didn’t mention it to the police, but between you and me Elise Meyers was a little off her rocker—not that I’m one to talk, which is probably why I didn’t say anything to them. Still, she was. Here’s an example: once when Rio called me on my cell at her house to yell at me for refusing to sign our joint tax return before my lawyer looked at it, she told me I should keep a list of every obnoxious thing he ever did. She said it could be very therapeutic. Then she told me that she kept lists, tons of them. She had brightly colored, leather-bound Kate Spade journals of every injustice ever done to her, every slight, every nasty glance thrown her way. She said she had a whole book of every bad thing Jack had ever done and why he deserved to die. At the end of it, she even had a list of what she’d do with his money after he was gone.
She had a separate list that Bobbie knows about and that creeps us both out, and another one in a slim, lime-green book that Bobbie doesn’t know about, at all. In that one Elise claimed she had cataloged the indiscretions of virtually everyone she knew, and she made a point of saying that I was probably the only woman she knew who wasn’t in it. The way she said it made it sound like just maybe Bobbie was, like she knew about Bobbie’s one mistake.
“What do you suppose the police would make of the How I’ll Spend His Money After He’s Gone list?” Bobbie asks me. I’ve never told her about the lime-green volume because she would totally freak, and it could be that Elise was just bragging. Maybe she told every woman she knew that she was the only one not in it.
“If Jack was the one who was dead, it wouldn’t look too good,” I say. “But I don’t suppose it will matter now. One of the other lists could be important, though. I mean, someone on one of those lists could have been the murderer.”
“My money’s on the husband,” Bobbie says.
I tell her about his “alibi.” And then I mention that there was something weird about Elise’s house, something out of place or something that should have been there and wasn’t, or shouldn’t have been there and was.
“Uh…” Bobbie says “…I guess that would be Elise’s body?”
CHAPTER 3
Design Tip of the Day
The windows in your house are your eyes on the world. They frame the view of your house from both inside and outside and demand treatment. They should reflect your house’s style, be it formal, casual or eclectic. Would you let the world see you without mascara? Don’t let it see your windows without prettying them up, as well.
—From TipsfromTeddi.com
Okay, before you meet my family, there’s something you need to know. I was switched at birth. My parents insist this is not the case, but there is no question in my mind that I am an alien child. Now, by alien I mean either that my real parents were here illegally from some foreign country and there is no Long Island blood in me or that I was switched by body snatchers from another planet.
Either way, I don’t belong here. Never have. This fact has escaped my mother (who, at sixty-eight, is still sure that with enough pressure she can convert me into a real Long Islander) and is irrelevant to my father (who is three years her senior and who I am convinced will love me even after my third eye makes its appearance).
My parents clearly intend to take up residence in my house, judging from the number of suitcases and amount of food my father has schlepped in. I will argue them out of this later. I hope.
At the moment, I am watching out the front window of my front-to-back split level home, the one I shared with Rio, while my father paces behind me repeating that he’ll call Mel Rottman—the best lawyer on the South Shore—to talk to the police with me. Each time he says it, I assure him it isn’t necessary.
My mother, however, isn’t so sure that the innocent always go free. This is why she is telling me about a friend of hers who tried to get through customs by sewing undeclared jewelry into her brassiere and claiming it was her underwire bra setting off the metal detectors. It doesn’t matter to June that the woman wasn’t actually innocent. The point is that if a friend of hers could get frisked at JFK, I could wind up on death row.
Even when her stories are tedious, it’s still amusing to watch my mother tell them because of all the cosmetic surgery she’s had since my father’s long-term affair with our housekeeper put her in the sanitarium and him in the dog house. He’s footed the bill for more Botox, collagen and Gore-Tex than Joan Rivers has tried to deduct from her taxes. What’s really amazing is that even though the woman can’t actually frown, grimace or pout, she can still give me “the look”—the one that says “you’re a disappointment, Teddi. You’re such a disappointment.”
At the moment, I’m ignoring the look and wishing that one of my lovely children would entertain their grandmother long enough for me to finish filling out all the forms I need to send in for the decorator showcase at Bailey Manor before Detective Scoones shows up. Bailey Manor, for those who don’t know, is a decorator showcase. Every year there’s a benefit showcase and each lucky decorator or decorating firm that gets chosen gets assigned a room at a fabulous old mansion on Long Island that—provided they don’t destroy any of the existing architecture—they can decorate however they think will best show off their talents. Bobbie knows someone who knows someone who is sleeping with the brother of the guy who is married to the woman who doles out the spaces, so I am doing the breakfast nook. I can’t tell you how excited I would be if I had a stick of furniture that I thought was good enough to go in there or a way of getting some before Halloween, when it opens.
Oh, the irony of the timing of my father’s retirement from the furniture business—just months before I opened my decorating business. And months after Rio’s patience for being second in command there was exhausted and he began his scheme to drive me crazy so that he could put up our house as collateral for a loan to open an outlet center right next to my father’s store.
“Maybe you should do the dining room,” my mother says as she watches me fill in the forms. This despite having told her several times that I am lucky to have a room at all and that peons don’t get to pick. She plucks a piece of lint off my sage-green silk sweater and adjusts the chunky necklace I made myself, telling me I look very nice, considering. I am going to assume that she means considering my day and not pursue it.
She and I both keep looking out the tall bay window of my living room, watching to see if it’s a squad car that pulls up. A family of bikers rides by, all in helmets, the smallest on a pink bike with streamers and training wheels. I think they are the new people who bought the Kroll’s house.
I remember riding around with our kids and, unlike Plastic Woman, it must show on my face since she says, “It’s not too late for you to find someone decent this time and have another…”
“Way too late,” I say, and then yell upstairs for Dana. “Come down and recite your portion of the haf tarah for Grandma and Grandpa.” I realize that bringing up Dana’s bat mitzvah is dangerous territory, where my mother has set minefields regarding the flowers, the food, the dresses, and hurry on. “Jesse, show Grandpa…” Nothing comes to mind, but I see that my father is fishing around in his pocket, which no doubt means he has some new techno-gadget he wants to show me.
“Wait until you see this, Jesse,” he says as my ten-year-old bounds down the stairs. “I got a new phone for your mother to try.” From his pocket he pulls out a PalmPilot, a key chain that beeps when you clap your hands and a spanking new phone.
“Dad, you have to stop doing this.” I try to look annoyed with him, but it’s hard. I mean, is it so awful for a man to spend his
