To the Manor Dead (2 page)

Daphne stood up and put her scarf back on, tying it under her chin like she was Audrey Hepburn or something. “My address is Westward Farm, on River Road in Rhinebeck, about a mile north of the bridge. Come in the late morning, around this time. It’s the main house, at the end of the drive. I’m on the
left
side of the house. Just come in, the door is always unlocked. I’ll be upstairs, in my bedroom. You’ll find me. It’s been such a pleasure, Janet. I look forward to our partnership.”

Then she stepped out into the monsoon. She opened her umbrella and it immediately got whipped inside out. She gasped and let it go, it skittered away. I grabbed an umbrella and went out. I opened it and held it over her. She looked at me as if I had just saved her life.

“Where’s your car?”

She pointed up the street, to an old Mercedes. She slipped her arm through mine and I escorted her to her car, and around to the driver’s side. She opened her purse to get her keys, then stopped. She looked at me, took my free hand, and held it to her cheek for a moment.

Then she got in her car and drove off.

“Janet!” I looked across
the street—George was poking his head out of Chow, Abba’s restaurant. “Come here!”

“My shop’s unlocked!”

“In this weather, baby, the worst that could happen is a fish swimming in!”

I crossed the street and followed George inside. Chow was an old luncheonette and Abba had pretty much left it “as is” since she’d bought it five years ago. The place was between breakfast and lunch, but there were still customers. Abba pulled them in no matter what the weather. It was partly her chill-pill atmosphere, but it was also her cooking—a pungent, fearless fusion that reflected her years of traveling the world with fifty bucks and a backpack. Her talent had earned her a growing reputation and she ran a small catering business on the side. There were about a dozen characters hanging out, the kind of people who have no place to go and all day to get there—over-the-hill hippies, artists real or imagined, folks who got out of the frenzy with
just enough
dough, boozers and reefer-heads, retirees, lowlife skanks living just this side of legal.

“Let’s have a cuppa joe,” George said, and I could tell from his tone that something was up. He was wearing a FUR IS DEAD T-shirt, a beret set at a jaunty angle, baggy harem pants, some very cool Nikes, and a little bling on his fingers and around his neck. Dude hated attention. George was an emergency room nurse who’d been smart enough to buy a couple of buildings in town years ago. He had eight apartments and two storefronts earning him a tidy income, and these days he only worked when he wanted to. He was pulling forty, bald, chunky, yet somehow handsome, with enormous eyes behind cool angular glasses. Resourceful, tough, and passionate, George had taken me under his wing when I first moved up here and given me endless advice on how to make my shop click. Or at least not clunk.

Abba’s waitress, Pearl—who had come with the place—brought us two cups of coffee. Pearl was a slow-moving seventy-something with gray hair, gray eyes, gray teeth, and gray skin. No matter what was happening, or how busy the place was, she wore the same vacant, dazed expression—the earth could split open under her feet and it wouldn’t register. As George put it: “Her elevator doesn’t go to the top floor.”

“Listen, babe, I’m counting on you for Thursday’s town meeting,” George said.

George was rabid about saving the Hudson Valley from the greedbag developers who wanted to line the riverbank with high-rise condos. Vince Hammer, a Trump wannabe with deep pockets and political pull, was trying to put up a mini-city on eighty acres of Sawyerville riverfront. It would bring in sickening amounts of traffic, raise taxes, obliterate the views, overload the infrastructure, and fuck up the character of the town.

Hammer had made his money down in the city and decided a few years back that the Hudson Valley was the next hot place. He’d built a mountaintop mansion outside of Woodstock and was spending a lot of time locally, throwing his cheesy, gold-plated weight around. George was in the thick of the fight to stop him.

“I’ll be there,” I said.

Just then the lights went out, the place went dim in the reflected rain. Abba came out of the kitchen carrying a cake that had a single candle burning on top.

“Happy anniversary to you,” she sang—to me.

George picked up the song, then some of the customers piped in.

“Happy anniversary, dear Janet. Happy anniversary to you!”

I grudgingly blew out the candle, everyone applauded, and the lights went on.

“What the hell was that about?” I said.

“It’s your one-year anniversary in Sawyerville,” Abba said.

So it had been a year since I’d closed my practice and left Brooklyn—overwhelmed by my clients’ endless outpouring of heartache and anxiety, my own regret and rage over marrying the Asshole, that long-ago decision that continued to haunt me, and just the whole goddamn jingle-jangle, global-frying, info-wired
mishigas
of twenty-first century life—and taken my savings, gathered my accumulated
junque
from the three storage spaces I rented, bought the small brick building that housed my store down and my apartment up, and begun my new life in a river town where I didn’t know a soul.

Big f’ing deal.

“This cake is new—pecan-coconut-blackberry,” Abba announced to the house. Everyone morphed into eager little guinea pigs—a new cake from Abba really was a big f’ing deal.

As the cake was cut, George leaned into me, “So, Abba tells me you got a visit from Lady Livingston this morning.”

“You know her?”

“Only by reputation.”

I took a bite of cake—frosted nirvana, moist to the point of melting, the blackberries a just-tart-enough counterpoint to the rich pecans and coconut. The whole joint was quiet in communal bliss.

“Abba, this cake is
amazing
,” George moaned. He was very in touch with his senses. All of them.

“Not bad,” Abba said. “I better try and get it down before I forget it. Come on back.”

George and I followed her into the kitchen and sat on stools while she made notes on a file card. Abba never used cookbooks—“that’s copying, not cooking”—so when she had a hit, she rushed to write it down. As she was scribbling, she asked, “So, how did it go with Daphne Livingston?”

“She wants to sell some stuff. What’s her story?”

Abba knew all the legend, lore, and lunacy of the Hudson Valley—her clan had been here for a long time. Her great-great granddad worked on the pleasure boats that carried people up the river, out of the city’s heat, in the nineteenth century. The boats docked in the village of Catskill; from there folks would take the railroad up into the cool mountain air. Abba’s ancestor settled in Catskill with his wife, one of the first black families. And even though Abba, who was now in her mid-forties, had been just about everywhere and done just about everything, she ended up back in the valley. She was tall and strong and beefy, with a wide-open face, a gap-toothed smile, and enormous green-brown eyes. She leaned against the counter and took a sip of coffee.

“Well, the Livingstons used to
own
a big chunk of the Hudson Valley. They got one of the original land grants from the King of England,” she said. “But like a lot of the valley’s old grandee clans, there’s been a certain, shall we say,
deterioration
over the generations. Daphne Livingston has lived a life and a half. She was a major beauty, the debutante
du jour
, dated movie stars and royalty, a Kennedy or two. She painted and wrote poetry, had a few art shows, published a book of poems, was in the thick of the whole society-literary scene down in the city. She was at Capote’s Black and White Ball. Then she moved to London, ran with the Stones, the Beatles, that whole crowd, even acted in a couple of European movies. But she had a few little self-destructive traits, like gin and drugs and nasty men. Then
she disappeared, turned up in Morocco years later. From what I’ve heard she got involved with some
very
nefarious characters down there, we’re talking prostitution, smuggling.”

Pearl shuffled into the kitchen and handed Abba an order. She moved to the stove, cracked a couple of eggs into a pan, tossed in some fresh herbs, a dollop of mustard, and began to scramble. “Five years ago Eugenia Livingston, the matriarch of the clan, kicked the bucket at age ninety-seven. She was a world-class snob and a world-class bitch, very competitive with her daughter. With her gone, Daphne finally came home to Westward Farm. She was burnt-out and broke, and she’s pretty much been a recluse over in that mansion of hers—I should say hers and her brother’s. Who
hate
each other. Which is why the place is split in half—right down the middle. Even so, carrying half a spread like that one ain’t cheap. I’d say Daphne is probably hanging on by her fingernails. That’s why she came knocking at your door this a.m.”

Abba slid the eggs onto a plate, added home fries, avocado slices, a hunk of cornbread, and put the plate on the pass-through. “Order up.”

“She was scared of something,” I said.

“Maybe her past is coming back to pay a little uninvited visit,” Abba said. “The past has a way of doing that.”

“I’m reminded of that every time my herpes breaks out,” George cracked. “But this Livingston saga sounds juicy. Are you going over there?”

“Tomorrow morning,” I said.

“Want some company?”

“I think my first visit should be solo. So, Abba, the house is divided in two?”

“Yes. Things got very ugly when old lady Livingston kicked. Daphne and Godfrey, that’s her brother, got into a battle royal. The Livingstons are what you call land poor, but we all know what six hundred acres and an old mansion on the Hudson are worth. There was a lot of nasty publicity, charges of alcoholism, incest, insanity, you name it. There were even whispers that old Mrs. Livingston didn’t die of natural causes.”

“You mean …?” George said.

“Yes, somebody helped her along. Of course, at ninety-seven it’s hard to tell. But the old gal had the last laugh, her will granted both Daphne and Godfrey lifetime tenancy in the house, and put a conservation easement on the estate so it can never be broken up and turned into Hideous on the Hill.”

“Kick ass, Eugenia!” George said.

“The bottom line is they both have equal claim on Westward Farm, and so they just put up a wall dead center in the house. She stays on her side, he on his.”

“What’s he like?” I asked.

“I’ve never clapped eyes on him. He’s reclusive, too, and apparently
very
eccentric. I understand his household is pretty bizarre. He’s a little younger than Daphne.”

“Tomorrow should be interesting, but right now I better get back to my shop,” I said. “And please—no more damn cakes.”

The rain was still
coming down hard. I dashed across the street—a teenage girl was huddled in the shop doorway, her face almost hidden under the hood of her pink plastic raincoat.

She pointed to the Help Wanted sign I had stuck in the window.

“Come on in.”

She followed me into the store and the first thing I noticed was her limp—one leg was a little shorter than the other. The cheap rain slicker was several sizes too small; her bony wrists stuck out and made her look like she was about eight years old. She had dark hair, a closed wary face, and stooped, guarded body language. She looked about as right for retail as I was for the NFL.

“I’m Janet,” I said, sitting behind my desk. “Have a seat.”

She perched on the edge of a straight-backed chair.

“I’m … Josie.” Her voice was halting, almost apologetic; she didn’t meet my eye.

“No last name?”

She hesitated, before mumbling, “Alvarez.”

“All right, Josie Alvarez, tell me a little about yourself.”

She noticed Bub, sitting on his swinging perch. Her eyes lit up for a second, just a second.

“I need a job.”

“That’s it?”

She nodded.

“Well, why do you think this would be a good job for you?”

“Because it pays money.”

“That’s an honest answer.”

“I am honest. Dependable.”

“Are you from Sawyerville?”

Josie nodded.

“You in high school?”

She shook her head.

“You finished?”

“I dropped out.”

“You live with your family?”

Her mouth tightened, she looked down, took a shallow breath, nodded.

“Tell me more: Mom, Dad, brothers, sisters?”

“My mother and her boyfriend and their baby.”

I knew this story: Josie was the odd one out, the Mom’s older kid who had no place in the new family. But there was more here, something darker. And where did the limp come from?

“You know anything about old stuff?”

Josie shook her head.

She looked me in the eye for the first time—I saw a little kid adrift in a big sea.

All right, Janet, end the interview, send her on her way. She’s in big trouble, something nasty is happening at home, she needs so much more than a job, so much more than you could possibly give her. The last thing your shop—or your life—needs is some messed-up teenager.

“Listen, Josie, I’m not sure this is the right job for you.”

Josie leaned forward in her chair and said, “I’m a fast learner.”

“I’m sure you are, but I just don’t think this is a good match.”

“Give me one day to prove myself,” she said with surprising vehemence.

Sputnik placed his snout on my thigh. I reached down and petted the little mutt. Jealous, Bub flew over and took his perch on Sputnik’s rump. I scratched his head and he puffed out his chest.

I took a deep breath. “All right, Josie, I’ll give you a one-day trial run.”

“Thank you.”

Goddamn it.