tottering on her high heels. “I’ll see you later,” she said.
Crawford dragged the perp across the street to the Crown Victoria, parked in front of the Avenue Steak House.
“Don’t tell me you never thought about it,” Fred said, thrusting his head in Carmen’s direction while opening the back door of the Vic.
Crawford shook his head. If only it were that easy.
Chapter 5
Another weekend came and I was still rattled by Ray’s death, and, truth be told, by my encounter with Gianna. Nothing says creepy like being in the sights of a Mob wife. Even though she was a seemingly innocuous Staten Island housewife there had been something cold and somewhat calculating about her and in the way she conveyed Peter’s message to me. Was that a hint of jealousy that I had discerned or nothing at all? Whatever it was, I was unnerved, and being as I’m slightly nervous about everything to begin with, this new state wasn’t a welcome addition to my psyche.
I awoke, at seven-thirty, to the sound of a chain saw, in clear violation of the town’s noise ordinance. No chainsawing, no lawn mowing, no noisemaking until eight o’clock. I looked out my bedroom window and saw my neighbor, Jackson, sawing a stump on his front lawn. Given the recent developments and my thought that a person with a chain saw had killed my ex-husband, I decided to forgo giving Jackson a hard time about it and let him saw away.
The phone began to ring. The last person I expected to hear from was Max. But indeed, she was up and at it, probably still awake from the night before.
“I’ve got two tickets to some Shakespeare shit up by you for tonight,” she said, yawning while talking. “My mother gave them to me in the hope of culture-fying me. You want to go with?”
I took a breath and tried to compose myself. “Shakespeare shit,” I said. “Sounds lovely.” I pushed my hair off my forehead. “Do you think you could be more specific?”
“Hold on,” she said. “I have to find the tickets.” I could hear her rooting around near the phone. “It’s at Boscobel,” she said, referencing an estate near Cold Spring that overlooked the Hudson River and West Point, “and they’re performing The Merry Wives of Windsor. I don’t know what the hell that is. Is that even Shakespeare? It sounds like porn.”
“Yes, it’s Shakespeare.” I really didn’t feel like seeing this particular Shakespeare play, but since I didn’t have anything to do, I was inclined to accept. “Where’s Fred?”
“Working.” She waited a second for my reaction to her invitation. “Do you want to go? I figured you could tell me what’s going on during the play. It’s supposed to rain, but not until after dark.”
“Sure,” I said, and lay back on the bed. I loved Boscobel and hadn’t been there in a few years; Ray and I had gone every year to the summer Shakespeare performances, but since our divorce, I hadn’t renewed my subscription. “We can bring a picnic and have dinner there. How does that sound?”
“Good. What time do you want me to pick you up? The show starts at seven.”
It would take about forty-five minutes to get to Boscobel, and factoring in picnic time, I figured we should leave my house a little before five. I told her that I would buy dinner and prepare it.
“Of course you will. If you leave it up to me, we’ll be eating stale Wheat Thins and drinking flat Diet Coke.” She hung up without saying good-bye; that’s her trademark. No beginnings and no endings.
I took a shower and got dressed. There was a gourmet shop in Tarrytown that would provide all of the food we would need to enjoy our evening. I went into the kitchen and grabbed my car keys from the counter. I peered out of the window over the kitchen sink and looked into the back of Terri and Jackson’s yard; the coast seemed to be clear. I had been trying to avoid the two of them ever since I had found out the little tidbit about Terri sleeping with my ex-husband. To me, Terri’s one-dimensional; she’s a slut and nothing else. I had no use for Terri, and while I felt a little sympathy for her husband, Jackson, he was a pompous jerk who was constantly looking at me with pity. I wanted to remind him that he had been cuckolded, too; we were kind of even on that score. I