Killers of a Certain Age(7)

CHAPTER THREE



The packet arrived in the mail in late November 2018, a predictably gloomy time of year. Contract assassination is surprisingly busy during the holidays—targets are as much creatures of habit as the rest of us, and you can often knock them off when they’re traveling over the fields and through the woods to grandmother’s house—but I had finished my last assignment the week after Halloween, leaving me rattling around my rented town house like Miss Havisham, only with leftover breakfast tacos instead of a wedding cake. There was no more work on the horizon, the Astros had lost to the Red Sox in the playoffs the month before, and to add insult to injury, it had actually snowed in Houston. In short, I was ripe for anything that hinted at adventure, and an all-expenses-paid retirement cruise embarking the day after Christmas was better than nothing.

I flicked through the brochures, noting the deliberate omission of prices.

It was too much. I gave up after reading about the thread count of the sheets (“hand-loomed from cotton grown in the Nile delta”) and threw the packet into my tote bag. It was still there a month later, buried under a bottle of sunscreen, a pack of cigarettes, and a bag of licorice whips, when I boarded the boat in San Juan for a late-afternoon departure that felt like a class reunion. Mary Alice and I had met up in the Dallas airport on our way east; Helen joined us in Miami. Leave it to Natalie to dash on at the last possible minute, spilling lipsticks and miniature liquor bottles from her bag as she ran up the gangplank in the harbor in Puerto Rico.

“She’s going to break a hip doing that,” Mary Alice said mildly. We were standing at the rail next to Helen, watching as Natalie teetered across the deck on wedge espadrilles that were four inches high and tied halfway up her leg with yellow satin ribbons.

“Or by falling off a porter,” I said, nodding to where Natalie was furiously batting her lashes at some poor twenty-year-old who didn’t know what had hit him.

“Leave her be,” Helen said, a little too sharply. I raised a brow at Mary Alice but neither of us replied. Natalie shifted her gear into the porter’s waiting arms and waved him away as she launched herself at us. She was the smallest, barely coming up to Helen’s shoulder, but somehow she managed to gather us into a group hug.

“It’s been so long!” she cried, pulling back to see us better. “Let me look at you! Christ, you’re all so old!”

“It’s been six months,” Mary Alice told her, smoothing out her linen tunic from where Natalie had crushed it in her exuberance.

Natalie flapped a hand. “Bullshit. It’s been longer than that.”

Helen was calculating. “It was my last birthday. You all came to Washington,” she said. She didn’t finish the thought. We’d gone to DC armed with dinner reservations and tickets to the Camelot revival at the Kennedy Center to get her out of the house.

I gave her a close look. She’d worried me on that trip. Kenneth’s death had hit her hard and I wasn’t sure she was going to make it. He’d been gone for three months when we showed up. The blinds had been drawn and the house dark, smelling of gin and unwashed sheets and even more of unwashed Helen. We stayed for four days, rousting her out of the house for spa trips and movies and a baseball game. We made her promise to keep her hairdresser’s appointments and her volunteer commitments and signed her up for pottery classes and a meal-delivery service. And then we’d gone home and gotten back to our own lives with a sense of having accomplished what we’d set out to do, like Helen was a chore on a to-do list. Check off the box marked console widow and move on to the next thing.

Only Helen hadn’t moved any further, I suspected. She was perfectly groomed now, her pale grey-blond hair shimmering with platinum streaks that matched the ostrich Birkin bag hanging from the crook of her arm. But she’d lost more weight. One good hug and I could snap her in two, I thought sadly.

Just then, Natalie’s young porter appeared with a basket and a pair of tongs. “Chilled towels, ladies? They’re scented with lemon verbena?” Everything the kid said ended in a question.

“Thank you, Hector,” Natalie said with a broad smile.

One by one he dealt the little towels out like cards. Mary Alice gave her arms a purposeful wipe while Helen patted her cheeks daintily. Natalie stuffed hers in her bra while I draped mine around the back of my neck with a moan of relief.

“Hot flash?” Mary Alice asked with a sympathetic look.

“Only occasionally,” I told her.

“I can’t believe you’re still not finished with that,” Natalie said, plucking the towel out of her neckline. “I haven’t had a period since 2005.”

“Natalie, please,” Mary Alice said, darting a look around to see if anyone was paying attention.

Nat shrugged. “Why do I care if anyone hears me? Periods are a perfectly natural phenomenon.”

“I know how periods work, Natalie,” Mary Alice said, setting her teeth. “I just think maybe some of the other passengers might not want to know about your gynecological endeavors.”

When we were younger, Natalie would have met a remark like that with fire, but she merely shrugged and grabbed two frosted glasses of rosé from the tray of a passing waiter. She shoved one at Mary Alice. “Here, Mary Alice. Drink this and I’ll see if I can find you a flashlight.”