Мэри Эндрюс - The Newcomer

Whoever he was, he wasn’t a stranger to Tanya, who was clinging to his hand like a junior high school girl.

She knew she shouldn’t have been surprised that Tanya had already moved on to seeing a new man, because she couldn’t remember a time, since her younger sister reached puberty, that she didn’t have a boyfriend.

Letty tried to think back to the conversations she’d had with Tanya in the months leading up to her death. She remembered Valentine’s Day—walking into Tanya’s apartment to find a huge arrangement of pink peonies. “Secret admirer?” she’d asked, teasingly.

“No!” Tanya had exclaimed. “I’m done with men. I bought these for myself. Just because.”

Letty watched more of the nanny-cam video for two more hours, reliving the tedium of life with a preschooler. Winter in New York City meant that Maya, and by extension Ellie, didn’t leave home much.

The camera captured Tanya, seated at her kitchen table, having several heated telephone exchanges, with, Letty guessed, her lawyer.

“How much longer ’til we get all this settled?” Tanya raged. “I don’t understand why he gets to hold me hostage here. He’s the one who walked out. Not me. Plus, he’s richer than God. Anytime he wants, he could get on a plane and fly out to see Maya, if that’s what he really wants. But he doesn’t. He just wants to jerk me around.”

Letty began fast-forwarding through the videos, but each time the frames flashed by she was afraid she’d missed seeing something important.

In one of the videos in late January, mother and daughter were clearly having a no good, very bad day. Tanya struggled to get the little girl dressed, yanking Maya’s tights up as she protested that she wanted to wear pants. “Noooo!” Maya screamed as Tanya pulled a dress over her head, trying to bat her mother’s hand away as she fastened the buttons up the front. Each time Tanya managed to buckle one of the leather Mary Janes onto her child’s foot, Maya would grab the shoe and toss it across the room, laughing spitefully as Tanya, cursing under her breath, retrieved the shoe and repeated the process two more times. “Fuck it,” Tanya said, tucking a shoe in each of her back pockets. “Come on, we’re late.”

Letty watched in dismay as Tanya dragged Maya by the arm. “Nooo!” the child yelled, “Ellie, I need Ellie,” then darted away to grab the stuffed elephant. Next they were in Tanya’s building’s dimly lit garage, where the film quality was poorer than usual, but where Maya’s voice echoed loudly. “I don’t wanna go see Daddy. I don’t like Daddy.” But Letty had to chuckle when Tanya’s voice snapped, “I don’t like him either. But a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do.”

The nanny cam’s view of the Mercedes’s back seat was limited, but Letty could see Maya’s legs as she struggled against being buckled into her car seat, and she soon heard the rhythmic kicking of Maya’s feet against the back of her mother’s seat.

“Stop that!” Tanya hollered at one point, turning around to ineffectively slap at her daughter’s feet.

“I’m hungry,” Maya whined, after they’d been in the car less than five minutes. The next moment, a plastic baggie of snacks and then a pink plastic sippy cup flew past the camera lens. Goldfish and apple juice, Letty guessed, her niece’s most favored car snacks.

For the next fifteen minutes, the nanny cam recorded traffic sounds, and Maya sounds, as she chomped on the Goldfish and sucked at the plastic straw in her cup.

Finally, the car’s engine idled. Letty had to believe they were parked at the curb in front of Evan’s building. Someone tapped on the car window, and Letty heard it slide it down. “I’m waiting for my little girl’s father. He’s supposed to be right down.”

“Mommy. I need to pee-pee,” Maya whined.

“I know, sweet girl. Can you please hold it? Daddy will be here any minute now.”

Minutes ticked past. Letty could picture her sister fuming, as she heard Tanya cursing her ex under her breath. “Come on, dammit. I don’t have all day to sit here in the cold and wait for you.”

After another few minutes, the nanny cam picked up the sound of Tanya’s voice, obviously calling her ex. “Goddammit, Evan! I’m tired of your games. If you’re not down here in two minutes, we’re leaving. I’ve got a life too, you know.”

Finally, the sound of a car door opening. Evan’s face came into camera view as he stuck his head in the car and began unbuckling Maya’s seat belt. “About damn time,” Tanya griped. “That cop was about to give me a ticket for being in a no-parking zone.”

“I don’t wanna go to Daddy’s house,” Maya wailed.

“Maya, hush,” Tanya said.

Evan started to lift the child from the seat. “Jesus, Tanya. She’s covered in crumbs. And she’s wet her damn pants again. You did this on purpose, you bitch.”

“It’s your own fault for making us wait,” Tanya said. She turned around in the seat. “Oh, don’t forget Ellie.” Evan’s hand snatched up the stuffed elephant.

Tanya’s voice sounded strained. “Bye, baby, be a good girl for Daddy and JuJu.”

“Nooooo,” Maya cried. “I want Mommy.”

Letty clicked STOP on the video. She’d watched all the disturbing images of the wreckage of her late sister’s life that she could take for one night, and she was weary from the day’s roller-coaster events.

She went to the front door, locked it and engaged the safety chain, then retreated to the bathroom, washed her face and brushed her teeth, checked on Maya one more time, and gratefully climbed between the sheets in her own bed. Right before she fell asleep, she checked her phone to make sure she hadn’t missed any messages from Vikki Hill. Nothing.

34

BY NINE O’CLOCK, VIKKI HILL could feel the walls of the Murmuring Surf’s efficiency closing in on her, so she walked down the beach to Gianni’s, the Italian joint Ava DeCurtis had recommended.

It was a small place, located at the end of a strip shopping center with a nail salon, a dry cleaner’s, and a liquor store. She opened the heavily carved wooden door and was welcomed with the scent of garlic, onions, and red sauce.

The hostess was busy, so Vikki looked around. It was a narrow room, fairly dark, with a wall of red leatherette booths facing the bar. The décor ran to heavily stuccoed walls with cheesy frescoes that she guessed were supposed to be Italian villages. The arched entrance to the crowded dining room was framed with a pair of gigantic fake olive trees draped with straw-wrapped Chianti bottles and clumps of green plastic grapes. The tables were topped with red-and-white-checked vinyl tablecloths and more Chianti bottles with candles stuck in them.

It was like a scene straight out of Lady and the Tramp, and she halfway expected to see a cocker spaniel and a mutt sharing a plate of spaghetti and meatballs.

The hostess, a rail-thin woman with fake eyelashes like dead spiders, approached. “Sorry, hon, we’re awful busy tonight. There’s a thirty-minute wait, unless you want to sit at the bar.”

“The bar’s fine,” Vikki told her.

She actually always preferred to eat at the bar when she was out of town, not because she was such a big drinker, but because it felt less awkward than sitting at a table for two or four and explaining to the servers that she’d be dining alone tonight. Again.

“Get you a drink?” The bartender was Hispanic and twenty-something.

“Yeah. Do you have a really dry red Merlot?”

“So dry you’ll spit dust,” he said. “Will you be dining with us tonight?” He offered her a menu, she took it, glanced at it, and nodded.

“I’ll have the pasta with bolognese and a house salad with vinaigrette dressing. No black olives, okay?”