Christietown Read online

  It was at Styles that her marriage had broken into pieces. The house was unlucky. The last three owners had suffered there. She’d wanted to move farther into the country—a cottage, it needn’t have been anything grand. There were only the three of them, after all. But Archie had insisted on being no more than a ten-minute walk to Sunningdale Station. She sped past it now, its blue-andyellow sign enveloped in fog. Monday through Friday, since he’d come back from the Great War, he’d commuted into London for work, twenty-six miles to the south. City life. How ill it suited him. Mornings were worst. He’d lurch into the station so late he had to run across the lines in front of the approaching train to reach the far platform to board. He had to be more careful. Accidents did happen. She closed her eyes for a moment, envisioning the scene. The screams. The crowd. The sirens. Then her eyes blinked open. She was fooling herself. Work wasn’t the reason he needed to be close to the station, not the real one, at any rate. London was where his mistress was. He needed to be close to her.

  It’s over, Archie had said. I want a divorce.

  What about me? Agatha had cried.

  Who are you?

  It was not an unreasonable question.

  The girl Archie had met all those years ago at a dance given by Lord and Lady Clifford of Chudleigh at Ugbrooke House in Devon—the girl into whose ear he’d whispered such lovely, wicked things—was gone. In her place was a hag as chatty and ridiculous as his mother, fat in her stockingette skirts and staid jumpers. The smell of her repulsed him, the taste of her. No wonder. Agatha tasted like tears now. Her mother was dead. All she could do was cry. And Archie had warned her—had he not?—that he couldn’t bear unhappy people.

  Her hands clenched the leather-wrapped steering wheel. She looked at them in disbelief. Were they actually hers, the veins so blue and ropy and twisted? Yes, those were her hands, her blood, her veins. Odd that they pulsed so violently when she felt so dead inside.

  The road was deserted. It was ten at night. Darkness had fallen like a heavy, woolen blanket. The stockbrokers, the bankers, the gray-haired MPs and their dutiful wives and children were tucked between sheets that had been laundered and starched and ironed by silent servants, gossiping family retainers, indigent

  third cousins.

  All were fast asleep, dreaming of the day ahead.

  She no longer dreamed of the future. She dreamed of the past.

  Suddenly, something dark passed in front of her windshield. She braked. Was it a deer? She pulled over to the side of the road, switched off the headlights, turned off the motor. She stepped out of the car, a Morris Cowley. It was a four-seater. How she adored that car. She stroked the front bumper absently. Dust. She must speak to someone about that. She’d bought the car herself, for two hundred and twenty-five pounds. She was a successful author now. A wealthy woman in her own right. A wealthy woman alone. A wealthy woman who saw things. A deer! Impossible, of course. She suffered, Archie always said, from an overactive imagination. Worse yet, from an excess of false gestures.

  False gestures. False life.

  Later that night, back on the road, she threw her wedding ring out of the car window.

  What, she wondered, would darling Archie make of that?

  CHAPTER 4

  am a superstitious person. I believe that you don’t toss anything out of a car window, that you don’t give a knife as a housewarming present, that cutting your hair on Good Friday prevents headaches, and that the spouse who falls asleep first on the wedding night will be the first to die.

  I get it from my mother, which is probably enough said.

  So by all rights I should have lost it when Gambino crawled into bed sometime after midnight Friday, armed with a French Vogue and a box of See’s chocolates and broke the news that he couldn’t be my soldier of fortune in the morning. But I was strangely calm—tranquil, even. I thanked him for the presents. I assured him that everything would be fine. Of course, his case came first. Of course, his witnesses couldn’t wait. After that, I don’t remember anything. I must’ve dropped off to sleep. The strain of being reasonable had clearly exhausted me. But maybe I’d finally learned to roll with the punches. Dispensed with all that nonsense about omens.

  Or maybe I’d had an inkling that losing my soldier of fortune would be the least of the day’s disasters.

  Saturday morning dawned bright and hopeful. I stretched lazily, then wrapped my arms around my sleeping fiancé. After mumbling what sounded like an endearment, he rolled onto his stomach and started to snore. I tucked the covers around him and glanced over at the clock: 6:19. I’d beaten the alarm by eleven minutes.

  Ian Christie’s call beat the alarm by five.

  “Good morning, Miss Caruso,” he said, sounding near tears. “I mean, Cece. I simply can’t get out of the habit of ‘Miss This’-ing and ‘Mr. That’-ing everyone. Shows my age. My, oh, my, it’s a big day today. Sun’s shining. SPF fifteen for all. Ha, ha! Quite a gamble we’ve taken with this enterprise. Well, me. Quite a gamble I’ve taken.” He stopped himself dead.

  “Good morning, Ian,” I said in a voice meant to inspire confidence. “Are you feeling better today?”

  “Yes, thank you. You were an angel of mercy yesterday, Cece. By the time I got home, I decided it must’ve been the flu, which has been going around, you know. My assistant was out four days last week. Of course, bad luck’s her middle name; her husband broke his leg recently. But the incubation period for flu was up days ago, so it had to have been food poisoning. I love kebabs, but they don’t love me!”

  Yesterday afternoon, after I’d left Bridget’s, I’d gone out to Christietown to go over some last-minute details with Ian. Poor man had thrown up all over the sales office front desk, perilously close to the $25,000 scale model of Phase 2 that had just arrived from Browning McDuff, the building firm. Even before that, he’d soaked through his festive Tommy Bahama shirt and scratched obsessively at a rash on his cheeks. I think they call it being betrayed by your body. I shuddered to think what was going to happen to him if he didn’t sell a whole lot of houses today.

  Not my business, I reminded myself.

  What was I going to wear? Now there was a real concern.

  While Ian prattled on, I lay in bed visualizing the contents of my closet. Normally, this was a pleasant diversion. Today, all I could conjure up were tangled piles of mismatched items and the occasional close-up of a stain. I blinked a few times. Hmm. Something was coming into view. A toffee-colored silk blouse cut close to the body and white, high-waisted trousers cinched with a gold mesh belt. Lauren Hutton in American Gigolo? I liked the concept. Of course, she’d gone braless, which I could hardly get away with, but at least I didn’t have to hire my lovers.

  Speaking of, Gambino had to get up. He was conducting eleven interviews today, starting at eight thirty. I nudged him awake. He kissed my shoulder, then squinted questioningly at the phone. When I mouthed, “Ian,” he rolled his eyes, then staggered into the shower. He never waited the three and a half minutes for hot water.

  Back to yesterday. After vomiting, Ian apologized profusely then requested breath mints, which I didn’t have. His assistant, however, soon appeared with a toothbrush and a fresh shirt. While he changed, she poured two cups of strong tea that we took with us as we strolled away from the Vicarage toward Lansham Road, where the last houses (Chipping Cleghorn 1 and 2, priced from the low $400,000s, each with four bedrooms, three bathrooms, a three-car tandem garage, and 2,346 to 2,981 square feet) were still being built.

  Ian drained his cup within seconds, handing it to me so he could more closely inspect a palm-shaded gazebo, one of nineteen in Christietown. True enough, the paint was already chipping. Maybe they should’ve thought twice about doing things on the cheap. But that was Browning McDuff ’s M.O. A film-production company had recently bought one of their failed housing tracts in the Mojave Desert for the express purpose of blowing it up on camera.

  Ian and I made quick work of our list.

  One: the
mailing. A thousand invites had gone out two weeks ago. Check!

  Two: the ads. They’d been placed in the Antelope Valley Gazette and the Antelope Valley News. Tour Christietown! Sample ye olde English fare! Free murder-and-mayhem coloring books for the small fry! Check!

  Three: the live-radio tie-in; 100.1 the Edge was on board, I had no idea why. Check!

  Four: the food. When it came to food, you could always count on Lael. Check!

  Five: the play. I hadn’t known then I’d be down one soldier of fortune. Check! All good! Ready to go!

  On the walk back to the Vicarage, Ian hadn’t so much as blinked at the gazebo. There was a spring in his step, the rash had faded. I didn’t want to take full credit, but I did feel a warm glow inside.

  This morning, as I tore down the Antelope Valley freeway dressed like Lauren Hutton, I summoned that memory of yesterday: Ian Christie, beet-faced, yet serene; me, organized, efficient, glowing.

  Because I’d already screwed up.

  Twelve miles outside Palmdale, I realized that my backseat was empty. My backseat was not supposed to be empty.

  It was supposed to contain my doddering neighbors Lois and Marlene, who couldn’t get anywhere under their own steam if their lives depended on it. In a moment of lunacy, I’d told them they could come with me. And I’d forgotten them. And it was too late to turn around. And nobody else had room, which is why I’d gotten stuck with the job in the first place.

  Well, that was that. If I could write out my soldier of fortune, I could write out my showgirls. They were comic relief, really, with those froufrou outfits. It would be fine—better than fine. There were too many laughs anyway. Death isn’t supposed to be funny. It’s supposed to be depressing. And my play was going to be really depressing now.

  Stop, I told myself. Self-pity is not attractive. And I was almost there. The hop sage and saltbush scrub lining the freeway had given way to the red-tiled roofs—thousands upon thousands of them, as far as the eye could see, swarming over the hillside like a Tuscan-village virus.

  The housing developments were relatively new. During the 1980s, first-time home buyers, priced out of L.A.’s nearer suburbs, drove farther and farther out to places long considered too remote for commuters. Lancaster and Palmdale became large cities overnight. By the 1990s, however, home values had tanked, foreclosures reaching an all-time high. That’s when Ian Christie stepped in. He bought low and waited for the right moment. Which was, in theory, now.

  I exited at Sagebrush Canyon. Last year, Ian gave the folks at city hall a good laugh when he campaigned to have its name changed to “Christie Canyon,” which turned out to be the name of an eighties porn star. Bumping along the unpaved access road, I tuned in to the Edge, hoping to hear a promo for my event, but it was somebody giving sex advice to teenagers. I’d have recommended they abstain until reaching financial independence, not that I’d followed that advice myself. I hit the Off button. There was some kind of commotion going on up ahead.

  Strange. It was too early for the guests to be arriving.

  I pulled into the lot across from the Vicarage, cut the engine, and grabbed Liz’s Miss Marple costume out of the trunk.

  What was this?

  A news van from a local TV affiliate.

  Cars parked willy-nilly.

  People milling about.

  This was not our target audience.

  These people weren’t waving checkbooks.

  They were waving signs and posters and placards:

  TEN LITTLE INDIANS NO MORE! CHRISTIETOWN CELEBRATES RACISM! DON’T BUY INTO IT! TRIBAL LAND SULLIED!

  Where was the huge Christietown welcome banner I’d strung up yesterday?

  I couldn’t see it.

  All I could see was a reporter holding a microphone in front of an indignant-looking man with a bullhorn.

  And Ian Christie—wringing his hands and ruing the day and probably losing his shirt, which was already dripping wet.

  CHAPTER 5

  an came running over the minute he saw me, right through some freshly planted beds of lovage, foxglove, and clematis. But that was the least of his troubles. “Oh, Cece,” he wailed. “This will be our undoing! It’s a disaster of epic proportions!” In the background, we could hear a chorus of children chanting, “One little, two little, three little racists.” “Take it easy, Ian,” I said. “Maybe it’s not as bad as it seems.” It was obviously worse. “Whatever shall we do?” His sweaty hand was clutching mine now. “Oh, dear. They’ve brought coolers and blankets.”

  “I think we should start by finding whoever’s in charge.”

  “That’s a fine idea,” he said without conviction. “Of course. It’s just a big misunderstanding. We’ll have these good people on their way in no time. Only logical thing to do.”

  We made our way over to the man with the bullhorn. He was Native American, very tall, with a shaved head. The bones in his face looked sharp enough to cut glass. He’d finished his interview. The camera crew was packing up. But he wasn’t done, not by a long shot.

  “Can you imagine,” he bellowed to the rapt listeners, “two thousand years ago, Roman families teaching their kids to sing ‘One little, two little, three little Christians’ when they were throwing them to the lions?”

  It didn’t seem like such a stretch.

  “No!” he cried. “Even the Romans had more decency!”

  Ian Christie piped up, “I beg your pardon, sir, but that particular children’s rhyme is not the one Dame Christie was referring to in her book title.”

  Oh, no.

  The man put down his bullhorn and gave Ian a radiant smile. “This gentleman is quite right,” he said.

  Ian looked pleased for half a second.

  “We should clear up a few things,” he said, looking Ian straight in the eye. “First of all, ‘Dame’ Christie’s book has had three different titles. The original title was Ten Little Niggers—”

  Ian blanched.

  “Which was derived from an unforgettable ditty recited to African-American children as a bedtime story. A story of their annihilation enacted for the amusement of others.”

  “Shameful!” came a cry from the crowd.

  “Ten Little Indians was next. It was supposed to be less offensive. And what do we say to that?”

  A chorus of boos.

  “But the book is no longer published under either of those titles,” Ian protested. “It’s published as And Then There Were None, the last line of the rhyme. Nothing offensive there.”

  “Does everyone know that line?” the man asked. “‘One little Injun living all alone / He got married and then there were none.’ What does that sound like to you?”

  “Death by assimilation!” shouted a youngish woman with a baby in her arms.

  At that moment, one Yorkie and two Corgis wearing kilts sprinted toward the man with the bullhorn.

  “Alice May, Jenny, Scout!” A woman with a platinum blond bob was following in hot pursuit. “Heel! Stay! You are better than this!”

  “They’re setting the dogs on Joseph!” an elderly man cried. “Where is the camera now?”

  Ian turned to me despairingly. God help us, I was the authority figure.

  “Please say you’re Linda,” I called out as the woman barreled past us. Meanwhile, the man with the bullhorn—Joseph, I’m assuming—had gotten down on one knee to pet the dogs, who were licking him all over the face.

  “Yes, I’m Linda,” she said, struggling with her fanny pack. “We spoke yesterday. Are you Cece?”

  It seemed like a trick question.

  “Nice dogs,” Joseph said to Linda with a rakish smile. Linda blushed, and handed him some treats to distribute to the dogs, who didn’t deserve them, if you asked me.

  “So are you or are you not Cece?” Linda repeated.

  At that point, I had no choice but to acknowledge that I was indeed the person who had selected Alice May, Jenny, and Scout from the worldwide database of purportedly well-trained dogs at the Hollywoo
d Animal Actors Agency. The dogs were not there to attack the protesters—whom I obviously hadn’t anticipated—but to enhance the English country ambience. Dogs were ubiquitous in Miss Marple’s hamlet of St. Mary Mead—real ones, little china ones on mantelpieces. Anyway, Linda was supposed to be wearing a mackintosh and dark green wellies while trotting them around—not a faded wraparound skirt, Birkenstocks, and oversize white sunglasses. And the dogs were supposed to be well-behaved and unclad—not in kilts, for god’s sake, which were Scottish, not English, and therefore entirely inappropriate.

  But Linda had lost interest in me. She much preferred basking in the warmth of Joseph’s attention. They were fussing over the dogs, chuckling at the lamb-chop-shaped treats, probably exchanging phone numbers. Maybe I’d get invited to the wedding. Linda must have decided to spread the love because just then she turned to Ian—who no longer knew which way was up—and complimented his shirt, which was now dry.

  “It’s a guayabera,” he said. “In addition to Dame Christie, Ernest Hemingway is a great passion of mine. His Cuban years, in particular.”

  “Did you say Hemingway? Ernest Hemingway was a great friend to the Native Americans,” Joseph began, drawing Linda and Ian into a huddle.

  “Joseph?” the woman with the baby ventured timidly.

  “I’m busy right now,” he replied without turning around.

  With Joseph otherwise engaged, the mob—which I realized consisted of no more than fifteen people, some of whom were now making faces at their erstwhile leader behind his back—began to disperse. It seemed like an opportune moment to duck into the Vicarage to drop off my things.

  We were in the middle of a desert, but the Vicarage was the apotheosis of Cotswold kitsch: faux stone with a thatched roof, Canterbury bells spilling from window boxes, ivy climbing the walls. On Ian’s ecologically unsound orders, the front garden was to be overwatered daily so there’d always be flowing rivers of mud. Visitors were invited to don one of the pairs of wellies lined up outside the timbered front door, but by the time you got that far you were already a sodden mess, so I never bothered.