Murder, She Did Read online

  Liz’s husband flashed her a private smile that heated the air between them, and she remembered again why she was here and why it was worth playing her role. As long as she knew he was playing along with her, that they were a team and that both of them recognized the game for all it could yield and what it was, then this was a beautiful island and life was fine.

  Liz turned her own smile on Hannah, with honest gratitude. She was glad to have been presented with this woman early on as an example of everything to be avoided. A woman who had devoted all her talents to fostering her ungrateful, philandering, negligent husband’s career, a woman without an interest of her own—except for sailing, and how often did she get to do that, except on corporate getaways?—a woman whose entire life revolved around others.

  I will never give up my own identity the way you have, Liz silently vowed. I will never be completely dependent on my husband’s earnings and my husband’s pleasure in me. I will never let my interests and life and ambitions be squeezed away by meaningless corporate pleasures. Thank you, Saint Hannah, for showing me precisely how not to be.

  *

  “I am so very sorry, madam,” the man in white said.

  “Excuse me?” The woman stopped sharply, as if he’d accosted her. She stood stark still, seemingly confused and overburdened, her flowered duffel bag clutched to her chest. “I was just going to—”

  “But you see, the marina is closed,” the man said.

  “It can’t be. I have a boat reserved.”

  He shook his head. There were notices posted every five feet. Stupid Americans can’t read. Won’t. Kings of the world. Rules didn’t apply to them. Signs didn’t apply to them. First, the bikini girlies who didn’t care what the signs said, they wanted their time on the sand. This precise stretch of sand, because it was near their overpriced rooms. But this dowdy one wasn’t a bikini girlie, for sure. Dressed in baggy pants and shirt, clutching her enormous pink flowered old-lady bag. But not old enough to be this confused, and if she was this easily muddled, if she ignored signs this much, she shouldn’t be thinking of sailing out there by herself.

  “I took a boat out yesterday, too,” she added as if she’d read his mind. “Right here. From this very spot.”

  “Yes, madam. We’re so very sorry for the inconvenience, but it is forbidden for you to go on this beach today. However, there is—”

  “But we—my husband’s company—this is our annual—our people are entitled to all the amenities of this—”

  “Madam, please. There are police all over this beach, and they’re armed. You don’t want to be shot, do you?”

  “Shot? This is a resort, not a…why on earth would anybody shoot me? I wouldn’t even be on the beach. I’d be sailing. And why are those policemen out there now? This is a terrible time to have a practice drill.”

  “Madam, this is real. The authorities believe that drug smugglers have targeted this beach as a rendezvous point where they transport the stuff. A drop-off.”

  “I heard that last night—but that was last night!”

  “Yes, madam. And this is the morning. And they are still not yet here.”

  “And they won’t be. In broad daylight? At a resort? That’s ridiculous!”

  “That’s all I know. Hide in clear sight, maybe. I’m only a security guard working with the police to protect you.” Goddamn rich bitch thinks she owns the island, owns me. He couldn’t stand how he had to smile and keep the polite patter up while she tells him her people have these rights on his island.

  “Now you listen here,” she said. “This foolishness is making me waste a perfectly beautiful morning. I’d like to register a complaint. Not against you; you’re just doing your job. If my husband had known such things happened here, we would have never—”

  “Yes, madam. This is very unusual, I assure you. But it is also very regretful.” Go ahead. Complain because our crystal ball didn’t work, so we didn’t know when something was going to happen for the first time. Complain as if drug smugglers have schedules, predictable drop-off points, the way trains do. And because it’s your ocean. You’re paying for it, drug drop or not. “Best talk to the person at the main desk,” he said.

  She sighed, and then she nodded, the way maybe a queen would, and huffed off. And here came another one with her rear hanging out in a thong, and her chest barely covered at all. And all of it inside a transparent so-called jacket. He stood straighter, smoothed his mustache and smiled. “Beach is closed today, madam,” he said. “We have transportation to the neighboring beach just beyond the jetty, however, if you will go up to the main house.”

  She looked startled, then pouty, then she shrugged and agreed. Good. He got to watch that thonged backside all the way up the hill to the main house.

  *

  She couldn’t believe how easy it was. Every time. Like blowing magic powder in everybody’s eyes, making them see only what you wanted them to see.

  The breeze fluttered Hannah Hackett’s hair. She lay back, her head cushioned by her pink flowered beach bag as she sunbathed in the late afternoon heat, eyes closed in a blissful half-daze. Arturo the sailor was as excellent as was Arturo the lover. She let her mind drift back to the past several hours alone with him, in a private, hidden cove. Lovely. She was still slightly breathless. Arturo did everything brilliantly.

  Even bake apple pies. Three dozen of them at a clip. And how their scent filled the house while the two of them filled the baking time.

  She was free. Nobody would connect Hannah Hackett, Richard’s wife, fuddy-duddy complainer at the resort’s beach, with the lady who’d hired a man to sail her out of a marina halfway across the island. Let Arturo steer the boat. Let him run the business from now on. She trusted him at the helm of anything, and she didn’t need to be captain of anything anymore. She was happily retiring.

  There was nothing like the sea, and nothing like making sure that the island’s woefully inadequate police force would be massed elsewhere. She’d done this before, on other islands and on the coasts of several small countries. That’s what set her operation apart. She wasn’t as greedy as her competitors, many of whom were now either dead or in some country’s jails. But marriage and motherhood teaches many valuable lessons—how to make sacrifices, to defer and distract, and give a little up. She transferred those skills to her business and sacrificed a part of the whole. A small part.

  That set them apart. That diverted the local constables. That avoided notice. That, and the fact they used sailboats midway, had no set routes, no set country, no pattern any official body could fathom. Everything depended on where Mr. Hackett’s boondoggle business trips took them. Once she knew the next destination, she and Arturo worked out the logistics, part of which was sacrificing a bit of the haul to put the police on alert at the wrong place, waiting for the rest of the drop to float in while she and Arturo carried on business—and carried on—elsewhere. From their first job on, the idea worked, and it was all, always, clear sailing ahead.

  She wasn’t the sort to arouse suspicions. For all the years she’d run her business from exotic ports of call taking major risks, using ever-changing ruses and plans—all anybody saw was a dithering, boring middle-aged woman. Their radar was shut down, their suspicions nonexistent. At Customs, too. Not once since her first hot-flash had she been stopped or inspected. She was that most respectable and least-feared of creatures—a middle-aged, middle-class woman. They waved her through.

  At first it had annoyed her. She’d felt stripped of her power as a woman. But then she realized she could use her invisibility to her advantage, amass power through the gift of not mattering.

  “You seem quiet today, my love,” Arturo said. “Are you sad about giving up the business?”

  “Not at all,” she said. “It’s time. It’s your turn. And it’s not like I’m giving you up.”

  He smiled and blew her a kiss. She wondered how long they’d last as lovers once she was no longer Captain. Days? Weeks? Well, for however long. He’d set
the stage for his departure by turning over the apple-pie duties to a small bakery that promised to follow his recipe. She’d known it was a gallant, quiet, first step out the door. But it had been splendid for a long time now, and all things change and move on. He’d been a particularly apt and willing learner, and not only about business. He was an elegant man, and she’d miss him.

  But with or without him, she was going to enjoy every second of her retirement. Except, maybe, for one detail giving her minor qualms. “I’m a little sorry about Richard,” she murmured.

  “Why waste emotion on such a rude man?”

  Arturo was correct. She gave up the qualm and decided to enjoy that aspect of her impending retirement, too. Richard lacked manners, flaunting his flirtation with that set of mammary glands. Right there, in front of everybody, including the glands’ husband. What was he implying—that CEOs had droit de seigneur? That executives got to sleep with whomever was attached to somebody lower on the organizational chart? Power hadn’t set well with Richard. He’d been in decline since his first promotion and this shameless, public display was the final straw. She’d declared their marriage contract null and void. Until last night, she hadn’t been positive about eliminating Richard, but enough was enough. He’d embarrassed her.

  Besides, the fact that he’d been so blatant about it meant that he was planning to end the marriage. Too bad and very stupid of him. She couldn’t wait to see how it was when they returned home. He’d be on the phone to his accountant—if he hadn’t already been—planning to move funds and hide assets. She’d make sure he lived long enough to discover that the money had already been juggled out of sight. And the art. Everything.

  Not that she needed any of it. She simply wanted to make a point, make him understand her powers, at least a little. As for funds, she was incredibly wealthy, enough of the money carefully laundered by virtue of its supposedly being his money. A perk of being a corporate wife. She had more than enough for herself, for her children and all the others through her Shadow Foundation. She’d named it in honor of herself, of how effectively she was ignored at home and outside. Like that radio show she’d heard as a child, about a man who became invisible, but still saw the evil that men did. Through her foundation, she funded direct assistance programs for whatever bothered her in the way people treated other people. The Foundation, on whose board she sat—nominated because of her husband’s position—was run by people who had no idea of its hidden and complex origins. But she’d made sure it was run the way she wanted it to be, and she’d sufficiently endowed it that it could carry on without additional funds, so she’d be retiring from that, too. Initially, Hannah had moral qualms about running a drug cartel, but given that all the money went for the greater good, she felt she was funneling these profits away from worse hands. Aside from the trusts for her grandchildren and other people who never suspected who their benefactor was, and the art, and the real estate, much of which she rented out to deserving people at below-market rates, and the Foundation, she’d invested a great deal of the enormous revenues in start-up businesses, under the banner of Nonnamus Venture Capital. She liked the play on “Nonna,” the grandma, and everybody (except businessmen, apparently) knew that Anonymous was a woman.

  Via Nonnamus, the drug money was doing good both for the fledgling companies and for her. Her choices had been sound. A woman had to take care of herself.

  It had all worked according to plan. Except for the Richard part. Pity, but he’d forced her hand. Luckily, her business was full of people who knew how to take care of such problems.

  Besides, with Richard dead, she’d also be retiring from Being Hannah Hackett, the woman stupid enough to be married to such a wretch of a man. Such a relief to drop that act, shed that skin, come out of the Mrs. CEO closet! Never to drag photo albums of her grandchildren again. Never to carry pink flowered bags. Always to talk about interesting things, or to remain silent, or walk away from bores.

  “You’re right,” Hannah now said to Arturo. “Richard is a rude man.”

  Arturo nodded. The skin on his back was tanned the color of cherrywood. “It is regrettable, but we must attend to the problem of your husband. When do you think?”

  “How about the first time he has an assignation with Miss Breast?” Hannah asked. “On the way to the love nest.” She’d long known the address of his pied à terre, the value of its furnishings, as well as the names of everyone who visited there with him. Nonnamus Real Estate owned the building. She enjoyed secretly being Richard’s landlady, and she made sure he paid top dollar.

  “On the way there?” Arturo asked. “Not even letting him satisfy his lust one last time?”

  She shrugged. “Given the number of times he’s already satisfied his lust in that apartment, and given how very rude he was last night—”

  “He has had his quota? Enough is enough?”

  “More efficient this way. And make sure it’s both of them.”

  “The girl-woman, too?”

  The addition of Susie had been spontaneous, but Hannah was a woman who was used to thinking on her feet and she trusted her instincts “Why not?” she said. “Make it a twofer. Nobody will mourn either one of that set of boobs.”

  Arturo laughed at her pun. His English was as finely honed as all his other talents.

  She lay in the sun, her head resting on a pink flowered duffel bag filled with photos of her grandchildren and several dozen million dollars’ worth of merchandise, her body still imprinted by Arturo’s.

  Life was good indeed. The future, rich and unburdened, glimmered atop the sea’s shining face. Clear sailing ahead.

  Ellie’s Chair

  I make people uncomfortable and I don’t care.

  It was happening right now. I was driving Carrie Brigham to a garage sale. It was Saturday, so Carrie was home, rather than in a high rise in the city selling bonus awards to corporations. She has a big title, something like Very Important Director of Something and Senior VP in Charge of Many Things.

  I barely know her. This expedition was by way of seeing if we had bonding potential, though I doubted it. Sometimes most of two people are incompatible but a little wedge of personality overlaps, and that’s enough to form a friendship. We were trying to become flea sale buddies. I still doubted it because even with an activity that basic, we had our differences.

  Carrie collects. She loves the hunt and the trophy, and almost anything can serve her needs: silver napkin rings, rocking horses, samplers, portraits (what anybody wants with a mediocre painting of somebody else’s ancestor is beyond me) quilts, tin wind-up toys, cookie jars, perfume bottles, heavy pre-electrical irons that needed to be heated in the fireplace, perfume bottles, Depression glass—almost anything. If it’s underpriced and decorative by her lights—it becomes her prey.

  She wants these things because she’s hooked on wanting and winning. The object almost doesn’t matter. She’s an acquirer who loudly prides herself on being a “self-actuated modern woman” as she puts it, and she has barely disguised contempt for women who don’t live the life she does. I wondered if she saw the irony in how passionately she snatched up the leavings of those women she disparaged: women who saved scraps and created the quilts she coveted; women who baked the cookies that filled the jars she found so quaint, women who pushed those god-awful irons across the clothing they’d sewn themselves.

  Like her, I’m a weekend hunter-gatherer, though with different aims and styles. Still, we might have had a future of tooling around together if she were not also fond of proselytizing for her way of life. I know she’s well-meaning—but who cares what anybody means if they meanwhile run sandpaper over your nerves?

  En route to the flea market, in the course of the conversation, I’d let slip that I was an alumna of an Ivy League college. I regretted saying it instantly, because no sooner were the words in the ether than she recovered from her shock and zoomed into preaching her personal gospel.

  “Don’t you think…” she began, and the muscles
at the back of my neck tightened. “I mean, with an education like that, do you ever…”

  “—feel as if I’m wasting my expensive and extensive education.” I kept my eyes on the road, away from her. “The answer’s no. I’m a happy woman and I like what I do.”

  “Of course,” she said quickly. “But with so many talents and abilities—”

  Here’s what bothered her: I, Genevieve “Jenny” Watson, do not work to what Carrie considers capacity. I’m self-employed, and I don’t punch a time clock. Besides, my work feels like play, so how can I time it? Still and all, by her lights, I am refusing to “have it all” because I’m not living the way she is, donning a power outfit and commuting in rush hour to an exhausting job. For some reason, that makes Carrie uneasy, confused, and obsessed with proselytizing. She and too many others who share her view are like unhappy people on a perverse and extreme diet. They’re so uncomfortable with their regimen they feel obliged to have you restrict your diet precisely as much as they do. “You’ll feel so much better!” they insist, although you’re already feeling quite well.

  I’m traveling to the market with Carrie to find discarded furniture to fix, decorate, and sell mostly through my website. “The Furniture Orphanage” is a genuine business, albeit not the kind that makes it into the Fortune 500 or hires people like Carrie.

  “Crafts are nice and all as hobbies,” she said. “For people with free time, but…”

  I didn’t bother to respond. I have never understood the mild disdain for “crafts,” and in fact, have never understood where the fuzzy border lies between “arts” and “crafts.” “Fine” arts versus—what? Unfine art? Rough art? Unrefined art?

  Just because most of what craftsman produce is useful, does that make it less “art”? I’ve had many happy moments at museums paying homage to ancient pottery vessels and sculpted soup ladles and inlaid furnishings—all the brilliant handiwork of long-ago craftsmen. Maybe we have to be dead for hundreds of years to get respect from the Carries of the world.