert Staunton—the new owner of apartment 7J and a partner in the law firm of Bellows, Stein, Jeffreys, and Berne—was going to be married to thin, beautiful, and successful Valerie Fenwick, DDS, a woman he had met while she drilled holes in his teeth. Many hundreds of dollars and dental sessions later, Rob had emerged from her care with healthy teeth and a great desire to sleep with her, which he succeeded in doing, as he succeeded in most things he set his sights on. The idea of marrying her only came up a year and half later, when he got careless and his wife of twenty years, Lori Corvino Staunton, found out.

“You should get the car,” Valerie said as they left the lobby, tossing her slithery blond mane for emphasis. They were late for the dinner Rob’s partners were throwing for them at Nobu57. “We’ll never get a cab in this weather.”

“The garage is four blocks away,” Rob said. Sitting through dinner with wet feet would probably give him a cold. “And I’ll never find a place to park.”

Valerie gave Rob’s chest a soft punch. “I can’t believe I’m marrying such a wuss.” She waved to the doorman, whose name she hadn’t bothered to learn. “Forget the cab.” She wrapped her black silk raincoat around her and started sprinting to the corner in her high-heeled sandals.

“Val, what are you doing?” Rob shouted, suddenly feeling abandoned.

The doorman joined him under the protection of the building’s canopy. “I believe she’s getting the car, sir.”

“Oh, for God’s sake!” Rob ran after Valerie, who was now crossing the dark side street, dodging between a steady stream of cars. Despite the heavy rain, no one was stopping to let her by.

“Come back, Val,” Rob shouted as a gust of drenched wind slapped his face. He plunged into the street toward his fiancée. “Wait up!”

Valerie turned, saw Rob coming, and slipped under the shallow roof of the open phone booth on the corner to wait for him.

Rob, halfway across the street, turned his head toward two glowing headlights speeding through the rain toward him. He stopped to stare, his brain suddenly empty of all thought.

“Watch out!” Valerie shouted, running toward Rob. He felt the front of his raincoat being yanked. The air behind him whooshed. Tires splashed. As he fell on the curb, a wave of filthy water washed over him.

“You almost killed him!” Valerie shouted at the red taillights as the car turned and sped down Park Avenue. Still holding on to the lapel of Rob’s raincoat, she contemplated her soon-to-be-husband for a moment. Anyone looking at her would have supposed she was having second thoughts. “Honey,” she said finally as she bent over Rob and helped him to his feet. “You’ve got to watch where you’re going.”

Safely on the sidewalk, Rob tried to wipe his face with his handkerchief. More rain wet it. One knee throbbed. The palms of his hands burned. He felt anger grip his bones, make them brittle. Anger and fear. When he had crossed the street, there had been a wide gap between cars. The car that hit him—well, would have hit him if Valerie hadn’t been so quick to pull him away—the driver had come down on him on purpose, he was sure of it. Was it a warning?

“Did you get the license plate?” he asked Valerie.

She shook her head and pulled at his arm. “Come on, honey. I’m getting soaked to the skin.”

Inside the lobby of the apartment building Mike O’Connor, the head doorman, watched the scene with his second in command. He was well aware that duty dictated he run out with a sturdy umbrella and help the new tenants, but Mike considered himself a shrewd judge of people after years in the business. He had this couple pegged. No matter how much he and his colleagues put themselves out, the Christmas envelope of Mr. Staunton Esquire and his toothpick dentist wife would be meager. Besides, he’d had enough of getting wet for one night.

Lori took a bite. There was nothing more sensual than good food. Sensual. Reassuring. Uplifting. Utterly redeeming. Her tongue pressed the tiny pillows of dough against the roof of her mouth. Butter, Parmesan, creamy tomato slid across her taste buds. Tomorrow it was back to the States and a future punctured with question marks, but now, sitting under a canopy of stars and wisteria in an elegant Roman restaurant, with a breeze lifting the ruffles of the silk dress she had splurged on that afternoon and the best gnocchi she’d ever tasted warming her mouth, Lori thought she was doing just fine.

“That looks good,” the craggy-faced, bespectacled American at the next table said, just as she swallowed. Up to now, she had welcomed the Italian restaurant habit of bunching Americans together, but this evening, for her last meal here, she wasn’t in the mood to compare travel notes and make chitchat with a stranger, even if he was American.

“What’s the Italian name for it?” the stranger asked. Lori shook her head, pretending her mouth was still full of gnocchi. What it was full of was a luscious aftertaste that should have made her nice enough to answer. She took another bite instead, and this time didn’t swallow right away.

“I’m sorry, I should have introduced myself. Alec Winters.” The man smiled.

Lori pointed to her mouth, truly full this time, and went back to basking in the taste of the yummy gnocchi, trying to memorize it. Whisking from her purse the small leather-bound notebook she’d bought on her first day in Venice, Lori started writing. Fresh tomatoes, a little onion, butter, a hint of nutmeg, basil, lemon zest. What else? There was an extra richness she couldn’t decipher. Some kind of cheese.

“Are you a restaurant critic?” the man asked.

He has a kind face,
Lori thought. “I’m not,” she said. Her husband’s face had looked kind when he announced he was turning her in for a newer model. She waved to the waiter, who sauntered over. “This dish is fabulous,” she announced.

He bowed, taking credit. “
Gnocchi della regina.
Gnocchi fit for a queen. A house specialty.”

“I’m a food journalist for the
Greenwich Dish,
” Lori said, handing him her business card. Real name, real address. Fake job. “I would love to write about the restaurant and give my readers this recipe.”

It was a ruse her friend Beth had suggested during their last lunch together on Beth’s deck. Lori had made tuna and fennel sandwiches on focaccia and brought a bottle of an expensive Chardonnay.

“I don’t like dishonesty,” she had protested as she crunched into her sandwich.

“Here, drink up and get over it. You’ll come home with fabulous recipes to start off your catering career.”

“Not a start, a re-launch,” Lori corrected. After sixteen years it wasn’t going to be easy, but she was determined to prove to herself and to her daughter, Jessica, that she could stand on her own. “I know you mean well, Beth, but I’ve had enough of lies.”

For revenge, Beth drank most of the wine and then offered instant coffee.

Lori found the business cards tucked in her satchel after she boarded the flight. She had no intention of using them, but while eating a superb crabmeat risotto in Venice she could never duplicate on her own, accompanied by half a carafe of sparkling Prosecco, Lori decided she deserved a few lies of her own. White, innocent ones, nothing like the ones Rob had told her.

Lori tried smiling at the Roman waiter, but didn’t bring it off. Either she’d forgotten how, which was entirely possible, or she didn’t want to be that hypocritical. She hoped it was the latter. “Can you please ask the chef for the recipe?”