Money To Burn (9 page)

It was early evening and the secretary’s pathetic melancholy proved contagious. Feeling sorry for myself was getting to be a habit. Not even the thought of Bobby D. standing in front of his closet, trying to decide what to wear to a gay bar, could pull me out of my slump. I didn’t want to go home to an empty apartment, but I didn’t feel like having a drink, either. Maybe I needed to get a dog. I’d had one once—for twenty-four hours. Until he had pissed on my rug while stoned out of his gourd. If I wanted to put up with behavior like that, I’d get a steady boyfriend. So I’d found the old mutt a new home. Now I missed the company, wet spot and all.

I opted for a drink as the lesser of all available evils and headed to MacLaine’s to see Jack. MacLaine’s is located on 15-501, about halfway between Chapel Hill and Durham. It was happy hour when I got there, but it didn’t make me any happier. The place was jammed with off-duty nurses and cops, along with the usual office and university employees. I took a spot at the bar near the kitchen door and Jack brought over a Tanqueray and tonic without asking.

“Hey, babe,” he said. “Hard day at the office? You look kind of blue.” He gave me one of his famous smiles in an attempt to cheer me up, but it lacked its usual dazzling magic.

“Hard day at everyone else’s offices,” I told him. “I spent the entire day with a bunch of creeps.”

“You spend your nights with creeps all the time,” he pointed out, teasing me. At least, I hoped he was.

“Yeah, but it’s easier to spot them in the daylight.”

“You need to have a love affair, Casey,” he told me, glancing toward the far end of the bar. “With someone nice, not me. There’s a nice guy down at the other end. Owns a construction company. Not a bullshitter. Big. Smart. Your type.”

“I have a type?” I asked. Maybe if enough people told me that, I’d finally be able to figure out what it was.

“Sure.” He smiled broadly. “Me. But I get this sense I’m wearing thin.”

Poor Jack. He was a good-natured, faithless and basically insecure cad who was human flypaper to babes. He loved them and left them with the speed of a Canadian sprinter. Most of them minded, but I didn’t. I always knew he was a snake when I picked him up. But he periodically suffered a slight sense of the guilts at his failure to maintain even a token semblance of monogamy when it came to our relationship. Probably his Catholic upbringing.

“You’re not wearing thin,” I assured him. “Life is wearing thin. Maybe I need a vacation.”

“What you need is a love affair,” he repeated. “Trust me on this one, Casey.”

He hurried off to refuel a couple of out-of-control nurses, leaving me to my drink. If I didn’t snap out of it soon, I’d end up permanently parked at the bar, begging the piano man to play me a tune.

“Buy you a drink?” a deep voice asked.

I turned to find a burly man dressed in a nicely pressed golf shirt and khakis at my elbow. Jack’s friend from the other end of the bar.

He had red hair.

“Sure,” I said. “Why not?”

It had been years since I’d taken home a stranger. I made up my mind to get to know him fast.

I woke up alone the next day, my newfound red-headed friend having had the good taste to slip from my apartment before dawn. He didn’t leave a note. Either he’d figured out I wasn’t the mushy type, or I had snored.

I decided to skip my morning weight-lifting session since I had burned a zillion calories the night before and was currently flexible enough to take on those ten-year-olds who keep winning Olympic gold medals. Instead, I sat at the kitchen table and looked out over my backyard as I slurped down my morning coffee. The air conditioning was cranked up to the max and the window fogged with the suffocating humidity of a Carolina July day.

Speaking of suffocation, maybe Jack was right. Maybe I did need a love affair. But you couldn’t just order one up like a pizza from Domino’s. Me and last night’s redhead was a case in point. I had managed to scratch an itch, but that was about it. Odd how two people either click or they don’t.

I didn’t want to dwell on my romantic drought, so I took the cold shower I probably should have taken the night before and thought about the Nash case.

I needed to warn Lydia that I’d have to speak to her father. I could hide her involvement in hiring me, butJult I couldn’t ignore the inconsistencies I’d heard about Randolph Talbot and his relationship with Thomas Nash.

I phoned Lydia at home, aware that, though she only lived a few miles from my apartment, our lives were a million miles apart.

I was living in a three-room apartment perilously close to the wrong side of the tracks. Meanwhile, the Talbots lived on an enormous ten-acre compound smack in the middle of Durham’s oldest and most expensive neighborhood. A forbidding wrought-iron gate surrounded the entire lot, keeping the riffraff at bay. The acceptable practice was to grasp a metal bar in each hand and gaze longingly through the gate at the twin mansions built atop a central hill. They were matching pink stucco, sort of miniature San Simeons, and were lit with tiny white Christmas tree lights all year long to inspire awe in the simple folk. A carriage house that was about ten times bigger than my own apartment guarded the single entrance gate. There were various smaller cottages scattered around the estate, most of them well-hidden by the huge old oaks that dotted the rolling green lawn or the weeping willows that lined the large creek meandering across the Talbot grounds.

I wasn’t sure if Lydia lived in one of the big houses or in one of the smaller cottages. Wherever she was, she had live-in help. A man with a faint accent and a formal manner answered the phone. I gave only my name; he recognized it and put me through without comment. I was vaguely relieved that she did not live alone. Until I found out who had killed Nash and why, there was a chance she could be in danger.

“Did you find out something already?” she immediately asked, oozing the effortless morning energy of a person who lives a cleaner life than my own.

“Not really,” I said to stave off more questions. “I just want to check a few things with you. I understand you know Franklin Cosgrove.” I wanted her take on King Buffalo’s remaining partner.

There was silence.

“Lydia?”

Her tone was cool. “Yes, I know him. In fact, I’ve known him since I was about ten years old.”

“I gather you don’t like him.”

“I don’t.”

“Can you tell me why?”

“Is he involved in Tom’s death?” she asked.

“I have no indication he is,” I answered carefully. “I just want to get your take on him. He told me some interesting things and I don’t heand I dknow whether to believe him or not.”

She was silent as she chose her words. “I think he’s truthful,” she finally said. “And certainly he’s a talented marketer. A lot of Tom’s success in King Buffalo was due to Frank. He came up with a great marketing strategy, selling expensive handrolled-looking cigarettes to yuppies. But I don’t think Frank is a very nice person when you get down to it.”

“Why’s that?” I asked, thinking of his sad-sack secretary and her dreams of a future with him.

“He uses people and has no clue that he’s doing it. He thinks of himself first, second and last. I doubt it even occurs to him to consider other people’s feelings and emotions.” She paused. “His mother worshipped him. It didn’t do Franklin a lot of good, either. He’s only thirty-eight and he’s already been married and divorced twice. He likes to marry up and he’s always shopping around for a new rich wife.”

“How far up does he have to go?” I asked. “He seems to be on speaking terms with the good life.”

“He has a fair amount of money, but he spends it fast. Everyone in our circle knows that when Frank’s father died, he left behind a trust fund for his wife and instructions to distribute the rest of his estate among all his children— which included three daughters—even though it cost him a lot of money in taxes. I guess he figured that if it were left up to his wife, Frank would get it all. So the family money has been diluted and there’s no way Frank can get more than his share. He has to work. Unless he marries rich, of course.”

Good God, she knew everything but his bank account number. I had no doubt she knew his balance. Talk about money recognizing money. These people treated each other like balance sheets. “But he has married rich twice?” I asked.

“Yes,” she admitted. “Both times to women I know. But he made the same mistake twice. He married pampered southern belles whose fathers were still alive and looking out for their little girls. When he proved to be a lousy husband, the divorce proceedings were like surgical strikes. Frank walked away with nothing in each case. My guess is that now he’s holding out for an orphaned hare-lipped heiress whose trustee is asleep at his desk.”

Her opinion made me glad that Franklin Cosgrove had not been the only person holding out the day before. “Cosgrove makes it sound like there was once something between the two of you,” I told her. “It’s in his tone of voice.”

“It’s in his dreams,” she assured me. “Did he say anything that might help?”

“Maybe,” I said. “Look, I know you aren’t going to like this, but I have to talk to your father. I’ll tell him I’m working on my own in this case, repaying a debt to Thomas. But I have to talk to him, okay?”
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She was silent for a moment. “Do you want me to set it up?” she asked, her voice tight with tension.

“No, then he’ll know you have something to do with it. Leave it to me. I’ll get in somehow. You sleeping okay?”

“Sort of,” she answered. “It gets easier every day. I almost hate that the big hole in my soul seems to be filling in. I feel like Thomas is really leaving me now, that one day soon I’ll wake up and have completely forgotten him. It makes me sad.” She sighed. “It just takes so much energy, is all.”

“I understand,” I told her. And I did. I had clung to grief for years after losing my parents, holding on to it because, as a little girl, I felt it was the only way left to honor their memory. Only the patient example of my grandfather had showed me that life goes on whether you get with the program or not, so you might as well make the most of it while you’re here.

“I’ll keep you posted,” I said. “And take care of yourself.”

“I will. I better go. I’m hosting a luncheon for some kids who are trying to read two hundred books each by the end of this summer. That’s pretty amazing, wouldn’t you say?”

I agreed and hung up. It was almost as amazing as weaseling your way in to see the most powerful CEO in the state. Which I intended to do right after lunch.

I knew Randolph Talbot was in the office for the day because an ultra-well-trained secretary told me so when I called pretending to be a secretary for the governor. I didn’t tell her who I really was because I doubted very much she’d be as big a pushover as the preteen working the tenth-floor reception desk.

Naturally, his office was on the top floor of the T&T building. Had I not intended to sneak in via the fire stairs, he would no doubt have been on the ground floor. As it was, I huffed and puffed my way up fifteen flights feeling very sorry that I had spent the night before fooling around instead of getting my nine hours of beauty sleep.

Once close to the inner sanctum, I slipped into the hallway and checked the corridor. Only the holiest of the holy had offices near Randolph Talbot and the place was as quiet as an Irish bar on Easter morning. Every single door was shut. I imagined a score of high-ranking executives barricaded in their suites, surrounded by mahogany and leather, guarded against the common public by karate-trained secretaries.

I wasn’t far wrong. Shielded by a large potted palm, I peeked in one of the narrow windows that flanked the firmly shut doors to the chairman’s suite and spotted an alertly erect secretary manning a front wrap-around desk. She was middle-aged, trim, tanned t grim, tanhe color of pumpkin pie and wore her dark hair in a resolute helmet that looked stiff enough to play handball against. There was no way I was willing to tangle with her. She’d staple my ass to the floor as soon as sneeze. Plus, she probably had a security button embedded in that shiny desk of hers and I was not anxious to argue with a phalanx of rent-a-cops out to prove they deserved their hefty paychecks.

Instead, I took the cowardly prudent approach. I slipped into a hallway closet and waited until all that iced tea that I hoped she had gulped for lunch took effect. Sure enough, within twenty minutes, she headed for a discreet ladies’ room at the end of the hall. The suite doors had pneumatic hinges and I caught them before they shut.

There was only one inner door and I wasted no time. Within ten seconds I was standing in front of Randolph Talbot’s desk. Within three more seconds, I was looking down the barrel of a .44 Magnum. Good Christ. I prayed he wasn’t about to ask me to make his day.

“Who are you and what do you want?” he demanded, his aim and voice steady. I couldn’t help but notice that his custom-tailored suit matched his gun. GQ would be proud.

Fashion aside, I was in trouble. Randolph Talbot was even shorter than in his photographs—and his face was as flat and pugnacious as a hungry bulldog’s.

“I’m Casey Jones, a private investigator,” I said quickly, trying my best to sound calm. “I’m looking into the death of Thomas Nash on behalf of his family. All I need is five minutes of your time.”

“Who the hell is Thomas Nash?” he demanded.

“Oh, come on,” I said. “You know damn well who he is.”

He glared at me.

“Five minutes,” I assured him. “Five minutes and then I’m out of your hair.” Speaking of his hair, I think it definitely was a toupee. But a good one. It was carefully arranged above a tanned face that I suspected had seen a facelift or two. Doesn’t anyone grow old gracefully these days? More to the point, was he going to give me a chance to grow old at all?

“How did you get in here?” Talbot demanded, his eyes narrowing to slits.

“Your secretary isn’t at her desk,” I explained hurriedly. “I think she must be in the ladies room.” I resisted the urge to hold my arms in the air. “Would you mind terribly not pointing that fucking gun at me?”

The secretary chose that moment to return, proving that she was even quicker on the draw than her boss. She popped her head into his office to ask a question, bing questiut her words slid into a gasp when she spotted me.

“How did you get in here?” she squeaked.

Talbot turned his gun on her like he was going to shoot her dead on the spot for daring to take a pee. Her knees shook and she dropped her steno pad.

“It’s all right,” Talbot finally told her after several scary seconds of intense contemplation. “I’ll take care of her. If Fletcher calls, tell him I’ll call back in ten minutes.” She hurried away and I remained standing, staring at the gun.

“Sit down,” he urged me, waving the pistol at a plush leather chair near his enormous desk. He slid open the top desk drawer and stored the gun back inside. “Can’t be too careful in my position,” he added. “Kidnapping is always a possibility. Look what they did to that Exxon fellow up in New Jersey.”

I pitied the poor kidnappers who winded up with Randolph Talbot. No amount of ransom money would be worth the trouble, I suspected.

I sat in a chair and regained my composure. Truth to tell, when I had seen that gun swing up at me, I near about wet my beloved Ann Taylor pants—which were lined and had been obtained for a mere five bucks at the PTA Thrift Shop in Chapel Hill.

“Thanks for seeing me,” I said, wondering if it was worth it to try to warm him up. Somehow, I didn’t think so.

“Do I have a choice?” he said gruffly. “You don’t look like the type who’d take no for an answer.” He closed a file and moved it far away from my prying eyes. His desk was as bare as a landing strip. What was the point of having a huge desk if you didn’t use it?

“Thank you,” I said. “I think.”

“Take it as a compliment. If you have to.” He stared at me, calculating my black pants, white Lycra stretch top and black leather boots. “Jesus, you’re built like a linebacker.”

“Now that I will take as a compliment,” I said, smiling.

He didn’t smile back. “Hurry up. You have five minutes. Start by showing me some identification.”

I pulled out my fake ID, and slid it across the desk toward him. I wasn’t worried. It was a good fake. In fact, it looks better than the real PI licenses North Carolina hands out and no one has been able to spot the difference yet.