‘I’d lay money on it.’
Mary put her drink on a side table. ‘I don’t understand you, Sunny. The way you describe it, almost anything could have happened. A car crash.’
‘His car was parked outside the house. Parked erratically but undamaged.’
‘Would you like me to come over with you?’
‘Come over with me?’
‘To help you if Cy’s still unwell.’
Sunny took a cigarette from the silver box with the Page crest. ‘Why should I need your help?’ she said. ‘I came over to Page Corner to get away from Cy. I’m certainly not going back on some mission of mercy.’
Mary stood and moved restlessly round the room. Sunny’s tone disturbed her. ‘Of course not, darling.’ she said. ‘If you think Cy’s all right, then I’m sure that’s OK. I just wondered for a moment if you’d come over for my help, that’s all.’
‘No,’ Sunny said. ‘I came over for something else altogether as a matter of fact.’
‘What was that?’
‘It was to give you this.’
She came forward and unclenched her fist over a mahogany table. Mary watched a small glinting object roll slowly from the palm of her sister’s hand. An earring. ‘Yours, I believe,’ Sunny said, straightening up.
Mary looked down at the clasp. Was denial possible? Not with a Biancini piece. ‘It looks like it,’ she said. ‘Where did you find it?’ She was praying.
‘In my bed,’ Sunny said. ‘Lodged beneath the mattress.’
They stood opposite each other in utter silence.
‘So my prim and proper, puritanical, post-menopausal sister turns out to be screwing her much younger and much despised brother-in-law. How does she pull it off? No cheap pun intended, Mary darling.’
Mary’s hands were over her face. ‘Sunny, Sunny…’ Her muffled voice burst through her fingers. ‘Sunny darling… I wouldn’t…’
Sunny grimaced angrily. ‘Wouldn’t hurt me for anything in the world?’ she flung at her sister. ‘Really? Well, you have. You’ve flattened me. I have a good looking, virile husband who I know likes ’em young and slim and pouty. I see where he looks in the street. He doesn’t look at fifty-year-old women, however glossy they’re dressed. He looks at twenty-year-old kids. Younger sometimes. All jeans and jumping T-shirts. So why you, for Christ’s sake,’ she screamed. ‘I could take the occasional twenty-year-old. I could take the occasional thousand dollar hooker. But I can’t take someone I’ve looked on all my life as practically my mother. It’s sick.’
Mary knelt on the sofa. She felt as if all thought processes had stopped functioning.
‘Then I realised.’ Sunny’s voice was almost a whisper. ‘Then I realised why he chose you.’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’ Mary half turned.
Sunny laughed. The edge of hysteria. ‘It was either you or old Mrs Rose! What a choice!’
‘Please, Sunny, I really do not know what you’re talking about.’
‘I’m talking about your vote, you silly bitch. That’s what my husband wanted. And when you give it to him on Christmas Eve, as I’m sure you will, everybody on that committee will laugh themselves sick. Except Fin, of course.’
‘It’s over, Sunny,’ Mary said desperately. ‘I haven’t been to your house since I got back from Europe. I came to my senses. All right, far too late. But it’s over.’
‘You mean you are resigning? You’re not voting for Cy on Christmas Eve?’
She couldn’t tell her. She couldn’t tell her younger sister that she had somehow allowed herself to be touched by another woman. And that there were photographs of every disgusting moment.
‘Yes or no?’ Sunny spat at her. ‘Are you voting for my husband or not?’ Mary stared at her in silence. ‘So he still has your vote.’
Sunny walked slowly to the door. ‘I won’t be running off to tell Fin, Mary. But then by Christmas Eve it won’t be necessary to tell anybody anything.’ She reached the door, opening it slowly. ‘You bitch, Mary,’ she said quietly. ‘You poor old bitch.’
Then she walked out to her Volvo where Fitz sat at the wheel.
‘You want a used car,’ the cop had said who had given her directions. ‘I could show you a hundred better places to buy. Some of them even in the South Bronx.’
The row of decrepit houses came to a stop opposite where she had pulled up. Half a dozen ageing automobiles leaked oil on to the forecourt. Another three or four stood under a tin-roofed awning in front of what had once been a bakehouse.
The two young men, Cubans or Puerto Ricans, looked up from the Ford they were working on as Nan Luc got out of the car. Something about her ease of manner, her clothes, alerted them. ‘What you make of this?’ the younger man said uncertainly.
They both straightened up and watched her cross the forecourt, baffled by the unhurried walk, the way she stopped to throw a critical glance at one of the ancient cars.
‘You wanna buy a car, lady?’ the older boy called incredulously. Nan Luc walked past the two boys and stopped, looking at the battered pick-ups parked under the tin awning. ‘Were either of you two driving that recovery truck last night?’ she asked. She tossed her head towards the truck marked Bronx & Bronx Garage Company, parked on the far side of the awning.
The boys exchanged a wary look. ‘Both of us,’ the elder said. ‘We got a call out an’ nothing there when we showed. Bad for business. Kids call up for kicks.’
‘On the way back you took the ramp up back of the Swallow Motel, is that right?’
‘Maybe we took the ramp, maybe not,’ the elder boy said. ‘Who’s asking? You’re not a cop?’
Nan Luc took four twenties from her purse. ‘You can help me. Perhaps you can help me.’
The boy hesitated. ‘How can we help you, lady?’ he said, his eyes flicking down to the money in Nan Luc’s hand. ‘Last night we jes’ drove back home, is all.’
‘Coming up the ramp you were behind a dark coloured Mercedes.’
‘Nice car.’ The younger boy spoke for the first time. ‘Right, Tony?’
Nan Luc turned. ‘You remember it?’
‘We tucked up behind it right down nearly to the bridge,’ the young boy said. ‘It slipped a lane there and went way ahead.’
‘So you were staring at the back end of this Mercedes for most of ten minutes.’
‘We didn’t get no number,’ Tony said. ‘New York plates is all I remember.’
‘You’re sure?’ Nan Luc said. ‘You didn’t even get part of a number?’ The boy shook his head. ‘How about you?’ Nan Luc turned to the younger boy.
He shuffled his feet. ‘No…’
Tony turned back to Nan Luc and the twenties held just above the open neck of her purse. ‘Sorry, lady. We’d really like to help.’
Nan’s eyes roamed across the forecourt. ‘You’ve got time to think.’ She showed no sign of moving.
‘The only thing I got,’ the younger boy said, anxious to please, ‘is a sticker.’
‘The Mercedes carried a sticker?’
‘In the rear window,’ the boy said. ‘Hey, what was it now? Something funny.’ He stopped suddenly, looking at Nan Luc. ‘Something about Vietnam.’
‘Something about Vietnam?’ Nan felt a sudden surge of hope.
‘Something Vietnam. Place upstate we did that refrigerator truck.’ He turned to the other boy.
‘Meyerick,’ his friend said flatly.
‘It’s coming.’ The boy snapped his fingers. ‘Meyerick Vietnam Fund. That’s it, lady.’
‘Where’s Meyerick?’
‘Upstate New York,’ the other boy said. ‘An hour or two’s drive north and west.’
‘You did a good night’s work last night,’ Nan Luc said. ‘I’m sorry to hear you didn’t get paid. How much do you calculate you lost?’