The Mulberry Tree

Bailey picked up her handbag. “I think I’d better go.”

“Then I’ll just have to tell my driver to follow you,” Arleen said calmly. “He’s former FBI, you know.”

Bailey sat back down. “All right, what is it that you want?”

“Some of whatever you took to make you look so good and get so angry.”

“I’m not angry!” Bailey said, but then she looked around at the mostly empty restaurant and lowered her voice. “I’m not angry,” she said quietly, “and I don’t know what’s given you that idea.”

“Let me see. You were married to a man who slept with everything in skirts, then he died and left you nothing. And now—”

Again, Bailey grabbed her bag, but Arleen clamped down on Bailey’s wrist and held her. “Okay, I apologize. We don’t have to talk about what was done to you.”

“You’re right. In fact, we don’t have to talk about anything.” Bailey was still half out of the seat, and Arleen still had her wrist in a viselike grip. “What is it you want, Arleen?”

“Is it really true that Jimmie left you nothing?”

“I see,” Bailey said. “You want money.”

Arleen shrugged. “One has needs.”

When Bailey didn’t sit back down, Arleen’s voice lowered. “Please,” she said, “sit and talk with me. I miss James. And I promise, no more cracks.”

Bailey knew she should leave, but something was holding her back. For one thing, Arleen was familiar to her. Not by any stretch of the imagination had they ever been friends, but Arleen had been one of the hangers-on around Jimmie. He used to think Arleen’s bitchiness was amusing. “And she knows everybody,” Jimmie said.

Slowly, Bailey took her seat again. “All right, what do you want to talk about?”

“You,” Arleen said. “I really do want to know what’s made you look so good. Before, when you were with James, you always looked dreadful.”

“Thanks,” Bailey said. “And the same back to you.”

Arleen leaned back against the booth, drew on her cigarette, and looked at Bailey speculatively. “You really are angry. Were you always like this, or is it something new?”

“I’m not—” Bailey began, but then she too leaned back against the seat.

“Is it your new husband?” Arleen asked.

“What makes you think I already have another husband?”

That made Arleen give a dry laugh. She couldn’t laugh too hard because her lungs were so full of carbon that if she started coughing, she’d never stop. “You? You, dear Lillian, were made to be a man’s wife. And now you look like a pregnancy waiting to happen. We used to wonder if you even existed when James wasn’t around. Bandy—you remember him?—used to say that you were a ghost and James had paid someone to conjure you. He said a voodoo priestess had performed some ancient ritual and from it had sprung this woman who was what all primitive men like James thought a wife should be.”

Bailey was looking at the woman in horror. She’d heard whispers and had been given looks, but when Jimmie was around, no one had dared say anything like this to her. “Go on,” she heard herself say. “What else did Bandy say about me?”

“Oh, darling, it really was most amusing. You know how bitchy Bandy can be. He said that only a ghost that’d had its spirit removed could be a billionaire’s wife and still go around the world putting cherries into bottles the way you did. He said that you had everything, but all you really wanted was to disappear inside James Manville—of course, that’s what James wanted you to do. That’s why James sent all those chocolates every time you lost a pound or two.”

“The chocolates were gifts from other people. Thank-you gifts, mostly. Jimmie said . . . ” Bailey trailed off because Arleen was looking at her as though to say, How could you be so naive?

“Bandy was with him one time when he ordered the chocolates. Bandy said, ‘I thought Lillian was dieting,’ then James laughed. But you know how Bandy is, once he gets hold of something, he doesn’t let it go. He coaxed and wheedled until he got James to tell why he wanted a fat wife. James said he wouldn’t have a beautiful wife. I remember that night so clearly. We were on Jimmie’s yacht, that big one he had, what was the name of it?”

“The Lillian,” Bailey said, her jaw clamped shut. She didn’t want to hear anything this woman was going to say, but at the same time she couldn’t possibly leave. “What did Jimmie say about me?”

Arleen lit another cigarette off the first one. “It was one of those nights after you’d gone to bed early, but then, you always went to bed early, didn’t you, dear? One of the reasons so many people disliked you is because you made no effort to hide the fact that you despised them.”

“You were all after Jimmie’s money,” Bailey said.

“Yes, dear, we wanted his money. But you wanted his soul. Now, tell me, which one is more expensive?”

Bailey wasn’t going to reply to that. “Tell me what it is that you’re dying to tell me,” she snapped.