The Craigslist Murders - Brenda Cullerton [45]
“Do you have any idea how long I waited for that Birkin?” Rita fumed. “I’m going to sue Hermes!”
Hers, of course, was no ordinary Birkin. Charlotte recalled the gloating phone call from Rita, a year earlier. Abe had somehow gotten his hands on one of six $78,000 anniversary Birkins with diamonds in the locket. He’d flown an assistant all the way to Honolulu to pick it up. Watching silently while Rita handed her new sable coat over to one of the maids, Charlotte noticed that a few stray hairs had managed to work themselves loose from her tight little updo. And there was a button missing from her cashmere cardigan. Neither was a good sign.
Wasting no time on further niceties, Rita launched herself into the next scathing tirade.
“And as if my life isn’t complicated enough, Charlotte … my daughter, my adorable ten-year-old daughter, has lice!”
Charlotte simply raised an eyebrow in response. Rita hated being interrupted during her tirades.
“We are paying $35,000 a year plus thousands more in donations to the fanciest private girls’ school in New York, and she has lice. I mean, what kind of children are they taking in over there?”
“I have no idea, Rita,” Charlotte said, picking at her cuticles.
“So I get myself over to the Whiting School, Charlotte, after forcing that feckless headmaster, Robinson, to talk to me. And do you know what he says to me? To me, one of the biggest contributors to their annual fund?”
More rhetorical questions, thought Charlotte.
“He says, ‘Rita, you should hire a professional nitpicker.’ ”
“What’s a nitpicker?” Charlotte asked, fighting off a fit of giggles, and carefully moving toward a chair in the living room.
“It’s a person who charges $100 an hour, Charlotte, to comb through my child’s lice-ridden hair like one of those grooming monkeys, on a Channel 13 documentary!”
Rita collapsed on a chair. “I need something to drink, Charlotte. Please, get me some water or juice. I’m exhausted.”
Charlotte reached for the small, embroidered, crewel-work pouch on the coffee table. The words “Ring My Bell” were stitched on the outside of the pouch in yellow thread. The pouch concealed a small wireless device used to summon the help. Similar pouches were scattered casually all over the house. Charlotte pressed the unseen button and wondered, yet again, if the embroidered words were supposed to be funny.
“Lice are rather common these days, Rita,” she said, fanning her fire. “So are bedbugs.”
“Bedbugs!?” Rita’s wail brought the young Ecuadorian girl, the one Charlotte had last seen at the Vineyard, scurrying into the room.
“Yes, I read somewhere that there’s an epidemic of bedbugs in the city.”
Ignoring the detour on bedbugs, Rita continued haranguing Charlotte as the maid stood there, waiting for her orders.
“Rita, didn’t you say you wanted something to drink?”
“Oh! Yes,” Rita hurumphed, turning to look at the girl. “Alba, bring me some ap-ple juice. Ap-ple. And I want the ice cubes made from Fiji water. Comprende?”
“Si, Senora. Right away.”
Charlotte was in such a buoyant mood after seeing Pavel, it didn’t even annoy her that Rita hadn’t bothered to ask her if she, too, might enjoy a drink.
“Listen, Rita,” Charlotte said, sweetly. “I’d love to hear more about all this, but you said it was important I make time for you today.”
“You’re right, Charlotte,” Rita said, giving a tug to her Carolina Herrera skirt and standing up. “If you just give me one minute. I have something to show you.”
As Charlotte sipped Rita’s apple juice, a young man slipped into the living room and began knife-creasing, plumping, and rearranging the down pillows. Rita was one of many clients who hired a professional pillow person to come in once a week. How ludicrous, Charlotte thought. While the rest of