Perfect Little Ladies (5 page)

She supposed she’d become a George Eliot of her generation, needing to earn a man’s wages to support herself. And Luna, of course.

If she’d had a husband like Malcolm, she wouldn’t have
needed to sell hand-painted dresses and jackets and elegant shawls. But the only husband she’d had had been Cooper (his first name was Lionel, so even CJ called him by his last), who had gotten too close to the truth.

They’d been married five years and had lived in a SoHo loft. He wrote screenplays (a few actually sold!), she painted textiles, and it seemed like a good long-term fit. For a while CJ forgot about Malcolm, but then she got pregnant. She and Cooper were ecstatic for a few weeks…until she miscarried.

“It’s just one of those things,” the doctor at the downtown clinic had explained to Cooper. “She’s had one healthy pregnancy, so chances are, she’ll have another.”

One healthy pregnancy?

CJ, of course, had not told Cooper about Elinor and Malcolm and Jonas and the rest.

She’d deemed it safer to divorce him than to tell him the truth and reveal the big family secret. Not many people understood the magic bond of the twin-psyche, the monozygotic connection.

So she’d broken Cooper’s heart, and broken her own, and since then, she’d been alone, which, she told herself, wasn’t so bad. When she missed the warmth of a man, she had Ray Williams to turn to. Ray was a neighbor, a friend, someone who’d fix her screen door and share a bottle of wine, which often led to a romantic occurrence. She’d been quite clear about not wanting to get involved. Besides, Ray had sole custody of Kevin and would not spend the night. Other than her ex-husband, CJ had never slept until dawn with a man, not even Malcolm, whose love had been limited to clandestine moments in surreptitious places until one day the guilt had been too much.

And now the ache swelled again in her chest, the one reborn yesterday at Elinor’s, the “Malcolm ache” she’d once called it before she’d buried it—or thought that she’d buried it—so long ago. But there it was, rising up from the ashes, Malcolm the Phoenix.

Unless it was just loneliness, looking for a victim.

She shuddered, then quickly shook her head.

“Luna!” she called. “Come on, girl!” It was time to stop dawdling, as her mother would have called it, time to stop thinking waste-of-time thoughts, to get home and get ready for the guests who’d arrive soon to talk about blackmail.

She clutched the newspaper to her chest, waited for Luna to catch up, then marched briskly back toward the cottage.

At five minutes to eight on Sunday morning, Alice located the mailbox marked Twenty-three Lakeside Lane. She stopped the car, surveyed a tall stand of pine trees, soft bundles of ferns, and thick clusters of sun-colored daylilies. It was quiet and serene, like a watercolor, accented by the old gardener’s shed off to one side and the former carriage house, which, Elinor once told her, now held CJ’s studio. In the center of the frame was the familiar stone cottage. It seemed smaller now that CJ lived there alone.

“It’s changed,” Poppy said quietly from the seat beside her. “It no longer looks scary.” Her words were reassuring, but her tone was rather lifeless.

“It’s older,” Alice replied. “So are we.”

“Older and wiser.”

“Well, older, anyway.” Alice put the car into drive and slowly directed it down the gravel driveway. “You’re okay, then?” she asked. “To be here?”

Poppy nodded. “I’m not going to faint, if that’s what you mean.”

“Well,” Alice said, “that’s good then.” She wondered if Poppy had been in therapy and hadn’t mentioned it, the way Elinor hadn’t mentioned her affair. Life was more fun, she supposed, when they’d been young and naïve and had discussed life’s minutiae at great, tedious length.

“Poppy,” Elinor said as she greeted them at the back door. “I am so sorry. I completely forgot. I wouldn’t have had us meet here—”

Poppy held up her hand. “It’s all right, Elinor. I’m a grown woman now.” She supposed none of them really believed that, but it seemed like the right thing to say. For once, she would try to be there for her friends—for Elinor this time—the way they’d always been there for her.

“Still, it was selfish of me…”

“Well, don’t be silly.” Poppy’s head twittered a little, so she spun around. “Catherine Janelle!” she called out to CJ. “You have, indeed, done wonders with this place!”

Her eyes cruised the living room, with its plump, comfy furniture in natural, neutral shades that accented the copper-like veins of the nutmeg stone fireplace.

Poppy had no idea how she remembered the fireplace was of nutmeg stone. Memories of this place were usually so confusing.

She held one side of her cerulean skirt up by its hem and wondered if her heartbeat would ever slow down. She feared that if she let her mouth relax from its smile, her lips would start quivering as they had that day, and that this time they’d never stop.

With a light fingertip, she touched a bouquet of gerbera daisies that stood in a thin crystal vase. Then she pirouetted to a painting in vivid acrylics.

“Yours?” she asked CJ, and CJ said, “Yes.”

“Fabulous!” Poppy twittered again, aware that everyone was watching her, as if they’d been suspended in her precarious air.

“Simply fabulous!” she repeated, her timbre a bit higher than she would have liked. She twirled back to CJ. “Now where is the kitchen? Do we have Bloody Marys? I believe I could use one or two.”

Eight

Yolanda was the only one who opted for coffee
instead of a Bloody Mary. Then again, Yolanda hadn’t been there when the gardener was murdered.

Alice meandered around the room, not wanting to witness Poppy’s behavior, but not wanting to look out the window to the garden, where she surely would picture the yellow Police—Do Not Cross tape ribboned through the innocent pink and white blossoms.

She sat on the sofa and stared at the fireplace until a furnace flared up from her feet.

Finally, everyone had a beverage, everyone was seated, and everyone waited for Elinor to hold court.

“So,” Elinor began, “do we have any ideas how we’re going to find out who my blackmailer is?”

Alice cleared her throat. “What about the note? Did it come in the mail?”

“No. It was overnighted. A standard courier service. The sender was a phony name and address somewhere in Manhattan. I’ve already checked that out.” A long fingernail traced the crease on her ivory cotton pants.

“What about the hotel?” Yolanda asked. “Were you at the Lord Winslow with your lover? Is that why your panties were there?”

Alice blanched.

Poppy blinked.

CJ seemed to take a deep breath.

Sometimes Yolanda was a little too outspoken for the ladies of Mount Kasteel.

“Yes,” Elinor finally replied. “I met my lover there Thursday night,” she continued. “We’ve often been careful to meet out of town.”

Out of town?
Alice gulped, even though this was not about her.

“We need to start there,” Yolanda said. “Whoever it was might have been spying on you, maybe waiting to find evidence to hold up for ransom. Your panties were their mother lode.”

They thought, they drank, they bit their lips and played with their hair. Actually, it was Poppy who played with her hair.

“Alice and Poppy,” Yolanda continued, “the two of you should go to the hotel. You can tell the manager that you’re Elinor’s friends. Show them her picture. Say she left something behind and you’ve come to get it.”

“Me?” Poppy asked. “Me?”

“Well, not me,” the hairdresser-slash-nail-tech replied. “No one would believe I’m Elinor’s friend.”

They blanched and blinked and deep-breathed again.

“Why doesn’t Elinor go herself?” Alice continued. “Or have CC go in her place?” She’d meant to say CJ, really she had, but “CC” had slipped out. It had been a tongue-in-cheek way she and Poppy had referred to CJ when they were kids,
CC
meaning “carbon copy,” the besmirched, lesser twin who’d not been quite as grand or as snooty as Elinor. When they were fourteen, snooty had been good.

Yolanda stood up and walked to the fireplace. “If Elinor is being followed, the blackmailer might mistake CJ for her. If he thinks either one of them is snooping, who knows what he’ll do.” She looked at Elinor. “Did he say what his next step will be?”

“The note said to stay where I am, which I suppose means at the country house. I don’t know if I’ll hear more in a day or a week.”

“In the meantime, maybe we can learn something.”

“Oh,” Poppy said, “I don’t know if I can do this.”

“Yes, you can,” Alice said. “You’re stronger than you used to be.”

“I am? That’s right. I am.”

Yolanda ignored them. “You should bring a picture. Preferably one of the three of you: Elinor, Alice, and Poppy. That way, whoever you show the picture to will know that you’re friends.”

“What if the hotel people say, ‘I remember her. But she left nothing behind’?” Alice asked.

“Ask if they’re sure. Ask if someone else might have already picked something up.”

“And if they say yes?”

“Ask what he looks like. Act as if it’s fun, as if he must be another of Elinor’s friends.”

“What if it’s not a he but a she?” That came from Poppy.

“I can’t imagine a woman being this scary,” CJ said.

No one mentioned Poppy’s mother.

Then Elinor asked, “Do you think you can do this? Pretend you’re my friend?”

Alice smiled. If nothing else, this game might be safer than the one she’d been playing. “We
are
your friends, Elinor. You’d do it for us.” Wouldn’t she?

“But what if the person we ask turns out to be the blackmailer?” Poppy asked.

Yolanda shrugged. “Look, I have no idea if this will work. But we can try.”

“Please,” Elinor said. “For the sake of my marriage.”

More sighing and drinking and hair curling followed.

Then Yolanda said, “Do you have a recent picture? Of the three of you?”

Elinor opened her eyes and looked at her sister. “CJ?” she asked with a smile. “Surely you have a camera somewhere in the cottage. Would you be a dear and fetch it?”

Fetch it?

As if she was Luna?

Elinor was in fine form today.

Oh, Poppy, I’m so sorry. I completely forgot.
And
please. For the sake of my marriage.

Puuuhleze, indeed,
CJ thought. If Elinor weren’t her twin, and if this wasn’t CJ’s house, and if CJ didn’t know that all the bs was simply an indication that Elinor was totally terrified, she would have said,
“Good luck”
and left.

As for the others, well, Alice and Poppy should at least have known that when Elinor was involved, nothing turned out to be simple.

CJ went into the kitchen, leaned against the counter, and thought about Mac. Did she really know him anymore? She had turned off her feelings for the sake of the family, for the sake of her sister. Once, she’d actually thought that life could go on unaffected, that she could marry and have other children. Once, she’d thought she could accept that Jonas was not meant to be hers.

Maybe she’d been in need of as much help as Elinor.

Recalling a line about being able to pick your friends but not your relatives, CJ exhaled her frustration and opened the junk drawer. She bypassed a letter opener, a few old pens, a screwdriver, her cell phone charger. At last, she located the camera. Closing the drawer, her glance fell on the Sunday
Times
that sat on the counter where she had dropped it.

As she turned to leave, a front-page photo caught CJ’s eye: A small group of men stood under the canopy at the front door of the New York Lord Winslow.

She halted.

That’s odd,
she thought.
Coincidental.

Her eyes scanned the caption: the men had stayed at the hotel Thursday night after late meetings at the United Nations. Most prominent in the photo was Joseph Remillard, vice president of the United States.

Good grief
, CJ thought. If Elinor had been at the hotel at the same time, she was lucky her lace panties hadn’t been found by the vice president or the Secret Service or any of Mac’s Washington cronies.

With a small laugh, CJ turned back toward the living room. Then her footsteps slowed. Her muscles went slack. A puddle of bile pooled in her throat.

Holy.

Shit.

No
, she thought.
It can’t be
.

Then CJ remembered that Elinor and Mac had had some sort of connection to the VP, which Elinor liked to flaunt with a martini pitcher.

Oh
, CJ thought.
Oh, God.

She went back to the newspaper. Stared at the photo. The New York Lord Winslow. Friday morning.

Her twin-psyche lurched into high gear.

“I can’t tell you everything,”
Elinor had said.
“We’ll just have to leave it at that.”

Nine

Elinor was the first to leave, which meant CJ
didn’t get the chance to ask her in private if she was sleeping with the vice president.

CJ had shuddered through the rest of the visit, during which Poppy had consumed three Bloody Marys while insisting that she had recovered from the incident with the gardener years ago and didn’t even remember his name.

Did they?

Yolanda had been mute. CJ had shaken her head, and Alice had, too, though anyone who had been in the county when it had happened probably knew the name Sam Yates. Sixty-three-year-old World War II veteran. Caught peeping at fifteen-year-old girls. Yuck.

But rather than dredge up that ancient pile of manure, Alice had stood up and announced it was time to leave. CJ could have kissed her, because she had such an awful headache by then.

Besides, there had been nothing left to talk about. The others hadn’t been willing to discuss Elinor in front of CJ, because no matter how strained the twin’s relationship sometimes was, they no doubt knew that family ties were still stronger than theirs.