Dying in Style (8 page)

But if anything happened to Amelia, Josie would feel an emptiness she couldn’t fill ever, no matter how many other children she had. When she became a mother, she gave birth to a whole new crop of fears, some rational, some irrational.

Josie was afraid she’d say or do something that would screw up her daughter’s life forever. She was worried she’d die and Amelia would be raised by her mother and turn into a little old lady. She was afraid Amelia would get some dread disease, like cancer or leukemia.

Those were rational fears. Well, fairly rational.

Then there were the irrational fears. When Josie saw someone arguing about stamps at the post office, she started looking for places to hide Amelia, in case the fight went postal.

When Amelia rode the big roller coaster at Six Flags, Josie stayed on the ground, wringing her hands, afraid the track would break and her daughter would fall to her death.

When Amelia went to a swimming party at Emma’s, Josie had visions of her daughter dead on the bottom of the pool.

When Amelia crossed the street alone, Josie saw cars rushing to run over her, kidnappers waiting in dark vans, gangbangers racing around the corner, spraying bullets.

It was ridiculous, she told herself. It was irrational.

But these tragedies had happened to other parents, ordinary people like her.

Every time Josie heard sirens on her street, her heart stopped. She knew the police were coming to tell her something bad had happened to Amelia.

Josie fought those worries, because she wanted her daughter to be happy and normal. I’m doing a fine job of being a mother, driving all over St. Louis, she thought.

Josie looked at the dashboard clock. It was nine forty-five p.m. She’d been driving aimlessly for two hours. Or maybe it wasn’t so aimless. She found herself at Plaza Venetia.

I need to get back home to Amelia. I am a woman with responsibilities. But Mom’s watching her and Amelia is in bed by now.

Josie remembered there was a chocolate shop on the mall’s second floor, the Queen of Chocolate. She wasn’t going to get that hot bath and margarita tonight. She deserved a chunk of dark chocolate.

The shop drew Josie like a magnet. She could smell its rich perfume two stores away. She bought three ounces of dark chocolate for herself and a milk chocolate dog for Amelia, who loved canines in any form. Her mother liked white chocolate, which Josie considered unnatural. But she got Jane a strawberry dipped in white chocolate.

“Thank you for shopping with us,” the woman behind the chocolate counter said. Her name tag said she was Libby.

Josie would have given Libby an excellent rating if she was mystery-shopping this store. She was polite, helpful and attentive.

Josie had left home without a dime, so she put her purchase on a credit card. Ten bucks for chocolate, she thought. One more bill I can’t pay.

“You look tired,” Libby the Chocolate Lady said. “I am, too. I’ve been here since noon.”

“It has been a long day,” Josie said. “And yours isn’t over yet.”

The chocolate-shop bell rang and a stampede of customers rushed in. Josie picked up her purchases and left.

Right across from the chocolate shop was the Danessa store. Maybe Marina was working a ten-hour shift, too. Maybe Josie could verify that the Russian giant really was there. She went into Danessa’s.

The store was absolutely quiet.

“Hello?” Josie said. “Anyone here?”

No one answered. As usual, she thought. She wished Harry could see the store now. No salesperson greeted her, just like in her report.

But there had been major changes since Josie’s visit to the store yesterday. Now the Lucite stands were gleaming. The pink lump of gum was gone. The basket of autographed photos was replenished.

“Hello?” Josie said again. No one answered. Josie checked her watch.

The store closed in three minutes. The salesperson must be busy in the back room.

Josie wanted to go back there, but decided against it. After her fight with Danessa, she could be accused of shoplifting or vandalism. She should get out of the store.

Might as well take an autographed photo of Danessa as a peace offering for Mom, she thought, and stuffed one in her purse.

Then she took a second Danessa photo. For her dartboard.

Chapter 7

“Josie, wake up.”

“Huh, what? What time is it, Mom?”

“Six a.m.”

Josie groaned and rolled over in bed. She hadn’t fallen asleep until three in the morning. She felt like she’d spent the night on a park bench. Jane had obviously showered, dressed and had her coffee. She was indecently alert.

Her mother flipped on the overhead bedroom light. It was like a searchlight in Josie’s eyes. She winced and threw the covers over her head.

“Go away, Mom. I don’t have to get up until seven.”

This was what it was like to get Amelia up in the morning. Josie was regressing.

“Mom, why are you breaking into my bedroom?”

Thank God I wore a T-shirt to bed, she thought. The last time her mother had caught Josie sleeping naked, she had to listen to the “What if there’s a fire?” lecture. Her mother had said, “Suppose this place goes up in flames and the firemen see you naked, Josie?”

“Then I’ll get rescued first, Mom,” she’d said.

Too bad there hadn’t been any lectures called, “What are you doing with a naked man in your bed?” Josie couldn’t remember the last time she’d spent the night with a man. It wasn’t likely to happen anytime soon—even if she could get Amelia out of the house for a weekend. Not with her mother bursting into her bedroom.

“Wake up,” Jane said. “We have an emergency.”

Josie sat straight up. “Where’s Amelia? What happened? What is it? A terrorist attack?”

“Your daughter is asleep,” Jane said. “Your problems are a lot closer to home than terrorists. Danessa is dead. And so is Serge, her boyfriend. I saw it on TV. The cops are going to come looking for you after that fight you had with her yesterday.”

“What? What do you mean dead? Both of them? How dead?”

“Very,” Jane said.

“I mean, how did they die?” Josie said. Her mother flipped on the bedroom TV and cranked up the volume. The sound exploded like a dynamite blast. “ST. LOUIS POWER COUPLE MURDERED,” the announcer shouted.

Josie leaped out of bed and turned the TV down to a level that didn’t crack the plaster. “Shhh. You’ll wake Amelia,” she said.

Footage of Serge and Danessa at some society event at the Ritz flashed on the screen. Danessa glittered. Serge glowed. They belonged together, a super couple who lived in a rarefied world. They were taller, thinner and better dressed than ordinary mortals. Danessa waved to the bystanders as if they were peasants lining up to see the city’s princess.

Next Josie found herself staring at morning show anchor John Pertzborn on Fox 2 News. John was one man Josie could stand this early—but only at a distance, on the tube.

“Danessa Celedine, thirty-one, and Serge Orloff, forty-two, were murdered last night,” John P. said. He looked seriously sincere. “The St. Louis couple were found dead within an hour of each other.”

Josie listened, but it was hard to wrap her mind around the words. Danessa was dead. That was good, wasn’t it? A dead person couldn’t sue her. A dead person couldn’t take her job.

She should be ashamed of those thoughts, but little scenes from that nasty fight had replayed in her head all night: Harry’s pork chop jumping in the air. Danessa’s nail pointed at her eye. Danessa’s threats aimed at her career. Harry’s revolting passivity.

Josie had been so angry, she’d put Danessa’s photo on the dartboard on the bedroom door. She stuck it to the cork with a dart through Danessa’s forehead.

It didn’t help. Josie still felt Danessa’s own darts, when she’d called her a liar, a slut and a bribe taker and declared Josie unfit to work at her store. Oddly, the one that hurt the worst was when Danessa said Josie would need a loan to buy one of her purses.

Probably because that charge was true.

About midnight, Josie had decided it was time to quit hurting herself and start hurting Danessa. She began thinking of ways to kill Danessa. It beat counting sheep.

First, Josie pushed Danessa off a cliff. Then she pushed her under a bus.

She stabbed Danessa with her own witchy black stiletto heels. Then she strangled her with that dead dragonfly necklace.

She kidnapped Danessa and made her wear a pink polyester pantsuit until she died of shame.

She spent an hour deciding whether to shoot Danessa neatly with a .22 or blow her to hamburger with a .357 Magnum.

By two o’clock, she’d decided not to shoot Danessa after all. Josie wanted the personal satisfaction of a hands-on death. Danessa should die slowly and painfully.

Josie fell asleep sometime around three a.m., as she was force-feeding Danessa buckets of General Cheeps chicken. Danessa had been strong-armed into a tube top and tube socks.

Now Danessa was really dead. Yesterday Josie would have howled in gleeful triumph. Today, confronted with the actual fact, she was dazed, numbed and curiously flattened. Under the numbness, she felt fear. It was a faint fear, a tiny smoldering fear fire, but Josie knew it would soon be raging out of control.

John P. was still talking on the TV. “Danessa Celedine was found dead in the stockroom of her upscale Plaza Venetia store last night,” he said.

We had our fight at the office that afternoon, Josie thought. Omigod. Mom’s right. I could be the chief suspect.

The tendrils of panic smoke burst into little flames. Josie tried to tamp them down. You don’t know how Danessa died yet, she told herself. Danessa could have been mugged, carjacked or shot by a jealous lover. The police may already have a suspect in custody.

“The police officials have not released the cause of the deaths, pending the autopsies,” John P. said.

Now an important-looking police officer was talking to a horde of reporters shouting questions. “Were both murders committed by the same person?” a hair-sprayed man asked.

“I can’t comment on that at present,” the police official said.

“Do you have any suspects for these murders that rocked the city?” a hair-sprayed woman asked.

“No comment,” the cop said.

They’re going to get me, Josie thought. I’ll wind up in prison. Amelia will be raised by my mother. She’ll wear pajamas to bed and eat soy burgers and work at the bank. I’ll see her on visiting day once a month.

“Josie, are you watching this, or are you staring into space?” her mother said.

Josie turned back to the TV and John Pertzborn’s report. “In a bizarre twist, Serge Orloff was found dead at the couple’s palatial West County home at eleven thirty last night, when homicide detectives arrived to inform him of Danessa’s death. The Russian-born Orloff was Danessa’s longtime companion.”

The tape showed a small herd of police, plain clothes and uniform, standing around looking serious. The brass preened for the TV cameras. Yellow crime-scene tape swayed in the wind. Two uniformed attendants opened massive dark wood doors and wheeled a gurney down the stone stairs. The black body-bagged mound on the gurney was not as big as Josie expected.

Serge Orloff had been larger in life.

The camera pulled back to show Serge and Danessa’s home. It was a palace. Actually, it looked like it had been put together from palace spare parts. There were turrets, balconies, bay windows, Spanish tiles and French doors.

John P. looked so earnestly at his TV audience that Josie was glad she was wearing a T-shirt. He said, “The body of Danessa Celedine was found at ten thirty p.m. when a security guard noted that the shop’s doors had not been locked after the mall closed for the evening.”

Ten thirty? That’s less than half an hour after I left the shop, Josie thought. The fear fire was building again.

I wonder if Danessa was already dead when I was in her store. My God, her body was probably in the back room when I was grabbing photos. I left my fingerprints on the counter. Josie felt hot with terror.

It’s not that bad, she thought. The store was empty. No one was inside. No one saw me in that store.

Except Libby the Chocolate Lady. Smart, alert Libby. She would probably remember the conversation they’d had about Josie’s long day.

Josie had had other conversations that day, and they were even more memorable. Dozens of people had heard her yelling at Danessa. She’d had the fight in the Suttin office in front of countless witnesses.

Her porky boss had tried to dump Josie at the first threat of a lawsuit. He’d do everything possible to save his bacon if Josie was involved in a murder.

Once again Mom was right, Josie thought. The Danessa job was a disaster. I didn’t fight with Danessa. I threatened her. I told her I’d retract that report over her dead body.

On TV, Danessa’s body was being wheeled out of Plaza Venetia. She was wearing black this time, too. It was full length and zipped up the front, but no one would call a body bag elegant.

Josie’s fear fire burst into a raging conflagration. It raced through her gut and melted her bones. She ran for the bathroom and began a hot, ugly retching.

“Josie!” Her mother pounded on the door. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine, Mom,” Josie said, her arms wrapped around the commode.

“You’re not pregnant, are you?” Jane said.

“If I am, it’s an immaculate conception, Mom.”

“That’s not funny, Josie.”

“You’re telling me, Mom.”

Josie tried to wash the bitter taste out of her mouth. She felt clammy and sick. She was leaning against the bathroom wall when she heard John P. say on the TV, “A special police task force has been formed to investigate the murders.”

The doorbell rang.

“It’s six ten in the morning. Who’d visit us at this hour?” Josie asked.

“I’ll get it,” Amelia shouted. They could hear her bare feet on the living room floor.

“Wait!” her mother and grandmother cried.

Both women charged for the front door. But they were too slow. Amelia came running back, her eyes as shiny as Christmas morning.

“Mom, Homicide’s here to see you.”