Confession Is Murder (18 page)

“I’m glad you’re here. I’ve been going through Joseph’s things, and I was getting so upset . . . I felt like I needed some company.” Connie put a hand on Lucille’s arm. “I know I can always count on you, Lucille.”

Lucille followed her into the kitchen. “Mmm, it smells good in here.” She sniffed. “Banana bread?”

Connie shook her head. “Carrot cake.”

Connie was wearing a beige silk blouse tucked into beige silk trousers with a gold chain threaded through the belt loops. Lucille wondered if she was about to go out or if she had already been out. Because no one she knew hung around the house dressed like that. And you didn’t go baking in no outfit like that either. That’s one thing her mother always taught her, to keep her good clothes for good.

“You want some coffee?”

“Yeah, sure, that’d be great. Then I can give you a hand. I remember when my father died, it was real hard on my mother going through his stuff. My Aunt Conchetta had to come over and sit with her the whole time.”

Connie measured coffee and water into the pot and flicked the “on” switch.

The kitchen was immaculate as always, Lucille noticed as she looked around, but Connie herself didn’t look so good. “You been sleeping okay?” she asked after Connie set two cups of coffee on a tray.

Connie shook her head. Her hands quivered slightly as she poured a drop of milk into her cup. “Not so good, no. What with everything—”

“Sure, I understand.” Lucille stirred three spoons of sugar into her coffee. She wondered if Connie was going to offer her some cake. She was starving, not having eaten since that morning. She patted her stomach. Had she lost some weight already?

Connie took the tray into the living room and set it on the coffee table. Tidy piles of clothing dotted the floor, and there was a large roll of black garbage bags set out on an ottoman.

Lucille looked around. “How about if we divide the stuff up, and I go through half and you go through the other half?” She hefted a bunch of clothes over to where Connie was sitting, and then grabbed another armful for herself.

“I’ve been going through the pockets . . . just to be sure.” Connie pulled a pair of pajamas from the mound. “And I’ve been making separate piles, you know, things to give away and things to throw away.”

“Good idea. Maybe there’s some stuff cousin Louis could use. Or even Tony Jr.” It felt good to be doing something—took her mind off poor old Mrs. B. She could still see her sitting there on the sofa . . . She didn’t want to say nothing to Connie on account of Connie already being upset enough.

Connie sniffed. “I suppose you’ve heard—about what Joseph did to me.” She stirred her coffee, and the spoon banged loudly against the side of the cup. “On top of everything else . . .”

“About Tony Jr. getting Joseph’s half of the business, you mean?”

Connie nodded. “How could he do that, Lucille? How could he leave our half of the business to that awful kid? We’ve got to do something. You’ve got to talk to Frank about it. I’m sure he’s not happy about this either. He’s got to figure out a way to invalidate the will or something.”

Lucille nodded and shook out a pair of tan trousers. There was a small hole by one of the pockets, but it looked to be at the seam and that could be fixed. Someone could get good use out of them. Lucille put them to one side.

“Joseph always gave me everything I ever wanted. I only had to ask.” Connie buried her face in one of Joseph’s sweaters. “And now this. It’s not fair.” She looked up at Lucille, and Lucille noticed her eyes were about to brim over.

“You’re right, you’re absolutely right.” She patted Connie’s hand. Connie’s nails looked so nice. Neatly filed and painted a pretty coral. Her own never looked like that. She spent too much time cooking and cleaning to care for them. Her stomach rumbled again. There was no sign of the cake, and she was starving. Maybe if she asked for a piece?

“The only thing Joseph was never able to give me was a baby,” Connie continued.

Lucille realized she hadn’t been paying attention. She was too hungry—how could anyone be expected to listen when their stomach was rumbling so loudly?

“He was never willing to try very hard,” Connie said. “And he knew how much a baby meant to me. But he just wasn’t that interested. He didn’t care as much as I did.”

“Yeah, sometimes men don’t understand how important having children is to a woman.”

Connie sniffled. She pulled a tissue from the box on the table—shell pink to match the rims of her cups—and blew her nose delicately. “Like I told you, Lucille,” her voice dropped to a near whisper, and Lucille had to lean in close to hear, “Joseph was never very interested in, well, you know, s-e-x.”

“Yeah, you said.” Lucille put her cup down. Maybe that’s why Connie spent so much time and money on clothes and manicures and all that sort of stuff. “Well, some guys need a little encouragement. You gotta set the mood, so to speak.”

“I tried.” Connie’s eyes filled with tears again. “I bought some of those filmy negligees they sell. To see if I could . . . you know . . .”

“Sure, sure, I understand.” Lucille pulled a brown golf jacket from her pile. There was a big grease stain near the zipper. She threw it into the discard stack.

“I even bought this book that gave you ways to . . .,” Connie blushed, “please your man. One day I got up the nerve to try one of the tricks. Oh, Lucille, it was awful! Joseph was so upset.” Connie wound her hands around and around the sleeves of Joseph’s sweater. “I wrapped myself all up in clear plastic wrap, without anything on underneath, not even my bra or panties, and greeted him like that when he got home.”

Lucille’s stomach grumbled, but she hardly noticed. “What did he think? I bet that got him going.” So Flo was right, she thought, about the plastic wrap they’d found in Connie’s drawer the day of Joseph’s funeral.

“He didn’t like it at all. Started shouting at me that that was no way for a decent woman to behave.” Connie gave a sob. “All I wanted was for him to make love to me. So we could have a baby. We hardly ever did it, Lucille. The doctor said that’s why I couldn’t conceive. Something about me being not very fertile, and needing to do . . . it . . . more often in order to conceive. But Joseph wasn’t keen at all. He told me that if God wanted us to have a baby we would.”

“Yeah, but sometimes you’ve got to give Him a little help.” Lucille stuck her hand into the right pocket of a pair of dark blue work pants. Frankie wore the same kind.

“Exactly. That’s what I told Joseph. But he wouldn’t listen. Maybe he should have been a priest after all, since that’s all he thought about.” Connie had a sip of her coffee and carefully wiped the smudge of bright pink lipstick off the rim with her tissue.

Lucille felt around inside the pocket. There was something in there, but she couldn’t quite get a hold of it. Her stomach grumbled again. She’d go past the Towne Deli on her way home. They did a pretty decent meatball hero there.

Lucille finally wrestled the thing out of the pocket. It was a picture—the kind they called “wallet-sized.” Frank carried one like that of Bernadette even though she didn’t look like that no more, what with that earring stuck in her eyebrow and her hair died that funny black color.

Connie bent down to grab another piece of clothing, and Lucille snuck a look at the picture. She ought to hand it over to Connie, but for some reason she didn’t want to.

The photograph was dog-eared and creased so many times you could hardly see the baby in the picture. Of course, all babies looked alike, but Lucille thought she recognized this one.

She just couldn’t figure out why.

Chapter 14

Lucille pulled into her driveway and sat in the Olds for a moment, listening. The car was making a funny noise—a faint clacking sound as it idled. She slammed her fist against the steering wheel. She knew them guys at that garage were no good. What had they done to her car? Sure it was getting old, but so was she—pretty soon she’d be sleeping with her teeth in a glass on the bedside table, like her mother.

The side window was fogging over on account of the steam from the two meatball heroes she’d picked up at the deli on the way home. She’d gotten one for Bernadette, too, since she was pretty sure Bernadette hadn’t bothered making herself nothing decent to eat. Although now she didn’t feel so hungry. Every time she thought of Mrs. B. sitting there dead on her sofa . . . Sambuco said she must have let the killer in, there being no sign of forced entry. Lucille shivered. This whole thing was scaring the crap out of her.

As soon as she got inside, Lucille headed straight for the phone in the kitchen. She was going to call Frankie and tell him to come home right away. She started to punch in the numbers of his cell phone when a thought hit her. What if Frankie didn’t want to come home? What if he was with Betty now? Lucille could picture them curled up together in a cute little apartment somewheres.

She was going to drive herself crazy. She pushed the last few numbers and waited, listening to the sound of ringing at the other end.

“Frankie.” She let her breath out in a whoosh.

“That you, Lucille?”

“Where are you?” There was a pause, and Lucille could feel her stomach clench. She inched over to the cupboard and got out a packet of antacids.

“I can’t tell you where I am, see, because—”

“You’re with Betty, aren’t you? Admit it, Frank. The two of yous have moved in together.” She popped one of the tablets into her mouth.

“Betty? You out of your mind, Lucille? I’m not with Betty. I can’t tell you where I am on account of the police. They’re looking for me. This way, see, you can say you don’t know where I am, and it won’t be a lie.”

Lucille laughed. After all the lies she’d already told . . . But Frankie had a point. Who knows, the police might have some way of worming it out of her. She thought of Sambuco and certain methods came to mind. She could feel herself getting hot all over.

“The police think I did it, you know. They think I killed Joseph.”

“That’s why I’m calling, Frankie. You come on home, and we’ll go talk to that lawyer friend of Dom’s. He’ll explain to the police that you didn’t have nothing to do with it.”

“They’re not going to believe him. For one thing, Janice told them about the blowup Joseph and I had the day he was killed.”

“Yeah, she told me about that.” Lucille loosened the aluminum foil around one of the heroes. “But just because you had a fight with him doesn’t mean you went out and killed him.” Heck, if she’d killed everyone she had a fight with, they’d all be dead—Frankie, Bernadette, Flo . . .

“And shit, my prints are all over everything.”

Lucille nibbled the end off the sandwich. “That’s only logical, you and Joseph using the same equipment and all.”

“But there’s something else. Something I haven’t told you.”

“Is it about them ledgers, Frankie? Because Janice already told me. You been borrowing money from the business, she said.” Lucille had another bite of the hero. Orangey-red grease dripped out the side and oozed down her arm. She swore and grabbed a towel. “You leave them books at the office?”

Frank sighed. “Yeah. I didn’t think to take them with me at the time, and now I don’t dare go back there on account of the police.”

“It’s going to be okay, Frankie. I’m going to figure something out. Maybe I’ll call that lawyer anyway, and see what he has to say. Meanwhile, you stay where you are, you hear?”

“Thanks, Lucille.”

Lucille hung up the telephone. She knew what she had to do.

• • •

“Christ, Lucille, it’s midnight. I’m not going out now—I’ve already taken my makeup off.”

Flo still sounded a bit pissy, Lucille thought, on account of their little spat at the beauty parlor that afternoon.

“Come on, Flo, you gotta help me out. You’re my best friend. I don’t have no one else to call.”

“Best friend? Then how come you didn’t tell me about Bernadette and the baby?”

“Yeah? Well, how come you didn’t say nothing about Lenny Musgrove, huh?”

There was a long pause. Lucille wrapped the phone cord around her finger as she waited.

“All right. I’ll be over in a couple of minutes. Just let me get dressed. I’ve already got my nightgown on.”

Lucille hung up the phone. She knew she could count on Flo. Now to get ready.

Lucille stood and stared at the contents of her closet. She wanted something dark, preferably black. She found some old black sweatpants at the bottom of the laundry basket, a black T- shirt under a pile of sweaters, and her black winter boots. She checked the outfit in the mirror. It still needed something. She pulled on her leather jacket, turned up the collar, and posed in front of the glass. Now, that was more like it! The outfit made her look slim. She circled this way and that. Yeah, she looked as if she’d lost at least ten pounds. If she squinted she looked kind of like she did back in high school—black jeans, black leather jacket, and an attitude. Lucille snapped her fingers at her reflection and thought of how she and Frankie used to circle the hallways before class, menacing the blond-haired California surfer types who thought they were so cool.

Lucille was waiting by the door when there was a muffled knock. She opened it and screamed. The person was wearing a mask—one of them stockings pulled over their face, their features all smooshed up underneath.

“Shhh, you’ll wake up Bernadette.”

“Flo?”

Flo pulled off the stocking mask. “Phew, that thing is hot.”

“What on earth—”

“I thought it would be a good idea. You know, so no one would recognize me. Besides, I’m not wearing any makeup.”

Lucille stared at Flo. She was all in black, too—spandex pants, high-heeled suede boots, and a belted leather jacket. She’d teased her hair into the usual hornet’s nest, but it was kind of flat in back, as if she’d been sleeping on it.

“Ready?”

Lucille gave the thumbs-up and pulled the door closed behind her.

The Olds started right up, and Lucille eased back out of the driveway.

Flo flipped down the sun visor on the passenger side. “There’s no mirror. What kind of car is this anyway, Lucille?”