Never Too Rich (59 page)

“
And I’ll be right behind you,” her
partner said staunchly. “I’m through too. Who needs torture like
this? Certainly not me.” She pulled up a chair beside
Lydia’s.

Lydia let out a shriek. “Will you put that chair
right back where you found it?” She pointed a quivering finger
toward the other side of the fireplace.

“
I’ll put it back,” Boo Boo said
calmly. “But first, I’ve simply got to get off my feet. They’re
positively
killing
me!”

“
Goddammit!” Lydia screamed,
jumping to her feet. “Don’t you ever listen?”

“
Lighten up,” Boo Boo advised. “Why
are you on my case? I didn’t cause the leak.”

“
Put that chair back
now!”
Lydia ordered. “This is
my
room. Go rearrange things in your
own!”

Boo Boo looked at her silently. Then she got up and,
without a word, pushed the chair back to where it had been.

“
Three inches to the right!” Lydia
snapped, hands on her hips.

Stoically Boo Boo placed the chair just so, and
without a peep drew herself erect and left the room with
dignity.

A house painter lowering himself on tackles and
pulleys floated into view outside one of the windows. Poking his
head into the room, he saw Lydia and waved. “Hi, beautiful. Wanna
date?” He mouthed an obscene kiss and waggled his tongue.

Outraged, Lydia strode to the window and banged it
shut.

The painter retaliated by brushing a crude penis,
complete with scrotum, on the glass.

From outside one of the other windows, a shrill
scream rent the air. “I quit!” a workman shouted. “You’re crazy,
lady! You don’t like it, do it yourself!”

“
Bastard!” a woman’s voice
shrieked. “Thieving bastard!”

Lydia ground her teeth. The tense atmosphere of
thirty-nine designers and their crews all working under the same
roof was bringing out the worst in everybody.

Never.

Never again.

The next time anybody whispered the word
“showhouse,” she’d tell them just where to stick it.

Murphy’s Law: If anything can go wrong, it will.

It did.

In spades.

For Edwina, it was like living inside a pressure
cooker.

Everything at Edwina G. was ultimately her
responsibility—from the initial designs of each outfit, which had
to fit within the overall mix-and-match concept of the Edwina G.
“look,” to the finished products, which were contracted out to the
manufacturers. Quality control, marketing, pricing, publicity, and
guaranteeing the stores on-time delivery—all the balls were hers
alone to juggle.

Sales strategies, ad campaigns, financial
projections, budgets.

Coast-to-coast travel to push the upcoming
collection and set up fashion shows—often she left in the morning,
did her sales pitch at a certain store, and returned on the
red-eye.

Fashion editors to woo over lunches,
department-store executives to win orders from, and battles to be
fought over the installation of the in-store Edwina G.
boutiques—the most difficult hurdle of them all. Everyone in the
fashion field clamored for the little allotted store space that was
available, and the competition was cutthroat.

All uphill battles.

Amazingly, though, it turned out that the single
best thing she had going for her was Edwina G.’s fresh approach.
Her gimmicky “fast-fashions” idea—with the computerized number of
items sold changing with each sale—generally clinched the
deals.

It began with Macy’s. Always the leader in new
marketing approaches, they snapped up the very first boutique—and
for their Manhattan flagship store. And they ordered one for each
of their satellite stores as well.

It was Macy’s, also, that would officially launch
Edwina G. at a gala party at the store the day after the collection
was unveiled at the Southampton Decorator Showhouse.

It would be typical Macy’s merchandising: in other
words, their launching of Edwina G. would be a New York City
event.

For Edwina, the Memorial Day weekend was equally
something to look forward to and something to dread. But thanks to
Macy’s, the campaign started to get easier. Other department
stores, reasoning that if Macy’s was confident enough to lavish
attention, then Edwina G. must stand a reasonably good chance of
succeeding, charged ahead and ordered their boutiques.

So, slowly but surely, the Edwina G. network took
shape. To keep track of the various boutique locations, Edwina had
a map of the United States installed on the wall in her office.
Each time a store opted for an Edwina G. boutique, she stuck a
color-coded pushpin into the city where that store was located. As
the months passed, the map began to look like it had been littered
with confetti.

Gold pins stood for Macy’s.

Red for Neiman-Marcus.

Green for Shacklebury-Prince.

Yellow for Bloomingdale’s.

Silver for Nordstrom.

And blue for Marshall Field.

The dream was becoming a reality.

But there were always problems.

Chauvinism, for instance.

Despite the growing numbers of women who owned or
controlled a good number of fashion firms, the stores that sold
their wares were basically solidly entrenched enclaves of male
executives. Women, especially unpardonably attractive ones, were
fair game. Edwina was constantly hit on, and the trick was to
reject advances without jeopardizing potential orders.

She was fast becoming an expert at turning men down
without damaging their masculine egos in the process.

But that was the least of her worries.

The biggest was the finished products, and that was
closely followed by distribution.

Shoddy workmanship, a fire in a warehouse, a
teamsters’ strike— the problems came at her from all sides and
without warning, and seemed insurmountable.

Somehow, she always managed to fight her way out of
them.

She insisted that the slipshod products be redone at
the manufacturer’s expense—”and
tout de suite,
buster, or
you’ll be hit by so many lawsuits your balls will shrivel and fall
off.”

The smoke-damaged clothes that had been stored in
the warehouse had to be replaced—and quickly—the cost borne by
Edwina G. until the insurance money would come in.

The teamsters’ strike made her look into alternate
methods of transportation—and the boutiques (and the racks of
clothes that were to follow) were sent out via more expensive air
freight.

Sometimes it seemed that her whole life was devoted
to nothing more than problem solving—and the only ones she couldn’t
solve were her own.

Her personal life was suffering. There just wasn’t
time for one.

Work. All her energies and drive were directed at
work work work.

“
Soon,” she would promise herself.
“Once Edwina G. gets officially off the ground, I’ll be able to
start leading a normal life.”

That became Edwina’s pie-in-the-sky: a normal
life.

Soon.
It was always “soon.”

One evening when she came home so late that
Hallelujah was already sound asleep, she made up her mind. At
breakfast the next morning she popped the idea on her. “Hal, my
sweet, what do you think of Hawaii?”

“
You mean, like Diamond Head? Mauna
Loa, surf-and-sun,
Hawaii-Five-0 Hawaii
Hawaii?”

Edwina smiled. “That’s the only one I’ve ever heard
of. Well? What do you say we plan a vacation?”

“
Oh, Ma,” Hallelujah sighed.
“Forget it. You’re dreamin’.”

Edwina blinked. “No, I’m not,” she assured her
daughter. “I’m serious.”

“
Then why don’tcha wait an’ lay it
on me when the time comes? Okay?”

Edwina nodded. Did her daughter know something she
didn’t know? Or was it such an obvious pipe dream that even a
thirteen-year-old could see through it?

One thing was for certain. She
had
to start
leading a more normal life—and the sooner that happened, the
better.

“
All work and no play,” she told
herself miserably, “makes you a very dull old girl.”

She sighed to herself. In no facet of her life was
this more true than in her sex life—or rather, the meager amount of
sex she allocated for herself.

Sex meant R. L. Shacklebury. Every two weeks or so,
she juggled her schedule so they could enjoy a quick dinner and a
roll in the hay. R.L. was a wonderful lover, and the time they
spent apart left an empty ache in her heart.

On alternate weeks she juggled her schedule to make
room for Leo Flood. Invariably, he was the perfect date—a charming
gentleman through and through. He never approached her
physically—something she sorely yearned for.

Each time she saw him, Leo would invariably bring up
marriage. “I’m still waiting for you to say yes,” he would tell
her.

And she would utter her excuses about not being
ready yet, and assure him that, yes, she was still seriously
considering it.

In truth, she just couldn’t make up her mind, but
she knew that, sooner or later she would have to. She couldn’t play
Ping-Pong and bounce between R.L. and Leo forever. Two half-lives
did not one whole life make.

But who would it be? Leo? Or R.L.?

She really didn’t know.

Chapter 62

“
It’s been nearly three months now,
boss,” Carmen Toledo said. “None of the surveillance units have
reported anything. You think he knows we’re guarding her?” She
looked at Fred Koscina sideways with her dark, shiny Latin
eyes.

He grunted and shrugged his big rumpled shoulders.
“Damned if I know, Carm. Our people are pretty well hidden.” He
grabbed the thick Reuben deli sandwich from the paper on his lap
and took a huge bite, a string of sauerkraut dangling out the
corner of his mouth. “Some people can smell cops a mile away,” he
said, talking while he chewed.

“
Yeah, but
how
can he tell?”
Carmen pressed. “We’ve got our undercover cops going into the
clinic like customers. That lady cop pretending she’s a maid in the
town house next door. An undercover cop instead of Billie Dawn’s
regular limo driver. It isn’t like we’re using only Con Ed trucks
or telephone vans or unmarked police cars.”

He sucked the dangling thread of sauerkraut into his
mouth. “It’s like I said. Maybe he can smell us.” He swallowed the
mouthful of Reuben and pulled the tab on a cold can of soda. He
held it out to her, but she shook her head. “Did you talk to them
earlier?” he asked before taking a swig.

She nodded. “To Billie Dawn, yes. Not to the doctor,
though. He was busy.”

“
How’s she holding up?”

“
All right,” she said, nodding.
“She’s a pretty brave girl. But she’s scared shitless, boss. She
wants this creep caught pretty badly.”

He laughed mirthlessly. “She’s not the only one.” He
took another bite of his sandwich, wiped his mouth with the back of
his hand, and peered out the tinted windshield of the delivery van.
Down the street, all looked normal at the clinic. All looked quiet
at the town house.

“
Boss?” Her voice had a funny edge
to it.

He looked at her questioningly.

“
What happens if he doesn’t come
around soon? I mean, what if he waits until we’re no longer
guarding her?”

“
We’ll guard her,” Koscina growled.
“I gave her my word, didn’t I?”

“
Yeah,” she said dubiously, “but
you heard the chief yesterday. Three shifts of six people costs the
taxpayers a lot of money. You know how he is about
that.”

Koscina took another swig of soda. “Don’t worry
about it. The chiefs getting so much flak over this creep that he’d
assign us his grandmother if he thought it’d do us any good. And if
I have to, I’ll guard her on my own goddamn time. I’m entitled to
two and a half months of vacation.”

She smiled suddenly. “And I’ve got three weeks
coming,” she said. The walkie-talkie crackled. She reached for it,
listened, and turned to her partner. “It’s Stu, boss. He says
they’re going to be coming out and going to lunch soon. The
Cherbourg Restaurant on Fifty-seventh.”

He grunted. “All right. Have Rosenthal and Jefferson
haul ass. I want them at that restaurant before they get
there.”

“
Okay, boss.” She started to speak
into the mouthpiece.

“
And tell ‘em not to fuck it up,”
he growled, tearing into another mouthful of Reuben. “We can’t
afford any fuckups.”

“
You’re sure they’re still with
us?” Billie Dawn asked when they were seated in the restaurant. “I
couldn’t see anyone following us.”

“
That’s because they’re undercover
cops,” Duncan said with a faint smile. “We’re not supposed to see
them. But they’re around here somewhere.”

“
I suppose you’re right. The thing
is, my nerves are getting frayed. I feel all fidgety outside and
all jumpy inside.” She stopped talking as the waiter approached
with their drinks.

She picked up her white wine and took a quick
sip.

Duncan reached across the table and took her hand.
“You can’t keep letting it eat at you,” he told her gently. “You’ve
got to believe they’re out there covering you. And above all,
you’ve got to try to forget everything that’s happened.”

“
How can I, after what he did to
Obi and Ermine?” Tears threatened her eyes. “Doc, Ermine was the
second time he’s invaded the place I live! First it was the
apartment I shared with Obi, and then your house!”

“
Our
house,” he corrected
gently.