Over His Dead Body Read online

  Cassie didn't hear the exchange that followed. She held her daughter's hand while the two ambulance people took their time moving Mitch out. Teddy came over to the Mercedes to get the wheelchair.

  "I'm going to push him. Where do you think he'll want to sit?" Teddy's mood was very up.

  "Teddy, he's too sick for that." Cassie jumped out of the car. Mitch wasn't joining the family.

  "Oh, come on. Pop the trunk, Mom. I want to push him."

  She couldn't believe they were having this discussion. The man had just come out of intensive care. She wasn't going to have him drooling in the living room. She popped the trunk.

  "We're going to put Daddy to bed, Teddy."

  "Oh, do we have to?" Teddy pulled the wheelchair out, then struggled, trying to figure out how to get it open. "Ah, got it."

  "Yes, we have to. He can't visit," Cassie insisted.

  "But he needs stimulation, Mom."

  "Fine, turn on the TV."

  "There's no TV in that room. Hey, this is neat." Teddy experimented with the wheelchair, rolling it this way and that, not so easily on the gravel. "I'm sure Daddy will like this."

  "Daddy's a vegetable," Marsha chimed in, taking her mother's side for once.

  "No, he's not. He winked at me yesterday."

  "Teddy, he's a carrot."

  Cassie put her hand to her splitting headache. Her kids were regressing again.

  "Look, Mom, I'm an XKE." Teddy tipped the chair all the way back, making the rmmmm, rmmm sound of a sports car engine.

  Just then Carol Carnahan appeared on the lawn with a casserole.

  "Stop it, Teddy," Cassie hissed. She waved at Carol.

  Carol hurried over and bestowed a careful kiss on Cassie's cheek. "The girls are organizing casseroles for you, honey. For the next ten days, at least. Then we'll see how it goes. After all you've put up with over the years, you deserve it."

  "What?" Cassie's cheeks burned.

  "Tonight's tuna noodle. I made it myself, with fresh tuna instead of canned. How's he doing?"

  Cassie shook her head. "Carol, that's so nice of you."

  "Hi, Daddy," Lorraine burbled loudly as the gurney with Mitch strapped on it was lifted out of the ambulance. "Remember me? I'm Lorraine."

  An hour later, Mitch was settled in his room. Cassie, Marsha, and Aunt Edith were sitting on the patio, bucking themselves up with unbelievably velvety Château Petrus '45 from the cellar. And Teddy and Lorraine were in the pool, bobbing around in neon inner tubes. Lorraine was in the pink one. Teddy was in the purple one, each chugging beer from a can. Every few minutes, not looking a bit like Venus emerging from her scallop shell, Lorraine got out of the pool in her pink bikini to check on the patient. Fifteen minutes, like clockwork. She was a very responsible girl. Edith was enchanted by her professionalism and weight.

  "Isn't it wonderful that Teddy found himself such a lovely, normal kind of girl?" she remarked.

  "Wonderful," Cassie said, rather pleased with herself. This was the first time she'd ever taken a single bottle from Mitch's cellar without his express permission. He didn't approve of her drinking, and now she knew why. Wine eased her anxiety, let her be warm and giggly. She didn't think it was so bad to take the rare Pomerol, because even though it was a special Bordeaux, one of the wine auctions' particular darlings because there was so little of it around, Pomerols weren't classed among the great red wines of Bordeaux, like the Château Latour, Château Margaux, Château Haut-Brion, Château Lafite-Rothchild, etc., etc., etc., not in 1855, when quality control was first established in France, or in 1973, like Château Mouton-Rothchild, the only new addition ever made. So the Pomerol was not better than the best, really, by objective standards. Still, it was earthy and deep and almost mystical in the way it made her think about burgeoning cocks, specifically Charlie Schwab's. The first bottle disappeared quickly, and she went down into the cellar for a few more.

  After a while a pretty tipsy Marsha got up to dress for her date with Tom Wellfleet. By eight o'clock the two of them had left for dinner at L'Endroit. After Edith and Cassie and Teddy and Lorraine finished Carol Carnahan's tuna noodle casserole, Teddy ordered several take-out pizzas. They ate them in the kitchen while Cassie drove Edith home. When she returned forty minutes later, she noted that the two of them were fooling around outside on one of the deck chairs. Totally sober now, she went into the makeshift hospital room to check on Mitch.

  He was raised up slightly in the hospital bed, resting against two down pillows. The lights were on, clearly illuminating his thin hair, very long now and white at the roots. His stubbly cheeks that hadn't been relieved of his grizzled beard in many weeks. His open mouth was blowing bubbles. She could see his yellow teeth and wet chin. As in the hospital all month, he didn't register her presence now. But unlike all those other times, tonight she had no interest in getting his attention. She studied him coldly, watching his chest heave as he breathed noisily on his own. Apparently it wasn't so easy staying alive. He was struggling. Stubborn bastard.

  She noted that Lorraine had dressed him in a pair of his own expensive Sulka pajamas and had made an attempt to neaten his hair. He smelled as if he needed a diaper change, but despite what Edith said, Cassie's contract didn't call for such a service.

  "I'm going upstairs now," she told him solemnly. "I'm going to drink a whole bottle of '89 Domaine Romanee-Conti all by myself. I know for you it wouldn't be ready. But my sources say the Grands Echezeaux is about perfect now-spicy, firm, with a taste of berries, minerals, and oak. In California, they may cheat and add too much oak-‘oaky, oaky,' as you would say-in the Cabernets and Merlots to enhance mediocre grapes. But not in France, right, Mitch?" She paused for a breath, then went on.

  "Listen, if you have to stay here for any length of time, I swear to God that I'm going to start dating. I'm going to have sex whenever I want it, wherever I want it. I'm going to drink this cellar down to nothing. I'm going to travel, and I'm going to leave you with a nurse. When I'm here, I'm going to dust you like a piece of furniture. And when I go out, I'm going to leave you in your wheelchair facing the wall. Welcome home, you son of a bitch."

  MITCH MAY OR MAY NOT HAVE HEARD HER, may or may not have registered what she said. But the rest of his evening didn't go well. At two in the morning Teddy and Lorraine were necking out by the pool. They'd turned off the lights outside so no one could watch them, but they could easily see the glow from the soft light in the office, where Mitch's hospital bed had been cranked down so he could go to sleep. Lorraine had wanted to turn that light off, too, but Teddy had wanted it on so his dad wouldn't feel disoriented if he woke up in the middle of the night.

  "Do you think he knows he's home?" Teddy wondered.

  "Of course, honey, don't you worry; he's happy as a clam."

  They were lying on a single chaise and it wasn't easy to stay balanced. Teddy was skinny and rested on one hip. Lorraine was tilted toward his chest, her breasts straining to free themselves from the bikini top that barely covered her nipples.

  "Kiss my neck, honey," she said.

  Teddy leaned forward and touched his lips to Lorraine's floral-scented shoulder. It was soft and round, and damp from the swim they'd taken. He was in terrible pain from all the time she was taking to warm up, and wanted to move along down to the business end of the operation.

  "That's nice, a little higher. Okay, that's good, just like that." She threw her head back and received his kisses on her neck where she wanted them. "Like butterflies, that's right."

  His arm was draped over her hips and he felt the wonderful curves of her belly, overflowing from the binding band of her tight bikini bottom. All around was the roll he loved to squeeze. But he wanted it all to spill out. He wanted in there, where he knew it was going to be heaven. He pretended some innocent roaming, then began to inch his fingers inside the band.

  "No, no."

  His hand jumped away at the barking command. She sounded a lot like his sister.

  "Not yet, honey. I'
m not wet yet."

  He lost it for a moment, felt himself deflating.

  "There, okay, that's nice. Go ahead."

  He struggled with a completely unfamiliar closing on the bikini top, then felt a surge of pure joy when suddenly the two skinny straps parted, the front fell off, and her heavy breasts swung free. "Ohhh," he moaned as he put his face into the glorious orbs and nuzzled away. His little man sprang back to life.

  "Hey, take it easy. One at a time, lover. Ohh," Lorraine squeaked. "Oh, that's great. Yes, circle the tongue. That's too hard. Yeah, like that. Now the other."

  Teddy was hanging off the edge of the chaise. His shoulder, wedged against the arm of the chair, was what kept him from toppling off. Lorraine was leaning closer.

  "Yeah. That's good, lower."

  He was panting, in the region of her belly button. He peeled the bottom down just a little, felt the pelt. Oh, God. If only she'd shut up and stop trying to make him her perfect lover… hurrah, his hand was in. Ooooo, that was good.

  "Ow! Honey, you have a hangnail," Lorraine yelped.

  Two fifteen-minute nursing periods passed as Teddy had to go back to square one with his erection killing him. Then it took another fifteen minutes to peel her bottom off, get his condom on just the way she thought it should be, then securely plant himself inside her in exactly the position she liked it. He did not consider it a bad experience when he came almost instantly. In fact, he thought it was a great big plus that he was spared getting any more instruction since he was pretty sure he already knew what to do.

  "I always teach my boyfriends how to be my perfect lover," she confided, not seeming to hold a grudge, this time anyway. She reached for a towel and another beer. Then she settled in for a natter and a recap of the plays. He dozed beside her.

  Back in the house, Cassie had long since fallen into a deep, drunken slumber. During the poolside frolic, Mitchell Sales heard the mumblings outside and began having trouble breathing.

  He made some sounds like "Heel…" Too soft to be heard above the gentle drone of the air conditioner in his room. He became further agitated when no one responded to his distress. This was not like the hospital, where the monitor had been on him day and night.

  "Heel…" He tried to move, but had no control of himself at all. He couldn't sit, and when his body convulsed, he fell over against the bars of his bed. Outside, while Lorraine was lecturing on the proper pressure a tongue should exert on a nipple, Mitch stopped struggling. When she looked in on him nearly an hour later, his body had already begun to cool.

  CHAPTER 41

  THE GRAY-HAIRED OFFICER FROM THE POLICE DEPARTMENT who came to question Cassie e arly the next morning was a paunchy man in a uniform that may have fit him five or ten years ago but wasn't looking so good on him now. She kept thinking that if Mitch were alive to see it, he would be disdainful of the man's chest and tummy tugging at his shirt buttons, getting in the way of all his cop paraphernalia so that if he had to pull his gun on her he probably wouldn't be able to reach it. Deputy Sheriff Lou Archer sat on the stiff, Federal-style sofa in Cassie's living room, cradling his belly and smelling of cigarettes, coffee, and Dunkin' Donuts. It was nine in the morning, and he'd been in the house since eight. Cassie tried not to look at his gun and notebook and handcuffs because they made her hands shake.

  Outside, the sun had come up on another magnificent summer day. The fifth of July. The pool sparkled. The brilliantly colored lilies and roses perfumed the air. Cassie was all alone in the house, and everything that could be wrong with the world was wrong with the world.

  "Tell me once again in your own words what happened last night, Mrs. Sales," the deputy commanded. Then he licked the tip of his pen as if a different answer would be forthcoming on this, his fourth, foray into the subject.

  Cassie faced him in the wing chair, hanging on to the arms as if she were on a turbulent flight thirty thousand feet over a bottomless ocean. She'd been staggering from room to room since around six-thirtyA.M., when Teddy and Lorraine woke her from her profound, alcohol-induced sleep to tell her that her husband had died in his sleep.

  For the last thirty-six days she had been up and down on a roller coaster of feelings about her husband and herself, about her stolen identity, about sickness and health, children and death. Now her eyes were red-veined and puffy. They just didn't want to stay open for any more reality. Her head throbbed continuously. After all the effort that had been made to save him, Mitch had died in his sleep. She couldn't take it in herself, much less form an appropriate response to a detective's interrogation. She had her first paralyzing hangover in a quarter of a century and could hardly form a coherent sentence.

  Three times Cassie had tried to explain that her husband had been released from the hospital late yesterday afternoon after spending a month in intensive care recovering from a stroke. His condition had been so precarious then that he'd returned home in an ambulance and was immediately put to bed by his nurse, Lorraine Forchette. During the night, between one of the regular fifteen-minute checks Miss Forchette made on him, he must have suffered another stroke and died in his sleep. It was a family tragedy, but nothing more sinister than that.

  The deputy sheriff, however, didn't see it that way. He wanted to know why she'd brought her husband home in such vulnerable condition. Cassie peered at him blearily. She thought that was a pretty good question, but didn't want to get into the issue of managed care.

  Then he wanted to know why a professional nurse hadn't been hired to look after him; and here, Cassie had to take issue.

  "Lorraine Forchette is a professional nurse. She works at North Fork Hospital," she protested.

  The clincher came on the fourth go-round. Cassie heard it through a fog. Deputy Archer wanted to know why a physician hadn't signed the death certificate before the body was removed to a funeral home instead of afterward. Some legal question or other that Cassie didn't know anything about. She'd had nothing to do with it. Her hands started shaking. For reasons as yet unexplained, when his father died, Teddy had called Mark Cohen and Martini's Funeral Home instead of waking her and calling 911 as he should have. Cassie had no idea why.

  Since Mark immediately concluded on the phone that Mitch's was a natural death, the funeral home had sent a hearse to take his remains away. From what Cassie gathered from the sheriff, this was a shady and illegal thing to do.

  "Martini's came in the middle of the night?" the detective demanded yet again.

  "No, it was morning. You can call and ask Mr. Martini himself."

  "Did you arrange this yourself?"

  Cassie shook her head. Teddy had done it. She guessed he'd thought the body was spooky and wanted it out of the house. In any case, when Teddy and Lorraine finally got her awake, she couldn't sit up much less understand what they were talking about. So, it turned out that the remains of the man who'd been her husband for twenty-six years were removed before she knew he'd died. The whole thing gave her a terrible feeling. Terrible. She'd been left out of Mitch's life and now she was left out of his death.

  Teddy had stood by her bed and informed her that he was the man of the family now, and he'd take care of everything from now on. But all she'd been able to do was hang over the side of the bed and gag. If she hadn't felt so miserable, she might have reacted with the rage she felt now. Who was Teddy to decide he was the man of the family when she'd told him weeks ago that she was the man of the family? Cassie wasn't sure yet if Teddy was a fucking incompetent who mismanaged every damn thing he touched, or if something sinister had happened and Mona had somehow gotten to him and triumphed over everyone. What if Mitch was actually alive and winking at all of them over on Duck Pond Road? She stared at the detective, wondering what she could do to make him go away so she could lie down.

  "I understand you were drinking heavily," he said, referring to his notes.

  Cassie squinted at the white specks on the sheriff's broad shoulders and chest and realized it was not doughnut sugar as she'd thought at first. W
aves of nausea crashed over her like the tide coming in on a rocky shore. Oceans. Now all her thoughts were of oceans. She wanted to go down to the sea again, and see those waves just one more time before she died.

  "I wouldn't say I was drinking heavily. I had a glass of wine," she said slowly. Or two.

  "Celebrating?" the sheriff said with a voice that was heavy on the irony.

  Cassie blinked raw sandpapery eyes. Her sick feeling of hangover was quickly escalating into hysteria. She didn't want to weep in front of the policeman who was sounding very much as if he suspected that she or Teddy, or Teddy's awful nurse girlfriend, had put a pillow over her husband's head so they could collect his life insurance and live happily ever after in the Cayman Islands with his tax shelter.

  Actually, her own disorganized musings had spewed up the same crazy idea, only with Teddy as the perpetrator instead of herself. But why would he do such a terrible thing-to save her from a life of misery? She didn't think he cared enough. To help Mona get rich? She shook her throbbing head. Teddy wouldn't! Even extremely paranoid and terrified, Cassie didn't want to believe he'd murder his own father. She couldn't help it, she started lying.

  "I was glad my husband was home. We were together as a family again. Could we finish this some other time?" she asked weakly.

  She didn't know what to do. If she called Parker Higgins, Mona would know. If Mona knew, she'd use the sudden death to discredit and threaten, even prosecute, her. She was frightened. The whole thing did look somewhat suspicious, even to her. Cassie held back her tears. And there was no one to corroborate her story or make the detective go away, because this was the moment her idiot son and his dangerous girlfriend had chosen to take off for Martini's to identify Mitch's body so he could be cremated on the spot. Wasn't that… strange?

  They'd taken the Porsche to the funeral home, and Cassie guessed that after picking out an expensive urn, they would probably stop at the International House of Pancakes for a hearty breakfast on the way home. She was so scared.