The Craigslist Murders - Brenda Cullerton [11]
Who the hell had taught Anna these things, anyway? Charlotte wondered. “I guess you’re right,” she said, craning her neck towards the entrance of the restaurant as Charles rushed towards the door and pecked the cheeks of two extremely well-kept blondes. “Every disappointment kills a little bit more of you.”
“Oh my God!” Anna whispered. “Look who’s here!”
“I know, I know,” Charlotte said grinning. “I thought she was in Rio!”
It was Suzie Katz, three times married, three times divorced, making her first public appearance with Gemitila, her new live-in lover and wellness counselor.
“Have you heard they’re following that crackpot nutritionist?” Charlotte added. “The one who practices breath-arianism?”
Anna leaned in closer. “The guy drinks his own urine, Charlotte. I’m not kidding.”
“Well, I certainly hope that’s Chardonnay,” Charlotte whispered as they watched the blondes touch glasses.
Nibbling her tilapia while the imperious Gemitila summoned Charles with a crook of her index finger, Charlotte shook her head. Whisking their basket of bread off the table, he backed away, bowing. The display of subservience was totally wasted, of course. Gemitila was lost in Suzie’s enraptured gaze. What was it that made these women so merciless to everyone but their dogs? Charlotte wondered.
“Penny for your thoughts, Charlotte?” Anna was buttoning up her brown cashmere cardigan. “Senti, I don’t want you to feel cornered. But surely, there must be something you owe your mother; something you are grateful for?”
Charlotte didn’t like answering questions about her mother. Not even when those questions came from Anna. Squirming in the banquette, she fiddled with her spoon. “She taught me how to create and maintain a beautiful façade, Anna.”
“Well, she must have been very good at it, cara. Because nobody in this town is as brilliant as you are at creating beautiful façades.”
“She was a climber. A phony. Kids at school used to ask me why there were no photos in our house. No grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins. My mother didn’t want them around as witnesses while she climbed the ladder, that’s why. So I’d tell them my family was dead.”
Anna patted her hand. “Like I said, learn what to ask for, Charlotte. You’ll be much happier. And this is my treat,” she added, quickly placing her Amex card into the leather folder. “Now I’m going to the ladies room. I want to take a closer look at Gemitila.”
It’s true, she thought as Anna stopped to speak briefly with Suzie Katz. I am grateful for “the eye” that I’ve inherited from my mother. Even her father’s wealthiest clients (he was an old-fashioned investment banker) had admired what Charlotte’s mother had done with their apartment on Fifth and the house out in hoity-toity Alpine, New Jersey. “She has impeccable instincts, dear,” Bunny Williams, the doyenne of high-class décor, had once said to Charlotte. The implication being, of course, that Charlotte’s mother had to rely on instincts. She was shanty Irish. And her husband, Charlotte’s father, was a Jew. Not that anyone ever mentioned it. He dressed like the Duke of Windsor.
All that was left now was the place in Alpine. Her father had blown his entire pension, investing in some tax shelter in the Connecticut woods. Two months after he had found out that it was a scam, he’d died of a stroke. He was sixty-two years old. Her mother had only managed to save the house. Furnished with big comfortable canvas-striped couches, threadbare Orientals from old auctions at Parke Bernet and a few 18th century English pieces, Charlotte still liked the feel of it. It was comfortable. And there was nothing contrived or forced about it. Nothing but the people who’d lived in it, she thought.
“Ecco! Are you ready, cara?”
“Definitely. I’m due at Darryl’s in twenty minutes.”
6
“I’ve got to have that goddamn belt, do you hear me?” Until Charlotte noticed the Bluetooth blinking in Darryl’s ear, it looked like her client was bellowing into thin air. She was also wearing a