Deadly Rich

ONE

SOMETHING WAS WRONG. LEIGH Baker kept hearing voices. The goose-down pillows in their Porthault cases that had begun the evening under her head were now lying on top of her, like a barricade, and she had to push them aside to see.

The Levolors were angled against whatever light the sky had to offer, but her time sense told her it was night. She stared a long moment at the light that beaded the perfume bottles and silver-backed brushes on the dressing table. Her eye followed the light to its source, the TV screen.

She recognized the man who did the weather wrap-up on Fox Five. The remote was lying on the little painted papier-mâché table beside her bed, on top of Vogue and Vanity Fair. She reached for it. Her fingertips touched the highball glass. An unthinking reflex brought the glass to her lips.

Slivered ghosts of ice cubes slid beneath her nose. The liquid had a brownish color and it smelled like Johnnie Walker and diet Pepsi. It flowed over her tongue without any flavor. To avoid spilling she drained the glass before setting it back down.

She patted her pillows into a fresh headrest behind her. She picked up the remote and pressed the Off button. The image on the TV screen collapsed into a white lozenge that sputtered and decayed into darkness.

She laid her head back and closed her eyes.

Even with the TV off she still heard those voices and she could not drop off to the state where she wanted to be, that oceanic feeling of floating nothingness.

At the sound of a latch clicking she opened her eyes again.

Light floated in from the living room, and a teenage girl stood silhouetted and slim in the doorframe. Taking fast, shallow breaths, Leigh’s daughter came into the bedroom with gingerly steps, as though she were walking on someone else’s legs.

Leigh pushed herself to sitting. What is it? Nita, what’s wrong?

The girl’s face was a blank surface. She worked her throat, worked her jaw, trying to force words out. Nothing in her expression changed, but suddenly her eyes looked as if they were full of icicles and a terrible little cry came out of her. What does it mean?

What does what mean, darling?

Like a comet flicking its tail, Nita turned and tore out of the bedroom and across the darkened living room, through the French window and out onto the terrace.

Leigh touched one foot down onto the floor and then the other. She tested her standing muscles. They seemed to work, though she listed a little to the left and she knew right away that she needed another drink.

Now she tested her walking muscles. They were slow to answer her head’s commands, but they took her to the bedroom door.

And then Nita’s voice: No!

It seemed to Leigh that something flew across the terrace, low and fluttering. She blinked and it took her mind a moment to process the image. A white dress. White arms. White legs. Nita.

For a moment light and shadow alternated like flashes of a strobe. And then silence pooled. Too much silence. It was as though a magician had waved a wand and made the white rabbit disappear. There was no white dress. No white arms. No white legs. No Nita.

Nita, Leigh whispered. Where are you?

A knot twisted inside her stomach. She closed her eyes, fighting back nausea. I will not vomit, she told herself.

When the spasm passed, she opened her eyes. Through the open French window moonlight spilled down onto the terrace in a wash of white stillness. Relief took her. There was no one there.

I was imagining it.

She moved into the living room.

I need a drink.

She turned on a light. The room was done in soft grays and deep greens—peaceful colors. Three dozen red roses with a note from her director had been placed in a tall crystal vase near the bar. She had the impression that the scene was being projected onto a 360-degree wraparound screen.

At that moment a wave of Nita’s perfume floated past her.

She didn’t move. She stayed exactly where she was, sniffing, listening.

Nita?

The silence and that faint trail of sweetness drew her toward the open French window. Her body had to fight a path through a wall of medication. Everything seemed twisted around, wrong. She stepped onto the terrace.

It took her eyes a moment to adjust to the moonlight.

Potted plants and dainty tables and chairs came into focus. She caught the trail of perfume again, and it drew her across the terrace to the low wall.

She stood there, looking out. She saw things with eerie, drugged precision. The town-house facades across the garden all glowed with the dead light of the moon.

A breeze ruffled the little boxwood bushes that the gardener had spaced along the low section of the wall. She saw that several of the branches had been freshly snapped off.

She moved a toppled chair aside. She stood a long moment staring over the waist-high wall. She slowly swung her gaze down to the garden five stories below. It was like staring down into a pool from a high diving board. The trees and the parallel dark rows of green hedge all seemed to be rippling on dark water.

A body lay directly below, splayed out across the flagstone path. White dress. White arms. White legs.

Leigh doubled forward. Disbelief physically took her. A sickening whoosh of bile and booze and half-digested diet Pepsi flooded her mouth. She could feel vomit rushing up and out of her.

Some instinctive residual sense of decorum told her to get to the john. She turned and shoved a garden chair out of the way and ran stumbling and puking back toward the living room.

A young man stood half crouched against the wall. She collided with him and stared with a hand over her mouth.

He sprang up to his full height, well over six feet, and there was something about his panicky eyes that made her think she might have to fight him.

I didn’t mean to, he whimpered.

No, I know you didn’t. Leigh kept her voice soft, nonconfrontational. She edged past him toward the open French window.

He made no move to stop her.

She darted into the living room and in the same movement swung the French window shut behind her. Her heart was banging in her chest. She fumbled her hand around the key and twisted it, and then she ran to the phone and snatched up the receiver and punched 911.

SIX WEEKS BEFORE THE TRIAL the woman who was prosecuting the case phoned Leigh and said the defense had unearthed new evidence. Could you be in my office tomorrow morning at ten?

Leigh wore her black-on-black Chanel. In the limo, riding to the meeting, she took twenty milligrams of prescribed Valium and twenty of unprescribed Dexedrine that her husband had left on his side of the bathroom cabinet.

At ten after ten, on the fourth floor of the State Supreme Court Building, the prosecutor introduced her to a small, stocky gray-haired woman wearing a plain black cotton dress. Miss Baker, I’d like you to meet Xenia Delancey—the mother of the accused.

Leigh did not take the hand that Xenia Delancey offered.

Miss Baker, Xenia Delancey said, I’m a mother too.

We have nothing to say to each other, Leigh said.

On the contrary. The defense attorney placed a small leather-bound book on the conference table. He invited Leigh to read it.

The book, Leigh discovered, was a diary. She opened it. Most of the pages were blank. Where there was writing she recognized it as Nita’s. The forty or so hand-written pages covered the last forty days of her daughter’s life. Days of drugs and sex and recklessness.

This is a forgery, Leigh said. Nita never did these things.

Miss Baker, I understand that you loved your daughter. The prosecutor spoke with an unashamed Queens Irish accent. Words sounded tough in her mouth. "I understand that the diary comes as a shock to you. But I’ve prosecuted six date-kill cases, and I can tell you from trial experience, young girls are sexual beings and they often do confide their sexual activities to a secret diary."

Maybe, but this diary is a fake.

The jury will have to decide that, the defense lawyer said.

"They’re putting this forgery into evidence? Leigh said. They’re allowed to do that?"

Yes, they’re allowed to do that. The prosecutor drew in a long breath and let it out in a deeply troubled sigh. But Mrs. Delancey has an offer to make.

You tell the state to accept a lesser plea, Xenia Delancey said. I’ll tell my boy’s lawyer not to use this diary.

What kind of lesser plea? Leigh said.

Negligent manslaughter, the defense attorney said.

At best, the prosecutor said, the state can make a case for involuntary manslaughter.

It was murder. Leigh heard herself speak before she’d even realized what she was going to say. It was a flat statement of fact, with no emotion in it whatsoever. I saw him push her.

The prosecutor whirled. Her glasses flew off her nose, and her blond hair spun out like a tossed skirt. After a moment she picked her glasses up from the floor and put them back on.

The muscles in the defense attorney’s jaw worked slowly. Miss Baker didn’t depose that she saw her daughter killed.

I’m deposing it now, Leigh said.

In other words, the defense attorney said, you’ve been suppressing evidence for the better part of a year?

I was willing to forgive the man my daughter loved—because I believed he hadn’t intended to kill her. Leigh could feel the defense attorney’s gaze on her, dubious, puzzled, probing for truth and for falsity. "But that diary, that forgery, is an act of pure malicious calculation. I have no intention of forgiving now."

She’s lying, Xenia Delancey said.

Mr. Lawrence, the prosecutor said, would you and Mrs. Delancey be good enough to wait in the hallway for a moment?

The defense attorney grumbled and stood and motioned Xenia Delancey to come with him.

Leigh and the prosecutor sat alone at the cigarette-scarred conference table. The prosecutor’s glance nailed Leigh through half-tinted lenses. "What did you see exactly?"

I wish I’d had time to prepare this, Leigh thought. And then she remembered what Stella Adler used to say in acting class: Who has time for sense memory? Improvise!

For the next two minutes Leigh improvised.

You realize, the prosecutor said, if you change your testimony, the defense will accuse you of lying. They’ll attack you, not just on the stand but in the media.

I realize that.

The attacks will be personal, they’ll be savage, they’ll reflect on your character, your habits, your morals, your marriages, your movies, your lovers, and, above all, on your use of medications, mood changers, and liquor.

Leigh understood that the prosecutor had sized her up and was strongly advising her to reconsider. But she had no intention of reconsidering. She had given her daughter very little in life, and she was determined that Nita would at least receive justice in death. I realize all of that.

The prosecutor held up the leather-bound book. Whether this diary is a forgery or not, the defense will use it to attack and destroy your daughter. They’ll use it to create sympathy for Jim Delancey. He stands a good chance of going free. Are you willing to take that chance?

Leigh nodded. I’m willing. Absolutely.

The prosecutor stood motionless, staring at her. Miss Baker, I hope you’ll excuse my frankness, but in all honesty I have to tell you something.

Christ, Leigh wondered, have I gone too far?

Thanks to your courage I believe we have a chance of nailing Delancey. The prosecutor shook Leigh’s hand. Then she crossed swiftly to the door and flung it open and leaned triumphantly into the corridor. Mr. Lawrence, Mrs. Delancey, would you come back, please? We’re not taking the plea.

Xenia Delancey looked at Leigh with her mouth closed so tightly that her lips made a line like a fresh scar. You’re making a stupid mistake, she said. The world is going to know what your daughter was.

And maybe, Leigh said, they’ll learn what your son is.

SIX WEEKS LATER Leigh Baker entered a packed, hushed courtroom and crossed in front of the jury to take the stand.

She had fortified herself today with thirty milligrams of Valium and thirty of Dexedrine, fifty percent more than her usual morning dose. She had washed the medicine down with a two-ounce shot glass of vodka.

She had never, despite fourteen years as a performing actress, felt less sure of the effect she was about to make. She was wearing a navy Galanos with Barbara Bush pearls. Her mouth was dry, her skin on fire, her heart thumping so hard she couldn’t hear anything else, and the light in the courtroom seemed to dip in rhythm to each heartbeat that rocked her.

Dear God, she prayed soundlessly, just get me through this and I swear I’ll never break another contract, I’ll never sleep with another man I’m not married to, I’ll never take another drink or drug.

How many abortions did you procure for your daughter? the defense attorney asked.

Leigh jumped to her feet. That’s a lie.

The judge directed her to answer the question.

Leigh sat. Nita never had an abortion.

Did you always give your daughter cocaine for Christmas?

Leigh looked out at the courtroom. From the front row of the spectators’ section, Xenia Delancey watched her with slit-eyed hatred.

You’re lying again, Leigh said.

The judge directed her to answer the question.

Nita didn’t take drugs.

How many lovers did you share with your daughter?

You’re lying and you’ve lied from the start of this trial.

Objection.

Every word you’ve said, every question you’ve asked, every glance and shrug you’ve directed at the jury has been an attempt to defame my daughter.

Objection.

Sustained. Witness will limit her response to the question.

Leigh had a panicky sense that the walls of the courtroom were slanting in on her.

How many lovers, the court stenographer read from the trial record, did you share with your daughter?

There’s got to be a way to answer this, she thought.

My daughter and I loved many people in common. We never shared a lover. The only lover Nita ever had is the man who took her virginity, and he’s on trial here today.

Objection.

Jury will disregard the witness’s response.

But they didn’t disregard it. Thirty-two days after the trial began, following seven hours’ deliberation, the jury of seven men and five women found James Delancey guilty as charged.

We did it, toots! Leigh’s husband sang out. They celebrated the verdict by sending the chauffeur to score eight grams of coke and four boxes of David’s macadamia chocolate chip cookies.

Four days after the verdict, at three-thirty in the afternoon, California time, two bodyguards didn’t exactly walk her and didn’t exactly carry her but somehow managed to stand her up in front of the crisp, sober, smiling redheaded nurse at the admissions desk. Fortified with what she swore to God would be her last eight vodkas ever, Leigh Baker picked up a squirming pen and signed herself into the Betty Ford Clinic.

TWO

Tuesday, May 7

"THE KING WENT INTO the garden the next morning, and he saw …" Leigh lowered the picture book.

On the floor four feet from her the child was playing with his battery-operated toy xylophone. Each time a key lit up he pressed it, and a note sounded. The result after he had pressed enough lit-up keys was a tune. Until six months ago the xylophone had known a variety of tunes, but something had happened to the wiring and the only tune it seemed to know nowadays was The Happy Farmer.

For the last half hour the child had shown no awareness at all of Leigh or the fairy tale, but he seemed to realize she’d stopped reading. He turned his head and at last she had his attention.

Can you guess what the king saw? Leigh said.

The child gazed up at her, his hair spilling out around his head like a frazzled black helmet.

Do you think the king saw the blackbird?

The child screwed up his face.

Do you think the king saw the gazelle?

The child was thoughtful.

Then what did the king see? I bet you already know.

The child shook his head.

Yes, you do know, Leigh said. That’s why you’re smiling.

I’m not smiling, the child said.

Leigh’s heart gave a jump inside her chest. He’d said an entire sentence. He hadn’t said an entire sentence for how long now—almost two weeks. "Oh, yes, you are smiling. I can see the smile right there." She reached out and touched the corner of his mouth.

He burst into giggles.

She opened the picture book again. "The king went into the garden the next morning, and he saw that the snow had vanished and all the queen’s— She peeked around the edge of the book. And all the queen’s what?"

Roses! the child shouted.

Leigh stretched the moment. She peered into the book with a baffled look, then back at the child with a disappointed look, then back at the book. You’re right!

Something skimmed across the child’s face, and he opened his mouth and let out a high, wild, rippling laugh.

"All the queen’s roses were in bloom, Leigh read. And the kingdom rejoiced, for the spell of the evil wizard had at last been broken."

Now the child was watching her closely. He had the look of a solemn deer.

He was six years old. Nothing but life had been given to him: he had had to struggle for every ounce he possessed of humanness. His name was Happy, and Leigh was as proud of her association with this child as she had been of any friendship in her life.

"The king said to the prince, ‘You have vanquished the wizard, and you shall have your reward. Whatever you wish I shall grant you.’ The prince said, ‘I wish the hand of your daughter the princess in marriage.’"

Leigh felt morally inferior to Happy. He existed like a tree or a rock or a flower, without troubling the universe. She felt he had a great deal to teach her.

"The king blessed the royal pair, and decreed seven days of celebration. At the end of seven days the prince married the princess. And … Leigh closed the picture book. And can you guess what happened after that?"

Happy shook his head.

Oh, yes, you can. The prince and the princess lived …

Happily ever after!

You’re right!

Happy giggled and began slapping his fists on the xylophone.

The front door slammed. A moment later Happy’s father strode into the living room.

Happy and I just finished a story, Leigh said.

Good. Ruddy-faced and military with his bristling crew cut, Luddie bent down and hugged the boy.

Happy stopped moving. Stopped laughing. Completely stopped.

Why is he always so quiet around his father? Leigh wondered. Why does he just click off when Luddie comes into the room?

Coffee? Luddie offered.

She looked at her watch. Sure. I have a little time.

She went into the kitchen and helped Luddie load up the coffee maker.

How’s Waldo? Luddie said.

Leigh shrugged. Waldo Carnegie was the man she’d been living with since her detox, and Luddie had an annoying habit of saying she’d exchanged one dependency for another. Waldo’s okay.

You should leave him, Luddie said. Really. What do you get from him?

Leigh sighed. Every now and then Luddie got on this refrain, and she hated it.

Money? he said. You’re working again. You don’t need money. Companionship? The only time you two even have dinner together is when he’s giving himself a birthday party and inviting half the planetary media. Do you two even sleep together?

Come on, Waldo is a hardworking, decent human being.

Okay, in minuscule ways, he’s a mensch.

She followed Luddie back into the living room. They dropped onto the canvas-covered sofa.

Why don’t you just admit you don’t like my friends? Leigh said finally.

Luddie shrugged. It’s not that I dislike them. I’m only asking why you have to have these particular friends? For instance, why these two gals you’re having lunch with tomorrow? Why if you can’t stand them do you agree to meet them?

Because I grew up with them. They’re part of me.

Happy tapped out three notes on his xylophone. The sounds hovered in the air like dust motes.

They aren’t necessary to you, Luddie said. You’ve always got the option of detaching. If they live in burning houses, it doesn’t mean you have to go up in flames with them.

Why are you always tearing my world down, Luddie?

What do you want me to do—ask for your autograph? Get it through your head that no one’s going to love you till you learn to give yourself a little unconditional love.

"What the hell is unconditional love?" she said.

What do you think I give you?

Luddie, I’m not you. I haven’t got it to give.

Bullshit. What did you just give my son? What do you give him two times a week?

I play with him.

Luddie fixed her with the manic, electrifying blue of his eyes, That is as hands-on and unconditional as love can get. You’re here for him when he needs you.

So are a lot of other people. I’m just a couple of hours a week, Tuesdays and Fridays.

Luddie shook his head and sat there for a long, silent moment appraising her. Not only would I not lift a finger to help you when you sell yourself short like that but I wouldn’t lift a leg to piss on you.

You put it so agreeably, Luddie.

You make choices in life every goddamned minute you breathe. Not making a choice is still choosing. It’s a loser’s choice, but it’s a choice. Recognize it. You chose to be a drunk, and you chose to stop being a drunk. You chose to enter AA, and the latest I heard, you choose to stay in AA. You chose me to be your AA sponsor, and you can tell me to go to hell anytime you want. You chose to live with a self-important billionaire eunuch, and God knows why, you choose to keep doing it. You chose to have lunch tomorrow with a political fanatic and a drunk, and you can still pick up the phone and cancel.

It’s only twice a year—and we’re friends.

"And you have a choice, so don’t come whining to me that you’re trapped. You don’t have to sit there for two hours. You can take those bitches shopping."

She drew in a deep breath and pulled her voice way, way down. There’s a new boutique at Marsh and Bonner’s, and I hear the designer’s great. I had them pencil us in for a private showing at two-thirty. And please don’t call my friends bitches.

Cut lunch short. Luddie tossed her a lopsided, cynical grin. Get to Marsh and Bonner’s at one-thirty. Say you made a mistake.

I thought you wanted me to be honest.

"Then get to Marsh and Bonner’s at one-thirty and don’t say you made a mistake. Just get your ass out of that restaurant before your two pals have you drinking again."

THREE

Wednesday, May 8

HI, KIDS, LEIGH SAID with her best reunion smile.

Hi, toots, Oona said. What’s the magic word?

Leigh bent down and exchanged the ritual lunchtime kiss with each of her schoolchums, lips barely brushing makeup. A waiter pulled out a chair for her and she sat. Have you two said anything interesting yet?

Waiting for you before we bother. Tori, with her small freckle-splashed nose and dimpled cheeks, had a face that would have seemed impishly pretty if she hadn’t countered the effect with enormous, rimless aviator glasses. The glasses made her look intelligent.

Leigh had never understood why Tori needed to look intelligent. Tori had been Phi Beta Kappa at Smith, and surely being intelligent was enough.

Would you care for something to drink? the waiter asked.

Leigh took the linen napkin from the wineglass and spread it on her lap. She saw that Oona was working on a split of Piper and then she saw a split already up-ended in the wine bucket and she realized this was not Oona’s first.

Tori was drinking a Kir.

Just some diet Pepsi for me. Leigh’s hand went to the tiny platinum hummingbird that she had pinned to the lapel of her ecru silk jacket. She drew an instant’s security from its touch. Encrusted with emerald and ruby chips no larger than grains of demerara sugar, it exactly matched the brooches that Oona and Tori were wearing.

They had made presents to one another of the three hummingbirds when they were students at Smith. They wore the brooches only when they were alone together—which had come to mean at these twice-yearly lunches, when they did their best to pretend the last fifteen years hadn’t changed a thing and they loved one another just as much now as they had then.

Ugh, Oona said. "How can you drink diet anything?"

Oona had been a beautiful young woman in college, in the blond way of the time, and usually Leigh saw her with the eye of memory. But today, in the noon light pouring in through the window onto the best table in Archibald’s, memory didn’t have a chance. Oona looked like an artifact—her face powdered white as rice paper, the makeup heavy as ink on a Chinese scroll. She was like a clumsy tracing of a beautiful picture.

We were talking about Ronald Ballantine, Oona said.

Never heard of Ronald Ballantine, Leigh said.

The Wall Street lawyer. Oona nodded toward another table. Right over there.

Leigh glanced toward the corner table. Still haven’t heard of him.

"He’s on the cover of New York this week," Oona said.

"And he’ll be the lead article in Vanity Fair next month," Tori said.

I see overnight success is still a growth industry in this town, Leigh said.

Until last night, Oona said, Ronnie was the guy everyone wanted. Men wanted him for litigations, women wanted him for dinner parties; today no one wants him, except the SEC—for fraud. That woman he’s having lunch with is Dorcas Stockelberg. She’s a major stockholder in Exxon, and she’s trying to leverage a takeover of Saks.

Despite herself Leigh was taken by something guileless in Oona’s open love of scuttlebutt.

Tori, on the other hand, clearly was not. That’s only a rumor, she said.

There’s more than rumor to the rumor, Oona said. Look who just joined them.

An extremely tall man in a dark blue Ralph Lauren suit and a towering brown toupee had joined the corner table. Leigh recognized Stanley Siff, the Park Avenue South-based conglomerateur whose takeover schemes had plunged three New York department stores and two national airlines into liquidation. His wife, tall and dark and stagily glamorous in a borderline anorectic way, was sitting down beside him. Under her maiden name, Gloria Spahn, she designed dresses. Leigh estimated that a dozen of them were being worn in this very room at this very moment.

Why’s Stanley involved? Leigh said.

The buzz is, Oona said, Saks refused to carry Gloria’s evening dresses.

That man has destroyed retailing in this city, Tori said.

Oh, come on, Oona said. He happens to be damned good at what he does, and he gets a kick out of it.

That’s still no excuse for doing it, Tori said,

I couldn’t disagree more, Oona said. We’re all in a race with the Reaper, so there’s no sense wasting time. You’ve got to pick two or three things you really like to do, and then do five of them.

Tori heaved a short sigh filled with resignation. Her eyes flicked up at Leigh.

Waiter! Oona snapped her fingers.

Their waiter approached the table. Yes, ma’am?

This dip is rancid, Oona said.

Leigh had not seen Oona so much as taste the dip. It came in a hand-painted little Provencal terra-cotta pot and there did not appear to be even a ripple disturbing its smooth surface.

You know we flavor it with Pernod, the waiter said.

"Young man, I’ve been coming to this restaurant since it opened—of course I know you flavor the dip with Pernod. The Pernod is not the problem, the rancid crème fraîche is the problem. Please take this dip back to the kitchen and bring us a fresh bowl."

The waiter took the pot of dip and gave a slight bow of the head.

Really, Oona said, this city is getting impossible.

Leigh was thinking, sadly, how alcohol could twist a person, how it had twisted her once upon a time, and how it was twisting Oona now. For almost two years something inside Oona seemed to have been losing its resilience, like a spring stretched too far: little things had begun getting on her nerves, she had begun taking them as personal affronts—and now she had begun imagining affronts as well.

You have to fight for everything in this town, Oona was saying. Just the other day I was at Bergdorf’s and— The flow of her words broke off. She was staring across the room. Her eyes were wide and her face had a stunned look. "I don’t believe it. Oh, my God, I do not believe this!"

What’s that, darling? Tori said.

He’s back there in the kitchen slicing endive.

Who’s back where?

What’s his name—you remember—Jim Delancey.

Leigh felt a queasy sense of unreality. She realized her hands were cold and at the same time beginning to perspire.

The smile had dropped off Tori’s face. Oona—please.

"Don’t Oona, please me—I’m talking about the man who killed Nita."

We know who Jim Delancey is, Leigh said quietly.

Well, he’s in that kitchen tossing salads.

That’s not possible, Tori said.

Just look through that door the next time it swings open. He’s standing there in plain view.

Leigh turned her gaze by slow degrees. The room with its carved mahogany bar and close-packed tables seemed to narrow, pulsing with each beat of her heart. Now she could see the kitchen door.

The noise of a siren howled down the street outside.

The door swung open and their waiter stepped through. Behind him Leigh could see a Korean and a black man in chef’s hats, mincing vegetables at a butcher-block counter.

She let her breath out. Of all possible delusions, she wondered, why had Oona had to imagine Nita’s killer in the kitchen?

The waiter set a fresh pot of Pernod dip on their table.

I will not eat this food. The sound of Oona’s voice carried through the entire room. Get the manager over here.

Leigh realized it was going to get worse. She lowered her eyes. She felt shrunken.

There was a silence behind her head. The other patrons in the restaurant had stopped talking. She could feel them with her skin, sitting there utterly quiet, not speaking, not clinking a fork.

A man in a dark tailored suit came rapidly across the room. "Bonjour, mesdames, how may I help you?"

Are you the manager? Oona said. I’ve never seen you here before.

The manager is not here today, ma’am. I’m the assistant manager. Could I help you?

A tilt came into Oona’s jaw and her face tightened. Yes, you could. What is your name?

My name is Matthieu.

Oona foraged in her Gucci purse and pulled out an expired Percodan prescription and began writing on the back of it. All right, Matthieu. First of all you could explain to me what a convicted murderer is doing in your kitchen slicing endive.

I’m sorry, ma’am, but there must be some mistake.

There sure is and I’m not the one making it.

Oona. Please. Tori gathered up her purse. We have to go.

I’m not through, Oona said.

There isn’t time, Leigh said. We have an appointment at Marsh and Bonner’s.

Leigh handed Oona her jacket. Come on, darling.

Oona waved her prescription at the assistant manager’s face like a straight-edged razor. Get rid of him, she warned, or I will personally see to it that this restaurant is killed in the columns.

Out on the sidewalk Oona looked up at the sky. She seemed genuinely surprised to see the sun peeking through scudding clouds. She dipped a heavily braceleted arm into her bag and dragged out a pair of sunglasses. She spent much too long a moment getting them to stay on her nose. Tori hailed a cab and Leigh helped Oona into the rear seat.

Where to, ladies? the driver said.

Marsh and Bonner’s, Leigh said. Fifty-seventh and Fifth.

The cab pulled into traffic.

Leigh patted Oona’s hand. You’ll be calm, won’t you, darling?

INSIDE MARSH AND BONNER’S with its three-story atrium, the air was cool and pleasantly perfumed. Well-dressed, well-mannered customers strolled the aisles, pausing to discuss scarves or cosmetics or gloves with well-dressed, well-mannered salespeople. A subdued murmur of civilized voices flowed across the gleaming display cases.

Leigh and Tori guided Oona to the elevator.

I swear, Oona said, when you have murderers slicing radicchio at Archibald’s, you know these are the plague years.

Mezzanine, the elevator operator said.

What’s happening in this town? Oona said. Who’s minding the store? The PLO? Bishop Tutu? Somebody’s got to care!

Right. Tori glanced at Leigh.

Second floor, the elevator operator said.

Excuse us, Leigh said to a woman standing in the way. She and Tori shepherded Oona across the floor to the Ingrid Hansen Boutique.

It was not so much a separate store as a stage set of a separate store, erected in the northwest corner of the floor. SCANDINAVIA’S LEADING DESIGN EDGE, a sign over the entrance announced.

A slender, almost fleshless blond woman sailed across the boutique toward them. Leigh recognized the boutique proprietress from her photograph.

May I help you?

We have an appointment, Leigh said. Baker and Sandberg.

The woman stood smiling with crisp formality. I didn’t realize we’d said one-thirty on the phone.

We’re a little early, Leigh said. "By the way, do you know our friend, Oona Aldrich? Oona, this is Ingrid Hansen. She designed all these terrific clothes, and she was written up in last week’s New York magazine ‘Intelligencer.’"

Ms. Hansen gave Oona a quick, appraising look. Delighted. If Mrs. Aldrich is the friend you mentioned, I have something for her. Could you wait just a moment?

Ms. Hansen went to the other side of the boutique and began whispering to a sales assistant.

I can’t believe it, Oona said. "I simply cannot believe it. Delancey is everywhere."

Leigh had never seen Oona this out of control so early in the day. Jim Delancey’s not here. She said it calmly, easily, as though it didn’t matter one way or another, as though they were idly discussing guests at a party. Do you see him anywhere, Tori?

He’s not here, Tori said. Really, Oona, he’s not.

"Not him. Oona snapped a nod toward Ms. Hansen’s sales assistant. I’m talking about his witch of a mother."

Leigh glanced again at the stiff, stout little woman. Except for the octagonal wire-rimmed glasses, she could see a certain broad resemblance to Xenia Delancey. The saleswoman had the same sort of uptilted, thimble-sized nose. She wore her gray hair wound into the same tight sort of gray nautilus coil. She even had the same way of listening with her head cocked to the left.

What Leigh was not prepared for was the voice that came out of that thick little body, or its effect on her.

Right away, Ms. Hansen. I’ll see to it.

The voice sent an icy needle of recognition down Leigh’s spine: it was unmistakably the voice of the woman whose son had murdered Nita.

Ms. Hansen returned carrying a dress and jacket ensemble. Usually I work in very bright colors. This is one of my first pastels. She laid the dress along a countertop. It was silk, patterned in white, black, and pale lavender swirls. The cut was extremely simple, with a slightly pulled-in waist. And then you have the jacket, which matches.

Where do you hire your saleswomen? Oona said.

For just an instant Ms. Hansen looked baffled.

Oona, please, Tori said. Let’s concentrate on the dress.

And as a caprice, Ms. Hansen continued, the lining is a silk screen of Warhol’s Mao. She reversed the jacket to show the Warhol. But naturally that can be changed. Some people don’t like Mao—even as a joke.

Oh, all right, Oona said. Give it to me, I’ll try it on.

You can change right over there. Ms. Hansen pointed to a curtained doorway.

There were two crashing sounds, as though a display case had shattered.

I don’t believe this, Oona said.

Leigh turned. A Hispanic-looking young man in jogging clothes had come into the boutique. In his left hand he was carrying a two-foot long radio and a voice was booming out of it:

Nickel-dimin’ two-bit pipsqueak squirt,

Bleedin’ Thursday blood on your Tuesday shirt—

A woman had come in after him—a young black woman in a pale coffee-colored clinging lace dress. She had a strikingly aquiline profile and dark, wavy hair and she looked like a fashion model.

Someone had better tell him to turn that racket off, Oona said.

Xenia Delancey approached the black woman. They walked over to a display rack. Xenia Delancey suggested a cream-colored blouse. The black woman held it up to her bosom. She studied her reflection in the mirror. After a moment she shook her head and handed the blouse back. Xenia Delancey began looking for another.

On the other side of the boutique, the Hispanic sauntered over to a costume-jewelry display. He set the boom box down on the counter and boosted the volume. The glass display case added a rattling vibration of its own.

Spilled a pint of plasma and you still don’t hurt—

Oona’s eyes had become burning slits. This is beyond belief. Things are falling apart in this lousy city. Isn’t anyone going to take a stand against that racket?

Oona, sweetie, Leigh said, please don’t get excited.

Oona drew in a breath, and then she was in motion. She crossed directly to the Hispanic.

Will you kindly turn that racket off? she said.

He turned. Sweat gleamed on the steep ridges of his cheekbones. His dark eyes returned her gaze unflinchingly. What?

I said, Oona shouted, turn that garbage off!

What?

It occurred to Leigh that the Hispanic needed a translation.

Oona walked to the boom box, snapped it open, and yanked out one of the batteries.

The music stopped.

Oona turned and picked up her dress and took the battery with her into the changing room.

The black woman burst out laughing.

Verdict, please. Tori was holding up a green beaded bolero.

Twenty-four hundred.

You mean for the whole dress, Leigh said.

There isn’t a whole dress. This is it.

It seems a little expensive, Leigh said.

I suppose. As Tori crossed back to the display rack the black woman intercepted her.

I love that jacket on you.

Do you really? Tori said.

The woman nodded. It picks up the green of your eyes. But you know, the violet might look even better. She walked to the rack and pulled out a violet bolero. "Voilà. Let’s see it on you in the daylight." She carried the violet bolero over to the door, and Tori followed.

An alarm went off.

Excuse me, Ms. Hansen called, raising her voice above the jangling bell. That merchandise is tagged. It can’t leave the boutique till we deactivate it.

I’m sorry. The black woman was giggling in embarrassment.

Will you kill that alarm! Ms. Hansen called to Xenia Delancey.

It was a moment before silence was restored.

Leigh glanced toward the changing rooms. The curtain in the little doorway was swaying. Did someone just come out of the changing rooms?

I didn’t see anyone, Tori said.

OONA ALDRICH FELT TOO WOOZY to take the overhead route getting out of the one skirt and into the other. So she undid her own skirt and let it puddle around her feet. She lifted one bare foot out and with the other flipped it toward the bench. And missed.

Now she opened Ms. Ingrid Hansen’s prissy little silk skirt. She held it in a hoop with both hands, lifted one leg, and tried to step into it.

Right away she saw there was going to be a balance problem. Holding the skirt open required two hands, but keeping herself upright on one foot required at least one wall and one more hand.

Oona looked around the changing room.

There’s the wall, but has anyone seen a third hand?

She put her engineering smarts to work.

What about sitting down on the bench …?

She sat down on the bench. Well, she’d intended to sit. It was more of a fall but no bones were broken.

And pulling the skirt up my legs …?

She pulled the skirt up her legs. She stood, adjusted the hang of the pleats, fastened the belt. She looked at herself in the mirror, fore and aft.

Not bad.

She slid the jacket off the hanger and slipped her right arm into the sleeve.

Something rapped on the door.

Just a minute! Her left hand, halfway into the jacket, snagged the lining. She reached with her right hand and slid the door bolt back.

How do I look? She faced the mirror, tried to untangle her left arm, heard cloth rip. Shit. Now I’ll have to buy the damned thing. Well—what do you think?

Funny—she liked the skirt, but the jacket struck her as sort of pukey. Well, no wonder. She was wearing it halfway on and halfway off.

Give me a hand with this jacket, will you?

There was a movement in the mirror behind her. For half an instant her brain recorded the image of a man standing there, two eyes staring with lids pulled back like snarling lips. At the same moment she registered two words, only one of them English.

"Saludos, bitch."

Before she could turn, something tugged at her hair and a sudden pressure twisted her head back. The air sparkled and silver whipped past her eyes. A hot piano-wire of pain gripped her neck and fire flicked across her throat.

She struggled to break free. The jacket held her hand like a tourniquet.

He bent her back and, with a cracking sound, she felt her spine surrender. She was on the floor, pushing up with one arm, trying to reach the bench, when a blade danced down in front of her eyes, winking right, left, up, and down.

She screamed and it was like a cartoon because she didn’t hear the scream, she saw it—a red scream, liquid and hot and flying in twenty directions at once. The bubbling scream flowed back into her throat, choking off her air.

And the blade’s bloody kiss went on. And on.

THIS IS INSANE, Leigh said. It can’t take her twenty minutes to change into a simple dress.

Take it easy, Tori said. Oona’s insecure, she’s a perfectionist.

Not on my time she isn’t.

Leigh crossed the boutique to the little doorway that led to the changing rooms. She stepped past the curtain, and her glance took in a corridor with an emergency exit at the end and three doors on each side. On the right two stood half ajar.

She moved past them and stopped at the third door.

Oona? Are you in there? She rapped on the door. No answer. She leaned her ear against it and felt a sort of coiled stillness radiating through the wood panel.

Oh my God, she thought, if Oona has passed out in the dressing room …

Leigh tried the doorknob. It turned. She gave a push inward. The room was empty.

She went to the door directly opposite. She knocked. Oona?

No answer. She tried the handle. The door swung inward. The room was empty.

She went to the next door and rapped sharply. Oona—are you in there?

She felt the first stirrings of concern. The doorknob turned and she pushed the door open. A flash of green whooshed up in front of her face.

She recoiled.

A dress left hanging on a hook was trembling in the air current from the open door. She saw it was green linen—not the dress Oona had been trying on.

A green linen belt had been thrown across the seat of a chair, and a woman was leaning toward it.

Excuse me, Leigh said, and when the woman refused to acknowledge her, she realized she had apologized to her own reflection.

She went to the last door.

The sounds of voices and bells floated in from the main floor—luxuriously muted as if they’d had to pass through layers of lamb’s wool and silk.

Oona! With one rap she gripped the handle and pushed.

She stood staring at a trash basket with a botany print wrapped around it, filled with sheets of pink tissue paper. Resting in a nested indentation on the tissue were three pins with fat heads.

Damn Oona, she thought. This can’t be—there’s no way out of here except the fire exit or through the boutique—

She stepped back into the corridor. Her eye went again to the first changing room with its half-open door. She realized now that she hadn’t actually looked in that room or in the one next to it—she had assumed that with their doors ajar they had to be empty.

She went to the nearest half-open door. Oona?

GET AN AMBULANCE.

Ms. Hansen’s eyes swung up and around as though she’d been slapped. I beg your pardon?

Leigh seized the telephone from the counter and thrust the receiver at Ms. Hansen. She felt her voice grow teeth. Get an ambulance this minute, or I will sue the ass off this store.

FOUR

THEN YOU BOTH WERE WITH Oona Aldrich when she was killed? Lieutenant Detective Vincent Cardozo was saying.

He was sitting in a borrowed doctor’s office on the second story of Lexington Hospital, questioning two very pale, very shocked-looking women who had just lived through one of the worst experiences that New York City could offer.

Leigh Baker answered Yes at the exact moment that Tori Sandberg said No.

Nervous glances flicked between the women. It seemed to Cardozo that the glances appointed Tori Sandberg spokesperson.

All three of us went together to the boutique. Tori Sandberg held herself upright, spine straight, her back not touching the chair. Oona took a dress into the changing room, and we were waiting for her to come out. It got to be an awfully long wait, and Leigh went to see what had happened.

Cardozo glanced toward Leigh Baker. Then it was you who found Mrs. Aldrich after the attack.

Leigh Baker nodded.

It occurred to Cardozo that he was questioning one woman who had been a world-famous movie star, who perhaps still was, and another who as a magazine editor enjoyed national recognition and, within the bounds of New York, fame. Yet these were no enameled faces of celebrity. Fear had broken through.

Was Mrs. Aldrich dead or alive? Cardozo said.

Oona was still alive, Leigh Baker said. Barely. The sofa had two seats, but she had positioned herself at the end farthest from Cardozo, sitting forward, taking up barely half a cushion. Her wavy chestnut hair had been cut long, and a lock had fallen across her face. She pushed it aside. Her deep green eyes gazed at him. I saw a pulse in her neck.

Cardozo, writing in his notebook, made a note of the pulse in the neck. I’d like you both to think back carefully. At any time before or during the period that Mrs. Aldrich was changing her dress, did either of you see anyone else go into those changing rooms?

No, Leigh Baker said immediately.

It took Tori Sandberg longer. She was staring out the window. No, she said finally.

Did you see anyone come out of the dressing rooms?

No, Leigh Baker said.

Cardozo waited for Tori Sandberg to answer.

No, she said.

Who else was in the boutique?

There was Ms. Hansen. Tori Sandberg gave the s in Ms. a careful z sound: no gliding over the distinction.

There was one salesperson, Leigh Baker said. There were two other customers—women—white women—and there was a black woman who came in a little after we did.

And a Hispanic man came in with her, Tori Sandberg said.

I wouldn’t say he was with her, Leigh Baker said.

Why not? Cardozo said.

A good deal of Leigh Baker’s strength and will seemed to be concentrated on sustaining an even rate of breathing. I couldn’t say exactly. I suppose because she left alone. And they weren’t really matched in any way. She had style and he—

He was a street lout, Tori Sandberg said. But they were together. I’m sure of it.

Cardozo had a theory that evolution had provided one hour of grace between the experience of raw terror and the onset of shock. The purpose was to enable prehistoric hominids to slink back to the safety of their caves.

For these women the hour was running out.

Okay, he said, anxious to cover as much as possible before they became too tired, too confused to even want to think. There was a black woman and a male Hispanic, and they may or may not have been together. Anyone else?

No one else, Leigh Baker said.

He had an enormous boom box. Tori Sandberg’s teeth came down tightly on her lower lip, clenching back distaste. He was playing rap music. Oona asked him to shut it off. He didn’t understand her. At least he did a good job of pretending not to. So she took one of his batteries into the dressing room with her. Tori Sandberg had turned her head, looking directly at Cardozo with an odd intensity. So he killed her.

Excuse me. Cardozo’s mind braked sharply. "You believe that the male Hispanic with the boom box killed Oona Aldrich over a boom-box battery?"

There was silence. Tori Sandberg’s lids sank with a moment’s weariness over her eyes.

She probably accepted that anyone could be a victim. The newspapers had taught her that. And she was probably coming to accept that anyone could be a killer. The plot of any TV movie of the week demonstrated that.

But in Cardozo’s experience it was still hard for most people to believe that there were individuals in this world who could drive a nail into a grandmother’s skull because she stayed on the phone too long, or force stones down a six-year-old’s throat for the hell of it, or slash a woman’s throat because she had challenged a guy’s macho by taking the battery from his boom box.

Yes, Tori Sandberg said quietly, firmly. She treated him like an inferior and an idiot. She was always doing that to waiters and strangers.

An interesting vibration was coming off her: Cardozo had a sense that she was enraged at the dead woman. Some part of her felt that Oona Aldrich had provoked her own murder.

She was out of control, Tori Sandberg said. She made a scene at Archibald’s over lunch, she made a scene outside the store, as we were going in, and she made the scene in the boutique.

Cardozo’s ballpoint moved quickly, trying to keep up, leaving practically illegible tracks over the notepad. What kind of scene did she make at lunch?

Tori Sandberg’s eyelids flicked down, paler than the color of her face. She was drinking a lot of champagne, and who knows what pills she was on. She started arguing with the waiter about the vegetable dip. So the poor waiter got her a fresh pot and that ended that argument, so she started another. She claimed she saw someone in the kitchen who shouldn’t have been there.

And who was that?

A moment went by. Cardozo was suddenly aware of a silence threaded through with shadow.

A murderer, Leigh Baker said.

She was screaming it, Tori Sandberg said. "What is that murderer doing in your kitchen? How dare you hire a murderer!"

Did she have any murderer in particular in mind?

His name is Jim Delancey. In Leigh Baker’s lap two thumbs with their clear-polished nails began probing each other. He killed my daughter four years ago.

And did Oona Aldrich actually see him?

Tori Sandberg shrugged as though it should have been obvious. She had to have been imagining it. Jim Delancey was sentenced to—what was it, Leigh—twenty-five years?

I could see into the kitchen from the table, Leigh Baker said. He wasn’t there.

Oona had an instinct, Tori Sandberg said. She zeroed in on people’s dreads. I’m not saying she did it with premeditation or even consciously. But if she’d wanted to destroy our little reunion, she couldn’t have picked a quicker or more effective way.

Cardozo flipped to a fresh page. And you said Mrs. Aldrich made another scene outside the store?

The man with the boom box was there, Tori Sandberg said. She insulted him.

How did Mrs. Aldrich do that?

She said they shouldn’t allow music like that in front of the store. She said next thing they’d be allowing it inside. He heard her and he followed us inside.

Cardozo glanced up from his notebook. This man followed you?

I didn’t see him, Leigh Baker said.

Well, one moment we were outside and he was outside, Tori Sandberg said, and the next moment we were on the second floor in the boutique and there he was.

The same man, Cardozo said.

Unless there were two Hispanic men with the same boom box and the same scowl wearing the same gray jogging clothes and red sweatband and red jogging pouch and white Adidas sneakers.

I didn’t think he was scowling, Leigh Baker said. If anything, he looked easygoing.

Killing Oona over a stupid ninety-cent battery is hardly easygoing, Tori Sandberg said.

She wasn’t killed over the battery, Leigh Baker said. She was killed for the brooch.

Excuse me, Cardozo said. What brooch?

Oona was wearing a brooch exactly like this. Leigh Baker tapped a finger against a small platinum hummingbird pinned to her lapel.

Cardozo noticed that Tori Sandberg was wearing an identical piece of jewelry.

We were all wearing one, Leigh Baker said, and Oona’s is gone.

Was she wearing it when she went into the changing room?

Leigh Baker nodded. A moment went by and then Tori Sandberg nodded.

And when did you realize it was missing?

It was missing when I found her, Leigh Baker said.

Cardozo made a note. How much is a brooch like that worth?

It cost about six thousand, Tori Sandberg said.

Fifteen years ago, Leigh Baker said.

Figure forty thousand today, Cardozo calculated. At the time Mrs. Aldrich entered the store how visible was her brooch?

Extremely visible, Leigh Baker said. It was pinned to her jacket.

It was pinned to her blouse, Tori Sandberg said. The jacket covered it.

Cardozo reflected that if Baker was right, Aldrich’s brooch had motivated the killing. But if Sandberg were right, Aldrich’s behavior had caused the murder.

Leigh Baker’s hands were in rapid motion, unpinning her brooch, practically ripping it from her blouse. She held it out to Cardozo. Her hand was shaking. You’re welcome to keep mine for reference.

Cardozo turned the brooch over in his hand. It was a beautiful little thing. The sugaring of emerald and ruby chips threw off glints of colored light.

I’ll return it as soon as we photograph it, he said.

There’s absolutely no hurry, Leigh Baker said.

It was as though she’d said, I never want to see it again.

Did either of you see the man with the boom box go into the changing rooms, Cardozo said, or come out?

Leigh Baker shook her head immediately.

It took Tori Sandberg a moment longer. It was clear that something had convinced her of the man’s guilt, and Cardozo was curious what that something was.

When did this man leave the boutique?

Neither answered.

Did either of you see him leave?

I saw his friend leave, Tori Sandberg said. The black woman.

I can’t believe they were friends, Leigh Baker said.

"But neither of you saw the man go," Cardozo said.

Neither spoke.

Could you identify this man if you saw him again?

I think so, Leigh Baker said.

I certainly could, Tori Sandberg said.

And would you be able to describe him to a sketch artist?

LAB REPORTS AND PHOTOGRAPHS and other people’s descriptions never quite did it for Cardozo.

He was one of those cops who needed to study the crime scene with his own five senses. He needed to know how it smelled, how it felt to be there. He needed to know what the killer had seen, what the victim had seen, how it felt to