One Dangerous Lady (38 page)
Read One Dangerous Lady Online
Authors: Jane Stanton Hitchcock
“What about that Christmas tree over there?” she said, pointing with her lorgnette to the heavily bejeweled Trish Bromire. “Think she'd like to buy it? She looks like the type who likes to spend her husband's money.”
“I don't know. Why don't you ask her?”
“Never mind. The less one has to do with these people the better.”
I was amused by this bitter old bird. She turned and peered at me through her lorgnette.
“So you know my son, do you? You were never married to him, were you?”
“No,” I said, laughing again. I couldn't tell if she were serious or not.
“Lucky you. Impossible man, just like his father. Only in my day we didn't believe in divorce. Satanic thing, divorce. My son married rich girls who all wound up costing him a fortune. Four hundred years, we've lived in this house. Now it's gone. And all because of my son's wretched appetite for silly, spoilt girls. Stupid boy.”
“Well, the world is very different than it once was, I guess,” I said.
She fingered the fire opal. “Tell that to my son. Never worked a day in his life. . . . Just married all these impossible girls. . . . Look at him over there, feeling sorry for himself.” She inclined her head toward Max, who was sitting off by himself in a chair, smoking a cigarette, a drink in his hand, looking extremely forlorn indeed. “He should be feeling sorry for
me, what
? At my age, having to pick up stakes and move to some godforsaken place. And he just sits there, pining over that dreadful girl.”
I perked up. “What dreadful girl?”
“Oh, you know, the one he married in secret. His father nearly had a heart attack when he found out. Said we couldn't have a girl like that in the family. I said, âYou married her. You should stick with her,' ” she said, pointing an accusatory finger at me as a proxy for Max. “His father won out, of course. No one ever listens to me. I don't believe in divorce. It's what's got the world all upset. Makes things too easy . . . and too expensive.”
I couldn't imagine who she was talking about. “Which girl was that?”
“I believe she's referred to in gossip circles as âthe Shady Lady Vermilion.' The Shady Lady Vermilion, indeed,” she said with evident distaste. “I knew he'd never get rid of her. And then she shows up
again
. . . mutton dressed as lamb, that one. Tries to impress him by putting a roof on this house. Thought he'd marry her again, she did. And this time his father wasn't around to say no . . . ha! Well, now she's gone. And so's the house and so's the roof. . . . Such is life, I s'pose. But I never dreamed that at my age, I'd have to pick up stakes and move to God-knows-where. Stupid boy . . .”
I was on the edge of my chair.
“Lady Vermilion, let me get this straight. Did you say that the woman who put the roof on this house was once
married
to your son?”
She looked at me with exaggerated wide eyes, as though I were an idiot. “What word in the sentence don't you understand, my dear?” she said irritably. “
Yes
, that is precisely what I said. What of it? Couldn't matter less now. That I should live to see this day!”
I was dumbfounded. Carla Cole was the Shady Lady Vermilion. Suddenly, everything made perfect sense. Carla hadn't wanted to get to the top of New York society at all. What she wanted was a fortune and respectability. She needed both to get Max back. Her aspirations were for Max, not money; her crimes were crimes of passion, not possession. I believe she had truly loved him. And from the disconsolate look on Max's face, he may actually have loved her, too.
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A
t the dinner, I was seated next to Max, who had apparently requested me. Far from being his aloof, laid-back, slightly bemused self, he was now just plain weary. I thought it odd that he had never gotten in touch with me since my now infamous trip aboard the late
Lady C.
As the waiters passed huge roasts on silver trays, Max gingerly introduced the topic.
“So you've really been through it, eh, Jo? Must have been frightening as hell to sink in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean at night,
what
?”
I gave him what was now my standard answer. “In some ways it was the most thrilling night of my life,” I said. I then proceeded to elaborate on all sorts of irrelevant details, obviously omitting the salient one: that I had been forced to push Carla overboard.
“Poor Carla,” Max said, as if reading my mind. “I rather enjoyed her. She was a game and generous woman.”
“But you didn't know each other all that long, did you, Max?” I said, baiting him, wanting to see how he would respond.
He leaned in close to me. “Jo, I'm going to let you in on a little secret. Carla and I were very old friends.”
“Were you?”
“Mmm . . . knew her before Russell. Before Hernandez, even.”
“
Did
you?” I said, feigning surprise and not letting on what his mother had told me. “Why did you bother to hide it?”
“Oh, well, you know, Jo . . . women like Carla . . . a fella doesn't like to advertise the fact,
what
?”
We sat in silence for a few seconds. Max stared into space, lost in thought.
“You really loved her, didn't you, Max?”
He winced. “I'm going to miss this old place,” he said, avoiding my question.
“Max, I know you were once married to Carla.”
He looked at me askance.
“How'd you know that?” he asked, obviously disconcerted.
“Your mother told me you were once married to the woman who put a roof on this house . . . Carla was the Shady Lady Vermilion.”
Max shrugged. “Leave it to mother to lose everything but her memory.”
“Max, I have to ask you thisânot that I expect you to tell me the truth.” I paused. “Did you put her up to it?”
“What?” he said softly.
“Marrying Hernandez and Russell?”
Max lowered his head. “That poor friend of yours who was killed, Jo . . .”
“Larry, you mean?”
“No . . . that woman . . . from Las Vegas . . . I believe her name was Ginger somebody.” He shot me a glance out of the corner of his eye.
I suddenly felt uncomfortable.
“I don't know what you're talking about, Max.”
He stared at me and raised his eyebrows. “No? Really? That's odd. Carla said you did. Told me you and Ginger were quite chummy at one time.”
He
knew.
Max knew.
“Well, she was wrong,” I told him. “I've never met anyone with that name.”
“Oh,” he said, nodding. “Well, you can't meet her now. She's dead. Murdered. Ghastly sort of death . . . I must be mistaken, then.”
“Yes, you must be.”
He paused. I thought that was the end of it, but it wasn't.
“And yet . . .” he went on, “I don't think I am.” He smiled. “ 'Course, I can't prove it. Very difficult to prove past associations and connections,
what
? And what does it all matter now anyway? Let sleeping dogs lie, that's my motto.”
I suddenly understood what was going on. Max
had
put Carla up to itâjust as I had suspected. He was the grand puppeteer after all. And this was his way of telling me that he knew all about me, too, and that the two of us had secrets that were better kept to ourselves.
“I think I'm going to enjoy my new life,” he said, leaning back in his chair. “As one gets older one prefers warm weather. I'll miss The Hall, of course, but then, all good things must come to an end. No use looking back,
what
?”
Max tilted his head upward toward the vaulted ceiling, and sat very still for a long moment with a rueful smile on his face. I imagined him basking on a Turks and Caicos beach, gradually tiring of bright, sunny days, thinking about Carla, and longing for his big, old, damp house, now gone, like the love of his life, forever.
Â
I
n accordance with her father's wishes, Courtney Cole gave the Cole collection to Tulsa, Oklahoma, his hometown. Courtney is building a museum there in her father's memory. Blow as it was to the Muni, Justin Howard didn't protest. The Municipal Museum is above such things. Justin and Edmond took me out to lunch several times, begging me to come back on the board. Eventually, I gave in and said I would. They were thrilled. So was Ethan. There's no point in holding a grudge, although I did mention to Justin my motto: I may not remember, but I never forget.
Charlie persuaded June not to buy the Wilman apartment. He told her it was bad luck since Carla had owned it. June listened to him for once. It's back on the market. The Bromires are back in circulation again, more social than ever. Jail isn't the stigma it once was. In fact, it adds a certain cachet, as well as being an endless source of dinner anecdotes. Betty says that “prison is the new pink!” She and Gil are the same, although they do seem a little concerned about Missy's marriage.
“The wedding was enough angst for a lifetime,” she told me. “I simply can't take a divorce!”
Miranda continues to chronicle us all in the glossy pages of
Nous.
I miss Larry more than ever. There was just no one like him. Some people really are indispensable.
They never did find Russell Cole. Some say that he's still alive. There are occasional reports of sightings, and he has taken on one of those mythical personas that live forever, like Judge Crater or Elvis. In New York circles, the story of Russell Cole has become a staple of social life, which, like the sea, just goes on and on and on.
Â
M
y thanks again to John Novograd and to the many friends who have cheered me on and up at various times during the writing of this bookâespecially Kathy Rayner and Lynn de Rothschild.
I am grateful to Captain Rick and Kirsten Morales, Captain Steve Martin, and Dionne Reed, for letting me draw on their nautical expertise and grand imaginations.
My deep thanks to Chuck Adams, a perceptive and patient editor.
And special thanks, as always, to Jonathan Burnham.
Thank you, too, C.L.H.
JANE STANTON HITCHCOCK is the
New York Times
bestselling author of
Mortal Friends
,
The Witches' Hammer
,
Trick of the Eye
, and
Social Crimes
, as well as several plays. She lives with her husband, syndicated foreign affairs columnist Jim Hoagland, in New York City and Washington, D.C.
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Cover photograph © Famke Backx/Getty Images
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A hardcover edition of this book was published in 2005 by Miramax Books, an imprint of Hyperion.
O
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D
ANGEROUS
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ADY.
Copyright © 2005 by Jane Stanton Hitchcock. All rights reserved. By payment of required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, no known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
Epub Edition © JULY 2012 ISBN 978-0-06-220657-2
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