How to Murder a Millionaire (2 page)

I gathered my courage and said, "This job will help me make payments on the tax bill, but first I have to reduce the debt. So I've sold a few ancestral acres."

I had assumed the Rusty Sabre restaurant was civilized enough that my sisters wouldn't scream bloody murder when I broke the bad tidings. At least I'd hoped they wouldn't.

"You're selling the farm," Emma repeated, as if she couldn't believe her ears.

"No. Just five acres."

"You're selling five acres without discussing it with us."

"It's already sold."

Libby dropped her fork, splashing raspberry vinaigrette. "You can't do that. It's been Blackbird land for two hundred years." She put her face in her hands. "Oh, my God."

"Here we go," said Emma.

"I didn't have a choice," I said. "I had to keep the wolf from the door, so I sold five measly acres."

"Without consulting your sisters?" Libby demanded, clearly forgetting we were in a public place.

"You just went ahead and threw away our family history?"

"Five acres, Libby, that's all."

"But once you sell land, you'll never get it back." Libby's eyes had actually begun to fill with tears. Her bosom trembled. "You've traded the Blackbird legacy for financial security for yourself."

"There's no tax on
your
inheritance. So what do you know?"

"You can't destroy a national treasure like Blackbird Farm."

"National treasure? The barn is falling down, and parts of the house don't have central heating. I've got weeds twelve feet tall! And neither one of you has set foot on the property since Christmas."

Libby clutched the table to gather strength for an impassioned speech. All our dishes and glasses lurched. "Suburban blight has spread too far already. If we keep destroying open land, we won't have any left!"

Emma rolled her eyes. "Oh, for godsake, Lib. Another of your causes."

"It's a valuable cause! A noble cause! We of all people should be doing something about it. Soon every farm in the nation will be paved for superstores and our children will never see a cow."

Emma said, "You talk a good line, Libby, but you never actually
do
anything."

"Take it easy," I said to both of them. "Shouting isn't helping."

"I
am
going to do something," Libby said, wounded but not defeated. "I'm going
to
stop you."

"Libby—"

"Let her go," Emma said. "She'll start a petition, and that'll be the end of it."

"It will not." Libby trembled with anger. "I'm going
to
stop you from destroying Blackbird Farm, Nora."

"Oh, good." Emma stamped out her cigarette. "Someday one of our sisterly lunches will end without one of us walking out in a huff. But not today. The record stands."

"Yes, it does," said Libby, spinning around and stalking out of the Rusty Sabre.

"Well," said Emma, "if you've sold land, you can afford to pay for lunch."

And she left too.

My sisters stopped speaking to me, which didn't seem so bad.

I should have known at least one of them was plotting.

It hadn't been easy to part with the family ground. For two hundred years, Blackbird Farm had stood proudly—rich Delaware River bottomland, virgin timber, breeding ground for prizewinning Hereford cattle and some very fine foxhounds, not to mention one of the oldest families on the eastern seaboard.

But in a couple of days, it became a monument to tasteless vulgarity.

A used car lot.

In the presence of two lawyers and a pinky-ringed real estate agent, I had sold the land to Michael "The Mick" Abruzzo, who told me he would put the ground to respectable use. But the infamous despoiler of the New Hope way of life went back on his word faster than my father could spend a dollar. He immediately bulldozed the topsoil, paved it with a quarter mile of asphalt and strung a thousand plastic flags overhead. Then he brought in a dozen jalopies with tail fins, and Mick's Muscle Cars appeared in all its neon glory.

And I had to attend the grand opening.

Kitty Keough sent me on purpose, of course, to cover the debut of Mick's Muscle Cars for all of Philadelphia to read about. To twist the knife, she ordered a photographer along to document my humiliation. I walked over from the house, pen and pad in hand.

The first person to arrive on the scene was my sister Libby, rife with protest placards and a gaggle of her own ragamuffin children.

"What are you doing here?" I asked as Libby rounded the hood of her minivan with a hand-lettered cardboard sign over one shoulder and too much estrogen flushing her cheeks.

"What does it look like?"

"Like you're protesting nuclear proliferation."

"Something even worse."

She had exchanged her hippie sexpot look for one of her suburban mom outfits—beige slacks and matching cashmere sweater set—clothes I knew she could transform from appropriate protest duds into something much more formal with a switch of accessories. She had a bandanna in her hair, a touch she had selected to give herself the look of an experienced social activist. She looked around. "Where's the photographer?"

"Over there, taking pictures of cars. How did you know to come today?"

"It's the grand opening, right? It's a free country."

Behind her, the doors of the minivan burst open, and her four children began to spill out of the vehicle like clowns from a polka-dotted Volkswagen. In their wake came an avalanche of fast-food wrappers and family flotsam, including a large, drooling Labrador
named Arlo. The children had been outfitted in tie-dyed T-shirts. Libby put her artist's eye for visual details to good use.

"Libby, what are you doing?"

"We're protesting the desecration of open farmland for suburban sprawl. Go ahead, kids." She pointed. "Set up your picket line over by that hideous yellow car."

Libby's four children eddied around her in confusion. Her nose-ringed son, Rawlins, and the Ritalin-needy twelve-year-old twins, Harcourt and Hilton, were the pictures of their father, who'd been a skinny, longhaired vegetarian long before most everyone else. He'd drowned in the Pacific five years ago after falling out of a Zodiac boat in pursuit of whale hunters.

Five-year-old Lucy, blond and blue-eyed, didn't look anything like Libby's first husband but instead suspiciously akin to a popular young foot reflexologist who'd lived briefly in New Hope.

Little Lucy clutched her placard in one hand and a naked Barbie doll in the other. She looked up at me with the gap-toothed smile of a kindergartner. "You look pretty, Aunt Nora. Are you going to a party?"

"Thank you, honey. Yes, I am."

"Anyone we know?" Libby asked tartly.

"It's not a date. It's an assignment."

"Run along, kids," Libby said. "Just go over by that car and wave your signs while I ask your aunt Nora where this dress came from."

"The attic," I told her as the kids scuffled off in a rainbow of tie-dye. "I can't afford anything new."

"That's one of Grandmama Blackbird's Givenchys."

"You want to protest my wearing it?"

"No," she said grudgingly. "It looks good on you. What about the shoes?"

"They're mine. Last season. I'd have worn my Grateful Dead T-shirt if I'd known you were conducting your campus protest."

Libby whipped her sign around so I could read it:

BAN SUBURBAN BLIGHT!

"Oh, Lib."

Her posters were beautifully lettered. A painter by training, Libby had taken the time to make each sign lovely with frolicking cows and smiling ducks.

"Embarrassed?" she asked.

"I could use a little sisterly support, please."

"You've traded away our mutual proud heritage for financial reward. On top of that, I morally object to ruining open land for the purpose of commercial development. And today I'm doing something about it."

"Your first act of protest has to be against me?"

"We could have come up with a creative solution to your tax problem together."

"Like what, a bake sale? Libby, it's a two-million-dollar debt!"

She looked huffy. "You know, it wouldn't be so bad if you hadn't sold to that—that person! Nora, he's the ultimate insult."

"So now we're getting to the truth."

"He's so awful!"

"He paid my price, Libby."

Libby's face flushed. "Wake up and smell the marinara, Nora. He's an Abruzzo with connections all over Jersey and South Philly. He paid your price with dirty money!"

"That is so offensive," I snapped, finding myself in the awkward position of defending the man. "Do you know how offensive that is? He's a businessman."

She waved her sign at the neon lights. "What he's
done to this farm is a crime in itself. Look at this place! Bring in an elephant, and you'd have a circus!"

"He has a perfectly clean record with the Better Business Bureau."

"He probably bribed them. It's a shame you didn't ask a few questions before you got to be his partner."

"He's not my partner. I have nothing to do with him."

"Oh, really?" Libby asked archly. "That's not what I hear."

"What are you talking about?"

"Why don't we ask him ourselves?" she said. "Here he comes."

I had hoped things couldn't get any worse. But I followed the direction of Libby's glare and saw a large male figure ambling towards us from the direction of the river. The setting sun cast a glint on his fishing rod. It could have been a grown-up Huck Finn coming home from his favorite fishing hole, but only if Huck had turned into an ominous, hulking bruiser with a face that originated in the Brando gene pool and the kind of dark curly hair that is only kept under control by a pair of sturdy scissors or the fingers of an attentive woman.

Michael Abruzzo himself sauntered across the road just in time to see my dysfunctional family in action. It was hard to amble in hip waders, but he managed. He wore a khaki fishing vest that had seen better days, and his jeans were so snug that the faded circle of a snuff can was perfectly outlined on the hip pocket, right smack on the curve of his left buttock. All right, I couldn't see his hip pocket at the moment, but I knew it was there. I'd memorized it.

Under her breath, Libby muttered, "He'd be almost handsome if he wasn't such a thug."

"Stop thinking with your ovaries, Libby."

"Oh, I forgot. You're thirty-one and still come across like a virgin. Well, look out, Nora. I can see that man has unfinished business with you."

I wanted to grab her arm and hold Libby back, but she stalked away, abandoning me to my fate. Within a moment, Michael Abruzzo arrived—a six-foot-four-inch, two-hundred-pound replica of the body Michelangelo studied when he sculpted David. Except with a lazy smile and a slouchy walk.

I raised my emotional defenses and met his gaze straight on.

Chapter 2

"You going off to Cinderella's ball, Miss Blackbird?" The Jersey inflection in his voice dispelled further ruminations on Michelangelo.

I ground my teeth. "Hello, Mr. Abruzzo."

"You're very pretty in pink," he said.

"Thank you." I pulled a small notebook from my handbag with as much professionalism as I could muster. "I'm actually here for your grand opening, and I could use a quote, if you don't mind."

"Grand opening?"

"Yes, this—" I gestured at the car lot and couldn't come up with a euphemism. "Your business. Today is the official opening, correct?"

"Well, yeah, I guess so. Usually I just park the cars and see who stops by. Looks like I got lucky today." He leaned his fishing rod against the nearest car, an enormous sea-foam green Pontiac with whitewalls and tail fins. Popping open the door, he said, "Hop in. See how it feels to you."

"I'm not in the market for a car."

He had a grin that must have worked wonders on the Catholic schoolgirls in Trenton in the years before he broke his nose. I was willing to bet that his appreciation for big old cars stemmed from backseat experiences with cheerleaders' sweaters and Bruce Springsteen wailing on the radio. "C'mon," he said. "You need
something to write about. Might as well be about the car."

Some people are hard to disobey. They command authority with in-your-face hostility, blatant intimidation or sheer physical size. Abruzzo had a benign smile and a languid demeanor that still managed to scare the hell out of people. A mob boss in the making? A bully who didn't need to prove himself anymore? I decided not to take a chance and did as he told me. I slid behind the wheel.

"What d'you think?"

I looked out the windshield and down the long stretch of gleaming metal at the hood ornament. "It's enormous."

"Well, size is important to some women, I hear." He leaned one hip against the side mirror and rummaged in his pocket. He pulled out a snuff can and proceeded to unfasten a fishing lure from his shirt. He put the lure into the can. "Turn the key in the ignition."