Chapter Forty-Three
Forty-three
“What kind of money?” I said, once Mimi had left Mrs. Dorsey’s room and I’d taken a few swallows of the tea she’d insisted on serving me, and we were both seated side by side on the plastic-covered couch.
“Excuse me?” she said.
“You said ‘that kind of money’ when we were talking about your daughter’s income,” I said. “As far as I know, it came from writing romance novels.”
She sipped her tea and set it back down on the flowery china saucer. “Not always,” she said.
“What do you mean by that?”
Mimi shook her head. “I’m just speculating. What do I know?” She squeezed her eyes shut and swallowed hard. Keeping herself together. “Nothing,” she said. “That’s what I know.”
I decided to take a few steps back from the topic. I took another sip of tea and gave her what I hoped was an encouraging smile. “It seems to me like you know a lot,” I said.
“Like what? You’ve just met me.”
“I know,” I said. “And since I met you, I’ve seen you calm down a three-year-old in seconds. There are entire books written about what you just did.”
“Tommy? He’s easy.”
“He didn’t seem easy when he was with Leila yesterday,” I said.
She said nothing for several moments.
“We went to see Leila yesterday. My client and I. We had an IP address for someone who had posted a terrible review of Melanie Joan’s memoir. It turned out to be Leila.”
“And that’s why that cop believes your client shot my daughter?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Well…that’s a theory, I suppose.”
“Anyway, Tommy was acting up. And Leila was having trouble getting him to settle down.”
“She’s normally pretty good with him,” Mimi said. “Was, I mean. Was. My daughter was pretty good with her son. When she was alive.” She closed her eyes again.
I put a hand on hers. “I’m sure she was,” I said. “And I’m not saying this out of disrespect for Leila. I’m just saying that in order for a kid to trust you the way Tommy does, you need to understand him.” I took a breath. “I think you understand people.”
She opened her mouth as if to say something, then reconsidered. “Thank you,” she said.
We sat quietly for a few moments, the kids’ show chirping out of the blue monitor, the pink monitor silent, save the hum of an air conditioner.
At last, Mimi spoke. “Leila and I were never close.”
I hadn’t expected that.
“I loved her, of course, but we didn’t have much to talk about. Ever. She was a real daddy’s girl.”
“I get that.”
“You have one of those?”
I smiled. “I am one of those.”
“Yeah, well. Give your mom some grace. She’s trying.”
“She’s trying, all right,” I said.
Mimi made herself laugh.
“Tell me about Leila,” I said.
Mimi took a deep breath, her bloodshot eyes fixed on some far-off spot. “She was an unusual kid. She had strange interests for a girl.” She coughed. “God, that sounded sexist. I think I’ve been hanging around Mrs. Dorsey for too long.”
“How was Leila unusual?”
“She was kind of a nerd, I guess. She and her father were both Trekkies. Serious Trekkies. They watched the shows, of course. They both collected memorabilia. They went to conventions together. They even talked about getting jobs as extras on one of the spin-offs. I think Bill was just saying that to humor her, but still.”
“That’s hardcore.”
“Very,” Mimi said. “Her sister. She lives in Hawaii, but she’s on her way out here.
When the two of them were growing up, Carolyn was more like me—sporty, social.
No cultlike obsessions. But Leila wanted more than anything to be a crew member on the Enterprise.
It’s what made her decide to start writing. ”
“Star Trek made her want to write?”
“Yes,” Mimi said. “First it was Star Trek fan fiction. Then she started writing novels of her own. Sci-fi. Her dad loved these novels. He read them all. I couldn’t get through a single chapter.”
I took another sip of my tea. I wanted to ask her what all this had to do with where Leila’s money came from.
I was hoping I’d find out. If there was one thing I’d learned from questioning the parents of murder victims, it was that this type of overwhelming grief could take strange turns.
Parents often went through their children’s entire histories in order to get to the point, if there even was a point.
A lot of times, it was just a way to keep them alive for a few moments longer.
“Did Leila ever publish any of the sci-fi books?” I asked.
She shook her head. “They had a very small audience. Her friends and her father. She was happy with that.” Over the blue monitor, a character with a high-pitched British accent was talking about a new baby sister.
Tommy started to laugh. Mimi smiled. Her eyes sparkled.
A tear trickled down her cheek. She wiped it away.
“Where is Leila’s dad now?” I said.
“Bill passed away ten years ago. Heart attack. Leila was just twenty-one. She took it very, very hard. Her sister was no longer living at home, so it was the two of us for a little while. I tried to bond with her. I even suggested these damn matching tattoos.” She rubbed the flower on her arm.
“I noticed. It’s pretty.”
“It’s a sweet william. For my Bill. Our Bill.”
“That’s nice,” I said.
“I thought so,” she said.
“Must have made Leila feel better.”
“Maybe for a day,” she said. “She just wasn’t the same.
She dropped out of community college, and she moved to New York.
She had it in her head that she was going to publish those sci-fi books to honor her dad’s memory, and that New York was the place for her to get seen as an author.
I told her she needed more of a game plan than that.
She said she had her mind made up and she was an adult and could do whatever she chose.
She didn’t want to hear anything I had to say. ”
“That must have been frustrating.”
“It was.” She sighed. “You know that Instagram of mine that you found?”
“Yes?”
“I made it when Leila moved out to New York, so I could follow her on social media. She didn’t post very often, but at least I could see her face.”
I winced. I was sure I’d tortured my mother over the years, but not like that. “New York is so expensive,” I said. “How was she surviving?”
“I heard through mutual friends that she was staying with some rich boy she’d met at one of those conventions. But she had a falling-out with him.”
“What about?”
“He ran with a rough crowd. Bragged about burglarizing a mansion in Southampton when he was seventeen and spending the money on drugs. He scared Leila, I think.”
“Boy, Trekkies have changed.”
“I thought the same thing,” she said. “Anyway, I guess I should have been grateful to this rich kid, because she got disgusted enough with him to move out of his place, and that’s when she called me.
I helped her find a new apartment. A studio in Queens.
She managed to get a job waiting tables. It paid her rent. Barely.”
“Was she happy?”
“At first, I think? Once she was settled, she stopped wanting to talk to me again.”
“Ugh. Why?”
“I don’t know. I felt like she had secrets she didn’t want me to find out. But maybe I’m just flattering myself and she just plain didn’t like me.”
“Mimi…”
She waved me off. “Anyway, what could I do? She was a grown woman. She even deleted her Instagram. I started sending her money every month, just so I could know from the cashed checks that she was alive.”
“But wait,” I said. “At some point, she became the Leila Donnelly.”
“Yep,” she said. “The reclusive, mysterious Leila Donnelly.”
“Did she call you when that first book became a hit? Is that how you got back in touch again?”
She shook her head. “I found out she was a bestselling romance writer when my friends started asking me if I could get them autographed first editions.”
I gaped at her. “Seriously?”
She nodded. “I downloaded her first book and I read it,” she said. “It didn’t sound like Leila at all.”
“How?”
“It was so…gushy. Leila was never gushy. It was like the book had been written by a stranger.”
“So,” I said, “what made her want to talk to you again?”
“Tommy.”
“That makes sense.”
“When he was born, he gave Leila a reason to move back home,” she said.
“There was no father in the picture. I got that he was a fling—someone who’d never even given Leila his phone number.
Leila said, ‘Mom, I’m afraid I’m going to mess up with my son.
’ And I said, ‘Don’t worry. I’ll help you take care of him.
’ I expected a snide response, but she was so grateful, and it’s been…
It was…Well, Leila just keeps surprising me. And Tommy’s a love.”
“He adores you,” I said.
“The feeling’s mutual.”
“Is your visitor still here?” said the pink baby monitor.
“She’ll be leaving soon, Mrs. Dorsey!”
“Did you offer her tea?”
“Yes, I did, Mrs. Dorsey!” Mimi waited. When it was clear that Mrs. Dorsey had no more questions, she turned to me and leaned in.
“The day Leila died, she called me. She asked me to watch Tommy, and I said of course. She wanted me to meet her down at the convenience store in Union. She handed Tommy off to me in the parking lot. It was the first time in a while that I’d had a good, long look at her and she was so… ”
“What?”
“Scared.”
“Did she say why?”
“No, but she was adamant about meeting in a public place. This is a young woman who rarely leaves her house.”
“That must have seemed strange.”
“She said, ‘I’m finally about to do the right thing, Mom, so wish me luck.’ ”
A thought came to me: When I’d talked to Leila on the phone, she’d told me that Tommy was with her mother.
Looking specifically at the timeline, she’d probably just come back from the convenience store parking lot.
I remembered the way her voice had sounded—that hushed, anxious tone.
I’d thought she was being manipulative—trying to gain my sympathy in order to keep me from going to the press.
But looking back on it, I realized she’d sounded genuinely frightened.
Sunny, listen. What you guys think about me is true. But only partly.
Which part?
The part I can’t say over the phone.
Why had she returned to her house after dropping off Tommy? Was she picking something up? Her gun, for protection? Or was there something else she’d wanted to show me? I thought of the computer. The one she’d used to write her Book Babe reviews. The one the police had never found.
The British voice on Tommy’s TV show was talking about jumping in muddy puddles.
Tommy called for his grandma softly, as though he’d fallen half-asleep and this was an involuntary action.
Calling for Grandma. Like the beating of a heart.
“It’s that word finally that haunts me,” Mimi was saying.
“I’m finally doing the right thing. So Leila had been doing the wrong thing for a very long time. Right? Doesn’t that make sense?”
“Yes,” I said.
“I wish it didn’t.”
Mimi took both of my hands in hers. Her face was flushed, her eyes thick with tears. “Sunny,” she said, “I don’t know if I can survive this.”
“You can,” I said. “I know you can. Because I know you love Tommy and Tommy needs you and—”
The blue monitor shrieked. Mimi jumped from the couch.
“What’s happening?” yelled Mrs. Dorsey. “What on earth is going on?”
Mimi didn’t respond. Tommy was screaming. “Grandma, help! Help!”
Mimi pushed away from the wall and hurled herself down the hallway.
I followed. She threw open the door to her room.
There was a neatly made bed with an old-fashioned bedspread—white, with pink roses and ruffles.
A chest full of toys at its foot. A pile of stuffed animals atop a toddler bed against the wall.
A crudely drawn pig with a British accent was on the TV, telling her mommy how much she loved her.
I didn’t see Tommy at first. But then I did.
He was on the floor, sobbing, his face pressed to the window.
“It’s okay, baby,” Mimi said. She crouched down and took him in her arms and rocked him back and forth.
“What’s wrong?” she said. “What’s wrong, honey?
You can tell Grandma. Why are you crying? ”
I moved to the window and peered out. A black Porsche convertible was parked at the curb in front of the house.
It was the same 911 Carrera that I’d seen at Leila’s.
The top was up, though. In the purplish twilight, I could see the silhouette of the driver inside.
A big, hulking man with cropped, curly hair.
I couldn’t make out the details of his face, but I knew he was angled toward the window. He was watching us.
“I’ll be right back,” I told Mimi.
“What’s going on out there?” Mrs. Dorsey hollered from the end of the hall.
I grabbed my purse and hurried out of the room, then threw open the front door and ran straight at the Porsche, just as it pulled away from the curb.
“Stop!” I yelled. To no one.
The sound from the tires echoed, like a scream.