Free The Wife, the Maid, and the Mistress by Ariel Lawhon Page A

comes back.”
    “I’ll search for him,” Fred said. “I promise.”
    “Write to me if you find anything.”
    “Of course.” Fred picked his jacket off the floor and ducked out the door, arms over his face to protect from the biting wind. He was lost in the rain before she could see him run around the cabin toward the car.
    When Stella was certain Fred had driven away, she went upstairs and dumped out the clothes hamper. At the bottom were the khaki pants Joe had worn to the Salt House. Stella turned the pockets inside out but found only the wrapper to an after-dinner mint. She stuffed thedirty clothes back in and went to the closet. Joe’s dinner jacket hung on a peg inside the door. Stella reached into the left pocket and found his cigarettes—unfiltered Camels—and a matchbook with the Club Abbey logo. Stella grimaced. She’d never approved of Joe’s patronage of the speakeasy that the papers referred to as a “white-light rendezvous spot.” In Joe’s right pocket were two business cards: one for Simon Rifkind, a law associate of Joe’s, and the other for Owney Madden, proprietor of Club Abbey. Stella tapped the cards against her palm.
    “So that’s who he called.” She changed into trousers and tucked the business cards into her pocket. Then she grabbed her raincoat and galoshes and marched into the storm.
    “I DON’T know what you were playing at the other day,” Donald Smithson said, laying an invoice on her work table. “But it clearly worked. He paid in advance.”
    Maria lifted the sheet of paper and saw an order for five suits, along with a check for $750. “Owney Madden?”
    “I will grant that your tactics were effective with him—perhaps due in part to his own lack of breeding—but it’s not a strategy that I want you to employ in the future. Are we clear?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    Smithson placed his clipboard next to the invoice. On it was recorded all of Owney Madden’s measurements and his choice of fabric for each suit. “He will be back in two weeks for his first fitting. Let’s begin with the classic cut in charcoal wool. You know what to do.”
    Maria watched Smithson return to his office. That was the closest he’d ever come to paying her a compliment. But the joy of being vindicated was dulled by the uncomfortable fact that she would have to see Owney Madden again.
    IRV BERN’S general store sat at the bottom of a wooded inlet a little over two miles away. But he had a telephone, which at the moment was the most important thing. Despite endless promises from the public works department, phone service had not yet made it to the Craters’ end of the lake, and they were forced to makethe trek into town to use the phone. Normally, this was not a problem, given the services of Fred Kahler. But Stella had something to say that she did not want him to hear. So having sent him away, she had no choice but to walk. What would have usually been a lovely trip beneath a heavy canopy of oak trees proved a lesson in misery. Although the branches protected her somewhat from the stinging rain, the little that made it through drenched her head and neck until rivulets of water ran down her spine. It took her an hour to hike down the hill, head bowed and hands tucked beneath her arms. The lights were on when she rounded the last turn in the gravel road. Sodden and dispirited, Stella trudged up the wide plank steps and pushed against the door with her shoulder. The shop bells above her clattered in alarm.
    The store was empty, save for Irv himself, stretched out behind the counter on a stool with his back against the wall and his mammoth feet near the register. He had the look of a man lulled to sleep by the sound of rain on a tin roof. Arms crossed. Head tipped to the side. Slack mouth. Scratchy snore. Stella let the door snap closed behind her, and the racket of bells jerked him from slumber.
    “I need to use your phone.” She gave no other greeting as he stumbled from his perch and blinked