Leslie Glass - Over His Dead Body

"Mona promised you a better life than what?" Cassie's brain spun back into its whirl. In an instant she lost her perfect calm.

"She promised she'd always take care of me." Teddy pulled on his fingers until his knuckles cracked. "I had to stop it, that's all."

Mona had promised Teddy a better life? Cassie swallowed bile as a terrible thought struck her: Had Mona been sleeping with her son, too? She shivered in the sun-drenched kitchen. This was the stuff of soap operas. Teddy was their informer. He had nailed his own father. She was speechless.

"What are you talking about? What did you do?" Marsha demanded. She didn't have a clue.

Teddy was telling his story and paying no attention to her. "He was always teaching me lessons. It was time to teach him one."

"For God's sake what did he do?" Marsha turned to her mother, and still Teddy wouldn't acknowledge her.

"Mom, I gave him the second set of books."

Cassie's life took another unexpected turn. She was spinning, spinning. Dizzy, dizzy. Where would it stop? "What second set of books?" she asked faintly.

"It was how he taught me accounting. Not even Ira knows." For the first time Teddy glanced guiltily at his sister. "He and Mona cooked the books. Daddy showed me how they did it. Easy as pie. The official set was prepared for Ira, the other for them. He told me everybody did it. He was proud of it. He thought only idiots were honest."

Cassie put her hand to her mouth. She pointed to the dining room. "You gave him the books?"

"Well, they were disks, really. He was in here. He would have found them, anyway, and I didn't want to be like that kid in The Sopranos."

Cassie frowned. Sopranos? Was that an opera?

"He loved that show. Loved it. He thought he was Tony. I was Tony Jr."

"Oh God!" Now Marsha got something. "He thought he was Tony Soprano, Mom."

No wonder she'd always hated that show. Cassie waved her hand impatiently. She was still on the cooked books. Teddy gave the juice to the finder. "When did you do that, Teddy?" she demanded.

"Just now. He pretty much promised none of us would go to jail. You're not mad, are you?"

"Ha. They rape boys like you in jail," Marsha crowed. "I hope you get buggered, you crook."

"Marsha!" Cassie said, shocked.

"Well, he is a crook, isn't he?"

"Mom, do you forgive me?" Suddenly Teddy was begging, a little kid all over again. "I did it for you," he said. "And her." He pointed at his sister. "She may be a total jerk, but Mona wasn't going to give her a nickel. It wasn't fair."

SO THIS WAS WHERE THE PATH of Cassie Sales's little uneventful life had led. She was in the Mercedes with Charlie Schwab, heading toward Mona's Refuge at just past noon on the day after Independence Day, which happened to be her first of single life in twenty-six years. She was very aware of looking like a vamp from a spy novel. She was wearing Marsha's black wrap dress, Marsha's big dark sunglasses, and Marsha's skimpy sandals. Her stomach was heaving, still in rebellion from the wine she'd drunk last night against a backdrop of exploding fireworks that had set the dogs in the neighborhood howling for hours just about the time Mitch had died alone.

All along she'd thought that her teenage daughter had been just your basic malcontent with multiple pierces and pink hair, and her son was a dolt, a puppet of his overbearing father. Now she realized that her children had minds of their own, and there had been a reason behind everything they did to annoy her. It amazed her how devious the mind was. It turned out that her son was actually tempted by prison because his father had deserved to be there, and her daughter wanted to work with women in prison because she and her mother had been in one. That was Cassie's interpretation.

Oddly, she was relieved that they had some depth. The three of them were eccentric, but possibly not certifiably crazy. In any case, like Teddy, she was setting the record straight regardless of the consequences. What did any of it matter now but the truth? It was only after she'd gotten into the car and taken the wheel that she remembered she hadn't asked Teddy if the cremation had taken place on schedule so no autopsy could be done of the body. Whatever had or hadn't happened to Mitch in the night, she didn't want anyone to know. So much for true truth.

It was too late to find out now. She became distracted on Duck Pond by how many worlds apart it was from Manhasset, where Teddy and Marsha had gone to public schools. Here was real privilege. Here were the horse farms, the Old Brookville Winery, with its greening suburban vineyard. Here was the estate where a rival importer far more wealthy than Mitch lived behind his iron gates. Here was the old money, the turn-of-the-century banking and oil money to which Mitch and Mona had aspired with their designer clothes, their trips, and their ever improving accents. The road that led to Le Refuge was nearly untraveled at noon on a weekday.

Cassie wondered where Mona was, if she knew yet that Mitch was dead. What would she do when she found out what the IRS had in store for her? She was amazed that she felt drained and elated at the same time. The infiltration of the enemy beside her was almost complete. Soon there would be nothing he didn't know. It was thrilling. He knew of the juice in all its forms, but not where it all was. Now she would show him everything she knew. Her body was electrified, almost singing in its new form. In the back of her mind, she had a feeling that even though Teddy had started the ball rolling on the revelations, Mona was probably behind Charlie's intense interest in her. He'd kept on her tail, followed her while her husband was sick, was dying, died, all the time as if she were the one doing wrong. And all the time Mona was the real thief.

"How are you doing?" Charlie interrupted her thoughts.

Cassie was hoping Mona would be tortured by her prison guards, raped, brutalized, tattooed. She was disappointed that it turned out that Charlie had only his own self-interest at heart, after all. She realized that for some inexplicable reason she'd actually been counting on his liking her not for the juice but for herself.

"Did you find any other safe-deposit boxes on your quest?" she asked, glancing at him in the passenger seat. He looked quite meek and tame for a person who had the power of immunity to grant or withhold.

"Yes." Charlie nodded solemnly. "I did."

"Full of juice?" Cassie asked. Still, the whole thing was thrilling. She'd never forget it for the rest of her life.

"Yes. Full of juice."

"May I ask whose?" Mona's, she bet. Mitch's was in the Cayman Islands. Maybe Switzerland, too, for all she knew. She almost laughed out loud. He'd find it. He'd find it all.

"Maybe later. What are we going to see, Cassie?"

"A house," she told him, proud to have something to throw in the pot. "A nice one."

"Ah."

"Did you seize the contents of my safe-deposit box? Or did you leave it?" And what did she have? Nothing.

"Seized, so it wouldn't get away," Charlie said with no hint of an apology.

Cassie blew air out of her mouth. "That's legal?"

"Good things don't happen to people who protest IRS actions." He opened his window and, like a dog, put his nose to the wind.

"Huh. Did you look at the contents of my box?" she asked. What did he think?

"Beautiful day, isn't it? I did give them a cursory examination. Why?"

"Did you notice anything unusual about what I had in there?" Cassie passed a car traveling in the opposite direction at much more than the legal speed limit. It was a Range Rover. A blond woman with sunglasses like Cassie's was driving. A small child was strapped in the backseat. Both looked smiling and happy.

"You spend a lot and don't pay for anything." Charlie drew his head back into the car and tilted his head quizzically at her in that way he had. Cassie wondered if she still smelled of throw-up even after her bath.