Never Too Rich (47 page)

Such is the
National Geographic
fate of
legendary editors-in-chief: the young fish eats the old fish, which
in turn is eaten by an even
younger
fish, which . . . which,
Liza had long ago decided, was not a positive way of thinking about
the future.

She sat broodingly at her ragged-edged, speckled
granite slab of a desk, her stony eyes glaring at the cover of the
Women’s Wear Daily
in front of her. Despite the fact that
WWD
was a daily trade newspaper and
Chic!
a glossy
monthly with a circulation of three million and as many as five
hundred pages per issue, over two-thirds of which were some of the
most expensive advertising pages sold on earth, Liza Shawcross
still couldn’t help feeling a pang of professional envy. After all,
designs of any yet-to-be-produced garments were as jealously
guarded as the gold at Fort Knox, and
WWD,
by having gotten
hold of Edwina’s, had come up with a scoop. The fact that a fashion
magazine, unlike a daily trade paper, is produced many months ahead
of time and usually can’t use a scoop if it falls right into its
lap, didn’t lessen her pique. She should at least have seen these
sketches first!

The very idea that someone else had gotten the jump
on her rankled, humbled, and smarted.

Worse, this time she had no one to blame but
herself.

I’ve been asleep on the job, she thought. I haven’t
been paying attention.

For when Edwina G.’s press release had landed on her
desk, she had summarily discounted it as just another
run-of-the-mill company starting out—ultimately doomed to fail. And
when, a month earlier, Edwina G. Robinson had finally gotten
through to her and proposed a lunch date, she, Liza Shawcross, had
purposely made it for many weeks in the future, an action designed
for a threefold impact: to show muscle, to humiliate, and to seek
the requisite obeisance.

But now . . .

Now . . .

Faced with the two fashion sketches in
WWD,
Liza Shawcross realized she had made one of her exceedingly rare
mistakes. True, Edwina G.’s designs were trendy. But they were so
originally trendy, and had such a vital visionary impact—such
pizzazz—that she immediately knew she had to remedy her mistake at
once.

So she had instructed her secretary to call Edwina’s
secretary at once and change the lunch date to today. And Edwina,
obviously no fool, had wisely accepted.

That done, Liza summoned her immediate staff to her
office. She got to her feet, took her characteristic wide-legged
stance, and faced them squarely, hands resting on her narrow hips.
“I want to know everything there is to know about Edwina G.
Robinson,” she told them in no uncertain terms, “as well as the new
company she founded, which is called Edwina G. You have until
eleven-thirty to dig up what you can. Report back to me then. Now,
get cracking.”

Thus dismissed, the staff rushed out to consult
microfilmed back issues of the trade papers, make telephone calls,
contact their vast networks of spies, and call in favors.

At eleven-thirty on the dot, Liza’s minions marched
back into her office to report their findings. Then, after
dismissing them without so much as a word of thanks, Liza sat back,
lit a skinny black cigarette, and puffed it thoughtfully as she
reviewed the information her staff had collected.

Edwina G. Robinson had been a trunk-show drummer for
Antonio de Riscal.

Which means she’s got experience and contacts, Liza
thought.

Edwina had actually quit her plum job at de
Riscal—and in a tiff, it was rumored.

Which shows she’s got nerve. Or courage. Or
stupidity. Or all of the above.

She had also raided the top marketing and design
talent from first-rate firms in order to create a first-rate
staff.

Which shows street smarts, loyalty from former
associates, and no small plans for the future.

And Edwina was seriously negotiating with
Bloomingdale’s, Marshall Field, and a host of other stores
nationwide for major-visibility in-store Edwina G. boutiques.

Which, for a new company, not only shows chutzpah,
but proves beyond a doubt that Edwina G. Robinson knows her market.
Obviously she has no inclination to sell ten or twenty high-priced
items— she wants to sell hundreds of thousands of low-ticket items,
and is too smart to gamble on a chic SoHo boutique or fight an
uphill and most likely losing battle for the wealthy, devoted
clientele of the likes of Geoffrey Beene and Antonio de Riscal.

But the single most important, and unexpected, piece
of information was that Edwina was being backed by Leo Flood—the
wunderkind of Wall Street—the man with the invaluable knack for
backing nothing but winners.

Now,
that
is more than just interesting, Liza
thought, swiveling her chair back and forth. It’s practically proof
positive that Edwina G. might be around for a long, long time—and
offer some serious competition to Liz Claiborne and Esprit.

The cigarette had burned down to the filter. Feeling
it scorch her fingers, Liza reflexively dropped the butt into the
ashtray and sucked on her index finger. She barely felt the burn,
and her smooth oval face had undergone a metamorphosis from
thoughtful to serene. Edwina G. Robinson, it seemed, had everything
it took to make a go of it in this cutthroat business. Talent,
contacts, vision, a single-minded purpose—and one hell of a
heavy-duty backer.

Liza Shawcross decided she would be very nice to
Edwina G. Robinson.

Chapter 48

“
Darlings!” trilled Anouk de
Riscal, the chairperson for the Decorator Showcase Showhouse. “This
is it! Get those all-important first impressions!”

Anouk was turned out like a diva on Capri. All in
white silk: pleated pants, blouse, jacket, turban. But she wore
very black 1950’s-style sunglasses with upswept frames, the black
earpieces hugging the outside of the turban instead of tucked
inside over her ears. The effect was stylishly bizarre. Very high
camp. Very Anouk.

In the rear-facing jumpseats of Anouk’s
midnight-blue Rolls-Royce Phantom V, Lydia Claussen Zehme, Klas
Claussen’s sister, and her decorator partner, Boo Boo Lippincott,
both ducked down to catch their first glimpses of the challenge
awaiting them.

Boo Boo and Lydia were dressed in their working
uniforms, Boo Boo in a red cashmere wool suit, white silk blouse,
and Hermès scarf, Lydia in a double-breasted black wool jacket,
cream-and-black-striped skirt, and gold Bulgari necklace.

One look out the window, and Boo Boo went pale
beneath her makeup.

Lydia let out a howl of anguish.

For what awaited them here at Southampton’s most
prestigious address, Meadow Lane, where some of the world’s most
opulent mansions shared some of the finest unspoiled sand dunes and
private ocean beaches in the world—was not at all what they had
expected.

What both decorating partners had expected was one
of those giant shingled mansions straight out of F. Scott
Fitzgerald—the kind completely surrounded by a deep pillared porch
and consisting of two or three rambling stories containing
forty-odd rooms—one of those dreamy oceanfront “cottages” erected
by free-spending millionaires in the Jazz Age.

But this.

Well, this house
was
big and rambling.

This house was not, however, by any stretch of a
farfetched imagination even remotely reminiscent of the golden age
of F. Scott Fitzgerald, rumrunners, and flappers.

Lydia turned slowly to Anouk. “Darling,” she begged
fervently, “say it isn’t so! Not this, the site of the old duPont
estate!”

Boo Boo, who summered in Connecticut and hadn’t been
to Southampton for two summer seasons, lowered her window with the
press of a button, all the better to gape, perplexed and in stunned
disbelief, at the monstrosity rising so ... so enormously out of
the dunes. “If . . . if this is the old duPont estate, then . . .
then where’s that marvelous old Georgian house I remember?”

“
Gone, darling,” said Anouk. “Gone,
like so many of the good things in life.”

“
But . . . but
this!”
Lydia
sputtered. “Anouk! Why didn’t you warn us?”

“
This” was a grotesque monstrosity,
a forty-thousand-square-foot Beverly Hills-style castle somehow
lost in the Southampton dunes— with ugly, ugly witch’s-hat turrets
and angled towers and steep dark mansard roofs. It didn’t seem to
rise out of the ground so much as lurk there, casting ominous
shadows.

And it was big, because for the
nouveau
riche,
bigger wasn’t vulgar, bigger was
better.

“
It looks,” said Boo Boo darkly as
the long Rolls crunched slowly over the sandy drifts that obscured
the gravel drive, “as though all that’s missing is a carousel and a
slide.”

“
Don’t look so peeved, darling!
Think of the challenge! How many other showhouses have you done
that were still in a raw, unfinished state, so to
speak?”

“
Unfinished?” Lydia asked, alarmed.
“How
unfinished?”

“
Yes.
How
raw exactly?” Boo
Boo piped up.

“
Oh, do stop going on and on,
darlings!” Anouk said.

A moat, Lydia thought, feeling such mangling,
lancinating pain and disgust shooting through her guts that she
didn’t think she would be able to get out of the car. That’s what
it’s missing. A moat. And a dungeon too. Most definitely a dungeon.
Or was there one, and had Anouk conveniently forgotten to mention
that too? “It wouldn’t happen to have,” she said, scowling up at
the eyesore, “a dungeon? Would it?”

“
Who knows?” Anouk trilled
laughter. “It seems to have everything else!”

“
How many rooms can it have, I
wonder,” Lydia thought aloud in horrified awe.

“
Enough so that, for once, there
needn’t be a lottery, or a drawing of straws, or a waiting list for
designers to showcase their talents,” Boo Boo replied tartly.
“There’ll be a room for every decorator on the east coast, from the
looks of it.”

“
Well, at least this explains one
thing,” Lydia said morosely to Anouk. “Now I know why you were so
cagey when I asked you which particular house the charity committee
board had chosen.” She turned to Boo Boo. “Oh, Boo Boo,
Boo
Boo!”
she wailed. “We’ve been
had!
We’ve been suckered
into taking charge of the ugliest house east of Beverly Hills,
without even realizing it!”

“
And all along we thought it was a
plum to be in charge of the showcase showhouse!” Boo Boo grumbled
in turn. “We’ve been duped!”

“
Duped?” echoed Anouk, pushing her
sunglasses up above her forehead. “I might have . . . ah . . .
neglected to mention which house on Meadow Lane it was, but . . .
‘duped’? Really, darlings! Isn’t that word a bit . . .
hyperbolic?”

“
You committed a sin of omission,
and if that’s not duping us, I don’t know what is,” Lydia snapped.
“All you said was that it was a house on Meadow Lane which was up
for sale!”

“
And it
is
up for sale,”
Anouk purred sweetly.

“
It’s been for sale ever since the
township’s been trying to have it torn down,” Lydia
retorted.

She and Boo Boo stared out at the offending
mansion.

“
Oh, Lydia!” Boo Boo
moaned.

“
Oh, Boo Boo!” Lydia moaned
back.

“
We can’t!”

“
It’s beneath us!”

Anouk raised an elegant eyebrow. “Come, come,
darlings. Just thing of it as . . . as a challenge.”

“
I prefer not to think of it at
all,” sniffed Boo Boo.

“
Then
do
think of the good
cause you’ll be doing this for.”

“
We’re trying, believe me.
Otherwise, you’d be seeing a cloud of dust where we’re sitting
right now.”

Anouk wasn’t deterred. “Lydia. Boo Boo. You two
know, as well as I, that not only will the showcase showhouse raise
tens of thousands of dollars for a very worthwhile charity, but it
will also give a lot of new and little-known decorators that
all-important first chance at exposure—not to mention all the
established ones who’ll be lining up to showcase their
talents.”

“
Lining up?” asked Lydia
acerbically. “Or chasing us with broomsticks?”

“
You have the most extraordinary
sense of humor, Lydia.” Anouk looked at her severely. “Just
remember, darlings, it’s all for a very good cause. Think of all
those poor innocent little babes born with AIDS. You know that’s
what this project’s raising money for.”

“
She’s trying to make us feel
guilty,” Lydia sighed.

“
She thinks plucking at our
heartstrings will work,” Boo Boo agreed.

“
And she’s succeeding,” Lydia
sighed. “Dammit!”

“
Now, enough wasteful
procrastinating! Off you two go!” Anouk made elegant shooing
motions with her hands. “Go . . . go
explore!”

“
Come on, Boo Boo,” Lydia sighed.
“We might as well get it over with. Let’s start the . . . ahem . .
. grand tour.” Snatching her sketchpad and a set of blueprints off
the seat, she glared at Anouk one last time and then ducked out of
the Rolls. She turned and stood there a moment, head tilted back,
eyeing the house with hopeless trepidation. Had she not known
better, she would have sworn that it was watching her from behind
all those blank, forebodingly dark windows.

“
You don’t suppose something with
fangs is waiting to attack us in there!” fretted Boo Boo with a
shudder as she joined her.