Skinny Dip (31 page)

Unbelievable, Chaz thought. I am so fucked.

Within moments Ricca began clomping toward him, Corbett Wheeler leading the way. Chaz extricated himself from Mrs. Raguso, though not in time to flee.

“Your housekeeper,” said Joey’s brother, “would like a private word.”

“Sure,” Chaz said, thinking: Housekeeper? Christ, she’s never going to let me forget that one.

Corbett Wheeler assumed the primary consoling duties as Chaz stepped away from the line. Ricca stood off to the side, eyeing him about as warmly as a barracuda. The tripod effect of her crutches made a conciliatory hug unfeasible.

In a half whisper he said, “We need to talk.”

“Go blow yourself, Chaz.”

“I was crazed that night. Completely out of my mind.”

Ricca said, “Save it for the jury, you sorry prick.”

“I apologize for cleaning out your apartment, too. And getting rid of your car,” Chaz said. “I panicked, honey. What can I say?”

“You look like shit. Are those cankers all over your face?”

“Mosquito bites. I’m coming down with the West Nile.”

“Good. I hope your balls rot off,” Ricca said.

“Look, you’ve got a right to be pissed. What I did was a horrible thing.”

“Duh, yeah?”

“But it wasn’t the real me. I was whacked-out,” Chaz insisted. “Seriously. What can I do to make things right?”

“Besides dying a slow, miserable death?”

“Shhhh. Please, honey, not so loud.”

“Two hundred and fifty grand,” Ricca said flatly. “In cash.”

“Really?” Chaz felt washed with relief. He’d always pegged her as a money-grubber. It was the cheeriest possible news.

“Plus a new car. Mustang convertible,” she said. “You don’t come through, I’ll be going to visit my new best friend.” She cut her eyes toward Karl Rolvaag, now chatting with the white-haired priest.

“Wait, Ricca, don’t! I’ll give you my answer now!” Chaz reached out, but she raised a crutch menacingly. “The answer is yes,” he told her in a low voice. “Whatever you want.”

“Wait for my call,” she said curtly, and limped away unassisted.

Chaz returned to the receiving line, which had dwindled to a handful of Joey’s friends. Corbett Wheeler leaned over and said, “They sure don’t make housekeepers like that Down Under. She’s a hottie.”

“Yeah, well, I heard she’s got the clap.”

Joey’s brother chuckled. “Nice try.”

Chez felt someone squeezing both his hands: Rose, the miniskirted blonde from Joey’s book club.

“Can I speak with you privately?” she asked.

“Of course.” Chaz caught a whiff of her perfume, the same kind of Chanel that Joey wore. He gulped, hungry for more; the scent had never failed to excite him. What he remembered most vividly in those seconds after dumping his wife off the ship was the smell of her, lingering alluringly in the air.

Rose led Chaz Perrone back through the doors of the church. It was cool and darker inside. He tried not to stare too obviously at her breasts, which looked anything but mournful under the clingy knit top.

“Your eulogy was just incredible,” Rose said with a hushed awe.

“Well, Joey was an incredible woman.”

“My God, wasn’t she? I still can’t believe she’s gone, Chaz. I cannot believe it.”

He said, “No, it doesn’t seem real.”

“But your speech today was just … you were like a rock, almost until the end. The Rock of Gibraltar.”

“I tried to be strong,” he said modestly, “for Joey.”

“But how are you doin’, Chaz, really’? How are you holding up?” Rose had found his hands again, caressing them in a worldly manner that brought a tingle. It had been days since he’d thought about getting laid, but all of a sudden that seemed like a fine plan. The perfect antidote for all this doom and gloom.

He said, “Tell you the truth, I’m falling to pieces.”

“Honestly, you don’t look well.”

“The house is so empty and lonely without her.”

“I can only imagine,” Rose said, her face etched with pity.

Chaz was getting high off the fog of perfume. He gazed at her coral-colored lips and resisted the impulse to part them with his tongue. Wait, he told himself, there’s a time and a place.

“Tonight’s going to be a rough one,” he said. “This service was supposed to be my closure, but I don’t feel any different.”

Rose interlocked her fingers with his. What an intriguing creature, Chaz thought. He wondered why Joey had never brought her by the house for a proper introduction.

“What say you come over to my place tonight? I’ll make us some dinner,” she said. “We can rent a movie or whatever. Take our minds off this awful, awful business. You like pasta?”

“Great, I’ll bring the wine. Tell me where you live.”

He stepped into the daylight and with renewed spirit descended the steps of St. Conan’s. At the bottom stood Karl Rolvaag, looking out beyond the sidewalk, where the mourners were dispersing. He was smiling in an amused and private way.

On a whim Chaz stopped. “Hey, aren’t you ever going to tell me what it was of Joey’s that the Coast Guard found?” he asked.

“Sure,” Rolvaag said. “Fingernails.”

“God. That’s all there was?”

“Yep. In a bale of grass.” Rolvaag began to laugh.

“You think that’s funny?” Chaz shook his head and walked on.

The detective wasn’t laughing about Mrs. Perrone’s fingernails. He was laughing about the green Chevrolet Suburban that had twice circled the block to cruise by the church. The vehicle was new and clean enough to be the rental that had been charged to Mrs. Perrone’s AmEx card. The sunlight cutting through the Suburban’s tinted windshield had revealed the driver to be a woman wearing oversized sunglasses and a ball cap; a young woman with a blondish ponytail.

To Karl Rolvaag it was so funny, so perfect, that he thought he might bust a gut.

Twenty-seven

Chaz Perrone swallowed his last blue pill, then rang the bell. Rose called out for him to come in. He found his way to the kitchen and saw her standing at the stove, talking on the phone, stirring marinara sauce while the linguini boiled. She wore tight cutoff jeans and a chartreuse tube top, which infused Chaz with optimism. He placed the bottle of merlot on the counter and rifled the silverware drawer for a corkscrew.

When Rose put down the phone, she said, “I’ve got a confession to make. I got home from the service and bawled for a solid hour.”

“Me, too,” Chaz said with a straight face.

He didn’t mention the five Michelobs or the supplementary martinis, which seemed necessary to settle his nerves… .

Ricca, the witch, was alive.

God only knew what Red Hammernut was up to.

The blackmailer wanted the money tomorrow night.

And topping it all was the videocassette that had been waiting on Charles Perrone’s doorstep when he returned home from church. The tape was grainy and underlit, but the images were sufficiently distinct that Chaz instantly realized what he was watching.

“Chaz, no! What are you doing?”

He hadn’t remembered her uttering a word, but in his mind the murder had become a silent blur. That it was Joey on the blackmailer’s video was indisputable; her face, her voice, her legs.

Same skirt, same shoes, same wristwatch.

The first time Chaz viewed the tape, he was staggered. The second time, he was gripped with perverse fascination.

It began with a flash frame of the legend sun duchess, painted across the archway of the gangplank. The next scene was on board the ship; the figures of a man and woman standing in low light by the deck railing. Although Chaz had had his back to the hidden camera, he had no trouble recognizing himself in the frame—the neatly trimmed brown hair, the dark blue blazer and charcoal slacks. Interestingly, his shoulders looked broader and his hips seemed not so thick as they often appeared in the bathroom mirror. As chilling as it was to watch the sequence, Chaz had been pleased about how buff he looked.

Seventeen seconds. He’d timed it with the clock on the VCR. Seventeen seconds from start to finish.

“Chaz, no! What are you doing?”

Hearing Joey’s startled cry was more than he could handle sober, so he didn’t stay that way for long. He now understood why the blackmailer was so cocky—the fucker had him cold. He had it all on tape.

Pure dumb luck, Chaz thought bitterly. Guy’s strolling around on deck, taking home movies of the constellations or the coastline or whatever. We walk into the shot, Joey and me, and next thing he knows, he’s recording a homicide.

The key drops on the deck and I bend down like I’m picking it up.

But instead I grab her ankles.

“Chaz, no! What are you doing?”

Aflutter of motion, legs in the air.

Then she’s gone.

So fast, Chaz marveled. Poof!

He was curious to study his demeanor, which he remembered as cool and steady, but the tape ended just as he began to turn away from the rail.

Six times Chaz had watched the crime on the VCR in his bedroom, his needs escalating from beer to the hard stuff. It was a miracle he’d made it all the way to Rose’s house without wrapping the Hummer around a utility pole.

The booze was therapeutic but what Chaz really needed, to sweep the mortal clutter from his mind, was sex. It had been what, two weeks? The last really good time had been on the ship with Joey, in the shower of their stateroom. Since then Chaz had been chronically out of rhythm, off his game, stuck in third gear. Ever since he was sixteen he had relied on a heavy schedule of lovemaking, accompanied or alone, to keep himself centered. Without it, he lost his edge. His brain fogged, his reflexes faltered, his hormones congealed, his testicles ached, his prostate began to calcify. …

He poured two glasses of wine and handed one to Rose. All things considered, he felt fairly positive about the evening. He’d been able to slip out of his house unmolested after Tool departed on an errand, probably to score more dope. The goon would never find him here.

“Tell me about your job,” said Rose, laying out the dinner plates.

“Not much to tell. It’s pretty technical, actually.”

“Joey said you work on the Everglades project, testing the water for some sort of pollution.”

“Basically, yeah,” Chaz said. “But it’s chemical elements we’re checking for, not sewage-type contaminants. Nothing you could smell or even see with the naked eye.” He couldn’t stop admiring Rose’s lovely hands as she spooned out the pasta.

She said, “That’s so cool. I’m sure you must’ve read River of Grass about a hundred times.”

“You bet.”

“Mrs. Douglas is one of my all-time feminist heroes. An amazing woman,” she declared. “Talk about a firecracker!”

“One of a kind,” agreed Dr. Charles Perrone, who hadn’t read a book from cover to cover in a decade. He was plenty drunk enough to wing it, though.

“How about Silent Spring?” Rose asked.

“Let me think.”

“You know—Rachel Carson?”

“Sure,” Chaz said. “Wasn’t she married to Johnny?”

Rose laughed. “Joey aways said you were funny.”

“She did, huh?” Chaz refilled their wineglasses. Either the blue pill was starting to work or Rose’s left foot was in his lap.

“Do you have a boyfriend?” he asked, trying to sound as if it mattered.

“Been a couple of months,” Rose said.

“Ah.”

“Things start to build up inside. So many pent-up feelings and urges.”

Chaz said, “I know what you mean.”

“Sometimes a person just needs to cut loose.”

“An emotional release.”

“Yes, exactly,” Rose said. “To get rid of all the stress and tension. Personally, yoga’s never done it for me.”

“Me, neither.” Chaz thinking: What a refreshing outlook this woman has!

“Could you do me a favor? The Parmesan,” Rose said, pointing. “It’s in the tall cabinet next to the refrigerator.”

“Sure.” Chaz got up cautiously, holding his napkin over his lap in order to hide the ascendant bulge. He did not wish to surprise his hostess until the moment was ripe.

His back was turned when she crumbled the small round tablet into his wineglass.

“Life is so unfair,” she observed. “Why Joey, of all people?”

Chaz returned to the table and passed the shaker of grated cheese. Then he took another slug of merlot.

“Know what’s weird?” Rose said. “The whole Madame Bovary thing. Joey never mentioned to any of us that she was reading it. The girls in the club, I mean. Why do you suppose not? We talk about everything we read.”

“I can only guess.” An errant noodle hung from the corner of Chaz’s mouth. He slurped it expertly and continued. “Maybe because that particular book was too personal. Like I said in church, there might’ve been something heavy going on—depression, whatever—and Joey didn’t want me or any of her friends to know.”

“Chaz, tell me honestly. Do you think she killed herself?”

“No! I can’t … I d-don’t know,” he said, affecting an agitated stammer. “I don’t want to b-believe that. Like I said, this was a very happy girl most of the time.”

Rose emphatically agreed. “She was. She truly was. That was a terrible question for me to ask—I’m so sorry, Chaz. Of course she didn’t kill herself. Not Joey.”

The subject was dropped, and they chatted pleasantly while they dined—music, movies, sports. It turned out that Rose was considering golf lessons.

She said, “I like any exercise where you don’t hardly perspire. What’s the matter, hon?”

Chaz grabbed the edge of the table. “I don’t feel so good.”

The room had started pitching and rolling like a carnival ride.

There seemed to be two Roses, each staring quizzically. In stereo they said, “You want to lie down? You should lie down.”

“Good idea.”

She led Chaz to her bedroom, sat him on the bed and tugged off his shoes.

“Here. Do as I say.” She patted a stack of fluffy pillows. Chaz stretched out and closed his eyes. Christ, he thought, I haven’t been this smashed in years.

“Be back in a minute,” he heard Rose say before she turned out the lights.

Chaz smiled as he fumbled to unbuckle his pants. He beheld a delicious vision of Rose kicking off her jeans, peeling out of her tube top and sliding under the covers beside him. With some effort he scooted over to make more space in the bed.