Never Too Rich (71 page)

She and Leslie got along famously.

Of course, it was only a matter of time before she
had to do
something
about changing his nerdy look. After a
while it just wasn’t all that fun or exotic anymore.

So Hallelujah took it upon herself to accompany Les
on an East Village shopping spree, where she picked out everything
for him. That done, she dragged him to her favorite punk haircutter
down on Astor Place.

The change in Leslie was immediate and startling.
Now he sported slick 1950’s greaser hair, cool aviator frames
instead of his ponderous horn-rims, carefully torn and frayed
Levi’s, and a scuffed motorcycle jacket of his own.

“
You are like totally tubular!”
Hallelujah exclaimed.

But best of all, Leslie commuted between the two
households with the same comfort and ease as Hallelujah.

Needless to say, Ruby never changed. The only
difference was that she now had
two
youngsters she could
chew out about looking “like something the cat dragged in.”

Olympia Arpel retired from the hectic world of
representing models. She sold her company to Eileen Ford, who
inherited Billie Dawn
and
Hallelujah Cooper along with all
the other models, and bought a condominium in Hawaii.

Since she had always been single and lived by
herself, no one was more surprised than Olympia when she met and
fell in love with her new next-door neighbor, Irving Ginsberg,
another New York expatriate. He was a retired sixty-year-old
widower who had, until recently, been the manufacturer of better
dresses. The strange thing was, for two entire decades he and
Olympia had lived within shouting distance of each other in
Manhattan—and never met until both retired to Hawaii.

Irving Ginsberg proposed and Olympia accepted. Both
promptly put their condominiums on the market and together bought a
large oceanfront house with its own private beach and a
picture-postcard view of Diamond Head.

Olympia loved having a man around and didn’t miss
the New York rat race one bit. Paradise agreed with her.

But she never gave up chain-smoking.

Fred Koscina discovered that years of being
overweight and eating high-cholesterol foods made for a deadly
combination. While chasing a fleeing homicide suspect on foot, he
suffered a massive coronary and spent twelve touch-and-go hours in
the emergency room.

When he was finally released from the hospital, he
bore a foot-and-a-half-long chest scar which testified to where his
ribs had been cracked open for surgery.

Returning to active police duty, he discovered the
department had transferred him to a low-pressure desk job. That,
and his having to give up junk foods and start exercising, did it.
He took early retirement, got his P.I. license, and opened a
one-man detective agency.

He didn’t mind tailing errant husbands and cheating
wives— anything was preferable to pushing paper or watching daytime
soaps.

Still, he missed the job terribly. Once a cop,
always a cop. It was in his blood.

Detective Carmen Toledo’s star rose rapidly in the
ranks of the police department. Being both Puerto Rican
and
a woman gave her an edge; by continuing to promote her, the NYPD
hit two minority birds with one stone, and she became their most
highly visible token Hispanic.

Foolishly, for a while she actually entertained the
belief that her swift promotions were the result of performing
exceptional police work. When she found out differently, she got
furious.

Nobody was going to play her for a fool—not even if
it was to her advantage. For Carmen Toledo was possessed of an
abundance of stubborn pride.

She quit the department, and her first order of
business was to call up her old partner.

“
Boss, you think you could use a
lady private eye?” she asked Fred Koscina.

“
Hell, yes,” he replied without a
moment’s hesitation. “You wouldn’t believe how many divorce-happy
schmucks with cheating spouses I got to turn down for lack of
manpower.”

Within a year his agency’s business volume doubled,
then quadrupled. He had to hire more detectives.

And Fred Koscina, P.I., became the Koscina-Toledo
Investigative Agency, Inc., which did have a certain ring to
it.

For Carmen and Fred both, it was almost like old
times.

Almost.

Antonio de Riscal continued to rule the top of the
high-fashion roost—and he wanted to stay there. He truly missed
Anouk, but that didn’t mean he had to mourn her forever. Although
his sexual peccadilloes were for the most part overlooked, he knew
that to really ensure his position he couldn’t remain a widower.
Even the ionosphere of society had its share of homophobics; more
important, there was the rest of the country to consider. In order
to keep generating publicity—the kind of publicity he wanted— he
knew that he needed another decorative woman to complete his sleek
image.

A wife. He needed another wife to be his beard for
the entire nation; another Anouk, who would put up with him and not
be sexually demanding.

Antonio had known Marissa Carlisle for years. She
was thirty-five, widowed, worth half a billion dollars, and a
killer beauty. She was also virtually anorexic, deadly funny,
delightfully evil—and a discreet lesbian. Just like Anouk.

And, like Anouk, she and Dafydd Cumberland fast
became bitches-in-arms.

One year to the day after Anouk’s murder, Antonio
and Marissa announced their wedding. The ceremony, of course, was
just the type of fairy-tale event that publicists love. The bride
wore—what else?—a ravishing de Riscal wedding dress embroidered
with seed pearls and topped off with a lace-and-pearl veil and a
thirty-foot train.

If any woman had the kind of balls Anouk had
possessed, it was Marissa de Riscal, and if Antonio was fire, she
was gasoline. Together they ruled the pinnacle of Manhattan
society, and stayed there, uncrowned emperor and empress of the
greatest city in the world.

It was just like old times.

Naturally, it was the de Riscals who gave the
parties of the year and made hitherto unfashionable things
fashionable—proving that Marissa, like Anouk before her, was the
hostess with the mostest.

And the first big party they gave was in Edwina’s
honor—to celebrate Edwina G.’s runaway success. It was held at the
Brooklyn Botanical Gardens, and consisted of cocktails, a formal
sit-down dinner, and a fairy-tale ball.

All of society turned out for it, a number of them
surprised and others simply curious that it should honor a fellow
designer—especially an ex-employee.

But Marissa, ever manipulative—an Anouk to the
core—possessed the kind of social brilliance only a true bitch—like
Anouk—could have appreciated.

“
Darling, isn’t it lovely, the
success Edwina is enjoying?” Marissa kept telling everybody,
showing how wonderfully kind and forgiving Antonio could
be.

And it was during that fairy-tale ball that, looking
around, Marissa de Riscal became aware of just how scarecrow-thin
most of the women were, how unhealthily bony, all sharp jutting
angles and slanting hollows. And there was Billie Dawn, pregnant
once again and positively radiant as she danced the night away with
Duncan Cooper. How good she looked!

Hmmmmm.
Marissa de Riscal considered. Just a
wee bit of flesh, a tiny bit more, can be quite, quite nice . . .
and so different and healthy-looking. But not too much. Just a tad.
Perhaps
she
would try to gain four or five pounds and be a
little bit different . . . perhaps even start a new rage.

Because, she thought, comparing Billie Dawn to the
dancing skeletons all around, you really could be too thin. But,
she thought smugly, her arms happily wrapped around Antonio, you
could never,
never
be too rich.

# # #

JUDITH GOULD is the author of 18 sensational novels,
the most recent being
GREEK WINDS OF FURY
.
SINS,
her
first novel, was the basis of the famed CBS television series
starring Joan Collins and shown during "Sweeps Week," upon which TV
advertisement rates for networks depend. In 1993, Ms. Gould was the
recipient of
Romantic Times Magazine's
REVIEWERS CHOICE
AWARD for "Best Contemporary Novel" for
FOREVER.
Her novels
have been translated into 24 languages. After living in Manhattan
for over 25 years, Ms. Gould currently makes her home in the
historic Hudson River Valley, and is at work on a new novel. She
can be reached at
www.judithgould.com
,
and her backlist is being mounted in e-book format.

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