While My Pretty One Sleeps Read online

  Neeve wiggled her feet into the padded slippers Myles called her booties and yanked up the shade. She decided that the weatherman didn’t have to be a genius to say this was an important snowstorm. The view from her room in Schwab House at Seventy-fourth Street and Riverside Drive was directly over the Hudson, but now she could barely make out the buildings across the river in New Jersey. The Henry Hudson Parkway was snow-covered and already filled with cautiously moving traffic. The long-suffering commuters had undoubtedly started into town early.

  • • •

  Myles was already in the kitchen and had the coffeepot on. Neeve kissed him on the cheek, willing herself not to remark on how tired he looked. That meant he hadn’t slept well again. If only he’d break down and take an occasional sleeping pill, she thought. “How’s the Legend?” she asked him. Since his retirement last year, the newspapers constantly referred to him as “New York’s legendary Police Commissioner.” He hated it.

  He ignored the question, glanced at her and assumed an expression of amazement. “Don’t tell me you’re not all set to run around Central Park?” he exclaimed. “What’s a foot of snow to dauntless Neeve?”

  For years they had jogged together. Now that he could no longer run, he worried about her early-morning sprints. But then, she suspected, he never wasn’t worrying about her.

  She reached into the refrigerator for the pitcher of orange juice. Without asking she poured out a tall glass for him, a short one for herself, and began to make toast. Myles used to enjoy a hearty breakfast, but now bacon and eggs were off his diet. So were cheese and beef and, as he put it, “half the food that makes you look forward to a meal.” His massive heart attack had restricted his diet as well as ending his career.

  They sat in companionable silence, by unspoken consent splitting the morning Times. But when she glanced up, Neeve realized that Myles wasn’t reading. He was staring at the paper without seeing it. The toast and the juice were untouched in front of him. Only the coffee showed any sign of having been tasted. Neeve put section two of the paper down.

  “All right,” she said. “Let me have it. Is it that you feel rotten? For heaven’s sake, I hope you know enough by now not to play the silent sufferer.”

  “No, I’m all right,” Myles said. “Or at least if you mean have I been having chest pains, the answer is no.” He tossed the paper onto the floor and reached for his coffee. “Nicky Sepetti gets out of jail today.”

  Neeve gasped. “But I thought they refused him parole last year?”

  “Last year was the fourth time he came up. He’s served every day of his sentence, less time for good behavior. He’ll be back in New York tonight.” Cold hatred hardened Myles’s face.

  “Dad, take a look at yourself in the mirror. Keep it up and you’ll bring on another heart attack.” Neeve realized her hands were trembling. She gripped the table, hoping Myles would not notice and think she was afraid. “I don’t care whether or not Sepetti made that threat when he was sentenced. You spent years trying to connect him to . . .” Her voice trailed off, then continued, “And not one shred of evidence has ever come up to tie him to it. And for God’s sake don’t you dare start worrying about me because he’s back on the street.”

  Her father had been the U.S. Attorney who put the head of the Sepetti Mafia family, Nicky Sepetti, behind bars. At the sentencing, Nicky had been asked if he had anything to say. He’d pointed at Myles. “I hear they think you done such a good job on me, they made you Police Commissioner. Congratulations. That was a nice article in the Post about you and your family. Take good care of your wife and kid. They might need a little protection.”

  Two weeks later, Myles was sworn in as Police Commissioner. A month later, the body of his young wife, Neeve’s mother, thirty-four-year-old Renata Rossetti Kearny, was found in Central Park with her throat cut. The crime was never solved.

  • • •

  Neeve did not argue when Myles insisted that he call for a cab to take her to work. “You can’t walk in that snow,” he told her.

  “It isn’t the snow, and we both know it,” she retorted. As she kissed him goodbye, she put her arms around his neck and hugged him. “Myles, the only thing that we both have to worry about is your health. Nicky Sepetti isn’t going to want to go back to prison. I bet if he knows how to pray he’s hoping that nothing happens to me for a long, long time. There isn’t another person in New York besides you who doesn’t think some petty crook attacked Mother and killed her when she wouldn’t give up her purse. She probably started screaming at him in Italian and he panicked. So please forget Nicky Sepetti and leave to heaven whoever took Mother from us. Okay? Promise?”

  She was only slightly reassured by his nod. “Now get out of here,” he said. “The cab meter’s ticking and my game shows will be starting any minute.”

  • • •

  The snowplows had made what Myles would call a lick-and-a-promise attempt to partially clear the accumulated snow from West End Avenue. As the car crawled and slid along the slippery streets and turned onto the west-to-east transverse road through the park at Eighty-first Street, Neeve found herself wishing the fruitless “if only.” If only her mother’s murderer had been found. Perhaps in time the loss would have healed for Myles as it had for her. Instead for him it was an open wound, always festering. He was always blaming himself for somehow failing Renata. All these years he had agonized that he should have taken the threat seriously. He could not bear the knowledge that with the immense resources of the New York City Police Department at his command, he had been unable to learn the identity of the thug who had carried out what he was convinced had been Sepetti’s order. It was the one unfulfilled need in his life—to find that killer, to make him and Sepetti pay for Renata’s death.

  Neeve shivered. The cab was cold. The driver must have been glancing in the rearview mirror, because he said, “Sorry, lady, the heater don’t work so good.”

  “It’s all right.” She turned her head to avoid getting into a conversation. The “if onlys” would not stop running through her mind. If only the killer had been found and convicted years ago, Myles might have been able to get on with his life. At sixty-eight he was still an attractive man, and over the years there had been plenty of women who had a special smile for the lean, broad-shouldered Commissioner with his thick head of prematurely white hair, his intense blue eyes and his unexpectedly warm smile.

  She was so deep in thought she did not even notice when the cab stopped in front of the shop. “Neeve’s Place” was written in scroll on the ivory-and-blue awning. The display windows that faced both Madison Avenue and Eighty-fourth Street were wet with snowdrops, giving a shimmering look to the flawlessly cut silk spring dresses on the languidly posed mannequins. It had been her idea to order umbrellas that looked like parasols. Sheer raincoats that picked up one color in the print were draped over the mannequins shoulders. Neeve joked that it was her “don’t-be-plain-in-the-rain” look, but it had proved wildly successful.

  “You work here?” the cabby asked as she paid him. “Looks expensive.”

  Neeve nodded noncommittally as she thought, I own this place, my friend. It was a realization that still thrilled her. Six years ago the previous shop at this location had gone bankrupt. It was her father’s old friend the famous designer Anthony della Salva who had bullied her into taking it over. “So you’re young,” he’d said, dropping the heavy Italian accent that was now part of his persona. “That’s a plus. You’ve been working in fashion since you got your first after-school job. Better yet, you’ve got the know-how, the flair. I’ll lend you the money to get started. If it doesn’t work, I can use the write-off, but it’ll work. You’ve got what it takes to make a go of it. Besides, I need another place to sell my clothes.” That was the last thing Sal needed, and they both knew it, but she was grateful.

  Myles had been dead set against her borrowing from Sal. But she had jumped at the chance. Something she had inherited from Renata besides her hair and eyes was a
highly developed fashion sense. Last year she had paid back Sal’s loan, insisting on adding interest at money-market rates.

  • • •

  She was not surprised to find Betty already at work in the sewing room. Betty’s head was bent down, her frown of concentration now a permanent set of lines on her forehead and between her brows. Her hands, slender and wrinkled, handled a needle and thread with the skill of a surgeon. She was hemming an intricately beaded blouse. Her blatantly dyed copper-colored hair accentuated the parchment-thin skin on her face. Neeve hated to realize that Betty was past seventy. She didn’t want to visualize the day when she decided to retire.

  “Figured I’d better get a jump on things,” Betty announced. “We’ve got an awful lot of pickups today.”

  Neeve pulled off her gloves and unwound her scarf. “Don’t I know it. And Ethel Lambston insists she has to have everything by this afternoon.”

  “I know. I’ve got her stuff ready to do when I finish this. It wouldn’t be worth listening to her jabbering if every rag she bought isn’t ready to go.”

  “Everybody should be such a good customer,” Neeve observed mildly.

  Betty nodded. “I suppose so. And, by the way, I’m glad you talked Mrs. Yates into this outfit. That other one she tried on made her look like a grazing cow.”

  “It also was fifteen hundred dollars more, but I couldn’t let her have it. Sooner or later she’d have taken a good look at herself in the mirror. The sequin top is enough. She needs a soft, full skirt.”

  A surprising number of shoppers braved the snow and slippery sidewalks to come into the store. Two of the saleswomen hadn’t made it, so Neeve spent the day on the sales floor. It was the part she enjoyed most about the business, but in the past year she’d been forced to limit herself to handling only a few personal clients.

  At noon she went into her office at the back of the shop for a deli sandwich and coffee and dialed home.

  Myles sounded more like himself. “I would have won fourteen thousand dollars and a Champion pickup truck on Wheel of Fortune,” he announced. “I won so much I might even have had to take that six-hundred-dollar plaster-of-paris Dalmatian they have the gall to call a prize.”

  “Well, you certainly sound better,” Neeve observed.

  “I’ve been talking to the boys downtown. They’ve got good people keeping tabs on Sepetti. They say he’s pretty sick and hasn’t much fight left.” There was satisfaction in Myles’s voice.

  “And they also probably reminded you that they don’t think he had anything to do with Mother’s death.” She did not wait for an answer. “It’s a good night for pasta. There’s plenty of sauce in the freezer. Yank it out, okay?”

  Neeve hung up feeling somewhat reassured. She swallowed the last bite of the turkey sandwich, gulped down the rest of the coffee and went back to the sales floor. Three of the six dressing rooms were occupied. With a practiced eye, she took in every detail of the shop.

  The Madison Avenue entrance opened into the accessory area. She knew that one of the key reasons for her success was the availability of jewelry, purses, shoes, hats and scarves so that a woman purchasing a dress or a suit didn’t have to hunt elsewhere for accessories. The interior of the shop was in shadings of ivory, with accents of blush pink on the upholstered sofas and chairs. Sportswear and separates were contained in roomy alcoves two steps up from the showcases. Except for the exquisitely gowned display mannequins there was no clothing in sight. A potential customer was escorted to a chair, and the sales clerk brought out dresses and gowns and suits for her selection.

  It had been Sal who advised Neeve to go that way. “Otherwise you’ll have klutzes yanking clothes off the racks. Start exclusive, honey, and stay exclusive,” he had said, and as usual he was right.

  The ivory and blush had been Neeve’s decision. “When a woman looks in the mirror, I don’t want the background fighting what I’m trying to sell,” she’d told the interior designer who wanted her to go into great splashes of color.

  As the afternoon wore on, fewer clients came in. At three o’clock Betty emerged from the sewing room. “Lambston’s stuff is ready,” she told Neeve.

  Neeve assembled Ethel Lambston’s order herself. All spring clothes. Ethel was a sixtyish free-lance writer with one bestseller to her credit. “I write on every subject under the sun,” she had breathlessly confided to Neeve on the opening day of the shop. “I take the fresh approach, the inquiring look. I’m every woman seeing something for the first time or from a new angle. I write about sex and relationships and animals and nursing homes and organizations and real estate and how to be a volunteer and political parties and . . .” She had run out of breath, her navy-blue eyes snapping, her white-blond hair flying around her face. “The trouble is that I work so hard at what I do, I don’t have a minute for myself. If I buy a black dress, I end up wearing brown shoes with it. Say, you have everything here. What a good idea. Put me together.”

  In the last six years, Ethel Lambston had become a valuable customer. She insisted Neeve pick out every stitch she bought as well as choose accessories and compile lists to tell her what went with what. She lived on the ground floor of a brownstone on West Eighty-second Street, and Neeve stopped there occasionally to help Ethel decide what clothes to keep from year to year and what to give away.

  The last time Neeve had gone over Ethel’s wardrobe was three weeks ago. The next day Ethel came in and ordered the new outfits. “I’ve almost finished that fashion article I interviewed you about,” she’d told Neeve. “A lot of people are going to be mad at me when it comes out, but you’ll love it. I gave you lots of free publicity.”

  When she made her selections she and Neeve had differed on only one suit. Neeve had started to take it away. “I don’t want to sell you that. It’s a Gordon Steuber. I refuse to handle anything of his. This one should have gone back. I cannot stand that man.”

  Ethel had burst out laughing. “Wait till you read what I wrote about him. I crucified him. But I want the suit. His clothes look good on me.”

  • • •

  Now, as Neeve carefully placed the garments in heavy protective bags, she felt her lips narrow at the sight of the Steuber outfit. Six weeks ago, the daily maid at the shop had asked her to speak to a friend who was in trouble. The friend, a Mexican, told Neeve about working in an illegal sweatshop in the South Bronx that was owned by Gordon Steuber. “We don’t have green cards. He threatens to turn us in. Last week I was sick. He fired me and my daughter and won’t pay what he owes us.”

  The young woman didn’t look to be more than in her late twenties. “Your daughter!” Neeve had exclaimed. “How old is she?”

  “Fourteen.”

  Neeve had canceled the order she’d placed with Gordon Steuber and sent him a copy of the Elizabeth Barrett Browning poem which had helped change the child-labor laws in England. She underlined the stanza “But the young, young children, oh my brothers, they are weeping bitterly.”

  Someone in Steuber’s office had tipped off Women’s Wear Daily. The editors printed the poem on the front page next to Neeve’s scathing letter to Steuber and called on other retailers to boycott manufacturers who were breaking the law.

  Anthony della Salva had been upset. “Neeve, the word is that Steuber has a lot more than sweatshops to hide. Thanks to what you stirred up, the Feds are nosing around his income-tax returns.”

  “Wonderful,” Neeve had retorted. “If he’s cheating at that too, I hope they catch him.”

  • • •

  Well, she decided as she straightened the Steuber suit on the hanger, this will be the last thing of his that goes out of my shop. She found herself anxious to read Ethel’s fashion article. She knew it was due to come out soon in Contemporary Woman, the magazine where Ethel was a contributing editor.

  Finally, Neeve made up the lists for Ethel. Blue silk evening suit; wear white silk blouse; jewelry in box A. Pink-and-gray ensemble; gray pumps, matching purse; jewelry in box B. Black cockt
ail dress . . .” There were eight outfits in all. With the accessories they came to nearly seven thousand dollars. Ethel spent that amount three or four times a year. She’d confided to Neeve that when she was divorced twenty-two years before, she’d gotten a big settlement and invested it wisely. “And I collect a thousand bucks a month alimony from him for life,” she’d laughed. “At the time we broke up, he was riding high. He told his lawyers it was worth every cent to get rid of me. In court, he said that if I ever marry again the guy should be stone deaf. Maybe I’d have given him a break if it weren’t for that crack. He’s remarried and has three kids, and ever since Columbus Avenue got classy his bar’s been in trouble. Every once in a while he phones and begs me to let him off the hook, but I tell him I still haven’t found anyone who’s stone deaf.”

  At that moment Neeve had been prepared to dislike Ethel. Then Ethel had added wistfully, “I always wanted a family. We separated when I was thirty-seven. The five years we were married, he wouldn’t give me a child.”

  Neeve had made it her business to read Ethel’s articles and had quickly realized that even though Ethel might be a talkative, seemingly scatterbrained woman, she was also an excellent writer. No matter what subject she tackled, it was obvious her research was massive.

  With the help of the receptionist, Neeve stapled the bottoms of the garment bags. The jewelry and the shoes were packed in individual boxes and then gathered in ivory-and-pink cartons with “Neeve’s Place” scrolled along the sides. With a sigh of relief, she dialed Ethel’s apartment.

  There was no answer. Nor had Ethel left her answering machine on. Neeve decided that Ethel would probably arrive any minute, breathless and with a taxi waiting outside.