The Golden Girl

You know their names: the Pruitts, the Sinclairs, the Daltons, the Whitmans, the Rothschilds. They’re the names that dot this column and all society pages, the names of the city’s greatest philanthropists…and the source of its juiciest scandals.

And a doozy is brewing. The police are probing into the murder of Claire Colton, who happened to be the best friend of Madison Taylor-Pruitt, the Golden Girl of real estate and sometime arm candy of Ryan Greene. Of course, when Claire started dating Jack Pruitt, Madison wouldn’t give her father or Claire her blessing. Selfish girl!

But here’s the thing—Claire showed up dead in a warehouse owned by Pruitt & Pruitt! Could Maddy’s daddy be responsible? I hear he might be brought in for questioning. If the charges stick, it could be the end of the Pruitt good name. Unless Madison’s not revealing everything she knows. Not to worry. This reporter’s not afraid to do a little digging!

is a native New Yorker who relocated to sunny South Florida after vowing to never again dig her car out of the snow. She loves playing poker—a Bombshell trait—and likes her martinis dry. Visit her Web site at www.ericaorloff.com.

“P
lease tell me that isn’t a thong,” Madison Taylor-Pruitt said, rolling her eyes and leaning in to talk to her friend, Ashley Thompson, over the din of Echo, Manhattan’s hottest club of the moment.

“Okay, Maddie, I won’t tell you.” Ash laughed. “But it is.”

The two of them were in the VIP room of the club, along with a high-wattage assortment of hip-hop stars, A-list actresses, a handful of supermodels and, unfortunately, the thong-wearing Charlotte “Kiki” Davis. Actually, Maddie thought, thinking of her
own
underwear choice, it wasn’t the thong-
wearing
that was so pathetic, it was the thong-
revealing
that made her crazy. Kiki gave Maddie, and every other heiress in NewYork City, a bad name.

There was a time, she mused, sipping her Cristal champagne, when being an heiress meant discretion. Her mother, the French actress Chantal Taylor, raised her with that in mind. But thanks to a few too many reality shows, and a high-visibility lifestyle, the names that tantalized New York’s gossip columns were now just as likely to be listed with a juicy scandal and a major dose of sex appeal as A-list balls and fund-raisers.

Ashley, a fashion editor for
Chic
magazine, hated the trend as much as Maddie. They were both members of the Gotham Roses, an elite group of old-money debs plucked by Renee Dalton-Sinclair, a beautiful society-page regular with a fresh approach to charity work. The Gotham Roses were women who raised
millions
combined for their chosen charities. Maddie loved the work she did for hers—a Spanish Harlem charter school. But heiresses like Kiki, who regularly made “Page Six” and “In the Know with Rubi Cho” with antics in bathroom stalls of nightclubs, and stumbling, breast-and thong-exposing escapades made it seem like all the young and privileged did was party and seek attention.

Maddie’s appearances at nightclubs were infrequent at best. She was president of the real-estate division of Pruitt & Pruitt, Inc., a corporation founded by her robber baron great-grandfather before the stock market crash and Great Depression. Pruitt & Pruitt was now synonymous with the Manhattan skyline and real estate—and just about any other industry her father could sink money and talent into—from hotels to shipping to high-tech. So, despite her bikini-perfect figure, her tumbling locks of golden hair, and eyes the society pages described as a cross between blue and green and yellow (depending on whether she was wearing emeralds, sapphires or yellow diamonds with her gowns), Maddie, on any given night, was more likely to be poring over contracts than partying—but Ash was sometimes irresistible, and this Thursday night Maddie had made an exception.

Maddie surveyed the dancing and chaos with a bemused eye and bobbed her head in time to a Moby techno beat. Ash suddenly elbowed her.

“Ryan Greene is making a beeline for the one woman in Manhattan he can’t bed.”

Maddie looked up and saw Ryan coming toward her. She shook her head with a slight smile on her face. He never gave up. Her chief rival for every scrap of land or skyscraper she tried to buy, he was convinced the two of them, together, would be the perfect Manhattan dynasty.

Ryan made it to their table and slid next to Maddie on the deep purple velvet couch she was sitting on.

“Hi, Maddie.” He smiled, revealing a perfect set of pearly whites Maddie knew only a visit to Dr. Harry March, dentist to the rich and famous, could provide. Ryan had toothpaste-commercial teeth—as perfect as any Hollywood star’s. He coupled that with four-hundred-dollar haircuts for his highlighted blond hair, perfectly tailored Italian suits, a Rolex, and a physique toned by, he’d told her more than once, 5:00 a.m. workouts. He was as driven as she was, relentlessly worked as many hours as she did. And he always smelled of a fantastic cologne she could never identify—and refused to ask about.

“Ryan.” She smiled enigmatically and nodded.

He leaned in close, his breath hot on her ear. “Care to dance?”

Maddie looked at Ash out of the corner of her eye and gave a shrug. “Sure, why not?”

She put down her champagne glass, winked at Ash, and allowed Ryan to take her hand. She was wearing the black Chanel suit skirt she’d worn to work—but she had changed in the bathroom of her office to a silk camisole top in a champagne color that almost looked nude. Her shoulders were creamy white, and she knew when Ryan was within touching distance of her, he would go crazy. He always did. That was as predictable as the fact that in the boardroom he was ruthless. Like her father.

They started dancing, and as she expected, he moved very close to her.

“You’re wearing that perfume again.”

She nodded. It was Sung, and it had a hint of gardenia to it.

“You make me nuts, Maddie. When are you going to come to your senses and realize we’re perfect for each other?”

“Never, Ryan.” She leaned in close to his ear and flirtatiously nibbled at it. “We’d eat each other alive if we got together, and you know it.”

He groaned and then pulled her to him, grinding into her ever so slightly as the pulse of the music got even more erotic.

“Is that a bankbook in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me,” she purred.

“You know it’s that I’m always happy to see you.”

“Along with every other blonde in your ZIP code.”

“You delight in tormenting me, don’t you?” He planted a kiss in her neck. “You’re the
only
blonde I’m interested in. You know, if we got together, we wouldn’t even need a prenup. Then all the buildings we created could be called Greene & Pruitt Towers.”

“You mean Pruitt & Greene.”

“There’s that competitive spirit I love.”

A couple of minutes later, the song ended, and the DJ slid into another one, a hip-hop tune requested, as the DJ said into his microphone, by Kiki, who was now dancing on a table, along with a B-list movie actress who apparently had gotten brand-new implants. If her breasts were any higher, Maddie mused, they’d be in her neck like twin goiters.

She and Ryan sat back down with Ash. No sooner had they than gossip columnist Rubi Cho approached them. Rubi, for all the blind items and salacious tidbits she printed, was actually someone Maddie didn’t mind. She loved her sense of humor.

“What sexy blond queen of New York real estate was spotted canoodling on the dance floor with her equally sexy male counterpart?” Rubi teased, pushing her purple cat’s-eye glasses on top of her shiny black hair.

“You print it, and I’ll sue you, Cho,” Ryan growled playfully. “Come on and sit down.” He winked at her.

Maddie and Ash waved. Maddie, given how rarely she got to party, rarely made “In the Know with Rubi Cho,” but Ryan’s dalliances with supermodels and actresses and even a presidential candidate’s daughter, often made the Cho column. Maddie hated publicity—but she thought Ryan secretly liked being known as a player. He ate up attention as voraciously as he acquired real estate.

“There goes Kiki’s thong,” Rubi remarked dryly, and sure enough, the drunken heiress had now removed her thong entirely and was swinging it above her head. “She’s a class act. Bet Daddy’s real proud at how well finishing school paid off for her.”

Ryan, Ash and Maddie all laughed, and Ryan reached over to the ice bucket and refilled their champagne glasses, signaling a cocktail waitress to bring them two more glasses and another bottle of Cristal.

“This is it for me,” Maddie said. “I’m driving.”

Ryan shook his head. “I don’t get it. You must be the only woman worth a hundred million in this town who
drives
herself around. Your father gives you a limo and driver, why don’t you use it? You can’t tell me you like fighting cabbies for the right-of-way.”

Maddie shrugged. “I use the limo most days. It’s just…I don’t know, sometimes I like to take a drive and clear my head. I’m a damn good driver, too.” She didn’t tell the three at her table that her father had her learn to drive with the Formula One team he sponsored. She loved speed—and Jack Pruitt believed if you were going to learn to do something, you learned from the best. She took tennis lessons from the coach for the Davis Cup when she was fifteen.

On the small table where her glass rested sat her cell phone. She saw it light up and read the caller ID. Her father’s unlisted home phone flashed in digital numbers. That was odd. He rarely called her after nine. She looked at her watch. Twelve-thirty.

She lifted her phone and opened it, holding it to her ear.

“Hello?” she shouted above the nightclub din.

“Maddie?” her father shouted. “Can you hear me?”

“Not really.”

“Where are you?”

“Echo. A club.”

“Get out.”

“What?”

“Get out now! I can’t explain. Get out and go home, and I’ll call you there and explain.”

“But—”

“Get out, Maddie!” Click. He hung up on her.

Puzzled, Maddie closed her phone and smiled at her friends, pretending all was good. “Um…something’s come up at the office, of all things. I have to run.”

She leaned over and kissed a perturbed-looking Ash on the cheek. Ash asked, “You okay, Maddie?”

She nodded. “Work. You know how insane my schedule gets when I’ve got a deal pending.” She smiled with an assurance she didn’t feel. Then Ryan kissed her goodbye as she slid past him, his lips lingering on hers for a fraction of a second. Maddie gave Rubi a peck as she stood up, and then grabbed her purse and cell phone and made her way through the crowded club to the street outside, trying to push down the nervous feeling in her stomach. Her father was considered one of the smartest, most coolheaded and absolutely toughest CEOs in the world. He wasn’t prone to emotional reactions—or panic. Not even when the bottom fell out of the stock market years before.

As Maddie exited Echo and walked east the two blocks to her car, a paparazzi photographer snapped her picture.

“Hey, Maddie, real-estate princess, how ’bout smiling for the cameras?”

She glanced over her shoulder and gave a smile, but then a chill ran through her. As if on cue, at the photographer shouting her name, ten guys with cameras suddenly went nuts. Yes, she was well known—but she wasn’t Kiki—and she wasn’t a supermodel. So the reaction was way out of proportion to her celebrity. Four of them started in a half jog toward her.

“Any comment, Madison?”

“Yeah, what do you have to say?”

She had no idea what the hell was going on—but she was getting out of there. She broke into a half jog, regretting the four-inch heels. She could hear the footfall of the paparazzi behind her, and the
click-click-click
of their shutters going off rapid-fire. She felt like a stalked animal in the wild. Spotting her two-seater Jaguar a few yards up, she pulled the keys from her purse and pressed the button to unlock the doors and turn on the lights. Just a half block ahead of them, she opened the door to her car, hopped in and thanked sheer luck that left enough room around her car for her to pull from the curb in one swift movement once the keys were in the ignition. Still, the photographers snapped away as she drove off down the street.

In her rearview mirror, she could now see two photographers climb into a black Jeep Cherokee and start to pursue her.

“This is insane,” she muttered to herself. She was smart enough to know something was up, but she remained utterly in the dark about what it was. All she knew was she didn’t relish the photographers catching up to her and nearly ramming her bumper for a better shot. She’d heard of it happening—she had mourned with everyone else in the world at the loss of Princess Diana. Maddie was American royalty, and she didn’t want to end up in a crash.

The streets of New York were still busy, but certainly quieter than the bustle of midday or rush hour. She drove several blocks until she pulled onto Fifth Avenue, a shopping mecca with wide streets. She decided she would take it until she could cut over a few cross streets and take a pass through Central Park. If the lights were in her favor, she just might outrun them.

Maddie gripped the steering wheel and spun, making a light and turning toward the park. She could see in her side-view mirror that not only had the photographers not made the light—they didn’t care. They blew right through it.

“What the hell is going on that makes me such a hot news topic?” Maddie mused aloud sarcastically. Her tires screeched as she rounded another turn, making an illegal right on red.

The photographers stayed on her, and she could actually glimpse the flash going off as one of them leaned out his window and snapped.

Maddie spied the park in the distance, by the Museum of Natural History entrance, and she tore around a corner, hit a pothole—a deep one—lost a hubcap and drove into the park.

“Yeah!” She smiled to herself. Her rolling hubcap caused the photographers to swerve and jump the curb. With the sidewalk empty at this hour, she was relieved no one was hit, but pleased she’d slowed them down.

Maddie was grateful she had learned to drive like a pro—and that she enjoyed it enough to have spent hours tooling up to one of her family’s estates in Saratoga Springs, speeding her way up the thruway and down miles of country roads in her first car—a shiny red BMW. Every year, on her birthday, her father used to surprise her by trading in one car for another. Of course, once she was on her own, she started choosing for herself. Though people often complained of the electrical systems in British cars, she was partial to the Jaguar—and hadn’t had one that disappointed her yet.

Maddie picked up speed in the park, passing the occasional nocturnal jogger, and swerving around a horse and carriage with a liveryman and two lovebirds in it.

She checked her rearview mirror again and could see the headlights of what she presumed was the photographers’ car gaining on her. She inhaled sharply, concentrating, though her mind was moving at warp speed, and her reflexes seemed to be in charge.

She sped through the night, illegally passing a Yellow Cab. The photographers did the same. As she came out the other side of Central Park, she could now see the flashing lights of a cop car bringing up the rear.