Never Too Rich (10 page)

“
Finished dusting these?” Koscina
raised his eyebrows.

“
Yeah. Go ahead.”

Koscina picked up the top copy and stared at the
cover. It was typical
Vogue,
courtesy of Richard Avedon.
God, but the woman was unconscionably beautiful. She had a squarish
jaw, angled by blusher-touched cheeks. Gray-blue eyes tinged with
color—pistachio and coffee bean, or however makeup was named these
days. Perfect brows: on the heavy side, definitely not plucked.
Hair casual and “undone”—imperfect and falling to one side. Moist
full lips just slightly pinker than natural. Long shocking-pink
plastic dangle earrings.

Vienna Farrow. Beauty. Model. Ravaged dead meat.

Toledo came back from the bathroom, her normally
olive complexion now pasty and pale. She gestured at the body.
“Christ, boss. What kind of monster would do something like that?
Je-
sus
.”

“
A beast,” Koscina growled. “Beauty
here met the Beast.” He turned to a tall black man with
black-and-gray hair and horn-rimmed glasses, who was taking
scrapings from under the woman’s fingernails. “Hey, Braswell. What
kind of weapon was used?”

LaRue Braswell glanced up and shrugged. “Too soon to
tell, Fred. Some kind of knife, I’d say.”

“
Rape?”

“
Either that, or she voluntarily
took him to bed.”

“
Sure it was a him?”

“
Autopsy’ll tell, but from the
crust on her pubic hair, yeah.” Braswell nodded. “Yeah, I’d lay
bets it’s semen.”

Koscina turned to another officer. “Sign of forced
entry?”

“
Nah. Downstairs door’s always
locked, and the buzzers all work. We checked. Looks like she let
whoever it was in. Maybe even brought him home.”

“
Who found her?”

“
We did. Her agency called 911—some
outfit called Olympia Models. They’re over on Sixty-fifth, just off
Madison. She didn’t show up for yesterday’s shoots, and this
morning they started gettin’ worried. Two of our guys got hold of
the super. He unlocked for them, and they found her in
here.”

“
I want the super’s story checked
out. And the neighbors’. They hear anything?”

“
We’re starting to canvas them
now.”

“
When d’ya think it
happened?”

“
Night before last. Early morning.”
Braswell shrugged. “Sometime between midnight and six, I’d
guess.”

“
Shit. Must’ve been thirty,
thirty-six hours ago!”

“
Yeah,” the man from forensics
commiserated. “I know.”

Koscina sighed and pinched the bridge of his bulbous
nose. Nearly a day and a half had already gone by since the
killing. In homicides, the first forty-eight hours were always the
most crucial. After that, with every passing hour the chances of
finding the killer were that much more remote. Another twelve
hours—eighteen at the most— and those precious first forty-eight
hours would be gone.

“
The newspapers are going to have a
field day,” Toledo mumbled unhappily.

“
Tell me about it,” Koscina
growled.

Carmen Toledo shook her head. “You know,” she said
slowly, taking the
Vogue
from Koscina and staring at it,
“whoever did this is a real sickie. I mean, no ordinary murderer
would try to make such a pretty woman so ugly.” She gave her
partner a haunted look. “It’s like he hated her beauty.”

“
Yeah,” said Koscina grimly,
shutting his eyes against the monstrous sight. “Or else he gets off
on having a natural wig.”

Chapter 10

Le Cirque.

Lunch time.

The double-parked limousines started at the first
elegantly rounded canopy of the restaurant and stretched halfway
down the block like a sleek chrome-festooned train. A
Women’s
Wear Daily
photographer skulked outside the entrance, camera in
one hand, lit cigarette in the other.

“
How do I look, darling?” Anouk de
Riscal demanded of Dafydd Cumberland as her chauffeur helped her
out of her midnight-blue Phantom V. As usual, she was coatless. Her
Russian Barguzyne sable stayed in the Rolls. “My coat check on
wheels,” she called it.

“
Scrumptious,” Dafydd replied in
his rich baritone. “If I were straight, I’d eat you.”

“
Darling, if you were straight,”
she retorted out of the side of her mouth as she posed briefly on
the sidewalk for the
WWD
photographer, “I would head for the
hills.”

“
And if you were straight, Nookie
my dear, I would likewise.”

They both laughed merrily, enjoying each other’s
wicked repartee.

“
Brrr . . . it’s cold.” Anouk
shivered, hooked an arm through his, and huddled close. “Let’s
hurry inside and knock them dead.”

“
As only you can, my
dear.”

She grinned with pleasure, unhooked her arm from
his, and swept into Le Cirque as casually as if it were her corner
watering hole, which, in fact, it was.

If anyone knew how to make an entrance, it was Anouk
de Riscal. She had style, plus a killer instinct for being the
center of attention, and, thanks to her fashion-designer husband,
she had headed all the best-dressed lists for five years in a
row.

Her entrance had the desired effect. Heads swiveled.
Female envy rolled at her in spiteful waves.

Anouk reveled in every malevolent vibe.

“
Madame de Riscal!” the famed
restaurateur greeted her effusively. “How beautiful you
look!”

But even without his compliment, she knew she did.
Her nubby black wool Antonio de Riscal suit (“Special Label”) was
one of a kind, and she’d warned Antonio what would happen to him if
he made another like it for anyone else. The skirt had a high,
tucked toreador waist, and the short, capelike matching jacket was
offset by a canary-yellow silk blouse printed with magenta cabbage
roses. For accessories there were the long black leather gloves,
black seamed stockings and, instead of jewelry, a
silk-rose-and-pearl corsage and matching earrings.

A huge-brimmed black hat and black custom-made
patent leather pumps completed the outfit. The hat would remain on
indoors— why else wear it?

She was without doubt the most elegant woman in a
restaurant full of women who devoted their lives to their
looks.

Dafydd touched her elbow as they were led to Anouk’s
usual table. It was a very short walk, since it was at the front by
one of the two big curtained windows.

Naturally, it was one of the two best tables in the
house.

Anouk’s sharp eyes swept the dining room as she slid
into the banquette under the towering arrangement of lilies that
dropped extravagantly over her from behind. Her gaze panned past
the sweat-beaded ice buckets and waiters holding out bottles of
wine and champagne for approval, past the familiar bright dazzle of
the wall sconces, fashioned like extravagant branches of tulips,
and rested momentarily on the panel paintings of French court
scenes set into the walls.
Singerie,
they were called in
French, which loosely translated into “monkery,” an appropriate
name. For in each, painted man-monkeys were camping it up, dressed
as amusing eighteenth-century French courtiers wooing bewigged,
begowned woman-monkeys.

The irony was not lost on Anouk. The diners sitting
on the mouse-colored banquettes and on the chairs covered in
old-rose velvet were the twentieth-century equivalents of the
French aristocrats who had rattled in tumbrels on their way to the
guillotine.

She noted, as she did wherever she went, the
hand-sewn suits covering aging male bodies long past their prime,
and the ageless women who kept time at bay through every
conceivable method under the sun and who forever dressed in the
very most expensive clothing and jewelry sold, changing for
breakfast, lunch, cocktails, and dinner.

Snatches of conversation prickled and then receded
from her ears.

“—
Just imagine, first her mother
stole her lover, and then she ran off with him and they got
married!”

“—
Why, I remember that little filly
from way back when!” A Texas oilman guffawed. “She could suck the
chrome off a trailer hitch!”

“—
So I asked the pretentious
asshole: is ‘majordomo’ New Jerseyian for ‘butler’?”

“—
They just got a new Lear jet. Do
you think they’ll actually
do
it at twenty thousand
feet?”

“—
Oh, he’ll tire of the frigging
yacht in six months’ time, and then I’ll turn it into a frigging
casino!”

Anouk had to smile. Some things never changed. She
was certain that if she walked out now and returned a year later,
she could pick up the conversations where they’d left off. The
snippets of gossip and business were always the same. Only the
characters sometimes changed.

Anouk drew her gaze back in. “Darling, do you see
Doris Bucklin anywhere?” she asked Dafydd casually.

“
Doris?”
He was taken aback.
“You mean that dreary pickle-livered puffball? Is she why we had to
come here?”

“
I will have my one glass of
champagne,” Anouk told the waiter sweetly, then answered Dafydd
with a little sigh. “I’m afraid so, darling,” she said, stripping
off her gloves without once looking down at her hands. “You see, I
never did receive an RSVP from her for my dinner
tonight.”

“
That, my dear Nookie, is because
you didn’t send her an invitation.”

“
Evil man.” His observation earned
him a ripple of laughter. And a sharklike grin. “You are as astute
as always. That’s why I love you so much, darling.”

He glanced up at the waiter. “A Scotch for me.
Neat.”

“
A heavy-duty drink at this early
hour?” Anouk lifted her exquisitely plucked eyebrows. “My,
my.”

“
Something tells me I shall be
needing it, my dear.” He was systematically sweep-searching the sea
of faces. “Ah!” he said at last. “I think I see your Park Avenue
princess.”

“
Where?” Anouk turned her head, but
slowly, so as not to be obvious.

“
I can just barely see her—in
Siberia with . . . well, well,
well.
It must be for security
purposes, or else they’d have this banquette.”

“
Well, who is she with?” Anouk’s
neck was craned.

He watched her closely. “Unless my eyes deceive me,
and they usually don’t, she’s with the president-elect’s wife.”

“
Hmmm.” Anouk forgot herself for a
moment and frowned before remembering the surgeon’s admonition:
frowning causes those facial lines to deepen. Swiftly she cleared
her face of expression.

Merde!
she murmured to herself. She didn’t
like this complication one little bit. Of course, she had heard
that Doris Bucklin and Rosamund Moss were friends. But did she have
to catch the two women lunching together today of all days? That
certainly threw a wrench into her plans. If she approached Doris,
the two women were likely to think that she was trying to suck up
to the First Lady—as if she, Anouk de Riscal, the acknowledged
queen bee of New York society, needed to buzz about doing that!

“
Well?” Dafydd asked after a
moment.

Anouk turned to him with a blank look. “Well what,
darling?”

“
What are you waiting for?” He
waved a hand airily. “Don’t mind me. Go on and do your dirty
deed.”

“
You’re horrible.” She laughed,
getting up.

“
So are you.”

It took Anouk nearly five minutes to table-hop her
way to the back of the dining room. Everywhere, she had to stop and
acknowledge greetings and exchange a word or two with familiar
smiling faces. But she had developed the quick escape into an art
form. Her “I’ll call you later, darling” was the perfect way to
keep greetings short and sweet. She’d been using the line for so
many years, people swore she’d had it trademarked.

Pretending to have just noticed Doris, she waggled
her glossy fingertips and approached.

Four Secret Service men rose as one to intercept
her. Startled, she frowned and raised her eyebrows at Doris.

Rosamund Moss called them off, and they let Anouk
by.

Anouk’s shameless smile dazzled. “Doris! How
felicitous that I should run into you.”

“
Y-yes?” Doris Bucklin asked,
flustered. Her face was glowing with embarrassment and her ears
were on fire. Which was understandable, considering she had walked
in on Antonio bent bare-assed over his desk just a short time
earlier and was now face-to-face with the second-to-last person on
earth she wanted to run into—his wife. With an effort, she managed
to recover her aplomb enough to gesture to Roz and say, “Y-you know
Mrs. Moss, I presume?”

Anouk’s beautiful topaz eyes shifted to the new
First Lady. “Only from television and newspapers.” Smiling, she
held out her hand and shook Roz’s warmly. “I’m Anouk de Riscal.
Congratulations on your successful election.”

Roz laughed. “It wasn’t mine; it was the party’s and
the President’s. But thank you all the same.”

“
If you like, I’ll get Antonio to
do your wardrobe. For nothing. He would be honored.”

“
I’m afraid the country wouldn’t
take well to that, Mrs. de Riscal. It would be perceived as a
payoff.” But Roz’s eyes ate up Anouk’s outfit. “I do so love his
designs,” she added wistfully.

Anouk smiled mysteriously and winked. “We will work
something out, then.” Unabashedly she turned back to Doris. “I was
going to call you and apologize, darling. I feel so badly that you
had to suffer such embarrassment because of Klas.”