Magic Hour, Susan Isaacs [life changing books txt] 📗
- Author: Susan Isaacs
Book online «Magic Hour, Susan Isaacs [life changing books txt] 📗». Author Susan Isaacs
Even if you stretched the definition of the Beautiful People beyond any rational limits, Wendy Morrell would not have fit in.
“So what’s with the ex-wife?” she demanded. “Is she under suspicion?”
“No. This is strictly a background check. I’m just trying to get a sense of the sort of person Bonnie Spencer is.”
“I can’t help you. I am not a neighbor type.” Wendy glanced over at Bonnie’s, then at her own driveway, where I’d pulled my Jag all the way up, almost to her garage, so Bonnie couldn’t see it from her house. She gave my car a suspicious look, as if it
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represented something nasty, sexual and, above all, unforgiv-ably pushy, since it was not a car a cop should be driving.
“But maybe you might have picked up something, just out of the corner of your eye,” I suggested. “Did she entertain guests with any frequency?”
“I wish I could give you a full report, but my days are very full. Believe me, I don’t spend my time watching Bonnie Spencer.” She touched the gold pin that, thank God, held her jumpsuit closed. It was at the point of her body that, on a woman who hadn’t starved herself, would have been called a cleavage. “I have a business to run.” She said “a business”
as if she meant General Motors.
“What do you do?”
“Wendy’s Soups. I’m president and CEO.” As in: Everyone knows Wendy’s Soups. Well, everyone who’s anyone, as I clearly wasn’t. “There have been major articles about me.
New York Times, Vogue, et cetera. Elle… You know Elle? The piece was called ‘Superb Soups!’”
“Do you cook them here?”
She smiled. Big mistake. God had given Wendy Morrell the gift of gums. “No. The plant is in a cute little ethnic neighborhood in Queens. I employ forty-six people.”
“So you don’t live here all year round?”
“No. East End and Eighty-first. Just long weekends here.
It used to be all August too, but then there was that cover story in New York Woman.” With, I assumed, a photo of a bowl of split pea superimposed over her ugly puss. “We went through the roof. You can imagine!”
“Look, Ms. Morrell, obviously you’re a very busy person, but busy people tend to be the most efficient.” She obviously agreed. “You’re not the nosy neighbor type, but…”
154 / SUSAN ISAACS
“I don’t know anything about her. We nod hello. That is all. When I’m out here I’m still plagued. The phone, the fax.
My office cannot leave me alone. The pressure never stops.
I have to force myself to relax. I do not do coffee klatches.”
“Does Bonnie Spencer have coffee klatches?”
“Not that I’ve ever seen.”
“What I’m getting at is, are there any frequent visitors?”
She glanced at my Jag again. “Men in sports cars?”
“Men in sports cars. Men in sedans. Men in all kinds of vehicles. Is that news to you?” She paused. “Once…I saw a pickup truck. I happened to notice it because it was late at night. Well, let’s be generous. Maybe she needed some emergency construction done by a kid who couldn’t have been more than twenty-two, in tight jeans and work boots.”
“I’m going to be direct, Ms. Morrell, but I feel I can be direct with someone who’s a CEO.” She acknowledged the tribute with a brief flash of gums. “Is it your impression that Ms. Spencer is promiscuous?”
“Maybe she’s just interviewing half the men in Bridgehampton for that happy-news column she writes. She came over once, asked if she could interview me! I was very pleasant.
I told her I was horrendously tied up, but I’d love to. Some other time.” She stopped. “Are you sure you’re with the police?”
I handed her my shield. She brought it up close to her nose, breathing what was probably disgusting, humid, lentil-dill breath on the plastic, and studied it. Then she handed it back.
“Have you seen any one car at Bonnie Spencer’s recently?
A black sports car?”
“Detective Whatever”—she smiled—“I know what a Maserati is. My ex-husband drove a Ferrari 250 GT, ’62.
Believe me, I had sports cars burned into my brain during that marriage.” She looked over at mine.
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“I know an E-type Jaguar roadster when I see one. The English don’t say ‘convertible,’ you know.” I hated it that this witch had any sort of intimacy with great cars. “And the answer to your question is yes.”
“Yes, what, Ms. Morrell?”
“There was a Maserati in her driveway. Last week. Every morning that I was here. A quarter to twelve. Like clockwork.
And a fabulously dressed man got out of it. I realize now that it must have been Sy Spencer. But I’m sure there’s an innocent explanation. Maybe she just served an early lunch.”
“Maybe. When did he leave?”
“Two, three, four.”
“Any sounds of fighting?”
She shook her head. “I cannot believe it! He was so fine—and re fined. I mean, this man could have any woman he wanted. Why would someone like him waste his time on a nothing like her?”
“Maybe she’s nice.”
Wendy Morrell cocked her head, drew her eyebrows together, as if she were hearing about a sensational new trend for the first time. “Nice? ”
C H A P T E R E I G H T
Nice Bonnie Spencer.
Well, fuck her and the horse she rode in on. All along I’d known something was wrong. All along I’d known she was lying to me about Sy. Still, somewhere I’d kept a candle burning, a flicker of hope
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