No Way to Kill a Lady (6 page)

All along, Michael had been expanding his legitimate ventures to include a couple of gas station–convenience stores with the unsavory name of Gas N Grub. As the price of gasoline soared, so had his profits. He built a couple more Gas N Grubs, and a few more after that. Wheeling and dealing in gasoline required not just a ruthless streak but the kind of immunity to intimidation that he'd earned in spades while working for his father. He'd made his first million about a year ago.

“How broke?” I asked. “As broke as me?”

“Sweetheart, nobody is as broke as you.” Fondly, he ruffled my hair. “One of my employees seized the moment when I went to jail. He embezzled just about everything I had, including the petty cash at the garage. Then he took off.”

“Where did he go?”

Michael smiled. “I'll work on that, don't worry. Trouble is, the money could be gone for good—­up his nose, or maybe he blew it at a dog track.”

“You've called the police, right?”

He shook his head. “The cops aren't going to be sympathetic to me. I'll take care of this myself.”

“Oh, Michael. I can't stand it if you—­”

“Take it easy. No knee breaking.”

“Promise?”

He didn't promise. Instead, he said, “There's more. Family stuff. I— We can talk about it later. Thing is, until I figure out what I can get back from the moron, I could start selling off assets to put some cash in my wallet. But that may take a while. Right now, I don't have enough dough to buy us another jar of peanut butter.”

But he had enough money to buy a couple of cell phones, I thought to myself. Or perhaps those phones had come from his father? And what “family stuff” was there to talk about that he couldn't say to me now, in the light of day?

But so far, our relationship had two unspoken truths.

First: He would do his best to extricate himself from the Abruzzo family.

Second: I wouldn't ask questions concerning how he managed the extricating.

But sometimes I ached with the uncertainty.

Today, I said, “I can afford plenty of peanut butter.”

We got up from the porch steps and strolled out to the pony pasture, hand in hand. Toby scrambled up and followed. Emma's herd of Shetland ponies rushed over to investigate us, biting one another to get close. They shoved their shaggy heads through the split rails. One particularly nasty black beast tried to muscle his way through the fence.

“That's one funny-­looking pony,” Michael said.

“It's not a pony. That's your Christmas dinner.”

“A pig?” Michael looked more closely. “Emma's into pigs now?”

“No, someone dropped him off. It happens all the time—­people abandon unwanted pets here, thinking we're a working farm and won't mind. Don't get attached to this character. He's going to the butcher in a few days.”

Michael tossed the last crust of his peanut butter sandwich to the pig, and the scrap disappeared in one gulp. The pig was big and bristling with black hair. The ponies tried to bully him, but he stood fast. Michael leaned down and scratched the animal behind his ears. The pig cast a lively, curious eye upward, and Michael said, “What's his name?”

“We don't name animals we're going to eat.”

“He's kinda lovable, though. And his nose makes him look a little like my uncle Ralphie.”

“Michael, do you like pork chops?”

“Okay, okay. See you at Christmas, Ralphie.” He gave the pig one last pat and turned around to look at the house. “Wow. Is the roof looking weird to you? Over by that set of chimneys?”

“I'm not looking.”

“That's one strategy, I suppose. Maybe you better fight hard for Aunt Madeleine's money.”

“I'd like to. Trouble is, she mostly invested in beautiful things—­art and antiques. And they've disappeared.”

Michael's interest sharpened. “Poof?”

“Like Houdini pulled his best trick. The house used to be filled with a priceless collection. But we took a look around today, and most of it's gone. Including a Fabergé egg.” I glanced up at him. “Do you know what that is?”

He didn't take offense at my question. “Russian, right?”

“Yes. Beautifully enameled and decorated with gold and jewels. It's gone. All that's left in the house is either falling apart or ruined.”

“Where'd the good stuff go?”

“We don't know.”

“You gonna call the cops?” Michael asked. “Looking for pretty stuff makes them happy—­no danger involved.”

Michael's opinion of police work was biased, and I didn't take him seriously. Instead, I put my hand on his arm and squeezed. “We'll talk to the police once we get a list of missing items worked up. Any other tips?”

“You'll need good lawyers where the will is concerned. Not the polite kind who play golf.”

“I can only imagine your kind of lawyer up against the ones Sutherland can surely hire.”

“Sutherland?”

“That's Aunt Madeleine's stepson.”

Indulgently, he said, “How come nobody you know is ever named Joe Smith?”

We smiled at each other.

“Aunt Madeleine's dying isn't the big headline today,” I went on. “We went over to her house this morning. Quintain is amazing—­”

“Who?”

“Quintain is the house, not a who. It's a castle, really. But tumbling into ruin. It's worse than Blackbird Farm.”

“Hard to imagine.”

I poked him with my elbow. “Maybe with all the time you'll be spending around here, you could learn a few carpentry skills.”

“You have a hammer I can borrow?”

“There are tools in the cellar. Surely some of them were made in this century. Thing is, when we were looking around Madeleine's estate, we discovered a dead body. It was in the elevator of the house, nothing left but bones.”

Michael touched his hand to my cheek. No longer teasing, he said, “You okay?”

“It was a shock,” I admitted.

“Aunt Madeleine?”

“We think it must have been Madeleine's housekeeper, Pippi.”

“How'd she die?”

“Sutherland suggested the electricity might have gone off while she was in the elevator. She must have been trapped and . . .”

When my voice trailed off and I struggled with my emotions, he said gently, “It happened a long time ago, Nora.”

“Still, it's awful to imagine how she suffered. The estate's been vacant for twenty years. Aunt Madeleine left, locked the door and went on a world tour, and nobody ever guessed there might be someone trapped in the elevator.”

“So nobody missed the dead lady? What about her family?”

“Pippi was her name. I don't know if she had family. She was very close to Madeleine. She baked cookies a lot. That's about all I can remember.”

I told Michael about our trip to Quintain—­the lawyers, the tour of the house, the fantastic treasures that had once been inside. And about the sheriff deputy's taking charge of the crime scene.

“So you'll have some answers,” Michael said. “Maybe not soon, but eventually.”

“I hope so.”

The pig poked Michael's ankle monitor inquisitively with his snout. Michael crouched down and scratched Ralphie's head again. I thought I heard the pig give a little sigh. Michael said, “I bet your sisters are excited as hell about inheriting big bucks.”

I couldn't prevent a smile. “Libby's already thinking up ways to blow her share. You'll be delighted. It involves the Super Bowl.”

“I can't wait to hear the whole story. And Emma?”

“Emma's being . . . cautious.”

“That doesn't sound like her.” He slanted a look up at me. “How's she feeling?”

“Fine. She quit smoking. That was an ordeal. Hasn't had a drink in a while, either, as far as I can tell.”

“That's great. And her baby?”

“It's a boy.”

Michael waited.

Here, at last, was the elephant on the table—­the subject the two of us had endlessly discussed before he went to jail. The issue that was never far from our thoughts.

I said, “She hasn't decided what she's going to do after the baby's born. I mean, she hasn't decided whether she's going to keep the child or not. She knows she's not a candidate for Mother of the Year. She even jokes about it. She and I talked seriously about—­well, we discussed whether you and I should take him, raise him. Adopt him. And she was thinking it over. At first, it seemed like a logical choice to her—­best for her. Best for the baby.”

Michael nodded. Before he'd gone to jail, we'd decided we'd like to adopt Emma's child. It had been Michael's suggestion, and I'd jumped—­perhaps too eagerly—­at the possibility. Michael said, “But now?”

“Well, Emma has had second thoughts.”

He stood up again. “With me in jail, you mean.”

“She didn't say that—­”

“But it had to figure into her thinking. Why give her kid to us if I'm not around to do my part?” Michael looked up at the sky. “I'm sorry, Nora.”

I took his hand and laced my fingers with his, trying to ease his regret at spoiling our chance. “She's still thinking.”

“What about the kid's father? Has he resurfaced?”

“Hart? No. He's going to marry someone else. For a while, he broke off his engagement, but it's back on again. He's marrying a very wealthy young woman from a wonderful family. She can do a lot of good for his career. It's like a royal alliance. Emma's not talking, but I think she's crushed. She really cared about Hart, and now—­well, if he's chosen someone else, you know Emma. She's going to reject him even harder.”

“What's his opinion on custody of his child, though?”

“If he has one, Emma hasn't heard it. Look, if she decides she's ready to be a mother—­that's great. Really. She'll learn on the job. She'll be fine.”

Michael shook his head doubtfully. “That's hard to imagine.”

I squeezed his hand again and tried to smile. “We have time to have our own children.”

“With me trapped here in the house, it seems as if we have a lot of time on our hands.” He laughed a little. “You busy right now? I've been locked up with six hundred men for months.”

“Is that your way of saying I look pretty?”

He pulled me into his arms again. His voice was husky in my ear. “You look beautiful.”

His embrace was tight, but different. He wasn't quite himself. Not yet. I knew from before that he needed a day or two to recover from a stint behind bars. Maybe this time it would take a little longer.

I wanted to wrap myself up in him for as long as it took.

But at that moment we heard the steady sound of an engine—­a rhythmic concussion that soon developed into the
whup-­whup
of a helicopter. It appeared over the treetops, and at first I thought it was passing by—­perhaps a medevac headed to one of the big hospitals in the city.

But the helicopter swooped low, blowing its downdraft onto us as it hovered directly over Blackbird Farm. The autumn leaves that had already come off the trees whirled up in a cyclone of noise. The ponies snorted and dashed away in a tight herd. Ralphie the pig hunched his shoulders and stood his ground, squealing his outrage.

Michael put a protective arm across my shoulders. “What the hell?”

I tried to peer up through the choking dust kicked up by the helicopter's rotors. That's when I saw a photographer leaning out of the open door, his camera pointed down at us.

“It's the press,” I said. “Taking your picture.”

Michael cursed, and we headed for the house. We dashed across the lawn together. Once safely inside, we heard the helicopter bank and fly off.

“So much for keeping a low profile,” Michael muttered, shaking dust from his hair.

“They won't be back,” I promised. “Surely they've taken one picture, and that's enough.” But I had an awful feeling our lives were going to be fodder for the media for a while.

“Let's hope,” Michael said, but he didn't sound convinced.

“Listen, I'm sorry about this, but I have to change my clothes and go to work. I'll be home by ten, I promise. We'll have a nice dinner, open a bottle of wine—­”

“The hell with that. I'll order a pizza. We'll eat it in bed.”

As wonderful as it felt to be in his arms again, I laughingly pushed out of his embrace. “Okay, but right now I have to change my clothes.”

“I'll come up and watch.”

“I know where that leads, and I don't have time. I'm serious, Michael. I have to get to the office, then to a couple of parties.”

After my husband was killed and my parents absconded with the trust funds, I took the low-­paying position as a social reporter for one of the city's less-­than-­prestigious newspapers. At first, I'd been someone's assistant, but I'd built my own place at the paper by covering philanthropic events. As newspaper circulation steadily declined, many of my better-­qualified colleagues had been let go. But the society page still attracted lucrative advertising, and my salary was one of the lowest on the staff. So I wasn't a big investment. Not long ago, the managing editor had gruffly told me I might be the last reporter to leave the building.

“Be sure to turn out the lights,” he'd said sourly.

Fortunately I was good at the work of reporting social events, and I had contacts that were hard to beat. I also knew how to promote the kind of charitable giving that kept so many nonprofit organizations alive and thriving. And my improvements to the lifestyle pages had brought in more advertising that appealed to the readers who followed my column. That advertising kept the newspaper alive. The online editor started saving plenty of space for my party reports, too. My school prom coverage set records for the paper's Web site.