Fed Up - By Jessica Conant-Park & Susan Conant Page 0,55
and she is one hundred percent put out that she has to stay in town for the week until the wedding. Believe me, I’m put out by it, too. And the kicker? My due date is a major pain in her ass. She has herself in knots because the birth might interfere with a work conference she has in Chicago. I informed her that no one invited her to the delivery room anyhow, and after that, we had a particularly obnoxious exchange. What are you going to do, right?” Adrianna waved her hand in the air. “I’m going to go home and inhale some of those aromatherapy oils Naomi gave me. Maybe they’ll actually work.”
Before the tipsy Nana Sally was helped to the car by Phoebe, she slipped me an envelope for Adrianna and Owen. “Give this to the proud couple at the rehearsal, okay? I don’t want Kitty and Eileen to know about it.” Nana Sally kissed me sloppily on the cheek. “You’re a good friend, Chloe.”
When everyone had left, my mother started on the dishes while I cleaned up the living room. Under a napkin on an end table I came across the distinctive cell phone that Robin had used at Alloy, the metallic hot pink phone that was as loud and obtrusive as her phone conversations had been. I tucked it in my pocket to take home.
“Well, that went pretty well, don’t you think?” My mom threw a dish towel over her shoulder and somehow managed to get it caught on her Maypole hair wreath. “Oops, there we go.” She untangled the towel and surveyed the room. “Looks like we’re all set in here.”
“Aside from Kitty, it was perfect.” I couldn’t bring myself to mention Nana Sally and Phoebe, who’d done their share, too. “Adrianna looked really happy. You and Dad have been amazing to her, and I know how much she appreciates you guys.”
“Our pleasure, Chloe. With a mother like that, Adrianna needs all the support she can get. Oh, before you leave, I have a bag of clothes to donate to that women’s shelter you volunteered at.”
“Haven’t you done enough good in the world today?” I teased. “Now you’re just showing off!”
FIFTEEN
WHEN I got home, I hauled the bag of clothes up to my apartment and put it in the living room, where it served as a reminder of what a lovely person my mother was: kind and generous to her family, her friends, her daughters’ friends, and even to the strangers at the women’s shelter; considerate to everyone; respectful of privacy; and, in short, the kind of fine human being who would return someone’s forgotten cell phone without so much as thinking of turning it on and exploring its contents. Bad luck for Robin that it hadn’t been my mother who’d found her phone. I should’ve been calling the shelter to arrange to drop off the clothes, but first things first: I turned on Robin’s cell, plopped down on the couch, and started scrolling through her list of contacts. Inga settled in next to me and began purring melodiously. I stroked her with one hand as I tapped through names on the phone.
One stood out: Leo.
Unless Robin knew Leonardo DiCaprio, I had a strong suspicion that this Leo was Francie’s husband and not a famous movie star. Because Leo’s number was still stored on my own caller ID, it took me all of thirty seconds to confirm that Robin’s Leo was, in fact, Leo the widower. When had Robin added Leo to her list of contacts? On the day of the filming? In other words, on the day of his wife’s murder? Or could Robin have known Leo before the show?
Leo. Hmm. As I knew from carefully studying thousands of TV shows, murderers were often spouses or lovers, so unless Francie had had a lover, Leo should have been the prime suspect from the beginning. Did the police agree? Did they watch as much TV as I did? And what about motives? What about love and money? Maybe Leo had wanted to get rid of Francie because he had a lover or because he stood to inherit oodles of cash when Francie died. As to access to digitalis, for all I knew, he had foxglove growing right in his weed-choked garden. Under other circumstances, I could have gained access to his yard by trying to sell him a rain barrel, but as it was, I couldn’t very well call him up and say, “So