Page 32 of Hard to Kill

I smile at him and proudly raise a hand.

“Was it still going on with Rob and Elise even after he ended up under house arrest?”

“I heard it ended badly,” Jimmy says. “But at least nobody got shot.”

Our plan is to stay about an hour. Ben and I are a few minutes away from the opening bid in the live auction and a clean getaway when Elise Parsons heads straight in our direction. The aging debutante is, bless her heart, the whole package: hair, makeup, not a bad body, lots of good Botox, enough jewelry to open a Tiffany pop-up store. She was probably a knockout back in the day. But for the catty life of me, I can’t imagine which day that might have been.

“Well,” Elise says when she reaches me. “I see the bitch is back.”

I keep my smile in place.

“Nice to see you, too, Elise. Usually people get to know me a lot better before they call me that.”

“I’m aware why your hideous client is unable to attend,” she says. “What’s your excuse for being here?”

She does a little toss of her head, hair unmoving, for effect.

“It actually did take nerve for me to show up,” I say. “But not for the reason you think.”

“You’re really going to defend him all over again? Seriously? Just how much of a whore are you?”

Elise looks flushed, voice continuing to rise, as if she’s already had too much to drink. Up to now, the event has been relatively sedate, even boring. The auditorium hushes to the unspoken thrill of listening in on a scene like this.

“Elise,” Ben says calmly, trying to diffuse an impossible situation. “Please lower your voice.”

She doesn’t. We’re way past that by now.

Suddenly a younger and much prettier version of Elise appears. Known as Ellie, she shares Elise’s name.

“Mom,” she says, “I heard what you called her. But there’s no reason to insult any other whores here tonight.”

“Is he screwing you, too, Jane?” her mother asks me, loud enough now for the parking attendants outside to hear. “Everybody on the South Fork thinks so.”

I look at Elise Parsons, then her daughter, then back at Elise.

I motion her closer and lower my voice to a near whisper.

“It was you who married Gramps,” I say, smiling sweetly at her. “So who’s the real whore?”

And with that, the chairperson for Friends of Jermain hauls off and slaps me, the sound so loud it echoes off the polished floor.

TWENTY-SIX

A FEW NIGHTS AFTER all the fun at the library gala, I invite Dr. Ben over for dinner, telling him that I’m doing the cooking for a change.

“What are we celebrating?”

“How about me walking away from Elise Parsons after she got the first swing in? My dad used to tell me that if a hockey fight was about to break out, I had to be the one to throw the first punch.”

“I’m still shocked you did. Walk away, I mean.”

“Not as shocked as I was.”

He’s very good in the kitchen, with an imaginative flair for cooking. What he doesn’t know is that he’s not nearly as good as I am. One of the many secrets I haven’t shared with him.

But not for long.

When Ben arrives, he immediately tells me how good the house smells.

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