Money To Burn (11 page)

When I got home, I phoned my friend Marcus Dupree at the Durham Police Department. It was time to call in an expert.

“It’s an emergency,” I told him. “You have to come over now.”

“What is this about?” he asked breathlessly. Marcus is six and a half feet tall, but his voice sounds like he’s about to start serenading JFK at any instant. “I have to lie low at the department,” he added in a whisper. “They’re still trying to figure out who helped you last time.”

“Relax,” I told him. “This has nothing to do with work. I need your help getting dressed for a fancy-ass dinner party tonight.”

“I get off in ten minutes and I’ll be there in fifteen,” he said and hung up.

What a pal.

Reassured, I sat down and began reading the hair dye instructions. I knew Marcus would arrive as promised. He is one of the most dependable people I know. As the oldest in a huge family, he has shepherded nine younger siblings through to adulthood so far, without losing even one to crack cocaine or alcohol—no small feat for a poor family in Durham, where the modernization of neighborhoods too often means bringing in the latest designer drugs from New York City. Marcus had helped at least six younger sisters prepare for high school proms. He ought to be able to help me with one dinner party.

Three hours later, I was behind schedule but my transformation was complete. Marcus had declared my intentional black roots to be “too crude” a statement for the soiree in question and had bleached my mop of uncooperative hair a lovely shade of yellow. At least that had been his intention. Unfortunately, he’d decided to first strip it of its previous bottled color and chemical overload set in. By the time we were done, I was sporting hair the color of a new copper penny.

The weird thing was, I liked it.

“It’s you,” Marcus declared. “It gives you an ‘X-Files’ sort of sensual authority. When you turn around and glare, it will give the men shivers.”

“That happens already,” I told him. I adjusted the blouse beneath my silk suit. “The tag itches. It’s driving me crazy.”

“Take off the blouse,” Marcus ordered. “Go without. Let me lend you my pearls.” He dug a strand of ivory pearls from his duffel bag while I ditched the shirt. After he fastened the necklace around my neck, he experimented with several hair styles. We finally settled on piling my hair in a big wad on top of my head—Marcus had some idiotic French name for it—and letting a few strands escape. It wasn’t Ann-Margret, but it would do.

“I’m trying for a ‘just rolled out of bed with a millionaire’ look,” he confided, loosening more strands of newly red hair and arranging them along my neck.

I admired the pearls against the rather spectacular cleavage of my silk suit minus a shirt. “Good call. This is elegantly sleazy in a very deliberate way.”

“Exactly,” Marcus agreed with satisfaction. “Which is just the statement you want to make tonight.” He steadied me by my shoulders and looked into my eyes. “There is no point in hiding who you are, Miss Casey. I’m afraid that your light is just too bright to hide under a bushel.”

“Meaning what, Marcus?” I asked. “That I should shoot and skin the family cat at dinner?”

“Meaning,” he said sternly. “That you should just be yourself.”

“Just be myself?”

“Just be yourself,” he repeated.

“This from a man who chesses up as a different movie star every night?”

He waved his hands, dismissing my skepticism. “Some of us happen to be chameleons. But there is only one you.”

“You sound like Confucius,” I said.

“Honey, that’s because Confucius was more southern than both of us put together,” Marcus explained. “Think of it. He was always telling people what to do and no one ever knew what the hell he really meant.”

He had a point. “Okay, Marcus,” I agreed. “I will be myself tonight. But thanks for making me a little bit… more me. I’d hate to give that Randolph Talbot bastard what he wants.”

“You’re most welcome, Miss Casey,” Marcus answered graciously. His brow furrowed in serious thought. “You might want to snag a rich man tonight,” he counseled. “Life has got to be easier when you have money.” Seeing as how he had paid for every one of his siblings to attend college, Marcus knew what he was talking about.

“I don’t like any of the rich men I’ve met so far,” I told him.

“Send them my way,” he suggested brightly. “I’m easy to get along with. If I can handle two hundred policemen a day, I can handle anyone.”

“Wnt>ndowtexhich reminds me,” I said, remembering why I was going to such lengths for the evening.

“Oh, no,” Marcus answered, backing away as he correctly read my tone of voice. “You promised me this had nothing to do with work.”

“I just want to know if the cops have any leads on who killed Thomas Nash,” I said quickly. “I heard Cole and Roberts caught the case. You don’t have to give me anything confidential.”

“There’s nothing to give,” he assured me. “They have zippo. Big nada. No one knows who did it. Or why. It’s a cold trail.”

“You’re telling me the truth?” I asked sternly.

“Girl Scout’s honor,” he promised, holding up three fingers.

“That’s the Boy Scout oath,” I said. “I think you’re confused.”

“Aren’t we all?” he replied.

The Talbots’ wrought-iron gate had been unshackled for the party. It swept open in a grand arc as I pulled up to the estate. A tuxedo-clad guard stepped from the shadows to check my name against a clipboard. He waved me in and I steered my decrepit Porsche along a winding asphalt driveway for a good half mile before I encountered civilization. Any doubt I had about which of the Talbot homes would be the site of the party disappeared when I came upon the first of the matching three-story mansions. It was blazing with more lights than an Italian Christmas display.

I wasn’t the only one running late. Groups of people scurried down a stone walkway toward the front door. Some of the women wore fur wraps, a real stretch given that it was at least ninety degrees without a smidgen of breeze to rearrange the humidity.

As it turns out, those women wearing furs had obviously been to a Talbot party before. A penguin would have felt at home inside the mansion. Anyone who could afford central air conditioning for that sprawling house was rolling in the bucks big time, I thought. And maybe that was the real message behind freezing the zookies of the assembled guests.

I was ushered by a poker-faced butler into a series of linked rooms decorated with well-dressed people in various stages of drunkenness. Take it from me, rich people who are drunk and obnoxious aren’t any more interesting than your average street bum drooling into his bottle of Thunderbird.

I side-stepped half a dozen old geezers flanked by bored wives who looked young enough to be their granddaughters. Then I encountered what was surely a pack of embittered ex-wives in one room, since they fell silent as I approached and stared at me until I drif leuntil Ited out of their orbit. Excuse me for being under fifty and swimming with estrogen, I thought as I escaped their malevolent glares.

Several of the rooms opened onto side rooms. It was like wandering through a museum. I kept expecting to find a mummy case parked in an alcove. Clearly, the furnishings belonged on display: exquisitely painted vases, turn-of-the- century marble statues and an endless array of oil paintings featuring Talbot ancestors whose sole shared characteristic looked to be, from their dour expressions, a genetic predisposition toward gas.

I was surprised to spot Franklin Cosgrove in one of the side rooms, sitting on the arm of a love seat and leering at a ripe blonde poured into a turquoise cocktail dress. Both of them held classic martini glasses and I kept expecting Nick and Nora Charles to refresh their drinks at any moment, though my true hope was for Asta to appear and bite Cosgrove on the ankle. He didn’t see me and I kept going, wondering what in the hell he was doing at the house of a competitor who, that very afternoon, had called him a “whore.”

I thought I’d discovered a sanctuary when I wandered into a small empty room with curved walls and a marble fireplace, but T&T’s marketing head Donald Teasdale traipsed through with a woman hanging onto his arm. She was even tinier than he was. I wanted to ask them if they were looking for Gulliver, but I didn’t have the chance. Teasdale glared at me with distaste and hurried away. Okay, so mingling was proving a challenge. I’d find a kindred spirit soon. Or, even better, a waiter with a tray full of drinks.

Just as I figured there was no end to the number of rooms—or the number of unpleasant dinner guests—I was rescued by an ancient but elegant-looking old woman who was lounging on a mustard-colored divan in one of the side rooms. She wore a long-sleeved black evening gown with a scoop top that showed off a sapphire necklace around her crepey neck. The blue of the stones set off the silver of her upswept hair nicely. For someone who was in her seventies, she was quite the dish.

“Come sit here, darling,” she ordered me in a throaty voice, patting the other half of the small sofa she occupied. “You look bored and contemptuous, which tells me you must be a woman of good breeding and taste.”

“I’m neither,” I confessed. “But I’d still love to sit down.”

“Then do so immediately,” she ordered, and I obeyed. There was an authority to her smoky voice, a hint of steel lurking beneath the genteel drawl. Up close, she was like a rose that had dried past its prime, her beauty faded and brittle, her skin coated with an almost invisible dusting of decaying gray.

“Bring us champagne,” she ordered a passing waiter and, before I had time to smack my lips, I was holding a well-filled glass of bubbly.

“No wonder everyone is drunk,” I said. “With bar servi=“2th bar ce like that.”

She laughed unexpectedly, a booming, contagious sound that filled the room. “The service is good because I pay their salaries,” she assured me. “I am Marie Talbot and

this is my home. That’s why I’m hiding out in this obscure room. No one can dare tell me otherwise.”

Holy Mary, Mother of God. Or close to it. “You’re kidding,” I said.

She looked at me over the rim of her glass. “Why would anyone pretend to be me if they weren’t, my dear?’ she asked. “I’m as old as the hills and twice as weather-beaten. All my friends have died off from cirrhosis of the liver. My gardenias have been eaten by weevils. And my son Randolph is an ungrateful little bastard who married a psycho for his second wife. Together they’re ruining the character of my grandchildren and withering my family tree on the vine. My only hope is my granddaughter Lydia. She reminds me of myself—a pearl emerging from the swine.”

I opened my mouth to comment, but she wasn’t done by a long shot. Her monologue would have turned Randolph Talbot’s toupee gray.

“I’m one of the Savannah Balls, you know,” she said. “In fact I was the belle of the Balls. Every distant cousin you could name pursued me, and plenty of other men, too. But I was determined to marry that incorrigible coot, Frederick Talbot, just to make my daddy unhappy. So I did. And when I did, I entered the seventh circle of hell.” She glanced around. “I expect Dante to start sketching me at any moment. That’s why I’m posed like this. Also, I’m too drunk to move.”

I stared at her, so fascinated that I forgot to guzzle my champagne. “You don’t pull any punches.”

“Well, dear, you’re a private investigator,” she said. “I assumed you would want to know something private. I could tell you about my latest female operation, if you prefer. I’ve had hundreds. I’m as plastic as a Barbie doll from the waist down.”

“How did you know who I was?” I asked. “I’m practically in disguise.”

“I know who everyone is,” she said. “And everything they do. I insist on having a last-minute list of every person who sets foot in my house and, if I don’t get it, there is no party. I like to know who’s sneaking up on me, my dear. Not to mention who might have stolen the heirloom silverware.” She smiled, revealing yellowing teeth. “I’m not talking about you, precious. I’m sure you’re completely trustworthy, since your honor is all you have. Who knows? I may even hire you myself. I do believe Randolph’s second wife is having an affair. I’m a little curious to know who the lucky fellow may be.”

“I’m a little busy right now,” I said, not wanting to explain tellto explhat I was already booked to air her family’s dirty linen—by her granddaughter.

“I imagine you are busy,” she said, raising her arched eyebrows. “Especially with a neckline like that.”

She held her champagne glass out behind her, over the back of the sofa, and I swear that a waiter appeared from the shadows and dutifully refilled it. She took a sip. “Who really hired you to look into Thomas Nash’s death?” she asked. “Was it Lydia? I hope so. That man made her very happy. Oh, yes—I knew all about their ‘secret’ engagement. And I am furious that someone has taken him from her.”

“What makes you think Lydia hired me?” I asked, gulping down my champagne. Unfortunately, no waiter rushed forward to refill my glass.

“I didn’t get where I am by being stupid,” she said. “Randolph’s father Frederick was idiotic, you know. A complete moron. He would have ruined Teer & Talbot had I not come along. It’s a good thing Frederick died before I had him declared senile.”

“How old was he when he died?” I asked faintly.

She waved a languid hand. “Oh, forty. Maybe forty-five. I forget.” She took a jeweled cigarette holder from an exquisitely beaded handbag and affixed a slender cigar to it. The procedure was as precise and graceful as a Japanese tea ceremony. I watched, transfixed, as she lit the cigar and blew smoke quite deliberately in the face of a beefy man who was lurking rather obviously nearby.