My arm felt heavy as I reached out to push the intercom button. Mostly because I had no idea how he was reacting to our current run in Celeb Weekly. For all I knew, he, too, would try to stab my eye out with a nail file upon seeing me. Maybe I just had that effect on the Farrells.
I pushed the intercom button anyway.
The voice that answered sounded raspy and mucus-filled at the same time, like Mildred or Paul had a cold. “Hello?”
“Hi, this is . . . Davie,” I said into the speaker. “I know this is bad, me coming here, especially after the Celeb Weekly article, but I’ve got some important information about James’s sister.”
I waited. But no answer came. “It’s about Veronica. I didn’t want to tell him over the phone,” I said.
Still no answer, but then a long electronic buzz cleared the silence and the two gates swung open.
I drove my old car through the gate and put it in park in front of the house. But as I walked up to the door, all the words that I had composed in my head on the way over to explain why I had put his sister in the hospital flew out of my head. I decided to concentrate instead on not passing out on his front steps from pure dread.
I could hear footsteps on the other side of the door, and I braced myself for either Paul or Mildred to answer it.
But it was Tammy Farrell who opened the door. “Tammy?”
“What’s wrong with my sister?” She sniffled. Her nose was red, and it sounded like she had a cold. I realized that she must have been the one who had answered the intercom and let me in.
“Where’s James?” I asked.
“He . . . left.” She said this in such a way that I didn’t think she was talking about him going out to a party.
“Do you know when he’ll be back?”
“No.” Tammy clamped, then unclamped her lips. “He moved to New York. And he took Mildred and Paul with him.”
“So now both he and Veronica are going to represent the Farrell brand in New York?”
“No,” Tammy said again. Her voice was clipped, like she was trying to figure out how much she wanted to tell me. “He presented a new line of men’s products to the company. It got approved, and now he’s launching the line from New York. Veronica and I moved in here, and he took over our apartment in SoHo. In fact, I got this cold on the plane coming here from New York.”
She sniffled. I could tell that Tammy was still trying to wrap her head around me being here and asking her these questions. But I couldn’t help the fierce pride that swelled in me when she told me about James getting his own line approved. “Good for him,” I said, my voice soft.
Tammy sneezed. Then more time passed and I knew that I had to tell her about Veronica.
I thought to ask to come in, but I didn’t want to prolong it anymore. So I just said, “Veronica came down to the club, and she tried to stab my eye out with a nail file. We ended up fighting and now she’s in the hospital. With a broken nose.”
Tammy’s mouth dropped open. “Oh my God, I was afraid she might do something like this. You broke her nose? Are they going to be able to fix it without plastic surgery?”
“Wait a minute.” I held up my hand. “You knew she was thinking about stabbing me?”
“She was really angry after she read that Celeb Weekly article. She loves Daddy so much. And she said some things.” Tammy stopped and sneezed four times in a row. Then she held up a well-manicured hand. “Wait here while I get my purse.”
But I followed her back into the house. “She said some things? Why didn’t you warn me?”
“Because I didn’t think that she’d actually do it. That would be psy—”
She broke off and looked away from me, guiltily.
“Psycho,” I finished for her. “That would prove that she was just as big of a psycho as me, right?”
Tammy’s eyes went all simpery. “You have to understand . . .”
“No, Tammy, I don’t have to understand anything. She tried to stab me in the eye.”