Goodnight Nobody Page 8

  I tucked my unruly hair, still damp from a shower I'd taken that morning, up into a twist. He must have seen something in me, even if I couldn't see it myself.

  "Vietnamese or Thai?" asked Janie, waving a sheaf of takeout menus. "Senegalese? Laotian? Cuban-Chinese?" She closed her mouth as she caught sight of me in the mirror. "Oh, so it's like that, huh?"

  "Like what?" I asked innocently, even while I was trying to remember where I'd packed my lucky black sweater.

  "Don't play dumb with me, sister," Janie said. "You've got it bad."

  "I don't know what you're talking about," I said. "And Cuban-Chinese sounds great." I slipped past her into the kitchen. We had beer in the refrigerator, six six-packs we were going to give to the movers, plus tips, when they came back with Janie's living room furniture the next day. I took the coldest one out of the back, combed my hair, located my sweater, borrowed Janie's lipstick and mascara and one of her bracelets, and proceeded down the hallway to 4-A. I took a deep breath, licked my lips, and smiled as the door swung open.

  "Hey..." The witty remark I'd been preparing died in my throat as I looked up at the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen. She had russet hair that hung in waves almost to the small of her back, and almond-shaped aquamarine eyes, the kind of cheekbones that looked like they'd been carved, and upturned lips full and soft as pillows.

  "Yes?" she asked politely, as her eyes flicked once, up and down, taking me in with a single pitiless glance and instantly dismissing me: no threat here.

  "I'm sorry, I must have the wrong apartment."

  I looked for a number by the door and got ready to apologize when Evan appeared in the doorway. "Hi, Kate!"

  I thrust the beer out at him. "Hi. Um, I wanted to thank you for, uh, helping us."

  "You didn't have to get us anything," he said.

  "Oh, it's nothing." Don't panic, I thought. Maybe she was his sister. Or just a friend. Or a lesbian, one of those hot makeup- and miniskirt-wearing ones who'd recently been discovered by New York magazine. Or--

  Evan looked at me kindly. With what I hoped wasn't pity on his face. "Kate, this is Michelle," he said, placing his hands on her shoulders, with the look of a man who's just cashed in a winning lottery ticket. "My fiancee."

  "Nice to meet you," I said, and tried to smile. Michelle ignored my efforts.

  "Yum," she drawled, plucking the beer out of my nerveless fingers.

  "Say thank you, Michelle," said Evan.

  "Thank you, Michelle," she recited, and turned on her heel. Evan gave me an apologetic shrug. I could hear music in the background, not Billie or Bessie but something loud and atonal and repetitive, like a CD that was skipping.

  "That was really nice of you." When he smiled, his eyes crinkled in the corners. "So I guess I'll see you around."

  "Sure," I said. "Sure thing."

  "Kate," he called, as I started back down the hall. When I turned around, he was still smiling. "Atlantic City," he whispered. "Don't forget."

  Back in our apartment, the living room was lined with empty boxes, and Janie was hanging her coats in the front closet.

  "So?" she asked.

  "So what? I just brought the guy next door some beer."

  "Is that what the kids are calling it these days?" she asked, hanging a plastic-wrapped full-length shearling coat next to something she'd told me was sheared beaver.

  "Janie, he's just a nice guy!"

  "Umm-hmm," she said, pulling a fluffy white stole out of its plastic bag.

  "And," I sighed, pulling more coats out of Janie's box and hanging them, "he's living with the most beautiful woman in the world. And she's kind of a bitch."

  "Oh, dear." She shook her head. She'd twisted her hair into a bun that she'd anchored with a pair of lacquered chopsticks. "Well, look. Better you find this out now than get your hopes up."

  "My hopes weren't up," I said.

  "Oh, grasshopper," she said, and gave me a hug, almost skewering my eyeball with her chopstick. "What a bad, bad liar you are."

  Nine

  "Like I said, miss, I don't want to question her," Stan Bergeron explained patiently from my driveway the next morning as I made my way downstairs in my bathrobe. "This isn't official. I'm just checking in."

  "Not without a lawyer," said my best friend, standing at my front door with her arms crossed over her chest, a stance that would have been more imposing if she hadn't been wearing pink silk pajamas and giant raccoon-shaped slippers and had my kids peeking out from behind her legs.

  I yawned. It was ten o'clock in the morning, a good four hours past when I normally woke up, but I hadn't been able to sleep until after two in the morning. I'd wanted to call Evan back but couldn't think of an excuse to leave the house without the kids, and there was no way I'd be dialing the former love of my life while under the roof I shared with my current husband. When I finally dozed off, I'd had terrible dreams, nightmares of being lost in a library where all the books had Kitty Cavanaugh's byline and, when I opened them, the blank pages slowly filled with blood. "I'm looking for something a little different," I told the librarian, who was Mrs. Dietl from the Red Wheel Barrow. She tapped her watch face and held out her hands for the books. "Late again," she said.

  I rubbed my eyes and surveyed the situation. Janie appeared to have things well in hand, with a few minor exceptions: the kids were still in their pajamas (judging from their hands and faces, they'd enjoyed a breakfast consisting entirely of syrup), and there was a police cruiser parked in my driveway. "Hey, Stan."

  He nodded at me fearfully as I edged past Janie. "Good morning, Kate. I just came by to give you an update."

  "Um, excuse me? Law-yer? Was one of those syllables not making sense to you?" Janie inquired.

  "It's okay," I told her.

  "It is not," she said. "If you talk to the police, you need a lawyer." She rolled her eyes and turned to Sophie. "Did I watch ten seasons of NYPD Blue for nothing?"

  "No way!" Sophie said. She had Uglydoll under her arm, dressed, I saw, in his police uniform ("Chapter 108: In Which I Join the Force").

  "You don't have to say anything!" Stan called. "You can just nod."

  I nodded. "What's going on, Stan?" I asked. "Did you find out who did it?"

  "No." Then he brightened. "But we found Evan McKenna!"

  My heart leapt like a stupid fish at the sound of his name. "Good!" I managed. "Good for you!"

  "Is he a suspect?" Janie asked hopefully.

  "We won't know until we question him," said Stan. "He was down in Miami."

  "He says," Janie muttered. She raised her voice. "How about the husband?"

  "The husband?" Stan repeated.

  "Is he a suspect?" Janie asked.

  "Nooo..." Stan said, dragging the word out. "No, he's got an alibi. He was in the city all day."

  Janie flipped her hair over her shoulders. "Well, there you go. Sounds like you've eliminated everyone. Maybe the butler did it."

  I glared at her.

  "Has Mr. McKenna been in touch with you?" Stan asked.

  I started to answer, caught Janie's finger-across-the-throat gesture, and shook my head instead. Stan stared at me. "Let us know if you hear from him," he said, and wandered back down the driveway to his patrol car. I watched him as he backed out over my hydrangeas.

  "Well!" Janie said. "If that's Connecticut law enforcement at its finest, might I suggest the name of a few Realtors?"

  We sent the kids upstairs to get dressed. Back in the kitchen, I started in on the sinkful of dishes while Janie helped herself to coffee.

  "So, Sherlock," Janie said. "What next?"

  I shrugged as well as I could with my hands full of silverware.

  "Call Evan back, I guess."

  "In my presence, and not from your house," Janie said. "We'll find a nice quiet pay phone somewhere else."

  "Why a pay phone?"

  "So after they arrest him there's no record of you consorting with criminals."

  "And why do you want to be
there?"

  She rolled her eyes. "Hello! I have to be there so you don't pledge your undying love to him--which, if you'll remember, didn't work out very well the last time--and run away and ditch me with the rug rats."

  "Don't pretend you don't secretly dig them," I said, even as the memory of the last time I'd pledged my love to Evan McKenna twisted in my heart like a straightened paper clip. I bent down to put the silverware in the dishwasher while Janie flipped through the newspaper.

  "Who were Kitty's friends in town?" she asked.

  I scrubbed a frying pan and thought about it. I knew who Kitty hung around with, but I wasn't sure they were really friends. I'd never heard them talk about the things that friends would talk about: their marriages, their parents, their former lives, preparenthood. In fact, most of their conversations seemed to revolve around scintillating topics such as whether the organic milk they sold at the local convenience store was really organic.

  "I don't know," I said slowly.

  "You don't know who her friends were?"

  "I don't know if she really had any. Maybe everyone else was afraid of her," I said. "Lord knows I was." I squirted soap into the dishwasher. "I should probably talk to the sitter," I said. "If she worked, she had to have a sitter. Someone who was in her house. Someone who saw her, and her husband, and her kids."

  "Sitter. Excellent." Janie tossed me the phone, and I called Sukie Sutherland, who seemed to know everything, to ask if she knew the sitter's name.

  "Lisa DeAngelis," Sukie said, and rattled off home and cell phone numbers. "Why?"

  "Well..." I hadn't considered that Sukie would want to know why I was trying to get in touch with Kitty's sitter.

  Luckily, she gave a cool little laugh. "Don't be ashamed. You're only the third person who's called me to ask for her number. Listen, a good sitter's hard to find."

  I saw the lifeline, and grabbed it. "Do you think she's got any time left? I'm desperate for a little help."

  "If I were you, I wouldn't wait too long to call."

  "Great. Thanks. I'll see you at the park!"

  "See you there," Sukie said, and hung up.

  "Good job," Janie said, nodding her approval from behind the Business section. "Call her up. See if she's free. I'll hang out with the kids."

  "Don't you have to go back to the city? And work?"

  She waved the concept away as though it were a fly. "I'm supposed to write a trend piece. Gray is the new black, black is the new pink, belly buttons are the new nipples." She drummed her fingernails on the table. "Hmm...Ass cleavage is the new cleavage?"

  "Works for me," I said. I closed the dishwasher, hit the buttons for heavy wash, and wiped my hands on my bathrobe.

  "Excellent. Only, Kate? No offense, but you might want to let me help you pick out an outfit before you go."

  Ten

  In most other towns in America, the opening of a chain coffee shop isn't that big a deal. When Starbucks wanted to come to Upchurch, it occasioned no fewer than three town meetings that packed the town hall's auditorium, a month's worth of outraged letters to the editor of the Upchurch Gazette decrying the "degradation of our downtown," and a demonstration on Main Street, where the protestors held placards with red slashes through mugs beneath the words No Corporate Coffee. Evidently, they were perfectly satisfied with Tea and Sympathy, where you could buy lapsang souchong for four dollars a cup, crumbly scones, and Danish that could have doubled as doorstops.

  The town selectmen finally decided that Starbucks could open, but it couldn't have a sign out front, because a sign would compromise the quaint character of Main Street. Thus, the Secret Starbucks, on the corner of Maple and Main, with nothing but the smell of roasting House Blend to give it away. It was like a speakeasy, in need of only a password to get you through the unmarked glass and metal door.

  I sidled inside, dressed in Janie's suede stiletto boots and light blue cashmere sweater--a size medium, which I couldn't have comfortably fit into even before I'd breast-fed three babies--and a clean pair of cargo pants that had been modified to show the small of my back and about two inches of my butt crack ("I need to test my theory!" Janie had said. I'd nodded my consent, then snuck into the bathroom to change my underwear, so that now the pants revealed the small of my back and two inches of faded grayish Hanes Her Way briefs.)

  Janie had trailed my minivan in her Porsche. We'd found three broken pay phones before locating one that worked, but Evan's phone just rang and rang before voice mail picked up and Janie cut the connection before I'd said a word. "No leaving incriminating messages," she said. She'd gotten behind the wheel of the van to take the kids back home, tossed me the keys to her car, and told me to call her when I was done interrogating the sitter.

  Once I'd placed my order, I scanned the room looking for--I'll admit it--a busty blonde, because that was the image the words "twenty-four-year-old babysitter" had conjured: every suburban mommy's nightmare; every suburban daddy's happy dream.

  Under different circumstances, Lisa DeAngelis, with her big blue eyes and buttercup blond hair, might have fit the bill. But when she gave me a listless wave from her table in the corner, she wasn't looking like anyone would be begging her to pose in lingerie any time soon.

  "Kate?" she asked tonelessly.

  "Hi," I said, and wobbled over to her table in Janie's boots. "Can I get you anything?"

  Lisa pointed at a plastic cup in front of her that seemed to be filled primarily with whipped cream. Her eyes looked glazed, whether from sleeplessness or something chemical, I couldn't tell. Her hair was pulled back in a listless ponytail at the nape of her neck. A canker sore bloomed in the corner of her mouth; a pimple was flourishing in the center of her forehead; and the tiny gold stud in her left nostril was surrounded by puffy, infected-looking red flesh. She might have had a drop-dead figure, but since she wore baggy gray sweatpants and an oatmeal-colored sweater, it was impossible to tell.

  "Thanks for meeting with me," I said. She shrugged.

  "I've got some free time now?" she said. She had the habit remembered from my own younger days of turning every statement into a question. "Now that..." She sighed and stared into her coffee cup. I was grateful that she wasn't staring at me, the way the three baristas and the six other patrons all seemed to be. The sweater and the boots, I thought sadly, had been a mistake.

  "Well, if you're looking for kids, I've got 'em!" Oy. "There's Sophie, my four-year-old--well, she's four going on forty--and my twins, Sam and Jack, are three..." I shut my mouth as a tear made its way slowly down Lisa's check. "Are you okay?"

  I handed her a napkin. She wiped her eyes, then blew her nose. I slid more napkins across the table.

  Lisa blinked, wiped her cheeks, then tilted her head back and fanned at her lashes. "I still can't believe it?" she said.

  Just the opening I'd been waiting for. "It is unbelievable," I murmured.

  She spun her cup in a circle. "She was nice, you know?" she said. "She'd talk to me. And there was never any Oh, could you please unload the dishwasher? or Oh, if the kids nap, can you fold some clothes? They had digital cable, and TiVo, and actual ice cream in the freezer. Ice cream just for me," she said. "The girls had that sugar-free whole fruit stuff."

  It figured. I could remember Kitty on the playground peeling fresh clementines for her kids. When mine had asked for a snack, I'd been reduced to offering them each a breath mint.

  "I should have..."--Lisa paused and wiped her eyes--"appreciated her more, you know?"

  "How long had you known her?"

  "Three years?" she sniffled. "Since the girls were in nursery school? I'd do three days a week, Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, from one to six thirty. When she went to the city, she'd take the one twenty-two, and she'd be home by six, almost always, and she'd always call when she was going to be late."

  "How often did she go to New York?"

  Lisa twirled her cup around the table some more. "Depends. Sometimes a lot. And sometimes she'd just be home. She had a
computer in the bedroom. She'd work there." I looked down at her hands and saw that her fingernails were bitten to the quick, her cuticles were ragged and scabbed.

  "Do you know what she was doing in the city?"

  Lisa shook her head. "She never told me. I never asked."

  Never told. Never asked. Very interesting. According to Laura Lynn Baird, Kitty had worked from home. They'd collaborated by phone and by email--the perfect, flexible part-time gig for a stay-at-home mother who'd told me she never left her kids. So if Kitty wasn't going into the city to work, what was she doing there? I had an idea. A guess, at least.

  "Did she dress like she was going to work or going to..." Meet up with a mystery man in a midtown hotel for hours of illicit passion and overpriced liquor from the minibar? "Do something else?" I concluded.

  "I don't know," Lisa said, after she'd paused for a long look at my underwear-baring ensemble. "She just wore clothes. Skirts and sweaters. Normal things."

  Ah, yes. Normal things. I remembered them well. "I'll bet you've got intuition," I said, using one of Janie's techniques: when in doubt, flatter. "Anyone who's good with kids--and I've heard great things about you--you must have kind of a sense about people."

  Lisa shrugged, but I could see from the faint flush in her cheeks that she was pleased. Or maybe not. Maybe she was just having some kind of allergic reaction to underwear.

  "What was your sense of Kitty?" I asked. "Was she happy, or anxious, or bored? Do you think she could have been..." I paused, gathering myself. "I don't know. Maybe having an affair?"

  Lisa's flush deepened. "I don't know," she said. "I really have no idea." She picked at the cuticle on her left thumb until she'd drawn a bead of blood. "How many hours a week are you looking for?" she asked.

  It took me a minute to remember why I'd ostensibly asked her out for coffee. "Oh, um...ten? Fifteen, maybe? It would be really basic. You'd just have to watch the kids. You wouldn't have to do any housework or even answer the phone." I paused to sip my drink and regroup before asking, as casually as I could, "Did you ever answer Kitty's phone?" Good one, Kate, I thought. Subtle. Like a fart in an elevator.