Dying in Style (14 page)

Gotcha! Josie thought. He has kids and he feels guilty, like all working parents.

“My girl asks very little of me,” Josie said. “But Amelia needs me to be at the Barrington School at five o’clock to work the book sale with the other mothers. If I’m not there, she’ll be embarrassed. She’ll be singled out. You must know what that’s like for a child. She’s already different. She doesn’t have a father and she lives in a flat in Maplewood instead of a mansion in Ladue.

“I have to be there for her. The school expects parents to participate in fund-raising activities. The kids suffer socially if we don’t. The school doesn’t do it on purpose. It just happens.

“My volunteer shift is over at seven. You can go with me. You can stand next to me at the sale table. I’ll give you coffee. You can even buy books. Twenty percent of the proceeds go to the school. Afterward, I’ll have Mom pick up Amelia and you can take me to the lie detector test. Please, please don’t do this to her. She’s only nine years old.”

Josie’s voice broke as she finished her speech. She was shaking. Detective Yawney said nothing. Some small silent signal seemed to pass between him and Waxley, a nod or maybe a blink.

Then Yawney said, “Be at the police headquarters at eight o’clock tomorrow morning. You can sign your statement while you’re at it.” He gave her a room number and directions.

After they left, Josie put the pizza for Stan on his porch swing, along with a note thanking him for offering to look at her air conditioner. By the time she was back home, Amelia and her mother were in the kitchen, putting away boxes and cartons.

Jane looked hot and irritated. “The traffic on Manchester was awful and we had to stop to get you milk, bread and cereal,” she said. “Amelia said you were out of food.”

“Thanks, Mom.” Josie kissed her mother’s cheek and said, “Amelia, run along and change. We have to go to school. I have pizza for dinner.”

“Pepperoni with extra onions?” Amelia said.

“Another meal with no nutrition?” her mother said.

“I got a salad,” Josie said.

“Iceberg lettuce, no doubt. It’s mostly water, you know.” Jane checked to see that Amelia was in her room, then dropped her voice to a whisper. “What did the cops want?” She sounded like Ma Barker.

“Just a couple of questions,” Josie lied. “I have to be there at eight tomorrow morning to sign my statement. Could you take Amelia to school?”

“I could, since I have nothing better to do than play chauffeur for you. But if my granddaughter were in a Catholic school, I wouldn’t have to. She could walk.”

“Mom, I don’t think Catholic school would be good for Amelia. She’s kind of a free spirit.”

“That’s the same argument I heard from your father. It’s why I sent you to public school instead of getting you a good Catholic education. And look how you turned out.”

Josie heard the rest of that sentence, even though her mother didn’t say it: pregnant, unmarried and a college dropout.

“I don’t think I turned out badly,” Josie said. You have the right to remain silent, she thought. That works for mothers as well as homicide detectives. Jane has had a bad day. It must have been an awful shock when those two detectives turned up on her doorstep again. She had to be crabby. Besides, she did your shopping. Typical Mom. All the time she grumped at you, she was also helping you out.

“Thanks for the groceries,” Josie said. “How much do I owe you?”

“Forty-one dollars and fifty-eight cents,” Jane said.

Josie dutifully counted out the cash. “I have to get dressed. Thanks, Mom. You’re always there when I need you.”

She gave her mother a hug, but Jane remained stiff and unyielding. She went upstairs to her flat, slamming the door behind her.

Josie had half an hour to put on her Rich Suburban Lady outfit. It was her dullest disguise—navy blue Ralph Lauren blazer, white silk turtleneck, camel pants and flat shoes. She brushed her hair into a severe style and put on the bare minimum makeup.

She felt like an imposter in those clothes, but Josie could see the relief in her daughter’s eyes when she came into the kitchen. Josie would look like all the other mothers. She would not embarrass her daughter. Amelia would never say that, but Josie had seen—and heard—what happened to the children whose mothers were different.

Vaniqua, an African American scholarship student, had to listen to little remarks about her mother’s “ethnicity” because of her flowing purple caftans and head wraps. Josie admired the woman’s bold style. But Vaniqua—and the rest of the Barrington School—were strict preppies, dull and disapproving as Puritans in their dress.

In the car, Josie studied her daughter for signs that she was upset or worried. Amelia didn’t seem to know that the police had been to their home again. She talked about boys on the trip to school. From what Josie could figure out, all the girls had boyfriends in class, but the boys didn’t know it.

“Jennifer broke up with Matt,” Amelia announced.

“How did Matt take it?” Josie said.

Amelia shrugged. “Jennifer didn’t actually tell him. She just doesn’t like him anymore.”

Josie bit her lip to keep from smiling. She hoped her daughter had invisible boyfriends for a long time.

As they pulled into the school parking lot, Amelia spotted her best friend’s SUV. “There’s Emma. Can I go in with her, Mom?”

“Sure,” Josie said. “But don’t wander off. I want to see you.”

Josie could smell the old money as she walked through the school doors, a distillation of leather, cigar smoke and dust. The place was decorated with gently worn Oriental rugs, portraits of rich old white guys, trophies, class photos and slippery leather wing chairs.

I bet I’m the only mom here who ever had a polygraph, she thought. But some of the fathers might have. At least two Barrington dads had been indicted in brokerage scandals.

Josie signed in at the volunteers’ desk and presented her brownies, bought at the bakery and transferred to a paper plate covered with foil to look homemade. Mrs. Jacobs, who had blue hair and a majestic bosom, gave Josie her assignment.

“You will work the Nature section in the book room. All the sections are marked. There’s nibbles on the table by the back door. Help yourself. The children will be in the gym and the playroom and volunteers will keep them busy in supervised play. Did you bring Amelia?”

“She’s with her best friend, Emma,” Josie said.

“Super,” Mrs. Jacobs said and turned to the next volunteer.

The hyperskinny Barrington women were wearing their Rich Suburban Lady outfits, too, but their clothes didn’t seem like disguises. Josie wondered why. Her silk turtleneck was slightly irregular, but the dropped stitches didn’t show under her resale-shop blazer. Maybe it was the pants. No matter how much she paid, she couldn’t get her pants to fit like theirs.

Josie said hello to Emma’s mother, then stopped at the food table and put a single cheese cracker and two celery sticks on her plate. She wanted to pile on the food. She was ravenous. By the time she’d made sure Amelia was fed and dressed this evening, she hadn’t had time to eat. But a Barrington mom did not stuff her face.

Josie wished her friend Alyce was here tonight. Her one-year-old son had been enrolled at birth, like his father, but Alyce wouldn’t have to volunteer for a few years yet. Josie did see two of Alyce’s neighbors. Saint Kate, as everyone called her behind her back, was a sweet-natured doctor’s wife with prominent teeth and a powerful urge to do good works.

“Our own Eleanor Roosevelt,” sniped Amy the Slut.

Amy claimed to have slept with every husband in the Wood Winds subdivision. She looked wicked in skintight black D&G, four-inch fuck-me heels, and the infamous twenty-seven-hundred-dollar snakeskin belt from Danessa. This one was black. Josie felt sick when she saw it coiled around Amy’s waist. The snake looked at home there.

Did Amy make the saleswoman dismantle the display, too? Did the police talk to her? Josie wondered how Amy made out with Detective Yawney, then decided that was a bad choice of words.

Josie smiled her way through more Barrington moms. Mrs. Harrow Forbes III (Mrs. Trey to her friends) was setting out the punch no one ever drank. Her daughter-in-law, Mrs. Harrow Forbes IV (known as Ivy for her husband’s Roman numerals), was presiding over the Home and Garden section at the table next to Josie. She was pushing something called
The Proper Way to Hire, Fire and Supervise Your Household Staff.

“This little manual is super,” Ivy said. “Good help is so hard to find.”

I can’t believe she actually said that, Josie thought.

“Oh, I can find plenty of help,” Elizabeth, another Barrington mom, said. “They just aren’t any good. My current housekeeper can’t tell a do-rag from a dust rag.”

She laughed charmingly at her own racist remark.

“What about you, Josie?” Ivy said. “Do you have trouble getting good help?”

Josie studied Ivy’s bland, blond face for signs of malice, but didn’t see any. The silly twit thought everyone had household staff.

“My cleaning lady is so lazy,” Josie said. “I ask her to do things, but she always has an excuse why she can’t. I’m lucky she runs the vacuum cleaner and dusts. I can’t fire her. She’s a single mom.”

Both Barrington mothers nodded their sympathy.

I’d love to fire me, Josie thought. I sure can’t get me to clean the place.

“You’d only find someone worse,” Ivy said. “At least you can get her to vacuum and dust.”

Elizabeth and Ivy happily discussed the servant problem for another half hour. Then Elizabeth bought three hundred dollars’ worth of books, spending for the school in the best Barrington tradition.

Josie calculated she’d have to spend fifty bucks minimum to get out without embarrassing Amelia. She’d encourage her daughter to buy lots of chapter books so it would look like more. Josie had her eye on
Easy Home Decorating Solutions Under $100.

It was nearly eight o’clock by the time Josie and Amelia left school with their load of books. Amelia bought
Artemis Fowl
, proud to be moving from the big-print books to more grown-up ones. She read to Josie by the dash light as they drove home.

After she got her daughter in bed, Josie put a slab of pizza in the microwave and opened the fridge. The fixings for margaritas were staring her in the face. She deserved one after this day. Josie fixed herself a pitcher while she ran a hot bubble bath. She lit all the candles in the bath, then poured herself a cold margarita, the edge of the glass rimmed with salt.

Once in the tub, she realized she’d forgotten the reheated pizza. Oh, well. She’d eat it after her bath.

Josie didn’t feel so nervous about her polygraph after the first drink, so she had another. Then she didn’t feel nervous at all. She remembered that margaritas were responsible for bringing Amelia into the world and had another to celebrate.

“To my daughter, Amelia, the best mistake I ever made,” she said and raised her glass in a toast.

Josie woke up at five a.m. in a tub of cold water, horribly hungover.

Chapter 14

“You know why you are here, don’t you?” the polygraph examiner said.

Josie nodded and her head nearly fell off and rolled across the floor.

She was holding on to the doorframe of the polygraph room to keep from falling forward. A pile driver was pounding her brain flat. Her stomach lurched and sloshed.

This hangover was worse than morning sickness. Josie craved coffee but couldn’t keep it down. She’d managed to swallow some white soda and a saltine. The cracker was like chewing sawdust. When she found last night’s leathery pizza in the microwave, oozing orange grease, she’d almost lost it.

Did she really down a whole pitcher of margaritas? That first drink had been so relaxing. But Josie wasn’t used to alcohol. She hadn’t done any serious drinking in nearly a decade, since she found out she was pregnant with Amelia.

Now she wanted to crawl into a nice soft bed, lie down and die. Instead, she had to take the lie detector test. Driving to the Venetia Park police headquarters in morning rush-hour traffic was an ordeal. Josie jumped at every honk and winced at every brake screech.

Thanks to the tax money from Plaza Venetia, the suburban community was rich enough to have its own Colonial police station, landscaped by the Venetia Park garden club with authentic early American roses. Josie was surprised the club hadn’t put in stocks and a dunking stool to complete the Colonial motif.

There was nothing antique about the polygraph room. It was soundproofed, dim and cool, with lights in the hall to warn passersby to maintain silence when a session was in progress.

The examiner gave his name, but it slid out of her brain. He was one of those chubby pink men who seemed jolly—unless you crossed him. He had a Santa smile and cop’s eyes.

Josie felt like Frankenstein’s monster when the examiner hooked up all the wires and gadgets. There were two bands around her chest, a blood-pressure cuff on her arm, and some weird things on her fingertips.

“These sensors will measure three things,” the examiner said. “Your heart rate, breathing pattern and the sweat coming off your fingertips.”

She was drenched in sweat. Flop sweat, alcohol poisoning, sheer terror—she had no idea what kind it was, but there were gallons of it. Could she get electrocuted by the salty water pouring off her skin onto the wires?

Josie hoped the machine didn’t measure odors. Her fear was an oily, pungent stink.

The examiner kept up a chipper little patter. Josie had trouble taking in everything he said. He asked her a zillion questions about her health and medications: Was she on lithium, Prozac, Valium or Xanax? Did she have a heart condition? Did she have a cold or a respiratory illness? Had she ever had a stroke or a history of epilepsy? Was she pregnant?

No, no and no.

“Are you in pain?” the examiner asked.

Oh, boy, am I, Josie thought. Last night I felt no pain in Margaritaville. But this morning I’m in a world of hurt.

The examiner was still talking. “By pain I mean, for instance, a toothache, a headache or a recent injury.”