Farewell, Dorothy Parker (33 page)

This isn’t a horror movie, she reminded herself, as she pushed the curtain aside. Of course, no one was there.

Violet wanted to take a quick look around for the Macy’s box before leaving, but she heard voices in the hallway. She stood, frozen, trying to imagine what kind of excuse she could give if the man entered the room. Fortunately, the footsteps passed right by the door and Violet let out a long, relieved breath.

She quickly looked through the drawers, the closet, and under the bed, but the Macy’s box wasn’t there. So that was it. Delaney and Mrs. Parker were not in the hotel.

She lowered herself onto the sofa in the living room area of the suite and cried. There was no place else she could think to look for her niece. And now she had to drive to the Suffolk County police headquarters and face Detective Diehl. What would happen? Would she be
arrested? Placed in handcuffs? Thrown into a cell? More important, were they going to find Delaney?

They had to. They simply had to.

She rose. No time to wallow in self-pity. She would face the detective and would do whatever it took to find her niece.

First, though, she had to figure out a way to get past Barry Beeman.

The corporate offices were in a suite facing the elevator bank. She knocked lightly on the open door, and a middle-aged woman in reading glasses looked up.

“Can I help you?”

“Is Barry Beeman in?” Violet asked. “I need to speak with him about something.”

“I believe he’s at the front desk.”

“Do you think he’ll be back soon?”

“I can call if you like,” she said, picking up the phone.

Violet nodded and waited as the woman spoke softly into the receiver. She covered it with her hand and looked at Violet.

“What is your name?” she asked.

“Violet Epps.”

She spoke into the receiver again for a few moments, but Violet made sure to slip away before she looked up again.

Violet almost laughed at she got into the elevator. This was so much easier than they made these things look in the movies. Barry Beeman would take the stairs up and she would take the elevator down, and they would miss each other entirely. Easy peasy.

The doors opened on the first floor, and Violet stepped out of the elevator, congratulating herself on outwitting the general manager. Maybe her luck was changing. But then a hand landed on her shoulder from behind.

“Ms. Epps,” said Barry Beeman.

Violet turned to face him, and his eyes said it all. He knew she’d
stolen his guest book and would be only too happy to call the police and have her arrested.

Don’t panic, she told herself. You can do this. Just think fast and you can lie your way out. Surely, her background in dissecting so many hundreds of movie scripts would serve her well now. Besides, if Andi could so easily lie, she could, too. Her heart pounded.

“There you are!” she said. “I’ve been looking all over for you.”

“You have?”

“My apologies for what happened with your guest book,” she said. “I was so delirious that day I passed out. I don’t even know how it wound up in my purse. Anyway, I’m glad my assistant returned it. So sorry it took so long. I’ve been convalescing.”

“She returned it?”

“She left it with someone at the front desk yesterday. Didn’t they give it to you?”

“What time was that?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Sometime in the morning.”

“Do you know who she left it with?”

“Um…no.” She glanced over at the Cindy Crawford look-alike, who seemed tense. Violet wanted to let her off the hook. “A man, I think.”

“Jonathan?”

“Maybe.”

Exasperated, Barry Beeman turned to the woman at the front desk. “Where’s Jonathan?” he asked.

“He got off at three today.”

Violet’s cell phone rang, and she begged the manager’s pardon, telling him she had to take the call. Then she slipped out the front door and dashed across the street to her car, which, mercifully, was still there. She put it in gear and drove away, an orange parking citation beneath her wiper flapping in the breeze.

Chapter 37

Violet’s cell phone stopped ringing, and almost immediately started again. She didn’t want to answer it, because she couldn’t even think of what she would tell the detective. He wouldn’t believe the truth and wouldn’t buy her lies. There was no way she could win.

Violet imagined that once she got to the precinct, she would be shown the surveillance video from the train station and asked if the petite woman seen with Delaney was a friend of hers. She wouldn’t be able to deny it, as both Sandra and Malcolm had already met her, and her neighbor, Candy Baker, had seen them together.

How could Violet possibly explain who the woman was? If she told them she was actually the ghost of Dorothy Parker, they’d lock her away in a psych ward.

Was there any way out?

Violet couldn’t take it for another second. When she stopped at the next red light, she grabbed her phone and answered it, ready to tell the detective she was on her way.

“It’s me,” said the caller.

“Michael?” she said. “What’s going on?”

“I’ve been trying to reach you,” he said. He sounded agitated.

“Sorry, I…I thought it was someone else.” The light turned green, and she stepped on the gas. “Did you hear anything?” She had phoned him earlier about her niece, so she knew he was on high alert.

“Kara got a text from Delaney.”

“What! When?”

“Just a few minutes ago. Kara had texted her three times asking where she was. Delaney finally responded.”

“What did it say?” Violet’s heart was thumping. This meant the girl was okay. This meant they would find her! “Read it to me.”

“I’m with my aunt’s friend,”
he read.
“She’s taking me to see my mother.”

“Her mother?” Violet stepped on the brake, and a cold sweat dampened her shirt. “That’s all she wrote?”

“Don’t panic,” he said.

“You don’t understand!”

“Violet—”

“Michael, please! The woman she’s with is obsessed with death and dying. She tried to commit suicide three times!”

“Take a deep breath,” he said. “It might not be what you’re thinking.”

“Did she say where they are?” This was a nightmare. An ugly, black, terrifying nightmare.

“Just a few minutes ago, but before you freak out, listen. I don’t think it’s a suicide pact. You once told me that Delaney had never visited her mother’s grave. If she was upset enough to run away, that’s where she would have wanted to go. She probably wanted her mother so very desperately that she finally needed to see where she was buried.”

Could he be right? Were Delaney and Dorothy Parker visiting Ivy and Neil’s graves? That would explain their appearance at the train station. They could have been traveling to the cemetery.

Violet got off the phone and pushed her way through Midtown traffic as fast as she could. She went through the Queens–Midtown Tunnel to the Long Island Expressway and sped toward the New Montefiore Cemetery on Long Island.

When she got to the gatehouse, a guard in uniform came out and told her he was sorry, but they were closed.

“Closed?” She peered past the iron gates and saw several cars driving along the cemetery’s narrow interior roadways. She saw families and couples walking among the tombstones. He followed her gaze and explained that there were still people inside, but that the entrance gate was locked every night at six-thirty.

“I can’t let anyone else in,” he said. “Sorry.”

“You don’t understand,” Violet said. “My thirteen-year-old niece is in there, and she could be sick. She forgot to take her medicine, and I have it with me. Please!”

“I have to check with my boss,” the man said, and picked up his walkie-talkie. He squeezed the control several times and talked into it but got no response.

“I’m going to have to go look for him,” he said.

Did he even believe her? Violet was frantic. “I’m running out of time!” she said. “Just open the gate. I promise I’ll find her and come right out.” She dug into her purse and took out a twenty-dollar bill, which she held out the window. “Her parents are buried here. They died last year in a car accident. Drunk driver. She’s just a kid, and she needs me. Please!”

The guard’s expression changed. Did he realize she was telling the truth? Violet held her breath.

“Keep your money,” he said, and pushed the button to open the gate. “Just don’t stay too long…and don’t tell anyone I let you in this late.”

Violet stepped on the gas and sped through the gate. She drove along the marked narrow streets of the massive cemetery to the corner plot where Ivy and Neil were buried. She got out of her car and looked toward the grave. The sun was low in the sky, and she could see the silhouette of a young tree and two moving figures. Violet wept as she watched them. A breeze pushed its way across the broad terrain, and the delicate tree swayed toward the couple. The more slender of the
figures crouched and laid her hands upon the earth. The other stood very still.

Violet pulled a tissue from her purse and blew her nose. Then she took out her cell phone and called Detective Diehl.

“I found her,” she said. “I found Delaney. She’s okay.”

“Where are you!” he barked.

“At the cemetery,” she said, and told him that Malcolm and Sandra would be able to direct him to the plot. Then she dropped her phone back in her purse and took a few steps toward her niece, whose head was bowed toward the earth. Violet didn’t want to break whatever meditation Delaney was in, so she stood and waited for the girl to look up and notice her.

Violet thought about the day Ivy called to tell her Delaney had been born. The phone rang at four in the morning, and she knew it was her sister, because she had called the night before to say she was in labor and heading to the hospital.

“News?” Violet said, instead of hello.

“She’s here,” Ivy said.

“You have a daughter?”

“Delaney Bea.”

A girl! Violet started to cry. “What is she like?”

“You have to see her. You have to hold her. She has these lips. This tiny little perfect mouth. It doesn’t seem possible for anyone to be so beautiful.”

“I’ll be right there.”

Now Violet looked up toward her niece, still crouched on her mother’s grave. This was so damned unfair.

She tried to pull herself out of her despair. This was a happy moment. She had found her niece. She looked around the cemetery at the endless rows of tombstones. So many people. So many stories. So much misery. Violet couldn’t help remembering something Dorothy
Parker had once said to Samuel Goldwyn when he complained that the script she had written for him ended on a sad note. “I know this will come as a shock to you, Mr. Goldwyn, but in all history, which has held billions and billions of human beings, not a single one ever had a happy ending.”

She looked back at her niece and knew that Dorothy Parker was wrong. Some stories did have happy endings. The girl looked up and spotted her. “Aunt Violet!” she cried, and ran into her arms. “I’m sorry I ran away. I’m so sorry!”

Violet held on to her niece, feeling like she would never let her go again. “I know,” she said.

“You must want to kill me.”

“I’m just glad you’re okay.”

“I should have called,” Delaney said.

“Yes.”

“Your friend Daisy told me not to. She said we needed to visit the grave first.”

“She’s not always the best influence,” Violet said, looking past her niece at the figure by the tombstone. Mrs. Parker waved to her. Violet waved back.

“You must have been here for hours,” she said to her niece.

“No, we walked around for a while, went out to eat. Talked. She’s pretty smart. Funny, too.”

“I know.”

“I was so upset. I was thinking about…” Delaney trailed off and shook her head, as if she just couldn’t say it.

Violet’s stomach clenched. She pulled her niece away so she could look into her face. “Thinking about what?” she asked.

The girl looked down.

“Delaney—”

“I was angry,” she said. “Furious. I wanted to cut my wrists and bleed all over Sandra and Malcolm’s stupid pink bathroom rug. I wanted them to feel terrible for taking me away from you.”

“Oh, honey.”

“They deserve it,” Delaney said, but didn’t sound that convincing. Clearly, her anger had dissipated.

“And you were mad at me, too,” Violet said.

“Not so much about the screening,” the girl said. “For fucking up at work, for getting fired and ruining everything.”

Delaney paused, and before Violet had a chance to explain about her job, the girl continued. “But I guess it wasn’t your fault,” she said. She took a long, jagged breath and let it out. “It was good to come here. It made me think about them more. I’ve been trying so hard not to.”

“I understand.”

“I needed to be sad.”

“Of course you did.”

“I miss them so much.”

“Me, too,” Violet said. They were both crying now.

“My mother wouldn’t want me to kill myself,” Delaney said. “I need to stick around. For them. For me.”

“It’s all going to be okay, you know?”

The girl nodded and hugged her aunt again.