Lady Killer Read online

  “Can you know…what that feels like? To be a mother, and your baby…your baby’s gone?” Mrs. Gambone finally broke down, and her ladyfriends supported her as she sagged, still trying to speak. Suddenly, she banged her fist on the kitchen table in sheer frustration, and the force of her hand jostled a cup of coffee sitting next to the christening dresses. Before anybody could stop it, the cup tipped over and coffee spilled on the pristine white dresses.

  “No!” Mary yelped.

  “Dio!” Her mother plucked the tiny dresses from the table, but it was too late. The espresso soaked instantly into the soft cotton, even as she hurried them to the sink. Mary sprang to her side, twisting on the cold water.

  “I didn’t mean it…I’m sorry,” Mrs. Gambone said, her tears subsiding.

  “We’ll pray for you and your daughter,” her father said softly. He handed her some napkins from a plastic holder, and the ladyfriend accepted them for Mrs. Gambone, who turned miserably away and left the kitchen under support, followed by the crowd. They found their way out the front door, closing it behind them, and only then did Mary notice that her mother was chewing her lower lip in an effort not to cry.

  “I’m sorry, Ma. So sorry.” Mary couldn’t do anything but stand by her mother’s side at the sink and hug her.

  “S’all right, Maria, s’all right.” Her mother ran cold water over the soggy white clump until her knobby knuckles turned red, but the coffee stains had already set. All four dresses were ruined.

  “Aww, Veet.” Her father came over and rubbed her mother’s back. “Maybe we put a lil’ bleach and it’ll come out?”

  “No, no, no,” her mother said, shaking her head, washing the dresses and trying not to cry. “No, the dress, they no matter. I no like what they say about my Maria. That hurts my heart.”

  “What’s going on?” came a new voice, and Anthony appeared in the kitchen, his dark eyes wide as he took in the scene.

  “Ma, it’s okay, it’s all okay.” Mary gathered her mother in her arms, meeting Anthony’s eye. Surprisingly, his pained expression mirrored her own.

  Half an hour later, the four of them were sitting at the kitchen table, trying to get back to normal. The christening dresses soaked in the cellar in a pot of cold water and Clorox, and the kitchen table was set with spaghetti, hot sausage, and meatballs. Steam from the plate, carrying the comforting aromas of fresh basil and peppery sausage, warmed Mary’s face. She was trying not to be bothered by the fact that Anthony was sitting in Mike’s old chair, or that her parents seemed overly happy it was filled again.

  Her father twirled his spaghetti against his plate. “So you and Mare were out to dinner, huh?”

  “Yes,” Anthony answered, suppressing a smile. “This is one of the more unusual first dates I’ve ever had.”

  Mary smiled, uncomfortably. He was a sweet guy, but she didn’t know if she was ready for him to sit in Mike’s chair. Or maybe she was upset at everything that happened. The image of Mrs. Gambone, weeping, would stay with her always. She’d already called Brinkley and left two more messages for him, hoping that he wasn’t boycotting her. It made her feel guilty to be enjoying a meal. What had she been thinking, going out to dinner while Trish was still missing? The neighborhood was judging her, no more harshly than she judged herself.

  “Mary doesn’t see anybody,” her father said, and Mary looked up.

  “Pop. Please.”

  “It’s all right. I don’t either.” Anthony stabbed a meatball with a fork. His sport jacket hung over the back of the chair, and he tucked a napkin in his collar, as if he’d eaten here before. He turned to her mother, who’d finally sat down to her meal. “These meatballs are great, Mrs. D.”

  “Grazie molto,” her mother said, brightening.

  “Prego.” Anthony caught Mary’s eye, and she faked a smile. He didn’t know her mother well enough to be calling her Mrs. D. Judy didn’t call her mother Mrs. D until she’d known her for a year, or after twenty-seven spaghetti dinners.

  “Parli Italiano, Antonio?” her mother asked, cocking her head.

  Mary couldn’t shake her disapproval. Her parents were practically offering Anthony the house keys.

  “Si, si,” he answered. “Ho insegnato all’Università di Bologna per tre anni.”

  “Excuse me,” Mary interrupted, rising with her BlackBerry. “I want to call the Roundhouse again.”

  “Sure, Mare,” her father said, and she could feel his puzzled gaze on her back as she left.

  She entered the darkened dining room, pressed Redial for the Homicide Division, and listened to the inevitable busy signal while the conversation resumed in the kitchen. She was in no hurry to go back into the light and the warmth and the family around the table, with all the chairs filled. For the time being, she sat alone in the dark.

  Beep beep beep, went the busy signal.

  It wasn’t until ten o’clock that Mary and Anthony got back to Center City and the silvery Prius cruised to a stop on her skinny back street. Her end of the street was dark, and everybody was inside, the windows aglow. Unlike South Philly, nobody here hung out on stoops talking or trading gossip, and everyone had quit smoking. Center City was just off the business district, revitalized by the city’s young professionals. It was a neighborhood, too, but one formed by gym memberships and gourmet muffins, both less constant than church parishes and blood ties. Mary had been trying to feel at home here for years.

  Anthony pulled up the emergency brake and looked over with a tight smile. “Was it something I said?”

  “Why? What do you mean?” Mary felt her face flush.

  “You’ve been so quiet and well-behaved.”

  “This, from an altar boy,” Mary shot back, more harshly than she’d intended. “I’m sorry,” she said quickly. “It’s just that this was such an awful night.”

  “In some ways. But in other ways, it was great. I got to know you.”

  Mary smiled, but somewhere inside she felt like crying.

  “No, really, going to your house, it felt like home. It was wonderful. It was…real.”

  Mary heard a soft, masculine note in his voice that she liked, even though she wasn’t ready to like it yet.

  “Your parents were terrific, the food was delicious, and we’re in agreement on my sexuality.”

  Mary reached for the door handle and saw Anthony’s eye catch the movement. If he was even thinking about kissing her good night, which it was way too early for anyway, she’d head it off with her patented going-for-the-door-handle move.

  “I’d love to see you again. Okay with you?”

  No. “Yes.”

  “Are you free this weekend?”

  Yes. “No. Maybe next, I’m not sure. Gimme a call.”

  “Okay, well—”

  “See you later and thanks for everything. ’Bye.” Mary grabbed her bag and got out of the car, closing the door. Through the glass she could see the corners of Anthony’s mouth turn down, and superimposed on his troubled expression was her own reflection, frowning back at her. She couldn’t begin to deal with him. She couldn’t make it better for him. She couldn’t even make it better for herself.

  She turned away and escaped to her building, let herself in and grabbed her mail without looking at it, then climbed the stairs to her apartment. She was unlocking her door when she heard her phone ringing inside.

  She burst through and flicked on the living room light.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Mary dropped her purse and grabbed the receiver. “Hello?”

  “It’s Reg Brinkley.”

  “Reg, thanks for calling.” Mary couldn’t miss the chill in her old friend’s voice. “I’m so sorry about what happened. I didn’t know they’d go on TV, I swear.”

  “I figured. I got your messages but didn’t want to call you from work or on your cell. This conversation is confidential, correct?”

  Gulp. “Yes, of course. I’m so sorry. Nothing like that will ever happen again, I promise.”

  “
I gotta make this fast, we’re busy tonight. Please don’t call me at work anymore. You’re radioactive.”

  “I won’t,” Mary said, taken aback. She sank onto the living room couch.

  “Take my cell number. If you need to contact me, call me there.”

  “Okay, thanks.” Mary grabbed a pen from the table and scribbled his cell number on her hand when he rattled it off. “I hope I didn’t get you in too much trouble.”

  Brinkley chuckled, which made Mary feel worse. She’d let a friend down, not to mention endangered his job, and all because he’d tried to help her. It didn’t feel good. She was screwing up left and right this week.

  “Reg, yell at me or something.”

  “Don’t worry about it. Officially, I have to bow out of the picture. As far as your friend Trish Gambone goes, let Missing Persons do its thing. They didn’t appreciate me sticking my nose where it didn’t belong, but they’re on it, even if they are busy with the Donchess case.”

  “I heard Trish called her mom.”

  “I know. How’d you know?”

  “Her mom told me.” Mary gave the details. “Do the cops have any idea where she could be? Can they locate where the call came from?”

  “I’m not discussing it further. Missing Persons knows about it and they’re on it.”

  “So that’s the only lead?”

  “Enough, Mare.”

  Mary took it as a yes.

  “Also, please tell your nutty friend Giulia to stop calling me.”

  Mary moaned. “She’s calling you?”

  “All the time.”

  Great. “By the way, I have Trish’s diary. Does Missing Persons want it?”

  “Yes. Anything in it?”

  “Like what?” Mary asked.

  “References to a getaway place they like. Their habits as a couple. People have patterns.”

  Mary made a mental note. “I haven’t even had a chance to read it yet. Today was wall to wall.”

  “Messenger it to them tomorrow.”

  “I could take it over myself, first thing in the morning.”

  “No,” Brinkley answered quickly. “I don’t want you anywhere near the Roundhouse.”

  Mary tried not to take it personally.

  “Sorry I can’t help you anymore. Hope they find your friend. Give my best to Mama.”

  “I will,” Mary said, and Brinkley hung up before she could say she was sorry again.

  Half an hour later, she was leaning against the soft down pillows in her bed, wearing her Eagles sweatshirt, her hair on top of her head in its Pebbles ponytail, and wearing her glasses, getting ready to read Trish’s diary. She would look for the references that Brinkley mentioned, and it could tell her more about their relationship. Not that it would be fun reading.

  My daughter came to you for help.

  Mary felt a deep pang, then pressed the image of Mrs. Gambone to the back of her mind. She grabbed a pen and propped her legal pad up on her knees. The best way she could help Trish was to do exactly what she was doing. She took a sip of decaf Lipton and began to read on page one.

  My birthday!!! Yay, T!! We went out for a great dinner and he gave me diamond studs, 2.3 carats if you add them together!!! G’s are only 1 carat each and also they’re flat, so it’s a cheat. They look bigger but aren’t really heavier and the cut isn’t as good. BTW, I’m starting a journal. But tonight, I drank too much to write much. TTYL.

  Mary made a note, then thought a minute. So that was why she didn’t find any other diaries in the house. She read on, and pretty quickly the November and December entries fell into a pattern. Trish seemed to write at night, on a weekly basis, after they’d gone out to dinner and a movie, a club, or a party. The entries were glowing and loving. Entries about the Mean Girls concerned weight gained and lost, and the time Yolanda got a butterfly tattooed on her lower back, which led to a flock of butterfly tattoos.

  It hurt like a mother!

  Mary smiled, sadly. Trish could be so cute, even conscientious, recording details about work, her increasingly large number of clients, formulas for mixing lowlights, and gripes about one Shawna, who appeared to be the salon’s Mean Girl. Trish wrote about her mother, worrying that Mrs. Gambone never went out and needed a man. She worried even more about Giulia, who seemed so moody lately, and Yolanda was so jealous of me.

  Mary sipped some tea, and by February, the entries were changing. After the dinners, there were fights. He drank too much, again. Or, He yelled at me for no reason. There were fewer exclamation points, fewer dates they went on together, fewer notes about the Mean Girls.

  Many of the entries read that He came back late from Biannetti’s, drunk. Mary recorded and counted them, finding 28 such entries until March. And about that same time, Trish wrote that he’s skimming, I just know it. He always has so much cash on him, and always when he comes back from work.

  By June, Trish was becoming frightened. The fights became worse, the drinking more frequent, and the skimming worried her more and more. On June 4 and June 10, she worried that they’ll find out. On June 23, she wrote that Cadillac thinks he’s stealing because at a wedding, Cadillac said that my watch must have cost an arm and a leg, and said, I didn’t know your boyfriend was earning that much. Mary made a note of the name Cadillac, but couldn’t find a last name.

  She read on, noticing that the verbal abuse intensified in the June entries, and she stopped flinching at the whore, slut, and lying bitch. Trish wrote that he’s slipping up on the job and not doing as good as he used to. On July 4th, she felt snubbed by the other Mob girlfriends at a barbecue because he’s not doing as good as he should be, even as good as his brother, who’s a dumbass on top of it.

  Mary read on. The story reached a climax of sorts, when Trish confronted him about his stealing, but he denied it to her, and she wrote, he told me I’m nuts to think he’d be dumb enough to steal from the boys, and if Cadillac thinks it, he’s an idiot, too. Cadillac keeps having his suspicions, which led to Trish being accused of having an affair with Cadillac, which she would never do because he’s a pig. Again, no last name supplied.

  More suspicions that led to the incident where he shoved me in the closet and held the door closed so I couldn’t get out! I was so scared he was gonna trap me or something! Mary read the following entries, in which a newly mistrustful Trish didn’t believe the apologies: And when he socked me in my stomach like four times and I couldn’t get my breath. In the next pages, the violence escalated. He beat the shit out of me after Biannetti’s again and the very next night, he won’t stop with the biting. More assaults after Biannetti’s, more reconciliations, more I’ll-never-do-it-again, and at least ten Polaroids, each one uglier than the next.

  Then Mary turned the page and it got worse: he made me suck his gun and he kept laughing and wouldn’t let me stop or he said he’d shoot me and blow my brains out my neck. Her stomach turned over. He had become a sadist, a sociopath. She shook her head in disgust and bewilderment, then kept reading. Entries in the days following were filled with I’m so scared and what do I do and what if he sees me writing in the diary. There were no references to any weekend getaway, as Brinkley had said, or any clue as to where they would be now. It was the chronology of a nightmare, and Mary reread the final entry: I went to see Mary but she didn’t do anything. Now I don’t know what to do. If you’re reading this now, whoever you are, I’m already dead. But at least this can prove he did it.

  She closed the diary, her heart leaden, and looked aimlessly around her bedroom, hoping to see something that would lift her out of Trish’s world and restore her to her own. It was a feeling she had after reading any book, a reentry issue when she was finished, as if she’d been out of earth’s orbit, but this diary was more powerful than any story. It was real, and Mary herself had let the heroine down, resigning her to a fate that admitted no happy ending.

  She was scared he was gonna kill her and now maybe he did. Ya happy?

  Mary felt her eyes moisten and blinked it
away. A white ginger lamp filled the cozy bedroom with a warm glow, and a blue-and-yellow flowered chair sat in the corner. Two landscapes hung on the wall, and a pine dresser sat nearby with a large mirror, which still had Mike’s photos stuck in the side. They weren’t photos of Mike; rather, they were photos he’d taken, loved, and put there, of his parents, his fraternity brothers, and the class he taught, third-graders, missing teeth here and there. He had loved teaching, and every time Mary saw those photos, she remembered him. She didn’t need to see his face in a photo; she had his face in her heart. She wanted to see what he saw, through his eyes. That’s what the photos showed. His soul.

  She felt suddenly lucky that she’d been married to Mike. She wouldn’t have married anybody but him, least of all Trish’s mobster. She wouldn’t have changed a single thing about her life, except losing Mike. And that, she couldn’t do anything about. So she set the legal pad and the diary aside, then took off her glasses and set them on the night table, faceup so they didn’t scratch. She reached over and turned out the light, and darkness covered her like a down comforter.

  She scooted down in bed, thinking in the silence of her room. Her solitude seemed more obvious to her now than ever, after the noise and violence of the relationship she’d been reading about, though she finally understood some things. Trish had stayed in the relationship because she was afraid to leave it, that much was obvious. But what Mary learned was that Trish had gotten into it because she didn’t want to end up in a bedroom alone, with her hair in a Pebbles ponytail and a mug of decaf tea cooling by the bed.

  Trish didn’t want to be her.

  Nobody did.

  Nobody wanted to be the girl avoiding a good-night kiss from a perfectly nice and handsome man whose only fault was that he liked her. Finally, there in the dark, Mary understood something about Trish, and about herself, too.

  And if Trish were still alive, Mary vowed to find her.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN