Lullaby and Goodnight (29 page)

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Authors: Wendy Corsi Staub

BOOK: Lullaby and Goodnight
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“Is it lipstick?”
“I don’t think so.” She doesn’t own a bright scarlet shade. And this doesn’t feel waxy, like lipstick. It feels . . . tacky.
Like blood.
The waiter has set the card and bill gingerly on the table and is quickly retreating, undoubtedly eager to wash his hands.
Peyton finds herself wondering vaguely if she should at least go after him and assure him that he has nothing to worry about where her blood is concerned.
But she can’t be sure it’s even her blood.
Tom has taken her purse from the back of her chair and is peering into it.
“Let me see.” She snatches it from him and looks inside. In the flickering candlelight, it’s difficult to see anything. “I’ll be right back.”
“Where are you going?” Tom calls after her as, bag in hand, she scurries toward the ladies’ room, a familiar route she’s already taken twice since they arrived here.
She finds it empty, thank goodness, and deposits the bag on the counter by the sink. She briefly considers washing her contaminated hand, but tells herself that can wait.
In the bright overhead light, she looks into her purse . . . and gasps.
There, tucked in among her belongings—her wallet, her hairbrush, her date book, her roll of Tums—is a coiled length of something gelatinous and bloody.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“Placenta,” Rita pronounces, the moment Peyton opens her purse to reveal the heinous object.
“
Placenta?
” Her hands still trembling even now, hours later, Peyton drops the purse back on the coffee table and backs away with a shudder. “Are you sure?”
“Positive. I’ve seen enough of it in my time, that’s for sure.”
“Oh my God. Oh my God! Rita . . .”
Help me.
Peyton doesn’t say it, but the plea is clear.
Sidestepping the garish stuffed elephant in the middle of the living room, Rita goes to her, placing a steadying arm around her shoulders. “Sit down.”
“But—”
“Sit.”
Peyton sits.
“You need to take some deep breaths. Try to relax.” Rita sinks onto the couch beside her, keeping an arm on her shoulders as she shakily inhales, then exhales.
“Thanks for coming over, Rita. I probably shouldn’t have called you, but I just . . . I guess I freaked out when I saw it.”
“Who wouldn’t? My God, Peyton, what on earth is that thing doing in your purse?”
“I have no idea!” Her voice is shrill, almost accusatory. “I didn’t put it there, if that’s what you’re wondering.”
“Of course I wasn’t wondering that. I just meant . . .” She shrugs. “It doesn’t make sense.”
“I know. I keep thinking somebody must have done it as . . . I don’t know, as a joke?”
“A joke? Well, it sucks. The one about the chicken crossing the road is a lot funnier.”
Peyton fails to crack a smile at the halfhearted attempt at levity.
“Pssst . . . ever hear that story about the elephant in the room that nobody would mention?” Rita nudges her and points at the oversized stuffed animal. “Please tell me you see that.”
“Tom brought it over tonight,” is the dull reply. “For the baby.”
No longer in the mood to make light of things, Rita asks, “So where is Mr. Wonderful now?”
“He went to buy milk.”
“He went to buy
milk?
” Rita shakes her head, about to ask what kind of man leaves a woman in need to go on a silly errand at this hour of the night.
“My stomach has been upset ever since . . .” She indicates the purse with a cringe. “Tom thought some milk might settle it down, but I’m all out of it, so he went to get it.”
“He left you alone when you’re so upset you can barely speak?” Rita asks dubiously.
“It was my idea, actually. And I knew you’d be here any second. I told him it was fine, go ahead.”
“Yeah? And what aren’t you telling me?”
“What do you mean?”
“Something’s up. With Tom. Tell me.”
Peyton no longer even bothers to feign confusion. “I guess I just wanted to get him out of here for a few minutes so I could talk to you in private.”
“About . . . ?”
“About . . . what if he’s the one who put that . . .
placenta,
” she says with difficulty, “in my bag?”
“Why would he—and where would he get—”
“He works in a bio lab.”
Rita clamps her jaw shut. “I knew that. I forgot. Oh, Christ.”
“I’m afraid. I don’t know why he would do it, but . . . what if he did?”
“Maybe he didn’t. Think about it. Who else would have had access to your bag?”
“Anybody would have, I guess. I don’t think I even opened it all day. I had my keys in my jacket pocket at work—I remember, because they kept jangling and I kept thinking I needed to put them into my bag, but I never did.” She’s thinking aloud, her brown eyes gazing off into the distance, her brow furrowed as she backtracks through her day. “And I didn’t need my wallet to buy lunch because we had a meeting and they brought sandwiches in.”
“So the last time you opened your purse was . . . ?”
“I guess yesterday.”
“Has Tom been around?”
“He spent the night.”
“Last night?”
“And the night before.”
Rita takes a moment to absorb the news. Then, shaking her head, she murmurs, “I told myself I was never going to tell you about this.”
“About what?”
This is going to kill her,
Rita tells herself. She squirms, looks up at Peyton. “I shouldn’t even say it. Because it probably has nothing to do with—”
“Rita, for God’s sake, tell me what you’re talking about.”
“Do you remember the night you invited me here for coffee, to meet Tom?”
“Yes.” Peyton’s eyes are wide with trepidation.
“Remember how I promised you I wouldn’t say anything else negative about him? Because I knew you really wanted me to like him, and—”
“I remember. What happened?”
“There’s something I should have told you.” Rita takes a deep breath. “You asked me to go into the bedroom when he was working on that shelf, to ask him how he took his coffee. Remember?”
Peyton shrugs noncommittally. “Not really, no. What hap—”
“When I went into the bedroom, I found him going through the top drawer on your bureau.”
“Oh my God.” Peyton clasps a hand over her mouth. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because I promised. And because he claimed he was looking for a pencil to make a mark on the wall where the shelf was supposed to go. At the time, I told myself it was a plausible explanation—”
“A pencil? In a dresser? That’s plausible?” Peyton’s voice rises more shrilly with every word.
“All right, I was reaching. I kept telling myself that I was just looking for reasons to be suspicious of him. But maybe I should have been more suspicious all along.”
“Maybe we both should have,” Peyton tells her. “Now what do I do? He’s coming back here.”
“Don’t let him in.”
“He has the keys.” After a pause, she admits, “His own set.”
“You need to change the locks again,” Rita tells her.
“I know . . . but what am I going to do about him tonight?”
“Tell him to go. You can’t stay here alone with him, Peyton.”
“He won’t want to leave. He knows how upset I am.”
“Well, tell him you don’t need him. Tell him I’m here to take care of you now.”
“He’ll want to stay too.”
Rita gives her a level look. “Who’s in charge here? This is your house. You decide who stays and who goes. Be straight with him.”
Peyton doesn’t reply immediately.
But as the words sink in, Rita sees a familiar gleam return to her eyes.
“You’re right,” she says, fists clenched, head held high. “I’m in charge. And he’s going.”
 
“How many nights?” asks the night manager behind the desk, obviously bored with the answer before it even arrives; bored with the job, people, life in general.
“I don’t know . . . two?”
He looks up at Anne Marie without moving a muscle. “Are you asking me or telling me?”
“I’m telling you two. Maybe three.”
“Sunday night, the rate goes up to three hundred forty-nine a night.”
“I thought the rates went down after weekends.”
“Not out here. We’re right next to a corporate park. We get business travelers in during the week. Rate goes up.”
“Fine. Rate goes up.
If
I need to stay.” Anne Marie fervently hopes that by Sunday, it will all be over.
Dripping ennui, the night clerk hands her the card key and points the way to the elevator.
He doesn’t offer a bellhop to help her with her bag. Maybe because there are no bellhops at this suburban hotel; maybe because she only has one bag and it’s on wheels; maybe because he doesn’t give a damn how she gets up to her room.
She seethes all the way to the elevator, tempted to go back and tell the clerk what she thinks of him.
But she doesn’t dare. Displaced rage is dangerous, particularly when one is as tightly wound as she is tonight.
She pulls her bag into the elevator and contents herself with shooting one last dark look in the direction of the desk before the doors slide closed.
You should have just stayed home, or at least in Manhattan, instead of coming all the way out here tonight,
she scolds herself. But it’s too late now, and anyway, she was anxious to get to her destination. She figured she’ll be so nervous by the time tomorrow morning rolls around that driving wouldn’t be a good idea.
The room is a guidebook example of three-star mediocrity. Two double beds with ugly quilted turquoise spreads, chair, desk, and television. There’s an iron in the closet and a plastic ice bucket on the desk; the shampoo and lotion in the bathroom are in packets, not bottles.
What am I doing here?
Anne Marie wonders as she gazes about, suddenly more homesick than she’s ever been in her life.
Homesick, oddly enough, not for Bedford and Jarrett and the boys . . .
But homesick, most of all, for her grandmother.
If Grace DeMario had been alive ten years ago, none of this ever would have happened.
She would have been there—always, always there—with her watchful eye and her many rules and her uncanny ability to sense trouble before trouble ever got close enough to strike.
But Grace wasn’t there.
The life Anne Marie had somehow managed to build without her help, without anyone’s help, was shattered by pure evil.
 
Despite Rita’s advice, Peyton can’t bring herself to keep the chain on the door when she hears Tom unlocking it on the other side.
She hurriedly slides the brass knob from its grooved track and as the door swings open, does her best not to look as though she’s terrified . . . of him.
Startled to see her waiting in the doorway, he immediately asks, “What happened? Are you okay?”
“Nothing happened, other than . . . that.” She points at the purse, still on the coffee table behind her. “I’m just upset.”
“This will help.” He holds up the white plastic shopping bag in his hand. “I got the milk, and some saltines, too.”
“Thank you.” She reaches for the bag, knowing he’s waiting for her to step aside and let him in.
“You go lie down and I’ll bring you the milk.” Still holding the bag, he makes a move to come in, awkwardly blocked by her position in the doorway.
“No, actually, I’ll just take this”—she grabs the bag from him—“and I’ll see you . . . tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?” he echoes, shocked. “You’re not staying here alone tonight.”
No, she’s not. Rita will stay with her. She’s in the bedroom even now, waiting silently, listening, just in case something happens.
“I’ll be fine,” Peyton tells Tom. “I’m just exhausted, and I really . . . I want to be alone tonight. Okay?”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
She studies the concern on his face, wondering if it might somehow be genuine after all, or a practiced mask.
“Really, Tom, I just want to go to sleep.”
“I can stay on the couch and stand guard. Just in case—”
“Nothing’s going to happen. It was a creepy prank. And I promise I’ll call you if I need you. You can be here in two minutes.” It’s all she can do to keep her voice steady as she echoes the phrase that was once so reassuring to her.
Now it feels ominous.
He just looks at her, as though trying to come up with a convincing argument for his cause.
Then, as though he’s realized that nothing he says is going to change her mind, he leans forward and kisses her forehead.
“Okay. If that’s what you want. But I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Right. Tomorrow.”
She twists her clenched jaw into a smile and watches him turn and walk away.
Then she closes the door behind him, locks the bolts, and replaces the chain.
As an afterthought, she turns to the heavy desk, eyeing it as a potential barricade.
“Wait, I’ll help you,” Rita says, reappearing in the room and instantly reading her mind. “Let me just put this down.”
This,
Peyton sees, is a meat cleaver her friend must have found in the kitchen drawer.
Noting her startled glance at the would-be weapon, Rita says simply, “I was afraid of him. I didn’t know what he might try.”
“I didn’t either.”
“Look, I’m thinking I should probably call J.D. or one of my boys to come stay here tonight with us.”
“Oh, Rita, don’t do that. I’m sure we’ll be fine. He’s not going to try anything.” There’s still a part of her that can’t quite accept that Tom,
her
Tom, is capable of hurting her. “Did you tell J.D. what was going on when you called him?”

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