Page 7 of The Alibi Club

In that moment, a black shape darted across the floor toward him. It was a cat so black it swallowed the light. The feline reached him and began sidling up to his leg, purring. Cliff bent down and gave the cat a quick pet, let the relief flood through him, and realized he’d been holding his breath again. He let it out slowly and looked at his watch. Twelve seconds to get out. He stood up and felt a muscle cramp in his hamstring. He had to stop to stretch it out as he watched the seconds rapidly dwindle.

He stood up straight, cramp assuaged, and vowed to drink more water.

He was getting too old for this gig.

He quietly opened the back door into the alley where two streetlights were out thanks to two accurate pops with a BB gun the night before. Manhattan Beach was an affluent town with very little crime and a lot of bored city employees. Those streetlights would be fixed by today. He knew, because he’d tested it a day before on his own street. Light was fixed within thirty-six hours. That was good knowledge to have.

Cliff heaved the backpack on his shoulder and started walking up Eleventh Street toward his rented apartment on Valley Drive. No one was out, but that would change in an hour. Californians rose early for all manner of healthy physical recreation. Surfing, paddleboarding, yoga on the beach. The fit and restless would be arriving soon.

He glanced at his watch and realized he had three hours before his meeting. Enough time for a quick shower, a breakfast burrito, and an existential crisis.

CHAPTER FIVE

M.O.M.

ELAINE CROMWELL FRISCO

Tidy. That’s how Elaine Cromwell Frisco characterized Barry Bonavico’s divorce from his recent wife. He signed the papers on a spacious travertine balcony overlooking Lake Como in the Italian countryside while Elaine poured him a glass of champagne. It took all of three months, some sensible urging, and a sizable sum of money to get his wife gone, but Elaine got it done. Per usual.

Still, thank God for prenups. They served husbands and mistresses alike. Like a swift kick to the ass with a generous tip, of which she was not fond of giving. Out with the frumpy, in with the glamorous.

Elaine sat up in her usual med spa chair, which she visited early every other Tuesday, and stared at her reflection, examining the effects of her latest cosmetic injection to her forehead and upper cheeks. Even the faintest sign of wrinkles would result in zero tip, so she strained hard to find any hint of an error. Everything about aging was awful, except the privilege to do so. Alas, her skin looked smooth, dewy, and taut. She sighed and reached for her wallet.

She would celebrate her sixty-fifth birthday later this year but never admitted her true age to anyone, not even her children, and was often assumed to be in her early fifties. This was one of the many reasons she managed to snag one of the most eligible bachelors in Los Angeles, Barry Bonavico.

Well, eligible might have been a stretch, but opportunities don’t just fall into your lap, now do they? Women like Elaine Cromwell Frisco created them.

After a chance meeting at a glitzy charity auction held at the Getty Museum on a spring night in Los Angeles, Elaine surmised that Barry Bonavico had been in a loveless marriage for years and was clearly in need of someone who could properly complement his intelligence and his aspirations.

Barry was a brilliant financier and founder of a hedge fund that, he explained, nearly took down a small Eastern European country last year. Just a kerfuffle, he said. Still ironing out all the details but he would come out unscathed, he said. His next move, naturally, was politics. Elaine nibbled on the olive in her Grey Goose martini as he spoke. Filthy rich, morally malleable, and rapaciously ambitious.

Elaine knew the right man when she saw him.

After engaging in spirited banter over climate change, the theories of Ayn Rand, and why Istanbul was unquestionably the most interesting city in the world, Barry Bonavico gave her a rakish smile and invited her to sit at his table for dinner.

By the end of the third course, before the rhubarb mousse was served, Barry had quietly suggested they fly to Paris that night.

She had a go-bag in her car. Complete with a pair of knee-high calf leather Louboutin boots and Chanel makeup. One can never be too ready.

It wasn’t Elaine’s fault that his dowdy wife in her sack dress had all the charisma of a wet potato chip. Every time Elaine looked over at her, she was yawning or wiping crab dip off her face. When Elaine engaged her in conversation and judged her hair (she had a bob cut, for God’s sake), she found her to be overly effusive, only dimly aware of current events, and so demure her words sounded more like a declawed cat purring in her ear than a billionaire’s wife. There was no spark of challenge, no edge to this boring woman. She was a walking version of a throw pillow.

Barry clearly deserved better. Someone who would shine like a sophisticated jewel on his arm, a relentless and charismatic supporter of his deeds, a perfect senator’s wife. A role Elaine Cromwell Frisco was born for.

Sharply unlike the station to which Elaine was born into: a blue-collar neighborhood outside of Detroit to a single, unwed mother who struggled to pay the phone company and the electric bill at the same time.

When her father walked out on them, he was in such a hurry, he left the car running. He gave her mother a check for a thousand dollars, a rushed and shame-filled excuse, and the best advice Elaine ever got. He’d bent down, took her chin in his fingers, and stared into her blue eyes. He gave a disdainful look at the cramped, shabby trailer and whispered, “Blue collar begets blue collar, Lainey. Do better.” He walked out to the car and didn’t look back once.

She understood the assignment.

Fueled by hatred and desperation, Elaine vowed to make herself immune to the disease of destitution. She detested her situation. She felt as if there had been some cosmic mix-up when she was a baby and had been given to the wrong woman at the hospital. She felt certain she was destined to be part of a more affluent family, like her father’s family who, in their thundering silence, had communicated they wanted no part of this mess. The mess, presumably, was her.

She loved her mother but judged her as weak and toothless. She never fought for them, even when she could have; even when she should have. Anger turned to resentment as Elaine watched with detached pity as the stress of perpetual poverty took its toll on her mother’s natural beauty, frayed her nerves, and fueled her addiction to cigarettes, cheap wine, and bad men. A woman without means was powerless in this world, left to the beasts of fate. If Elaine wanted a different life, she would have to fight for every inch of it.

Luckily, she was sharp, resourceful, observant, and devoid of the kind of sentimentality that rendered other women powerless. Elaine was not a people pleaser, but she could charm. She could manipulate others without feeling the slightest bit of guilt. She was not ashamed of her ambition, nor did she hide her intelligence from men so they could feel better about themselves. She knew dirty jokes as well as which fork to use during the oyster course. She armed herself with knowledge, etiquette, and psychology. Her powers were only sharpening. She did not feel or understand love and viewed this as a strength.

She learned in college that she was “East Coast pretty,” which meant something between beautiful and plain, helped by her bright eyes, flawless skin, good bones, and straight dark hair. A magnet for the upper-crust boys with family money.

She met George Cromwell, the golden-haired son of an aristocratic family from Boston, while at the University of Michigan on a full scholarship. Elaine could sense he was in love with her. For the first time, she saw a clear, well-lit path to the upper echelons of society, to the kind of refined life where money would never be an issue again.