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know I might have been looking at the results.
    “No, no, no. She met someone.”
    “Who?”
    “Do you want some ginger tea?”
    “No thanks. Whom did she meet?”
    “His name is Tony. Like in the Tony awards.”
    Mary Alice’s white-blonde hair was pulled up into a pretty topknot, and she twisted a loose strand around her index finger, a gesture that led me to believe Tony was not unattractive.
    “What’s Tony’s last name?”
    “Tony Marx.”
    “As in Karl?”
    “What?”
    “M-a-r-x or M-a-r-k-s? Never mind. Did you ever meet him?”
    “No. I mean, yes. See, Vanessa also got the country club membership as part of the settlement, which I hear just about killed Stan because his grandfather had been a founder. Very, very rare for the wife to get the membership, which shows you how much Stan was willing to give to get out of that marriage. He and Ryn still have the loft—like eight thousand square feet—in some fabulous part of Brooklyn, but they’re living in the grandfather’s house now. He’s dead. The grandfather. Father, too, I think. Way out in Lloyd’s Neck. Practically a château I hear. It’s called Giddings House, but it needs major fixing up. It’ll take years. That’s why Vanessa never wanted any part of it. Anyhow, I know someone like you with a PhD. doesn’t take country clubs seriously, Judith, but they mean a lot to people. Anyhow, Lance and I were there as Jim and Ellen Shay’s guests …”
    She gave her wedding band, a knuckle-to-knuckle diamond dazzler, a twist. “They don’t accept Jews as members, you know.”
    She paused, waiting for a response.
    I offered none, so she explained: “Lance is Jewish.”
    “I guessed it, Mary Alice. The ‘Goldfarb’ was a clue.”
    “That’s why we were there as guests.”
    “So you just happened to see this Tony there with Vanessa?”
    “Right. Well, we chatted for a few minutes. He was wearing a sports jacket in the teeniest houndstooth. I mean, when you first looked at it, you’d think charcoal gray, not black and white. Cashmere. Stunning detail. You could tell—”
    “What does Tony do?”
    “He owns a car dealership.”
    “What kind?”
    “Volvo. He kidded around and called it Vulva. Well, I guess not to his customers.”
    “Is it here on the Island?”
    She nodded.
    “How serious was Vanessa about him?”
    “How serious?”
    Mary Alice chewed her thin but well-glossed lower lip, then smoothed over the chewed area with her pinky.
    “It’s serious in that he’s very, very attractive. But not so serious because he only owns one dealership.”
    I must have looked confused because she exhaled impatiently: “Forget that he’s not in Stan Giddings’s league money-wise. He wasn’t even in Vanessa’s league. So how serious could she be about a man who couldn’t earn as much as she could? No, she’d let the relationship play out, which might take her through the summer. That way, she’d have someone for mixed doubles, then in September she’d just get busy with her business or whatever, then go away after Christmas and come back and get her plastic surgery over with so that by the next summer she could really be a contender. You know very well what I mean, Judith, so don’t look like ‘Duh?’ Contender: be eligible for a really important guy.”
    “So then why did she kill herself?” I asked.
    Mary Alice shrugged.
    “Maybe what everyone’s saying is right. Losing Stan and Sveltburgers just took too much out of her. When all you want is to die of a broken heart and you don’t, what do you do?”
    “What?” I asked.
    “Commit suicide!” she said brightly.
    Just as I opened the door to leave, Connor the trainer ambled in. He was an exceedingly muscular but very short man, not much longer than his gym bag. Yes, he said slowly when I asked him, he had seen Vanessa the morning of her death. Not only had she not been in the zone, she’d actually cut their session short when she looked out the window of her workout