Over His Dead Body

CHAPTER 45

SO THIS WAS WHERE THE PATH of Cassie Sales's little uneventful life had led. She was in the Mercedes with Charlie Schwab, heading toward Mona's Refuge at just past noon on the day after Independence Day, which happened to be her first of single life in twenty-six years. She was very aware of looking like a vamp from a spy novel. She was wearing Marsha's black wrap dress, Marsha's big dark sunglasses, and Marsha's skimpy sandals. Her stomach was heaving, still in rebellion from the wine she'd drunk last night against a backdrop of exploding fireworks that had set the dogs in the neighborhood howling for hours just about the time Mitch had died alone.

All along she'd thought that her teenage daughter had been just your basic malcontent with multiple pierces and pink hair, and her son was a dolt, a puppet of his overbearing father. Now she realized that her children had minds of their own, and there had been a reason behind everything they did to annoy her. It amazed her how devious the mind was. It turned out that her son was actually tempted by prison because his father had deserved to be there, and her daughter wanted to work with women in prison because she and her mother had been in one. That was Cassie's interpretation.

Oddly, she was relieved that they had some depth. The three of them were eccentric, but possibly not certifiably crazy. In any case, like Teddy, she was setting the record straight regardless of the consequences. What did any of it matter now but the truth? It was only after she'd gotten into the car and taken the wheel that she remembered she hadn't asked Teddy if the cremation had taken place on schedule so no autopsy could be done of the body. Whatever had or hadn't happened to Mitch in the night, she didn't want anyone to know. So much for true truth.

It was too late to find out now. She became distracted on Duck Pond by how many worlds apart it was from Manhasset, where Teddy and Marsha had gone to public schools. Here was real privilege. Here were the horse farms, the Old Brookville Winery, with its greening suburban vineyard. Here was the estate where a rival importer far more wealthy than Mitch lived behind his iron gates. Here was the old money, the turn-of-the-century banking and oil money to which Mitch and Mona had aspired with their designer clothes, their trips, and their ever improving accents. The road that led to Le Refuge was nearly untraveled at noon on a weekday.

Cassie wondered where Mona was, if she knew yet that Mitch was dead. What would she do when she found out what the IRS had in store for her? She was amazed that she felt drained and elated at the same time. The infiltration of the enemy beside her was almost complete. Soon there would be nothing he didn't know. It was thrilling. He knew of the juice in all its forms, but not where it all was. Now she would show him everything she knew. Her body was electrified, almost singing in its new form. In the back of her mind, she had a feeling that even though Teddy had started the ball rolling on the revelations, Mona was probably behind Charlie's intense interest in her. He'd kept on her tail, followed her while her husband was sick, was dying, died, all the time as if she were the one doing wrong. And all the time Mona was the real thief.

"How are you doing?" Charlie interrupted her thoughts.

Cassie was hoping Mona would be tortured by her prison guards, raped, brutalized, tattooed. She was disappointed that it turned out that Charlie had only his own self-interest at heart, after all. She realized that for some inexplicable reason she'd actually been counting on his liking her not for the juice but for herself.

"Did you find any other safe-deposit boxes on your quest?" she asked, glancing at him in the passenger seat. He looked quite meek and tame for a person who had the power of immunity to grant or withhold.

"Yes." Charlie nodded solemnly. "I did."

"Full of juice?" Cassie asked. Still, the whole thing was thrilling. She'd never forget it for the rest of her life.

"Yes. Full of juice."

"May I ask whose?" Mona's, she bet. Mitch's was in the Cayman Islands. Maybe Switzerland, too, for all she knew. She almost laughed out loud. He'd find it. He'd find it all.

"Maybe later. What are we going to see, Cassie?"

"A house," she told him, proud to have something to throw in the pot. "A nice one."

"Ah."

"Did you seize the contents of my safe-deposit box? Or did you leave it?" And what did she have? Nothing.

"Seized, so it wouldn't get away," Charlie said with no hint of an apology.

Cassie blew air out of her mouth. "That's legal?"

"Good things don't happen to people who protest IRS actions." He opened his window and, like a dog, put his nose to the wind.

"Huh. Did you look at the contents of my box?" she asked. What did he think?

"Beautiful day, isn't it? I did give them a cursory examination. Why?"

"Did you notice anything unusual about what I had in there?" Cassie passed a car traveling in the opposite direction at much more than the legal speed limit. It was a Range Rover. A blond woman with sunglasses like Cassie's was driving. A small child was strapped in the backseat. Both looked smiling and happy.

"You spend a lot and don't pay for anything." Charlie drew his head back into the car and tilted his head quizzically at her in that way he had. Cassie wondered if she still smelled of throw-up even after her bath.

"Isn't that kind of thing unusual?" she asked, trying not to be unnerved.

"Well"-he exercised his neck, circling his head one way and then the other-"it's not that unusual. More people than you'd think live off their credit cards."

"But wouldn't you say this is a lot of debt to carry?"

"I did wonder why you kept the receipts locked away. Surely your husband knew about them." Now he started with the tilting again, as if his head were so heavy with information, he could hardly hold it up. "But maybe not," he concluded. "People live mysterious lives."

Cassie couldn't resist a bitter laugh. "Yes. I saw the file for the first time after my husband had his stroke. I was looking for a living will. Imagine my surprise when I found a whole other me."

"Amazing," Charlie said wonderingly.

"It was so bizarre. I thought it had to be a mistake. I didn't have those cards. Mitch knew I didn't have those cards. I thought maybe the people in the computer had stolen my identity. Or I had a mental disease, one of those multiple personalities that does things you don't know about. Take that Jaguar. I just couldn't remember buying it or where I kept it. Quite a step up from losing your car in a parking lot, wouldn't you say?" Cassie hiccuped on another laugh.

"Uh-huh, very strange," Charlie agreed.

"The Jag wasn't in my garage. Those curtains with the custom fringe from France, not in my house. As you said, amazing. The dishes and jewelry. Never saw 'em. I said to myself, who's this Cassie buying all this stuff, and where is it?"

"Hmmm," Charlie murmured.

"Guess what happened when I tried to cancel the cards and stop this leak."

"How about, denied."

"How'd you know?" Cassie turned to him, surprised.

"You're not the primary cardholder, am I right?"

"Who would have thought I couldn't cancel the cards with my own name on them? Know what else? This morning I called and told customer service the primary cardholder was dead. They told me they'd need a letter to that effect from his lawyer. When I told them the cards had been stolen, they promised to send new ones right out, so I gave up. Ah, here we are."

Cassie made a little sound of triumph and turned in at the iron gates with the Sales logo. She drove up the drive to the stone house. Beside her she could feel Charlie tense as soon as he saw the place in its entirety. It was then that she realized she'd been right: He'd never believed a single word she'd said.

"Voilà, the new house of my husband's partner, Mona Whitman, aka Cassandra Sales." From the front, all looked quiet as Cassie slowed to a stop.

"The little devil." Charlie whistled, and before Cassie had time to kill the engine, he was out of the car taking pictures with the camera that five weeks ago she'd thought was a gun.

"Wait a minute, where are you going?" she asked.

"Going inside. Let's do an inventory and see what items come up. This is interesting."

"But there must be an alarm." Cassie opened the door and inched one leg out of the car. This made her nervous. How many things could go wrong in one day? He might be setting her up for some kind of fall. She was immune now, but what if she went in the house? Would she stop being immune on a B and E? She'd seen this on Law and Order.

"So it goes off. What's the worst thing that could happen? The cops could come." She was scared, but Charlie laughed. He was excited now and headed toward the back of the house, firing off rounds of photos as he went.

Cassie wanted to see for herself what was inside the house, but the police had already questioned her once today. She didn't want to get in any deeper. She hitched the sunglasses up higher on her nose, as if she could disguise herself. All her life she'd been afraid of going out on that limb. Afraid to look an attractive man in the eye. Afraid to be bold and have an extramarital orgasm. What the hell, she was going inside.

For once, however, Cassie's fears were for nothing. The house was wide open. Where the service road led, there was a brick-walled courtyard. Inside was a station wagon and a medium-sized van withMOVING DEPOT stenciled on the side. The back doors of the van were gaping wide, and furniture and boxes were scattered all over the tarmac, ready for loading. Looked like Mona was moving, but Cassie knew she was only packing up the juice. The glassed-in mudroom door was propped open for easy access, and Cassie followed Charlie in.

Inside, the huge kitchen and pantry were in complete disarray. Silver and dishes were laid out on the counters in preparation of packing. Two movers were smoking, talking, and wrapping Tiffany china in recycled paper. They didn't bother to look up when Cassie came in.

"Is Miss Whitman around?" she asked.

The packer with the black handkerchief tied around his head said, "She'll be back after lunch, who's asking?"

"I'm her sister," Cassie said. She picked up a huge crystal candlestick and wondered how much it had cost her. "Charlie?" she called.

"In here."

Cassie moved into the dining room, where two men were struggling to take down heavy curtains dripping with beaded fringe. Charlie held his cell phone to his mouth. He was talking excitedly, watching the maneuver with one hand on a hip. Cassie moved into the living room, where her mother's Napoleonic settee and side chairs were now covered in gold brocaded velvet. Seeing them there like sentries in front of the fireplace was a kick in the gut. There was Marsha's piano with its leather stool. What warehouse or secret love nest had they been in all these years? The library was through an archway that could be closed with sliding doors. In there, the shelves were filled with leather-bound books, leather furniture, and more velvet curtains.

Cassie stepped into the large entry gallery and eyed the chandelier with all that crystal. She studied the mahogany staircase with its heavy carving of pineapples, the symbol of fertility. This was not the house she would have chosen for herself. She hesitated for a moment, then climbed the stairs and found her rival's bedroom. Here, she stopped. Like everywhere else in this place, nothing was white, nothing simple. This room was red, red, red, like the library and the dining room. Red satin and velvet and taffeta, different textures. Not bad if you liked Victorian bordello. Cassie moved to the closet where the juice was, but the door was locked. She wanted to see that jewelry. "Charlie," she called out.

"Right behind you," he said.

Didn't take him thirty seconds to get the door open. He was good at B and E; must have gone to break-in school as part of his training. The jewelry box was locked, but he didn't have any trouble with that, either. Inside, nestled among ropes of pearls and gold chains and diamond tennis bracelets were the Cassie credit cards, bundled together with a few new receipts and a rubber band. Bingo. Charlie stepped back and took some photos. Then he pocketed the cards and moved on, taking notes on a PalmPilot.