Skinny Dip - Страница 55

"You ready, Charles?"

Chaz jumped in surprise, Corbett Wheeler having slipped into the sacristy through the back door.

"You're the headliner, man. The one they're all waiting to hear." Chaz peeked out and thought: Who are all these people? He was surprised that his wife could draw such a crowd. Some faces he vaguely recalled from the wedding reception, but most were strangers. On the other hand, Chaz had seldom bothered to inquire what Joey did during the day while he was working, golfing or chasing other women. Nor had he displayed much curiosity about her past social life, before they'd met. Chaz's domestic policy was never to ask questions that one wouldn't care to answer oneself.

"Who's your friend?" Corbett Wheeler asked. Without waiting for a reply, he greeted Tool heartily and pumped his hand. "I can tell by your outfit you're a man of the soil."

Tool had come to church wearing his black overalls, which he had laundered for the occasion. Chaz Perrone had not wanted him to attend the service, but Red Hammernut was emphatic. "I used to run crews on a vegetable farm," Tool said. Joey's brother beamed. "I've got two thousand head of sheep." Tool seemed impressed. "Yeah? What kind?" God help me, thought Chaz. The mutants are bonding. Rose said something that got a good laugh, and suddenly Chaz felt Corbett Wheeler's meaty hands steering him out of the sacristy and up a small flight of stairs to the pulpit. Chaz was trembling as he adjusted the microphone and fished through the pockets of his suit in search of his notes. He was alarmed to realize that his penmanship, once precise and consistent, had degenerated to the sort of sinuous, pinprick scrawl associated with UFO correspondents and future workplace snipers.

He raised his eyes to the gathering and immediately froze, for there was the blackmailer, three rows from the front, grinning like a hungry coyote. Chaz Perrone jerked his gaze to the other side of the church only to spy Karl Rolvaag, his chin impassively propped on his knuckles, as if watching a hockey game.

Chaz's throat turned to sawdust. When he tried to speak, he sounded like a busted violin. Joey's brother delivered a glass of water but Chaz was afraid to drink it, fearing it might be spiked.

Finally he licked his lips and began: "Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to tell you about my wife, Joey, who I loved more than anything else in this world."

At that moment, Joey Perrone was reaching into the bird feeder to retrieve the spare key for the house she had once shared with her husband. She entered through the back door, disabled the alarm, hurried to the bathroom and vomited her breakfast.

Get a grip, she told herself. For heaven's sake, you're not the first woman who ever married the wrong guy.

Just because you happened to pick one of the wrongest guys who ever lived.

The bed was unmade. Joey lay down and took slow, measured breaths. On the pillow she smelled Chaz's shampoo, some mango-scented goop that he'd bought at that Ricca woman's salon. Joey stared at the ceiling and wondered if Chaz had been lying right here when he'd made up his mind to kill her; plotting while she'd dozed beside him, clueless.

She went to the living room and put on a Sheryl Crow CD that both of them had liked. The music made her feel better. She took a seat on the sofa, where Chaz had left his backpack unzipped in typical disarray. Inside, among wads of blank water charts and half-completed mileage vouchers, was a photocopy of the bogus will that Mick had sent to the detective. Chaz had underscored in red ink the paragraph that ostensibly bequeathed his wife's entire fortune to him. In the margin he had drawn three dancing exclamation points. Joey flipped to the last page and eyed the signature, which Mick had traced off one of her credit card receipts. It was good enough to fool her husband, who would be greedily predisposed to embrace its authenticity. The ass.

Imagining himself so irresistible and smooth, such a studly operator, that Joey-in some impulsive swoon-would have shredded their pre-nuptial agreement and decided to leave him everything. Knowing Chaz, he'd already conjured a theory to explain the stunning turn of events. He probably figured that Joey had planned to surprise him with the good news on that final night of the cruise, but she'd never gotten the chance. Then, after she was gone, Corbett had anonymously slipped the will to Rolvaag in order to stir suspicion about what had happened; to brand Chaz with a clear motive for murdering his sister.

At least that's how Chaz might put it together, Joey thought. The appeal of inheriting $13 million would bring its own sunny plausibility, regardless of the odds.

Joey returned the document to the backpack, then turned off the CD player. When she approached the aquarium, the fish rose up in a manic glitter of anticipation. The man from the pet shop had restocked the decimated tank with neon gobies, a rainbow of wrasses, a butterfly fish, a queen angel, two clownfish and a yellow tang. Their life expectancy would be short under Chaz's inattentive guardianship, but for now all the fish were frisky and bright. Joey sprinkled three pinches of flaked food into the water and watched the kaleidoscopic frenzy.

The decorative centerpiece of the aquarium was a ceramic shipwreck, a schooner keeled bow-first in the gravel. Joey dug into her jeans and took out her platinum wedding band, bouncing it in the palm of one hand. She didn't bother to re-read the engraving on the inner rim, which she knew by heart: "To Joey, the girl of my dreams. Love, CRP." Joey closed her fist around the ring and, with the other hand, lifted the lid off the tank.

"Try nightmares, schmucko," she said. "Girl of your nightmares."

Chaz had settled in comfortably at the pulpit. Miraculously, the stiffness in his neck had vanished and the scabs on his face had stopped itching.

"I've gone over this tragedy a thousand times in my mind," he was saying, "and I can't help but thinking it was my fault. If only I'd told Joey to wait for me that night, if only I hadn't taken those few extra minutes in the cabin, we would've walked out on the deck of the ship together. She wouldn't have been standing alone at the rail in that slippery rain-I would've been right beside her, and this tragic accident would never have happened."

Chaz knew the risks of recounting such bald fiction before an audience of potential witnesses-any decent defense lawyer would have counseled against it. But Chaz thought it was important to show Rolvaag that he was sticking to his original story. At the same time, he couldn't resist the opportunity to feed speculation that Joey had been battling with inner demons so dreadful, she'd confided in no one, and that she might even have done herself in.

"I've replayed the evening over and over again in my head," Chaz said, "but there are always more questions than answers. How many of you have read a book called Madame Bovary?"

As expected, all the members of Joey's book group raised their hands. So did Karl Rolvaag and perhaps a dozen others in the church. Chaz said, "Joey was reading this novel on our cruise. Afterward I got curious and read it myself." In truth, he'd pulled a two-paragraph synopsis from a Flaubert fan site on the Internet.

"It's about a young Frenchwoman who's bored and unhappy with her life. She marries a man she hopes will bring her excitement and fulfillment… a doctor." Chaz made his voice crack, so that even the dimmest bulbs in the audience could make the connection. "But it's sad, because Madame Bovary still isn't satisfied, so she sets off on all these escapades that bring her no lasting happiness. And at the end of the story, this poor confused woman winds up killing herself."

There was an uneasy hush in the church. Chaz pressed forward without pause.

"After finishing the book, I admit I was pretty depressed. I couldn't help wondering whether my Joey was unhappy, too. Whether she identified in some way with the restless wife in the story, and hid those feelings from me." Chaz lowered his head and let his shoulders sag. When he looked up again, he saw that the blackmailer appeared to be dozing. Meanwhile, Rolvaag's expression (or lack thereof) hadn't changed.

"But I've thought about it and thought about it," Chaz went on, "and after speaking to so many of you who knew and loved my wonderful wife"-another outrageous lie; he hadn't returned a single phone call-"I'm more certain than ever that she was a very happy person at heart. A positive person, as her brother said. A firecracker, as her dear friend Rose described her. A fighter and an optimist who loved life. That's the Joey Perrone I knew. That's the Joey Perrone I adored. And that's the Joey Perrone…"

At that instant Chaz was distracted from his peroration by a lone figure entering the church somewhat awkwardly on crutches.

"I will mourn for…"

A woman, Chaz observed, who was pegging purposefully up the center aisle.

"… for the rest of my…"

Some frizzy-haired klutz with a plaster cast on one leg, interrupt-

ing his big tearjerker finale. Who would be rude enough to pull such a stunt?

"… my, uh… my…"

Ricca.

No way! Chaz thought. It's not possible.

"… my life," he rasped, clutching the sides of the podium.

The assembly noticed his unsteadiness, and a ripple of concerned murmuring broke out. He forced himself to look away as Ricca sat down beside the blackmailer, who politely took her crutches and stowed them under the pew.

Fuck me.

The breath emptied from Charles Regis Perrone in a stale sibilant rush. He reeled from the pulpit and staggered toward the sacristy, gulping like a doomed tuna. He made it as far as the doorway before his legs turned to noodles, Tool catching him on the way down. Chaz lowered his fluttering eyelids to the mellow harmony of "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?"-a smooth and savvy segue by the Act of Contritionists.