Money To Burn (13 page)

“Yes,” he replied fiercely. “And when I find Jake, I’m going to rip his arms from their sockets and nail his legs to the floor.”

“Ouch,” I said. “What brought that on?”

“He stole my money. Again. I had fifty dollars saved up for a new Seiko and he took it. I know it was him. He takes everything of mine.”

“How old is your brother?” I asked, a bit taken aback at the thought of multi-millionaires, however young, pilfering from one another.

“Twenty-two,” he said sullenly. “Every time he comes to the big house, my money is missing. I know it’s him.”

“Well,” I lied, moving to block his view of the library door. “He’s not at this end of the house. Tell you what— I’m a private investigator.” I pulled a business card from my evening bag and gave it to him. “Call me anytime you need help proving it, okay?”

He looked impressed and immediately forgot about his brother—thank God. At his age, he was about thirty years too young to witness the floor show taking place behind us.

“Cool.” He turned the card around, then back again. “Do you have a lot of spy stuff you use?”

God bless Bobby D. Who’d have guessed that his adolescent preoccupation with James Bond-like devices would pay off so quickly? I walked Haydon Talbot back toward the other end of the house, regaling him with descriptions of Bobby D.‘s ridiculous electronic excesses. Fortunately, he seemed more interested in night vision goggles than in tracking down his brother.

We had time for a good chat about the snobby kids who attended his private school before a waiter came and fetched him away, leaving me on my own. Drat. I was stuck with the boring adults again.

I made the mistake of making eye contact with the first person I saw and ended up being trapped by some beer-bellied yuppie who was losing his hair and insanely insistent that he had seen me play field hockey at Choate. I told him to lay off the M0” ay off iller Lite and escaped, only to collide with Donald Teasdale.

“What are you doing here?” he hissed.

“I was invited. How about you?”

He glared and walked away into the crowd where, despite his balding head, a drunken woman spotted him from behind and mistook him for Lydia’s little brother. I thought she’d faint when she called out Haydon’s name and Teasdale’s bulldog face whipped around, scowling indignantly.

Laughing, I retreated to a bar I spotted in one of the rooms. There, I pretty much drank myself into a stupor until dinner was announced. Silly me, spending all that time worrying about the silverware when all that these people really cared about were the drinking glasses.

There was a genteel stampede toward the dining room when dinner was announced, and much inebriated lurching and confusion. I found myself elbow-to-elbow with the woman in the turquoise cocktail dress who had been flirting with Franklin Cosgrove earlier. I could see Cosgrove waiting in line at the other end of the room, searching the crowd for her.

“So you know good old Frankie?” I asked her in a woman-to-woman voice. I bent over her to shield her from Cosgrove’s line of vision.

She looked at me uneasily. “Frankie? You mean Franklin?”

“Franklin, Schmanklin. They call him Frankie the Felcher down at Hotcakes, that topless truck stop outside Gamer,” I confided. “Miriam’s cousin Harold told me. Frankie stops by at least once a week.” There was a Hotcakes near Garner, but no Miriam or Harold. The thing is, in the South, if you sprinkle your statements with the names of enough relatives, it adds greatly to your story’s veracity.

Her perfectly made-up face went through an amazing series of gyrations, finally settling on slow-burning rage. “What else do you know about him?” she asked, eyes narrowing.

“Well,” I said cheerfully. “He gave Miriam’s sister Candace the clap, which was poetic justice since it was Candace’s roommate who first gave it to Franklin. But then Candace passed it on to the pastor of her church and pretty soon the whole choir was infected. I hear Franklin can’t even show his face in Salisbury anymore, much less the First Baptist Church. They’d run him out of town.”

“Thanks,” she hissed, her eyes narrowing even more. She peeled away from me and headed for a far door, putting as much distance as she could between herself and Cosgrove.

One small step for woman, one giant step for womankind. Cosgrove deserved much worse, but it way’se, but s a start.

The dining room was immense, with an entire wall comprised of windows that looked out on a lit garden. Round tables had been set up all around the room to give diners a view of the flowers and koi pools outside. A long head table was set up along the far wall. The Talbots and their closest hangers-on were already seated there by the time the herd arrived, leaving us to scramble for spots close to the hallowed hosts. I watched, amused, as Franklin Cosgrove found his date, only to see that both seats on either side of her were taken and that she was no longer speaking to him. Good news traveled fast in this crowd: he was rebuffed at several more tables before he ended up sandwiched between two old ladies whose pendulous bustlines wedged him in place tighter than a muskrat trapped in mud. He would no doubt spend his entire dinner accidentally elbowing their enormous breasts and having to apologize.

I found a spot—not by accident—near the beefy man who had been identified by Marie Talbot as her family’s lawyer. Our table was in the middle of the room and surrounded by so many other identical tables that I felt like we were attending a charity banquet. I prayed rubber chicken was not on the menu, then turned to my companion to make small talk. Emily Post would have been proud.

“I understand you’re the Talbot’s family lawyer?” I said pleasantly to him.

“What’s it to you?” the beefy man growled, running a finger under his tight shirt collar as he gulped down a glass of what smelled like straight bourbon. His face was glowing the color of a medium rare steak, which was appropriate since that’s what probably had gotten him into pulmonary trouble in the first place.

I explained who I was and what I was doing and emphasized that Randolph Talbot had promised me “one hundred percent” cooperation, in hopes that the name of his employer might penetrate his bourbon-soaked brain.

It did. He warmed slightly and boldly offered that his name was Herbert Norsworthy. Then he moved his chair a few inches closer to mine—which wasn’t what I’d had in mind—and offered to answer any questions that did not violate client-lawyer privilege.

In order to keep a lid on what I was asking, I was forced to bend close to him and nearly whisper, which gave the rest of my table the impression that I was being picked up by the old coot. Not that their opinions mattered. A more motley crew I’d seldom seen before. My table of twelve held an assortment of bored, aging men, insipid younger women and a few suspicious old ladies. They were more interested in where the hell the salad was than in sex.

“What do you know about the harassment lawsuit Nash was bringing against T&T?” I asked the lawyer before he suffered a heart attack before my eyes.

“Not much,” he said, his bourbon breath wafting past my ear. “T&T’s corporate lawyers rean>e lawyesponded to that one. But he also initially filed a harassment suit against Randolph Talbot personally and I was involved with that one.”

“Against Talbot personally?” I asked. “Doesn’t that imply that he had evidence Talbot himself was directly involved?”

The lawyer shrugged. “You’d have to ask Nash’s lawyer about that. The suit was dropped before we got to the evidentiary stage.”

“Did Nash’s lawyer try and settle it?”

The man’s laugh was like a bear growl. “You bet. And we would have settled, too. Randolph’s a big believer in cutting your losses and moving on. But the Nash fellow said he had changed his mind completely. He didn’t want money. He didn’t want anything.”

A waiter arrived and set a wild green salad dressed with a balsamic vinaigrette down in front of us. Herbert Norsworthy stared at his with disdain. I guess it didn’t have enough cheese, chopped eggs and Thousand Island dressing glopped on it for him. He pushed it away, but I dove into mine, aware that a handful of leaves wasn’t going to do much good when it came to soaking up the bottle and a half of champagne I’d had so far.

“How far did Nash go before he dropped the suit?” I asked, curious as to how much evidence may have been gathered.

“Far enough that it was unusual Nash dropped it,” the lawyer explained as he crammed bread into his mouth. “Court date had been set for next month.”

“What did Nash’s lawyer say when he called you with the news?”

“He didn’t call. Nash did himself.”

That surprised me. “Really? What did he say?”

The lawyer waved his highball glass in the air for a refill. “He said he was dropping the harassment suit. He apologized for taking up my time. He sounded like the nicest litigatee I’d ever run into.” He shrugged. “Go figure.”

“Why do you think he dropped the lawsuit?” I asked.

The lawyer shrugged again. “I figure either his evidence didn’t pan out, they’d filed prematurely or Talbot paid him off under the table. Not that I’d ever advise a client to do that. I wouldn’t even suggest it, except to make sure you understand that Randolph Talbot had no motive to kill Nash.”

“Why would Nash settle under the table?” I asked. “I didn’t think court judgments like nt>gments that were taxable.”

“They’re not, little lady. That’s not the issue.” He smiled at me with well-bonded teeth. “The issue is Nash’s lawyer. He would have gotten at least a third of any settlement or judgment. I figure maybe Nash cut out the middle man and took something from Talbot under the table. But I didn’t ask. I know when to keep my mouth shut.”

Yeah. Except when he’d been drinking bourbon.

I was doubtful that was what had happened. It was possible, but I thought Talbot’s explanation more likely: Tom Nash had dropped the suit out of loyalty to Lydia and to force a Hargett case settlement. Still, it wouldn’t hurt to run a check on Nash’s finances.

“Do you know anything about the other lawsuits against T&T?” I asked.

The lawyer patted his well-rounded belly. “Nope. And I don’t want to. Show me a tobacco company lawyer today and I’ll show you a man with an ulcer.” His smile grew broader as a pair of waiters arrived with red meat all around.

There aren’t many people in Durham with the bucks and the balls to serve filet mignon with béarnaise sauce in this day and age. But Randolph Talbot was one of them. Thank God. I turned my attention to the dinner in front of me and the all-important decision of whether to switch to red wine or stick with champagne. A glass of merlot set in front of me decided it. Time to mix and match.

Soon after dinner, a squadron of waiters removed the empty dessert plates. The hubbub of the room abruptly ceased as Randolph Talbot rose from his place at the head of the main table and clinked his knife against the rim of his wine glass for silence.

“I have an announcement to make,” he said.

The room grew still, but the mood was broken when a woman sitting to the right of Talbot quite distinctly hiccoughed. She giggled and put a hand to her mouth, eyes wide. Talbot glared at her briefly, then looked back up at the crowd.

If that was Lydia’s stepmother, Randolph Talbot hadn’t done too badly in terms of looks when it came to choosing a second wife: she was very pretty, with silky black hair and a finely carved face. But her sense of elegance left a little to be desired. She was listing to one side, like a disabled sailboat. Throughout the subsequent announcement by her husband, I could hear her alternating between hiccoughs and giggles, as if she were adding the punctuation marks.

“As you know, T&T Tobacco has grown steadily over the past two decades to dominate a number of key market niches here and overseas,” Randolph Talbot intoned. My eyelids drooped, but flew open at his next surprise statement.

“We are determined to continue this growth into the new century and so I am happy to announce tonight the acquisition of King Buffalo Tobacco by Teer & Talbot.” He waited out the buzz that greeted this announcement with a benign despot smile, then held up his hands for silence. “Of course, King Buffalo recently suffered the tragic loss of one of its guiding partners. However, the company was fortunate enough to have two superior minds at her helm and it is the surviving partner, Franklin Cosgrove, who I believe will prove instrumental in guiding both King Buffalo and T&T to new success in the future. Franklin?”

Cosgrove rose from his seat between the two old gargoyles and nodded majestically, as if he were simply too pleased to put it all into words.

A whore, eh? If so, he was an expensive one. Cosgrove had said his investment bankers were working on selling the company, but come on—Nash had barely been dead two and a half weeks. Could he really have pulled it all together in that short of a time? I needed to find out fast if that was possible.

“Franklin will be heading up a new division of T&T devoted to natural products such as King Buffalo’s premium blend,” Talbot continued. “And he will also take over as head of marketing for all of T&T’s brands.”

I heard a choking noise at the table behind me. I turned around to discover Donald Teasdale staring at Randolph Talbot, his tiny mouth open in outrage.

What a bastard. Randolph Talbot had brought someone in over Teasdale without telling him, then broken the news in front of a room full of strangers. God, but I was glad I worked for myself.