The Body in the Boudoir (19 page)

The incident in the subway had been a little less than a week ago and Francesca had been sticking to Faith's side like mozzarella on pizza. She'd had difficulty persuading the girl that this constant vigilance wasn't necessary and had almost persuaded herself. It was an accident. She tried hard to ignore the little voice that reminded her the falling brickwork had been an accident, too. And Danny's death? The Todds'? In addition, the event today, another of the rituals leading up to her nuptials, reminded her of her shower and the as-yet-unexplained food poisoning. Entering the club, she put all of it firmly out of her mind. Nothing more untoward was going to happen. Not here or anywhere else.

She was wearing a pale lemon sleeveless linen sheath with the pearls her grandmother had given her on her twenty-first birthday and she was carrying a light raincoat since an April shower had been predicted for later. Before going upstairs, she went to hang it up in the club's cloakroom. Aunt Tammy was headed in the same direction. Faith helped her off with the beige Burberry she was wearing and assured her they weren't late.

“Aunt Frances was here when I came in and she told me that Nana and my mother had arrived just before her. We have plenty of time.”

“I hate to be the last one, but Sky kept dawdling. Men take so much longer to get ready to go out than we do. I don't know how that whole thing about us being the ones keeping our near and dear waiting started. We weren't even leaving together, but first he couldn't find his keys, then it was his wallet. Finally, I told him he was a big boy and could get himself off alone. I swear, Danny just plain ruined him.”

And his mother and sisters before her, Faith said to herself. Her mother had often told her that every woman related to Sky or in his orbit thought he hung the moon, catering to his every whim. Well, Faith thought, she counted herself among them.

“He had to go to Manhasset to pick up Danny.”

“What!”

Several women turned in Faith's direction and she lowered her voice.

“Aunt Tam, what on earth are you talking about?”

Tammy was giving her hair a final pat, although it would take a cyclone to disturb a single strand, and was taking out a tube of lipstick from her voluminous purse.

“Her ashes, silly. What did you think? The police released the body to some funeral home there and it took a while to be sure no relative was coming forward to claim it. Sky's putting her in a beautiful Ming porcelain container, which to my mind is a complete waste. It's going in the ground where only the worms will see it. Now I ask you, isn't that going too far?”

Faith decided the question was rhetorical and avoided giving an opinion. Whatever her uncle Sky wanted was fine with her if it lessened his grief. She supposed the rare antique was the equivalent of a mahogany casket with Florentine gold handles if the housekeeper had been embalmed instead of cremated. It certainly seemed that Sky wasn't about to spare any expense for his beloved Danny's interment. And it was his call.

She'd known there were no relatives, unless they were very distant ones. A brief article in the paper about the Todds' house fire had stated that there were no next of kin. It had also listed Gertrude's name as “Mrs. Gertrude Danforth Todd,” which meant her sister's “Mrs.” was bestowed by convention. There was not now, nor ever had been, a Mr. Danforth, except for the sisters' father and so on.

“You look adorable, Faith, like a buttercup. Now, let's go up. I'm as dry as dust. I told Eleanor to put me at the same table as your future mother-in-law. I just know we're going to get along.”

The club's Sunroom lived up to its name and light was flooding in on three sides from the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the city. It was warm enough, so a few guests had wandered out to the terrace. The women looked like butterflies, or spring flowers, mimicking the tulips and daffodils on Park Avenue's median strip or the beds in Central Park. There was a steady hum of conversation. Faith went over to her grandmother, who was talking to one of the servers. It was a high tea and the round tables were covered with crisp white cloths that matched the rattan-type chairs. The room's walls were a soft blue-green decorated with trompe l'oeil rose-covered lattices and topiary. Each table had a different arrangement of seasonal blooms.

“Nobody wants to stand up for hours balancing a plate and something to drink,” her grandmother had said. “It's going to be sit down.”

“The bride is here,” Eleanor called out, giving Faith a swift peck on the cheek, not quite an air kiss, but one calculated not to leave a smudge of the coral lipstick she always wore.

There was slight applause, smiles were directed at Faith, and then the ladies returned to their conversations.

“Where's your sister?” Jane Sibley asked. “Did she call you to say she'd be late?”

“No, I spoke with her last night and she said she'd blocked out the time and would even try to get here early to help put out the place cards.”

“She needs to find a man.” Aunt Frances had joined them. “Not that namby-pamby whatever his name is. Phelps something. Then she wouldn't bury herself in her work this way.”

“I don't think that's it,” Faith said, surprised since her great-aunt was a close friend of Bella Abzug's and had worked on her various campaigns, as well as other women's. She'd done many a needlepoint pillow with
A WOMAN NEEDS A MAN LIKE A FISH NEEDS A BICYCLE
for NOW fundraisers. Surely she understood what Hope's career meant to her—and it was the kind of career that demanded every waking hour, and very few sleeping ones.

She added, “To stay in the game, Hope has to work the way she does. And she loves it.”

“All right, but she should still be able to make it to her sister's engagement tea.”

Hope arrived a few minutes later and stood in the doorway scanning the room. The guests hadn't sat down yet. She spied Faith and waved her over. Faith was only too happy to go. She saw at once that Hope looked terrible.

Faith pulled her sister out of the room. “What's wrong? What's happened?”

“I don't know. Things have been so weird at work and they just got even weirder. My boss came by as I was getting ready to leave and handed me this.”

It was a legal-size envelope with the name of the firm in the upper-left corner and addressed by hand simply, “Hope Sibley.”

“He actually patted me on the shoulder. Not the male-bonding pat they give one another—that punching thing—a pat like, ‘There, there,' and said I might want to consult the doctor whose name he had put in the envelope and he was sure everything was going to be all right.”

“But you're not sick.”

“I
know
that, and I told him I was fine and thanked him for his concern. He said, ‘That's what I admire about you, Hope. You're a trouper.' Now what the hell is that supposed to mean and what the hell is going on?”

“It has to be tied somehow to the client stuff, don't you think? He'd know about it, right?”

“Yes, but he hasn't said anything before.”

Faith had a sudden thought, one that she'd raised out at The Cliff with Hope, but she wanted to make sure again.

“I know how confidential your work is, but besides him, who else would you have told about your transactions? Who has access to them?”

“Only Jennifer, and I trust her completely. Besides, what could she do?”

Faith sighed. This wasn't going to be an easy fix, but at least she knew where they should start.

“The first thing we have to do is find out what kind of doctor this is so we know what's supposed to be wrong with you.”

“No,” her sister corrected her. “The first thing we have to do is have a wonderful time at Nana's tea. I'm going to fix my face and then be the life of the party. Maybe they have some of those snake-charmer costumes hanging around.”

Eleanor Lennox was clinking a teacup and asked everyone to find her place. When all were seated, she clinked again.

“I'm not going to make a big speech. You all know how hopeless I am at it. Didn't some survey come out that said people feared public speaking more than death?”

There was general laughter—and agreement.

“But this speech is no chore. I'm devoted to both my granddaughters and proud of them. We're celebrating Faith's engagement and upcoming wedding. Please raise a glass or cup to the bride, but let's add my dear Hope, too.”

“Hear, hear,” Frances said, and the toast was made. “To Faith and Hope,” the room chorused, clinking in turn.

Faith had always known her grandmother possessed special gifts, but how had she managed to divine that Hope needed this affirmation especially today?

The afternoon passed by pleasantly, and too quickly, as the guests table-hopped in between courses—field greens salads with Maytag blue cheese and toasted walnuts, followed by small lobster pot pies, and petit fours decorated like wedding cakes for dessert. There was plenty of tea and champagne, too. It struck Faith that in future years, whenever she thought back to this happy time before her wedding, she'd remember the champagne that kept appearing at every turn. She felt positively awash in it—like Cleopatra in her asses' milk bath, only much, much better. She'd always wondered how that ancient skin treatment would have smelled. Maybe the perfumes of Araby played a part.

“Are you feeling overwhelmed, dear?” It was Marian holding a glass of champagne, and she had even more of a sparkle in her eye than usual. “Hard when the groom is in another part of the country and so busy on top of that.”

“Maybe I'm missing something, but I think it's all pretty much done. And we still have almost a month and a half to go. One of the last things on my list was the dresses for my attendants. I found the dearest eyelet ones for the little girls. White with different pastel-colored linings and moiré sashes to match them. They can use them as party dresses afterward. We were going to have boys, too, but my cousins, who have infinitely more experience, told me it was safer to stick with their daughters since their sons might head for the beach and show up strewing seaweed instead of rose petals.”

“I agree completely, and I also speak from experience. I can't imagine any of my boys in a wedding party at that age. I just hope Craig behaves himself in this one! He was in a wedding last fall and I believe he was the ringleader for the trick the ushers played on the groom. They got hold of his shoes and wrote ‘Save' on the bottom of one and ‘Me' on the other. When he knelt, everyone couldn't help laughing. Fortunately it was just the rehearsal and they scrubbed the paint off for the real thing.”

Faith laughed, but also resolved to keep a firm eye on her mischievous soon-to-be brother-in-law.

Great-aunt Tammy was waving to her from across the room and Faith made her way over.

“I knew I would adore Marian. She is such a hoot!”

This was not the way Faith would have described Tom's mother, but Tammy tended to bring the “hoot”ness out in people.

“Imagine. She's never been to Mardi Gras! I'm taking her along next year. She told me she's lucky if she can get that husband of hers to go to Cape Cod. Thank goodness Sky isn't like that. Well, if he had been, I wouldn't have married him. Marian seems happy with her husband, though. Wouldn't be normal if he didn't have something wrong with him. Mark my words, sugar, a man who seems perfect is going to have some major flaw that he's hiding. Like bodies in the backyard.”

There
were
bodies in Tom's backyard, but to Faith's best knowledge they all had headstones.

Eleanor had asked several of her friends' teenage granddaughters to come after school and be “floaters,” graciously moving about to see that everyone had what she needed. Their main task was to help departing guests with their wraps and make sure each left with a favor. Faith's grandmother was not to be outdone by Poppy Morris. The floaters were carrying pretty white wicker baskets filled with Tiffany signature blue boxes containing an Elsa Peretti heart bookmark. A lovely sentiment, and appropriate to the party's setting. Cos Club members were readers.

Faith lingered in the foyer saying good-bye and thank you to everyone. She was waiting for Marian and her sister so she could take them over to the Morrisses'. This evening they were all having dinner at Faith's parents'. She'd offered to get tickets for a show or concert, but Marian said they would much rather spend this time getting to know each other better. “We can go to shows anytime,” she'd said. They had to be back in Massachusetts for the weekend and were taking a late afternoon train the next day. Marian had made her wishes clear for the next day, as well. “You're busy, but too polite to say so,” Marian had told Faith. “Besides, we want to explore on our own, so don't worry about us.”

She had definitely lucked out in the mother-in-law department. Whatever Marian wore to the wedding, it wouldn't be the black outfit complete with mourner's veil that the groom's mother of one of Faith's friends appeared in at the church, weeping copiously. Or the one who declared she was boycotting the ceremony only to show up at the reception with a number of uninvited guests—a Hell's Angels gang she'd managed to corral. The newlyweds left for their honeymoon a bit sooner than planned by the country club's back door.

Dropping the two women off, Faith got out of the cab, too, deciding to walk across the park to her apartment. The predicted shower had come and gone, leaving a bright sheen on the city. She needed a breather and it was a walk she was going to miss, this shortcut from the east to the west side through Frederick Law Olmsted's masterpiece. Tom had told her there would be plenty of the landscaper's work to explore in the Boston area, but she was dubious. Especially since she'd heard from Hope that major portions of his “Emerald Necklace,” Olmsted's green space along the Charles River, had been paved over to create Storrow Drive, the city's main artery.