The Last Housewife (19)

“Good for you. Use what God gave you, I always say.” Clarissa raised an eyebrow. “I bet you didn’t tell your Whitney friends you were a beauty queen, though. I know the kinds of girls who go to that school. They’d eat you alive.”

I crossed my arms. “You said Laurel was desperate for the job. Why?”

Clarissa shrugged, moving to the large stainless-steel sink to wash her hands. “Don’t know. She practically begged me to hire her, said she’d do anything. At the time I figured she wanted to run her own catering firm one day and thought my shop would be a leg up. Back then, we were one of the most popular caterers in the area. Had some exclusive contracts.” She wiped her hands on a dish towel. “I was living high on the hog.”

“How long did Laurel work for you?” Jamie asked.

Clarissa pulled the batter out of the mixing bowl and began kneading it with strong, sure hands. I dropped my eyes, her movements triggering a flood of memories: a bright flash of molten shame, a twinge of arousal.

Once, I’d kneaded dough naked on my hands and knees, and I’d liked it.

“I got a good year out of her.” Clarissa’s voice broke the spell, and I swallowed hard. “Then she started missing work. She’d lie, tell me she was sick, and then people would see her out around town. She started getting off-balance.”

“What do you mean?” Jamie asked. I was grateful he was doing the talking.

Clarissa shaped the dough. “Moody. Irritable. Erratic. When you’re a waiter, you have to be charming. Hell, at least nice to your customers. I started cutting her shifts because she’d come in with bags under her eyes, all angry and sullen, and she’d back-talk the clients. I was starting to think she was on drugs, to be honest. They find any drugs in her system?”

None of this sounded remotely like sweet, accommodating Laurel. But maybe Clem’s death had broken something in both of us.

“None we know of,” Jamie said. “How’d she quit?”

Clarissa huffed, pulling open the oven and shoving her baking tray inside. “One day she completely lost her shit. We were out working an event. It was important, maybe our most important one, for one of our exclusive clients. And she just blew up, out of nowhere, over nothing, and stormed out. I never saw her again. It’s real sad how she ended up, but like I said, you could see trouble coming.”

“That was how many years ago?” Jamie asked.

Clarissa squinted. “Five or six, thereabouts. It’s been a while, but you don’t forget a meltdown like that.”

Jamie and I glanced at each other. The timing roughly matched when Laurel’s landlord said she’d started disappearing.

What kind of trouble had she gotten into?

Clarissa rested her hands on her hips. “Not to rush you out, but I need to move to savories if I’m going to be ready. We’re doing an anniversary party in Poughkeepsie.”

“We appreciate your time.” Jamie checked his phone. “If you think of anything else—”

“Wait,” I said. “Do the words ‘Tongue-Cut Sparrow’ mean anything to you?”

Clarissa froze in the middle of untying her apron. “You know that place?”

“It’s a place?” I took a deep breath. Instinct told me to play it easy.

Clarissa’s eyes darted to the door, and the fine hairs on my arms lifted. “I don’t know for sure, but when you’ve lived here long enough, you catch whispers.” She glanced down at Jamie’s phone. “Would you mind turning that off?”

He stopped recording and leaned over the table. “What have you heard, Ms. Barker? I promise, anything you say is safe with us.”

“I told my daughter not to go near it,” she said. “The Hudson Mansion, up the river… You know, the hoity-toity hotel?”

“I’ve never heard of it,” I confessed.

“Yeah, well, it’s real old money. Those kinds of people don’t want you to hear about them, trust me. I brush up against those circles sometimes in my line of work. And it’s not just fancy airs and nice things. They’re a different species.”

“We’ll look up the Mansion,” Jamie assured her. “What’s the relationship to Tongue-Cut Sparrow?”

Clarissa’s voice lowered. “During the day, the Mansion’s all blue bloods and high teas. But I’ve heard it runs a seedy club at night. Not trashy—the other kind.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

She looked me up and down. “The kind where on the outside, they’re wearing blazers. But on the inside, they’re wolves.” She cleared her throat. “We were actually working a job at the Mansion the day Laurel flipped her shit.”

Jamie canted his head in my direction, and I buried the urge to grab his arm. I could feel it. This was important.

“Ms. Barker,” Jamie said, much calmer than I felt, “I know you need to get to work. But could you spare one more minute and tell us exactly what you remember about the day Laurel quit?”

Clarissa’s eyes moved between us. They were bloodshot, like she wasn’t used to sleep. “It’s been years now. And I’m not going to lie to you. I’ve struggled with…getting some habits under control. So there might be holes. Maybe there’s even a few things I made up, I don’t know. I’ll give you what I remember, but I’m trying to be honest about what it’s worth.”