Chapter 3
CHAPTER THREE
A Nightmare in Lemon Chiffon
JAMIE
Jamie looked at her watch and her blood ran cold.
Ten AM. Did she forget some hideous brunch plan?
She glanced in the mirror, looked disapprovingly at her blond hair in a messy bun, thin streaks of gray exclaiming her age.
She frowned at her pajama pants but had no time to change.
She rushed to the front door. Her mother didn’t abide delays.
There stood the tyrant herself, midsixties, clad in a pale-yellow chiffon dress, a hat so extravagant it belonged at the Kentucky Derby, and lips painted a perfect shade of blood red. Elaine Cromwell Frisco always came camera ready.
Her mother stood there holding a basket of baked goods and a bottle of champagne.
Behind her was her brawny, lovable fuckup of a brother, Ripley “Rip” Frisco, in torn jeans, a Ramones T-shirt, his hair and beard in need of a trim, but his eyes sharp and sparkly as usual.
Rip was only two years younger than her but somehow always appeared to be perpetually twenty-five. He occasionally got carded for alcohol.
“Mom, what are you doing here?” Jamie tried to hide the hysteria in her voice. She cleared her throat.
“This is admittedly an impromptu visit, but I have news.” Elaine Cromwell Frisco sashayed into the beach cottage and put down the basket on Jamie’s small dining table.
She swirled around, handed the bottle of champagne to Rip and said, “Will you do the honors?”
Without a word or a delay, Rip immediately took the bottle and headed back to the front porch to open it.
“News,” Jamie said flatly, worry starting to build like a hurricane.
She rushed to the kitchen for champagne flutes, gave them a quick rinse to get a year of dust off them, and scurried back. In the distance, the cork of the champagne popped off followed by the yelp of a neighborhood dog.
Rip came back in and headed straight for the flutes, which he filled to the brim. He gulped his entire glass down and filled it again before handing one to Jamie. He shot her a look of warning. Then stuffed a croissant in his mouth and began to chew.
Jamie didn’t miss the hidden sign and felt herself breaking into a sweat.
Jamie’s mother cast a look around her apartment.
She followed her mom’s disapproving eye and clenched her stomach.
Jamie had leaned into the idea of home as sanctuary.
She bought a new sofa she could melt into, stocked up on new vinyl for the turntable, and put every single light switch on a dimmer.
The house felt like a cocoon. She’d set up food and alcohol delivery and as a result, barely had to leave the house.
She’d even adopted a tiny rescue dog named Dash, who had taken one look at Elaine Cromwell Frisco, started to shiver, and scuttled into the bedroom to hide.
She sat down next to her brother on her couch, took a swig of her champagne, and waited for the other shoe to drop. The two exchanged a wary glance.
“Barry Bonavico and I are getting married,” Elaine stated.
Huh. Not as bad as she thought.
Rip squinted at their mother and said, “The same Barry Bonavico accused of insider trading in New Jersey?”
Elaine threw her head back and with a haughty dose of indignation said, “Good God, that was years ago.”
“Pretty sure I read something about it last week on—”
Elaine interjected, “Ripley, please hold your tongue. He is rehabilitated. Just like Michael Milken. One decade he’s incarcerated for securities fraud, this decade he’s a major philanthropist and beloved professor at USC.”
“Who says crime doesn’t pay?” Rip muttered under his breath.
Jamie was concerned, but not because she was getting married. “Seems fast.”
“Marriage suits me, Jamie. Not that you have any idea.”
Burn.
“Which brings me to why I’m here.” Elaine took a sip of champagne and stood ramrod straight. “I want you both at the wedding.”
“We’ve been at the last two, what makes you think we’d miss this one?” Rip delivered this line without a hint of sarcasm. Jamie marveled at him.
“We’re getting married at the Montage Hotel in Kapalua Bay in two months.
” One of Elaine’s eyebrows rose with an air of importance, a nostril flared.
She dropped the hotel’s name as if her children should both understand its preeminence.
No doubt if Jamie googled Montage Hotel, she’d find it a seven-star resort with unmatched oceanfront views, multiple swimming pools overlooking a virgin beach, and a James Beard Award–winning chef serving up delights like sea urchin pasta and beluga caviar tacos.
“Congrats?” Rip offered uncertainly.
Eyes narrowing, Elaine Cromwell Frisco set down her flute and in a flat, deadly serious tone said, “I am demanding that you bring significant others to my wedding. By significant, I mean it must be a proper relationship or on the way to becoming one. I will not tolerate some henna-tattooed interloper or some floozie from whatever dive bar you frequented that week, Rip. The days of your twenties are long gone, especially if I’m judging by your hair. ” She pointed at Jamie’s gray streaks.
Jamie instinctively touched her bun, and retorted, “Why do we need dates?”
Her mother squinted at Jamie. “I’m assuming you’re bringing that running shoe magnate you’re dating. Chad, is it?”
Jamie did not correct the running shoe magnate job title to what it really was, a retail clerk at Skechers in Manhattan Beach, nothing more than a casual affair, but her mother didn’t know that.
“It’s Chaz, actually.”
“Can’t we just call him Chad during the wedding?” her mother stiffly pleaded.
“No, we can’t.”
“It’s a small favor. I don’t know why you’re so stubborn—”
“Mom,” Jamie interrupted, “we can’t call him Chad at the wedding because Chaz and I broke up.
” This truth came out hard and fast, like a bluster; to draw it out only left room for her mother to attack midsentence.
She quickly motioned for Rip to pour her some more champagne.
Truth was never a good tactic with her mother. It made her unpredictable.
Her mother sat there, stunned for a moment, as if she’d been slapped in the face.
“What happened?” She said the words slowly, so slowly they almost sounded like a gun being loaded.
A quizzical look remained on her face. “At my birthday brunch, you and Chad were canoodling and that was only last month.”
Jamie cleared her throat and willed herself to avoid rolling her eyes. “It’s Chaz,” she repeated, “Chaz, Mother, and yes, he was doing me a favor. We’ve been broken up for a while. I didn’t tell you because I know how you get.”
Mouth agape, Elaine asked, “You were fake canoodling?”
Jamie blushed but nodded. She’d didn’t ask much of Chaz, like proper dinner dates or weekends away, for fear that his skittishness toward monogamy would make him run like a spooked horse toward an open gate, but he had done this one solid favor for her because he, too, had met Elaine Cromwell Frisco.
He had shown up and canoodled out of pity. And fear.
“I see.” She ran her tongue along her teeth and straightened up again. “Well, I thought I would only have to worry about Rip. But it seems you’re both in the same boat now that Chad is no longer around.”
Rip cocked his head and said, “What boat is that?”
Elaine Cromwell Frisco’s shrewd eyes darted back and forth between her offspring. Eyes absorbing her mother’s expression, Jamie was briefly reminded of a documentary she once watched where she learned a species of green tree frog in the actually eat their young. She shivered.
“I have concluded that the only way you two will get married is if I force it. I know that your father and I did not have the healthiest relationship when you were growing up, and I fear that it might have set in some sort of romantic rot that Barry might sniff out. He’s thinking of running for office, and we can’t afford any scandal let alone the press questioning why my dysfunctional middle-aged children aren’t married. ”
While Jamie secretly acknowledged that she and Rip weren’t exactly delivering on her dreams and probably had dipped a toe into the pool of dysfunctional, she felt she was a far cry from scandalous. God, this woman.
“I’m always my best self at weddings. Ask any bridesmaid,” Rip said with a smile.
Jamie squinted into the distance, finally finding her words. “We have to worry about scandal? Wasn’t he investigated by the FBI?”
Elaine glared. “Enough. Barry has three perfectly happy, married children and a gaggle of grandchildren. Where are my grandchildren? Hm? Quite frankly, you two are an embarrassment.”
Jamie smirked. She already did not like Barry Bonavico or his perfect family. In her experience dealing with sociopaths, perfect usually meant psycho.
Rip chuckled and murmured, “You’re crazy, woman.”
Elaine took a swig of champagne. “Be that as it may, here it is.” Her voice dropped an octave lower.
She pointed a perfect, polished finger down toward Jamie and Rip as if she were an evil sorceress damning newborn children.
“You shall bring a suitable date—no neck tattoos, no derelicts, no fuckwits, no floozies—to my wedding in ninety days, or you will be cut out of my substantial will. Remember, I’m doing this for your own good. ”
Elaine Cromwell Frisco stood up, adjusted her enormous hat, and walked toward the front door. She looked back and said, “Time to grow up, kids.”
Jamie’s mouth fell open.
Talk about embracing the crazy.
She let herself out and left Jamie and Rip sitting there with empty champagne flutes, a shitload of croissants, and high anxiety.
Sometime after midnight as Jamie lay in bed, lamp on, novel open, it dawned on her that she’d read the same paragraph seven times.
Wise-cracking Detective Larrabee had latched on to a theory about the killer, but she had no idea what it was.
She couldn’t concentrate. Her mind kept jerking her back to the harsh realities foisted on her that morning.
She took each piece and mulled them over one by one.
Her mother. Her insane mother demanding attention the only way a psychotic control freak can, with fear and threats.
God forbid she tried love and support. Jamie learned long ago never to expect that from Elaine Cromwell Frisco.
If you found yourself in some life-threatening crisis, like a level-five hurricane or a multivehicle traffic accident, she was your girl.
Firefighters and FEMA could learn a thing or two from her mother’s commanding organizational skills.
But when it came to wiping away tender tears caused by tiny skinned knees or easing the first emotional pains of not being invited to a sleepover, her mother was about as consoling as the statue of Medusa.
Then there was her ex, Nathan, happily ensconced in a relationship that was about to bear him a child.
This was laughable considering when they were together he couldn’t commit to attending a four-day weekend wedding in Sedona of a mutual friend, let alone any real commitment.
Now he was opting in for fatherhood and domesticity.
The news had stirred up some squirmy, unnamable fear in Jamie, something simmering under the surface of her nonchalant facade.
She tried to put her finger on it, to name it, so she could quell the unsettled feelings.
But no answer came. Only a tangled knot of fear that threatened her sleep.
Earlier that day when the sun was up, which made everything still seem possible, Jamie had assessed herself with pluck and sarcasm.
But now, in the dark when everything was too quiet, the long tendrils of worry seemed to seep into her mind and implore certainties from a harsher perspective, like a tiny distress signal of an unloved heart about to shut down.
All the terrifying truths came at her like blow darts dipped in emotional poison.
She was forty-one. Certain doors begin to quietly close at forty-one, some rites of passage gone forever.
It was as if she’d been jarred awake from her lackadaisical existence by a very cold slap in the face.
Here she was. No kids. No house. No prospects.
Nothing but a rented cottage, a fledgling new job she had to admit she didn’t really like, and a head full of reliving alternate paths she could have taken.
Nathan, that prick. How could he still get to her?
She was furious with herself for allowing her mind to drift into a jumble of regret, longing, and confusion.
Just then, Jamie heard a faint sound in the distance. She did not move, but looked to her left, toward the half-open bedroom window. It was the middle of the night. But somewhere in the dark, a sound echoed down her alley from behind her bungalow. It was the forlorn echo of someone crying.
A terribly sad, low tenor of pain cut through the quiet night. The kind of cry that silences everything and everyone around it. Jamie listened to the anguished solo song of grief. Or regret. Or heartbreak. She didn’t know the reason, but she knew it was the kind of cry you can only have alone.
Jamie sat in the dark and listened for a long time.