Little Black Book of Murder (7 page)

I knew he had good intentions. I also knew he was enjoying himself.

The way Todd had been drawn to drugs, Michael was pulled by some instinctive urge to rejoin his family in their illegal activities. He loved outsmarting the law, skirting the edges of criminality. Now he was trying to outsmart his own family, too. I hoped that was enough of an intellectual challenge for him.

Eventually, I worried he was going to do something truly bad—­and get caught.

I heard a vehicle in the driveway, brakes squealing. I got up and took a peek out the window. Libby's minivan. She hopped out and left the door open, the engine running.

“It's me!” she sang as she burst into the kitchen. “You must have dropped your cell phone in Emma's truck. I passed her in town, and she gave it to me. Here you go. I can't stay. I've got Lucy and Max and the twins in the van, and the twins are in an instigating mood. My word, it's freezing in this house!”

“The furnace is on the fritz. Thanks for my phone. You're a lifesaver.” I was always leaving my phone places I shouldn't, and it made Michael nuts. “How did the audition go?”

She blew a gusty sigh. “It was hours and hours of little girls yelping that awful song from
Annie
! I'll never get it out of my head.”

“Did the twins sing?”

“No,” she said with a shade of relief.

“What did they do?”

“Well,” Libby said, “they did magic tricks.”

“That sounds like fun!” I remembered her wish that we should all be more supportive with one another, so I mustered some auntlike enthusiasm. “What kind of tricks?”

“First they made the director's car keys disappear.”

“Oh.”

“Then a twenty-­dollar bill.”

I could sense where this was going. “They reconjured everything, right?”

Libby beat a path to my refrigerator and opened it. “Do you have any of those yummy wine coolers? Or the fruit thingies with the vodka? Those are so refreshing.”

“Libby, you're driving.”

She sighed and closed the fridge. “It was just a passing impulse. Actually, I was hoping I might catch my son here. Have you seen Rawlins?”

“Yes, I bumped into him at a party at the Starr farm.” I went over to the Aga stove and opened one of the vents to warm up the kitchen.

“Really?” Happily surprised, she forgot about needing a drink. “You mean, he was invited and everything?”

“Yes, of course he was invited. He looked terrific, by the way. Very grown-­up, wearing a sport coat. But I lost track of him. Michael said he stopped here, before I got home.”

“Why?” Libby's expression changed. “What was my son doing with That Man of Yours?”

“I don't know, Lib,” I said, a little sharply. “If either of them was here at the moment, you could ask them.”

She seemed to sense my annoyance. “Rawlins is being so secretive! And I can't find him half the time. He never answers his cell phone when I call. I assume he has a girlfriend, but does he bring her home to introduce me? No, he just spends every waking minute with her.” She sighed again and slumped into one of my kitchen chairs. “He's probably embarrassed by his mother.”

“That's not true.”

“Maybe I should just go home and make a pitcher of margaritas and resign myself to watching that show on the BBC with Judi Dench playing a boring gray-­haired divorcée. Spending every Saturday night with my children isn't the kind of action I was hoping I'd have at this stage of my—­oh, never mind.” Wistfully, she propped her chin in one hand, elbow on the table. “Do you have any chocolate? I know you keep a stash for emergencies.”

“I'm fresh out.” I patted her shoulder. “You're anything but boring, Lib.”

“Rawlins is worrying me,” my sister admitted.

“He looked fine. Better than fine. But when Michael said he stopped here with Porky—­I mean, Porter Starr, I—”

Libby sat up. “He was with Porky? How nice.” Her funk began to clear. “I don't need to be worried at all, do I?”

“Are they friends? How did that happen?”

“Oh, a few weeks ago after an appointment for the twins, I asked Rawlins to take Porky—­that is, Porter, back to his mother's place. Porter had wrecked another car, you see, and needed a ride. Why didn't one of his parents teach that young man to drive properly, I wonder? I thought Rawlins could earn a few dollars by taking Porter where he needed to go. But that was ages ago. I never thought they'd become friends. Pork—­er, Porter is several years older, and much more sophisticated.”

I decided not to debate the level of Porky Starr's sophistication.

I felt a certain loyalty to Rawlins. I didn't want to rat on him if he was simply being a high school senior, straining to get through his last semester of high school and bending a few rules along the way, so I simply said, “Don't worry about Rawlins. He's a nice kid. His head is screwed on straight—­at least, most of the time. If he has a new girlfriend, that's a good sign, too, right? He's just got a little senioritis. Give him a break.”

“That's the difference between you and me. You're too trusting.” Libby got to her feet and headed for the door once more. “I have a mother's instincts.”

I tried not to be hurt by her remark. She knew Michael and I had been trying to have a baby for a long time. But her wisecrack cut deep.

She prattled on. “If I didn't have a dog at home, there would be nobody at all to appreciate me.”

“Max loves you to pieces. Lucy, too.”

“Max is having second thoughts since I stopped breast-­feeding. And Lucy's imaginary friend calls me the Wicked Witch of the West. She finger painted it on my bedroom door.” Libby pulled herself together. “The twins need head shots, so I'm researching photographers. You know that glamour shots booth at the mall? Do you think they could do something to—­I don't know—­glamorize the twins a little?”

“Do they need to look glamorous?”

“It couldn't hurt. I thought I'd go first—­to make sure it's quality photography.” She touched her hair. “They also do lingerie photos for women. They pose you on red velvet cushions. Do your hair and makeup, too. I love being fussed over. Maybe someday I'll have a man in my life who'd enjoy a few sensual photos of me.”

I could imagine Libby posed on velvet in her best lingerie. With the gleam in her eye that was glimmering at that moment, she'd look like a king's mistress.

She shook herself out of her fantasy. “Well, I'll look into what Rawlins is up to. Bye-­bye!”

“Good luck,” I said, but she was already gone with a slam of the door that rattled the windows.

Under my feet, I heard the furnace give a plaintive moan. I almost ran after Libby and asked her to share that pitcher of margaritas.

B
y the time Michael came home, I had changed into jeans, a warm sweater and my sheepskin-­lined slippers. I had also put a load of delicates into the washer and spent a couple of hours at the kitchen table working on my profile of Swain Starr. The kitchen was the warmest room in the house, and I sat close to the stove. Michael walked in with his cell phone pressed to his ear and a modest bag of groceries in one arm.

He gave me a kiss on the top of my head and kept listening to his caller while he put the milk in the fridge. I knew he was doing family business, because his answers to all the questions were a monosyllabic “No.”

“No,” he said while I e-mailed the profile to my editor.

He flipped open a cookbook and started dinner with the phone still pinned to his shoulder, saying, “No.”

He used his favorite knife and said, “No.”

He slipped a pan under the broiler, and listened another minute before he finally said, “Okay, do it.”

He terminated the call and tossed the phone onto the kitchen counter.

I finished reading e-mails and closed the program. “Something brewing in the underworld?”

“A feeble attempt to con me, but that's nothing new. It's insulting, though, guys thinking I'd fall for an old scam.” Michael came to me and rested his hands absently on my shoulders. But I knew he was thinking. Deciding his next move? Calculating collateral damage? Or considering our dessert options?

In addition to initiating sex more frequently than was surely natural, Michael had been cooking like crazy during the last several months. Maybe it was boredom or a manifestation of how much he loved me, but he made enormous quantities of food two and three times a day. We may have been broke, but we certainly weren't missing any meals.

As I closed my ancient laptop, a fragrant steam began to surge out of the oven door. Michael grabbed a mitt and pulled the pan out from under the broiler. He got busy with the final preparations of the food, and I watched him. He worked with an economy of motion, but his thoughts were far away.

When he set a plate in front of me, I inhaled the mouthwatering scent of lemon sole and fresh asparagus. “Wow, fine dining,” I said. “Can we afford this?”

“I splurged on a lemon. The asparagus came from Father Tom's garden. The fish was on sale.”

On sale because it would go bad in another day or two?

As Michael sat down across from me, he caught my hesitation and laughed. “The fish is fine. I figured I'd better feed you something besides pasta.”

Immediately, I felt contrite for having brought up my weight gain. I knew we were eating a lot of spaghetti because it was what we could afford. Why was inexpensive food so fattening? But I said, “Don't feel guilty about the pasta. I love that you do most of the cooking. I should have been more careful about portions, that's all. I'm sorry I said anything about it.”

“You look great to me.” He poured some wine into my glass and splashed a more sizable portion for himself. We were down to the last few bottles in the collection he had amassed while studying wine with his usual acute focus.

I lifted my glass. “Welcome to the world of the working poor.”

“Yeah.” He touched his glass to mine but didn't drink. “I guess that's what you are now. And it's partly my fault.”

“Not even remotely. Unless—­are things still bad with Gas N Grub?”

I wasn't the only one with money trouble. After a rogue employee embezzled from him while he was incarcerated last fall, Michael was struggling to keep his string of gas stations afloat. He could have sold one to get our heads above water, but selling real estate took time, and the market was bad at the moment. Taking a loss on the property seemed foolish in the long run. We had decided to try living as frugally as we could manage and see what happened.

He said, “I paid my employees last week. That's good news. I don't know about next week, though.”

“What can you do?”

“Raise the price of gasoline.”

“Will that take care of your problem?”

He shrugged. “Until customers start looking for a cheaper way to fill their tanks.”

“So it's a short-­term solution?”

“Very short,” he agreed. He slugged some wine and picked up his fork at last. “Tell me what happened at your party this afternoon.”

I toyed with an asparagus spear, aware that he had changed the subject. “The party was lovely. Picturesque.”

“How picturesque was the shooting?”

“Oh, that. Marybeth looked very well dressed with her musket in hand. Of course, that doesn't mean she has the right to go around shooting at his new wife, but—”

“Especially with you standing in the wrong place.”

“Believe me, I'd have headed for the hills if I'd had any clue she was showing up with a gun.” I twirled my fork. “Before she pulled the trigger, she was shouting about something, though. Her ex and her brother, Tommy, are partners in some kind of farming venture. They're raising pigs—­high-­end pork, probably for Tommy's restaurant. But one of the pigs important to the breeding went missing. A special pig her grandfather had bred.”

“Who's her grandfather?”

“Howie Rattigan,” I said. “Of Howie's Hotties fame.”

“The hot dog guy?” Michael grinned with delight. “The old coot who looked like a pig? Did those TV commercials with the hog calling? Is he still alive?”

“No. And the family sold Howie's Hotties to a big food conglomerate for a lot of money. But they're still breeding hogs, I guess. Marybeth seemed very upset about the missing animal—­as if this particular pig is extremely important, the family legacy, that kind of thing. She claims Swain has it, but he says it disappeared.”

“Kinda hard to hide a pig. I mean, look at Ralphie. We try to keep him penned up, but he's not exactly—” Michael's face went still. “Wait. When did this important pig go missing?”

“I don't know.” I let Michael think it over.

It took him less than a second. “You think Ralphie is the pig they're worried about?”

“That was my first thought. What are the chances a pig wandered onto Blackbird Farm around the time the Howie's Hotties pig disappeared?”

“Slim to none,” he said, no longer amused.

“Maybe I'm wrong,” I argued. “Nobody ever came looking for him, and surely they'd have put out a search party if he was as valuable as Marybeth was saying.”

“Well, don't go telling anybody about Ralphie,” Michael said. “He belongs here now.”

“You're actually fond of a pig!” I said. “A misbehaving pig, in fact.”

“A kindred soul.” He smiled at me across the table. “I should have let him rough up your editor today.”

I tried the asparagus. It tasted like springtime—­a welcome flavor. Swallowing, I said, “The young man who came here today with Rawlins. The one with the hat. Did he see Ralphie?”

“Ralphie's kinda hard to miss. Why?”

“He was Pork—­er, Porter Starr, Swain's youngest son. Marybeth's son, too. I don't know if he'd recognize Ralphie, since he doesn't seem to be involved in the farm side of things. He used to be on television, in a sitcom, as a child. Now he's a talent scout.”

I told him about Libby and her plan to get her twins into the entertainment business.

Michael laughed again. “Anybody who thinks he can teach those twins anything must have some stones. But what's the talent scout doing with Rawlins?”

“Libby said Rawlins gave Porter a ride a few weeks back.”

“They've been hanging out together ever since? What does Libby say about that?”

“You think they shouldn't be friends?”

He smiled again. “You always see the good side of people, Nora.”

“I see flaws, too,” I said at once. “But I choose to think the best of everyone.”

Michael gave me a longer look, but his thoughts were elsewhere. He shook his head. “I didn't like something about the Starr kid. And Rawlins was acting shifty, too. They were up to something.”

“Why do you say that?”

Michael concentrated on his plate as if trying to find a way to explain something. “Growing up? My delinquent brothers and me—­we spent most of our time beating each other up or throwing blame so we could get ten minutes alone just to—­I dunno, be alone, I guess. That friend Rawlins brought around had the look. Like he was trying to get away with something.”

I forgot about Rawlins for a moment. Michael rarely talked about his childhood. “Your brothers sound . . . challenging.”

“I hated them,” Michael said without emotion. “They hated me more—­the bastard half brother that Pop seemed to favor. Little Frankie and I fought like animals. It was good practice for prison, I guess.” He caught himself and tried to brush off the memory. “I spent a lot of time with the family next door.”

I knew Michael never had the kind of home life other people did. This new footnote in his life intrigued me. “What was that family like?”

“Fun. They collected all kinds of junk to play with—­trash can lids for shields so we could pretend we were saving the planet from aliens, that kind of stuff. We shot a lot of basketball in the driveway, too. The parents were always laughing—­not laughing at anybody's mistakes or weaknesses, but, you know, having a good time.” His smile faded. “But I got into some trouble—­broke Little Frankie's arm and went to a foster home for a while. When I got back, they had moved. Anyway,” he said, firmly tucking his memories back down inside, “I guess I know shifty when I see it. Rawlins was uneasy. And the other kid had an agenda.”

Michael's instincts for trouble were finely tuned. I hadn't realized how deeply into his childhood that particular instinct was rooted. My heart ached for the boy who'd had such a volatile youth, and I wondered what had happened to the other family who'd made a difference.

But he was finished talking about himself, I could see, so I said, “You think Rawlins is in trouble?”

“I dunno. How much trouble can a white-­bread kid like him get into? Whatever it is, it'll all shake out soon enough.”

“I have a problem of my own,” I said on a sigh. “Gus wants me to dig up some dirt on Starr's wife, Zephyr.”

For the last week, Michael had listened to me brainstorm my article, and he knew the story of the Starr marriage. His interest sharpened. “There's dirt on the model?”

“She seems perfectly nice to me. I mean, there are the usual rumors that she has done some drugs and partied with infamous people back when she was modeling, but I don't think that's what he has in mind.”

“Zephyr's the one from West Virginia, right? I know a guy who's connected there.”

“I need to find out why Starr gave up his career so abruptly. Gus seems to think it has to do with Zephyr.”

“Playing Old MacDonald doesn't quite have the same luster as hobnobbing with beautiful girls, I suppose. Why do you think he retired?”

“To make his wife happy?” I ventured.

“Makes sense to me,” Michael replied with a smile that turned his eyes very blue. He reached across the table to touch my face.

 • • • 

I
n the morning the house was colder than ever, so I wrapped up in two sweaters and made pancakes while Michael Skyped with his teenage daughter, Carrie, who was still serving in Afghanistan. Their standing video appointment wasn't always easy—­they were going through a rough patch in their already tenuous relationship—­but this time Michael closed his laptop with a smile.

After breakfast, we went down to the cellar to coax the furnace with a technique I remembered my grandfather using—­a lever pushed here, a well-­aimed kick there. The huge motor groaned and something gave a terrifying bang before it revved up again.

Michael laughed and gave me a high five. “Show me that trick one more time.”

Upstairs, glad to have heat in the radiators again, we read the Sunday newspapers for a while. I looked through the advertising pages to see if I could find a Filly Vanilli toy for Emma. No luck. Not entirely playfully, Michael and I argued about the politics shouted on one of the morning pundit shows, and then Michael decided he'd go to Mass.

I hoped he wasn't going to seek absolution for something I didn't know about yet.

After he left, I pulled on my jacket and went outside to do some work in the garden. With the sun shining, it was almost warmer outside the house than inside. While I puttered, I thought about Rawlins. I hoped he wasn't getting into a bad friendship with Porky. I had helped him with his essays for his college applications, and I knew he was feeling restless these days.

I cut some of the dried hydrangeas off the bushes and arranged them in the big marble urn by the back porch. The urn had come from Europe when my grandparents returned from their honeymoon. My grandmother said she found it in a Paris flea market. All her life, she kept the urn full of something from the garden during every season, and since moving back to the farm, I tried to do the same. I wanted to make a home for Michael and me that included some gracious traditions.