Never Too Rich (30 page)

“
Ben Susskind.” The cop gestured
with his thumb to the sliding glass doors. “He’s out on the
balcony, taking a breather.”

Koscina went out to join him, grateful for a breath
of fresh air. This high up, the air was cold and the wind
clipped.

“
Whatcha got, Ben?”

Susskind turned around from the railing. “What does
it look like I got?” His voice was a perpetual complaint and his
eyes blinked constantly out of nervousness. He wore an ill-fitting
checked sports jacket that was too big for him, and used the cuffs
of his trousers as an ashtray. A cigarette was stuck in the corner
of his mouth and he talked around it. “Another dead girl, that’s
what I got. I should have listened to the wife and retired
already.”

“
So should I. Well?”

Susskind’s eyes blinked rapidly. “She’s twenty-four.
If it weren’t for the flies and the smell, we wouldn’t even have
found her. Someone folded her up in the convertible sofa. Nice,
huh?”

“
Christ.” Koscina sighed deeply and
looked away. At least that explained the strange way her arms were
squeezed against her sides. He looked down at the river, where a
tug pushing barges was making slow progress against the
current.

“
Name’s Joy Zatopekova,” Ben
Susskind went on. “Model. No one at the agency missed her. Seems
she took two weeks’ vacation time.”

“
Some vacation.”

“
Tell me about it. If she’d gone to
Miami Beach, she’d still be alive.”

“
According to you, going to Miami
solves everything. What agency’s she with?”

“
Either Ford or Elite. We’re
checking now.”

Koscina nodded.

With a sigh, Susskind ground his cigarette out on
the balcony railing and then bent over and placed the butt
carefully inside the right cuff of his trousers.

Koscina watched him with incredulity. “You still
doing that, Ben?” He shook his head. “You’re disgusting.”

“
And you’re startin’ to sound like
the wife,” Susskind grumbled. He sighed. “Come on, we’ve got work
to do.”

They went back inside and stood studying the
corpse.

“
Here’s all we got so far.”
Susskind’s eyes blinked rapidly. “You’d never tell by looking at
her now, but she was one of them cover girls. You know, fashion
magazines and stuff.” He shook his head mournfully. “Now look at
her. Stabbed. Mutilated. Scalped. Who said death isn’t the great
equalizer?”

A curious female face, dark as polished walnut, with
slanted feline eyes, brutal cheekbones, and a leonine mane of black
hair, peered into the living room from around the corner of the
narrow hall. She was strikingly bizarre and stood six feet tall.
“What happened?” she demanded in a rising voice.

“
Hey!” Susskind yelled. “Someone
get her outta here!”

“
I live here, dammit!” the
beautiful black woman said angrily as two cops intercepted
her.

“
Carm and I’ll take care of this,”
Koscina said, and together he and Toledo took the woman out into
the public corridor. Koscina noticed she had a blue suitcase fitted
with casters. “Ma’am,” he said gently, looking at her beautiful
face with its striking pantherlike features.

“
What happened?” she demanded. “Is
it Joy?”

“
Yes, ma’am,” Koscina said softly.
“ ‘Fraid so. And who are you?”

“
Obi Kuti. Joy’s roommate. We’re
represented by the same modeling agency.”

Koscina turned to Toledo. “Take care of her, Carm.
See if she has any friends she can stay with, okay?”

“
Sure, boss.” Toledo looked
relieved for an excuse to get as far away from the death scene as
she could. “Come, ma’am,” she said softly to Obi Kuti. “Let me help
you with that suitcase. Is there anybody you can stay with? A
friend or a relative, maybe?”

“
Edgar,” the beautiful black model
said. “I won’t leave here without him.”

“
Edgar?” Carmen Toledo stared at
her.

“
The cat.”

Chapter 31

“
Personally,” Catherine Jacqueline
Warren Gage observed in that boarding-school lockjaw of hers as
R.L. unlocked the door to the stately brick mansion on Beacon Hill,
which his family had occupied for the past two hundred years, “I
much preferred your penthouse.”

He shrugged. “After my father died, the house became
mine. It was move in or sell it. I chose to move in.”

She stood in the center of the dark parquet with its
scattering of patterned red rugs, one elbow cocked as she drew on
her cigarette and glanced about. The big foyer was overbearingly
heavy, and the afternoon sun lit the rich ruby reds and sapphire
blues of the stained-glass panels to either side of the front door,
dappling her in ecclesiastic colors. Somber-faced
portraits—ancestors dressed mostly in black with frugal bits of
lace at the collar—marched like giant gilt-framed steps up the wall
along the golden oak staircase. “Is anybody home?”

He shook his head. “Leslie’s visiting his mother,
and it’s the servants’ day off.”

“
Good. Then we’re alone.” She
grinned at him. “What I can whip up to eat is nobody’s business.
Point me toward the kitchen, lover.”

He looked surprised. “I didn’t know you could
cook.”

A silvery light glimmered somewhere deep in her
eyes. “There are many things you don’t know about me,” she said
huskily. “Well?”

“
The kitchen’s back through there.
Last door.” He pointed down a long door-lined hall that stretched
away under the staircase.

She nodded. “Leave it all to me. Meanwhile, go
upstairs and get tucked in. I’ll bring us a little something
up.”

“
Not too much,” he warned. “I’m
really not very hungry.”

“
You will be.” She laughed. “Just
wait and see!” She grinned. “I won’t be but a flash.”

She was as good as her word. Not five minutes had
passed before he heard her calling softly from somewhere out on the
landing, “R.L.? Where are you?”

“
The second floor at the end of the
hall.”

“
Okay. Just keep talking, and I’ll
let your voice guide me.”

His vast bedroom was dim and peaceful. Fringed dark
green draperies were drawn shut across the windows, and each time a
breeze stirred them, thin, diagonal shafts of sunlight glinted in.
The sounds of civilization were distant and muted. A trapped fly
droned relentlessly between two layers of glass.

He heard the slap of her bare feet against the
parquet and lifted his head from the pillow. In the doorway,
Catherine Gage was striking a languid Rita Hayworth pose, one bare
arm resting on the doorjamb, the other cocked lazily on her rounded
hip. She was watching his reaction through half-closed, sultry
eyes.

He was silent. There was a tight feeling in his
chest.

Catherine Gage, Daughter of the American Revolution,
princess of Beacon Hill, and heiress to a pure and unbroken
bloodline that went back to the Pilgrims and their revered
Mayflower,
must have acquired a questionable ancestor or two
somewhere along the line. Because right now she was wearing two
clouds of whipped-cream breasts and absolutely nothing else from
the waist up—if he didn’t count the two slipping bright red
maraschino cherries dripping pink juice, which were supposed to
pass for nipples. As for her groin, it was something else
entirely—a smeary pinkish mass of more whipped cream, this batch
liberally mixed with strawberry jam.

“
Well?” she asked impatiently.
“What do you think?”

His first reaction was to laugh. “What’re you
wearing?” he quipped. “Barbasol?”

Humor was definitely not on her agenda. “Whipped
cream,” she said huskily with a straight face. Her eyes glowed
brightly. With a forefinger she deliberately scooped a dollop of
cream from her breasts and made a production of licking it off.
“Mmmm,” she said. Her entire finger disappeared down her throat. “I
got all sweet and tasty for you, R.L.,” she whispered huskily. “I
taste really good.” She giggled lewdly. “ ‘Finger-lickin’ good,’ as
the late Colonel would have said.”

“
I’m sure you do,” he said with a
frozen smile. “Got any other tricks I don’t know about in your
repertoire?”

She looked at him narrowly. “Now you’re poking fun
at me!” she accused. Frowning, she twirled little circles in the
cream around the cherry nipples. “Come on, R.L.” she said. “Lick it
off.”

Coming forward, she scooped another dollop of cream
off her breasts and held it out to his lips, a solemn offering.

He clamped his mouth shut and averted his face.

“
Damn! What a prude you are!” she
exclaimed, her eyes bright and dark at the same time. Angrily she
smeared the cream across his closed lips, his cheeks, his
eyes—seeking to wound and hurt and deface.

His hand moved with the speed of lightning.
Clutching his fingers around her elegantly thin wrist, he forced
her struggling hand away and held it at arm’s length. “Let’s you
and I get something straight,” he said quietly. “I don’t like
mixing my food and my sex. Okay? I happen to like the one on a
plate and the other in bed.”

She was glumly silent.

“
Got that?” He looked at her almost
sadly. “Do yourself a favor,” he advised tonelessly. “I’m not into
all your kinky shit. Go find yourself a sweet-toothed victim who
appreciates you.”

She raised her chin defiantly. “If you don’t like
this, then what
are
you into?”

He smiled. “You know, the basics. Man-and-woman.
Give-and-take.” He paused and added softly, “Making love.”

She stared at him. “You,” she said without malice,
“are full of crap.”

Abruptly he let go of her arm and pushed her away.
She stumbled back on her haunches and crouched there on the carpet
beside the bed, her hair hanging over her face. For a moment she
seemed subdued. Then she slowly looked up and fingered a tendril of
hair away from her face. Her lips were half-parted, and she ran the
pink tip of her tongue across her perfect teeth.

He got up and stood looking down at her. “The
shower’s through there,” he said harshly. He gestured to a door
across the room. “I suggest you wash that goop off fast and get out
of here.”

“
You bastard,” she said quietly,
her voice almost impersonal. “You measly little piece of shit. I
should have known better.” She gave an ugly laugh. “This is the
last time I’ll have lunch with you,” she said unnecessarily, the
accompanying toss of her head supposedly restoring her dignity. And
with that she rose to her feet and stomped off across the room to
the adjoining bath.

His eyes followed her wearily, but he didn’t blink
when she slammed the door. He’d expected it.

He shook his head at his folly. What was wrong with
him, anyway? he wondered. Was he so desperate to get laid that he
reached out for the first female shark who cruised along?

No, he reflected, that wasn’t true. He had needed
female company— not sex—only to get his mind off Edwina.

What a damn stupid reason for getting laid! His face
darkened with self-loathing. For immediate penance, he retied his
tie and yanked the knot as tight as a noose.

Edwina stood broodingly in front of her upright
easel, tapping a newly sharpened number-two pencil against her
bared teeth. She was staring with malevolently narrowed eyes at the
unfinished pastel sketch she’d begun yesterday—an almost monastic
jersey dress topped with a cowl-hooded rust-colored plaid bolero
cape that, ironically, seemed now to stare tauntingly right back at
her. Even the lengths of bright rust mohair plaid and the soft
fluid gray jersey she’d intended to use, and had spread out side by
side on the worktable, didn’t make a dent in her plunging
spirits.

It was almost four o’clock. She had been locked in
her study-turned-atelier ever since coming home from her disastrous
meeting with the infernal Ms. Brackman. And what did she have to
show for the last hour and a half? Nothing. Absolutely,
unconditionally
nothing.

She tapped the pencil against her teeth with renewed
vigor. If divine inspiration didn’t hit soon, then the entire
afternoon was wasted, another day gone. The problem was, how could
she summon up her creative energies after this latest
rejection.

Why, oh why, wouldn’t inspiration just
come?
Was it so difficult to simply shut her mind to the harsh facts of
reality and keep on plodding? Hadn’t Van Gogh painted furiously
despite being mired in direst poverty? And hadn’t Balzac written
masterpieces while suffering the same harsh circumstances? And what
about poor Bizet? Hadn’t he composed a whole slew of failed operas
until he’d finally produced his glorious
Carmen,
after which
he’d promptly dropped dead? Yes, he had. They all had, despite
everything. And if they could create so abundantly through the
worst difficulties, then shouldn’t she be able to also? Just
standing here moaning and groaning and feeling sorry for herself
would do nothing but incapacitate her even further. Meanwhile, time
was a-wasting. Time, the luxury she could least afford.

Time, she reminded herself grimly, as if it didn’t
occur to her at least ten times hourly, is money.

Lacing her fingers purposefully behind her head, she
forced herself to focus on the sketch, concentrating so fully on it
that the paper began to swim in front of her watering eyes.

“
Damn!” she said out loud. “Damn
damn damn damn
damn!”
She squinted to bring the blurring
sketch back into focus. She stared at it awhile longer. It looked
so deceptively simple, this garment she’d envisioned—yet it was its
very simplicity, its almost architectural purity of line, that made
it such a well-designed item of clothing. No, she amended, it was
more than merely well-designed. Truth be told, it was terrific.
Splendid. Magic. Yes, magic. She was convinced that if she, the
ultimate fashion consumer, spotted it in a store window, she would
be unable to resist buying it on the spot. And wasn’t that the
proof of the pudding?