Some Like It Lethal (11 page)

"Dozens—and real money, too. It was a hit fundraiser. My master stroke was mixing the vintage clothes with that new designer from Yardley—you'd love him, honey. So anyway, thanks for loaning me that gorgeous Mainbocher from your granny's closet. I put it out on a mannequin at the entrance, put a spotlight on it, and it really set the stage for the whole night. Very classy."

"Did the old thing survive?"

"Oh, honey, we took good care of your dress, and nobody dared wear it. It's too delicate."

"Grandmama Blackbird wore it a lot. It's just worn out, I'm afraid."

"But still amazing. Anyway, I have it all boxed up and ready to go home."

"Keep it handy," I said. "I'll be seeing you Tuesday night."

"Oh, you're coming to the thing? Perfect. I'll have it with me, then. It really was the hit of the fashion show, Nora. Oh, and somebody even wanted to buy it."

"Sorry, not for sale."

"I figured." The music changed behind her, and she said, "I hear you were at that nasty hunt breakfast yesterday. I knew I hated big animals for a reason."

"It wasn't the animals that made it horrible."

"So I hear. You okay, honey? Is your sister in a shitload of trouble?"

"Not for long, I hope."

"Poor Rush. I knew him way back when, y'know. Sweet guy."

"How did you meet him?"

"We took some college classes together. No Ivy League for us, of course, just state university on scholarships. Poor Rush was a washout. He had some kind of dyslexia, so I helped him study, and he helped me out when I needed an extra man for a party. Girl, I was party central! I liked doing the networking thing even then." She didn't need to explain that she probably knew more people in the city than the mayor did and threw much nicer parties. She added, "I introduced Rush to Claudine Paltron, in fact—which I'm still kicking myself about. It happened early in my career, before I knew how to handle misguided sexual attraction."

"Misguided? On whose side?"

"Claudine's, of course. I could tell you tales!"

I had forgotten that Delilah had counted Claudine among her clients when she first got started as a publicist. Claudine would have been a trial by fire for any PR person, but Delilah managed to control the self-centered dancer's public persona very well. Claudine's adoring fans stopped hearing about her many affairs and started reading about her charitable work on behalf of lupus and young dancers from underserved neighborhoods.

"And you introduced Claudine and Rush?"

"Long before he met Gussie, I swear. When I first got into the publicity gig, I snagged a lot of my college buddies as extra men. What can I say? You can never have too many handsome guys at events. And I dragged Claudine to a greyhound adoption rally he organized—a dud, actually, but it was his first attempt, and he really believed in the cause. I thought maybe Claudine would look good with a couple of greyhounds by her side—kinda white-bread Josephine Baker, you know? Turned out she hated dogs. But she met Rush and that was a different story."

I hadn't remembered that Rush and Claudine had been seen together before Rush's marriage. "Fireworks?"

"More like a train wreck. You know how Claudine wants everything she sees? I swear it's because she had to starve herself all those years dancing."

"How long did it last between them?"

"I don't know. It sort of petered out gradually. He was good for her, but Claudine got tired of all those little mutts he had with him all the time. Anyway, it turned out okay. They broke up and he married nice, safe Gussie. Except who'da thought he'd die so young?"

Or so violently, I almost said.

"So, honey, am I going to see you at the ballet gala on Friday night?"

"I think so," I said. "If I can figure out something to wear."

"Nobody does vintage like you, Nora. You'll outclass us all."

Delilah's call waiting clicked, which was always the way conversation ended with her. Her business thrived because of her ability to field dozens of phone calls every hour.

"Gotta boogie, honey. See you at the gala!" I thought about what Delilah had told me as I put a Lean Cuisine into the microwave. The rest of the kitchen was strictly ancient history. My parents had done few repairs and fewer upgrades to the estate, but when I moved to the farm more than a year ago, I'd brought a few essentials from my condo in the city. While my dinner hummed, I went through the stack of mail that had piled up during my stay with Libby and her family.

Spike leaped into my lap and helped by shredding a Williams-Sonoma catalog. I flipped the rest of the catalogs directly into the trash and created a pile of envelopes on the table. Mostly they were invitations and bills, plus a postcard from Kennedy Airport from Michael.

On the back he had written, "I miss you already." Just looking at his handwriting sent my thoughts rushing into warm and fuzzy memories best suited for the sappiest pages of a romance novel—the way his stroll through my door made my knees quiver, his tantalizing touch lingering on my throat, his husky whisper good-bye when we last parted. Yes, I yearned for more—dark secrets as well as hot kisses shared late at night. But the sex part wasn't going to happen yet. Maybe not ever, but certainly not now. The sensible part of my brain cautioned that neither of us was ready to trust the other so unconditionally that love-making could be as natural—or as safe—as breathing the same air.

I hoped I would be able to recognize when we reached the right place. My life had been so shattered by Todd that even now I sometimes don't know which direction is up.

I propped Michael's postcard on the pepper mill in the middle of the table.

At the bottom of my heap of mail was a large white envelope, addressed to me in typewritten letters. The same kind of envelope in which I'd brought home Kitty's invitations.

I slit open the envelope with a knife. I shook out the contents, and a sheaf of three photographs spilled onto the kitchen table.

Photographs of me.

With Tim Naftzinger.

"Good Lord," I said.

Spike spat out the catalog and put his paws on the table. He studied the pictures with his head cocked and his lips drawn back in his usual snarl.

"This isn't what it looks like," I said to Spike.

It looked as if Tim Naftzinger and I were more than just friends.

I knew at once that the photos had been taken surreptitiously in the cloakroom of a hotel a month earlier. It had been at a party thrown to raise money for a safe house for abused children. I clearly remembered the evening. I had attended on behalf of the newspaper and had dinner with two other couples and Tim. He had come on behalf of the hospital, but was alone and therefore needed a seat at a table with an uneven number of guests. After the dinner, there had been dancing, but Tim and I both decided to leave early. He had helped me into my coat, I recalled.

But the photographs looked like something more than a gentleman assisting a friend in the cloakroom. My dress had revealed a lot of bare shoulders, and Tim had leaned closer than I remembered. He looked ready to nuzzle my throat, in fact, and in the next
picture my innocent good-night kiss to his cheek appeared to be a flash of passion between two longtime lovers.

I dropped the photos on the table. As I did so, a note fell out.

Spike grabbed the note in his teeth. I wrestled with him and won.

The note read:
Ten thousand dollars by Wednesday or you are in big trooble.

Trooble?

It took me a second to realize what the misspelled word meant, and then I couldn't get enough oxygen.

What followed were directions for placing a bag of hundred-dollar bills underneath a statue in Rittenhouse Square.

Suddenly, my hands were shaking so badly that I couldn't stuff the photographs back into their envelope.

Spike growled when I dumped him on the floor. I rushed to the telephone and picked it up, but couldn't imagine who to call for help.

Blackmail.

I dialed Michael's cell phone number with trembling fingers and prayed the call would reach Scotland.

It rang four times before he picked up, shouting hello from several time zones away.

"It's me," I said.

"Hang on," he bellowed. "I'll call you back from another phone."

I hung up and waited. For a man who assured me he had nothing to hide from the law, he spent a lot of time switching telephones. Thirty seconds later, my phone rang.

"Am I pulling you out of a trout stream?"

"Salmon," he said, in a normal tone of voice. "Scotland has salmon. But I'm—never mind. What's up?"

"I'm sorry. I don't mean to— What time is it there? Did I wake you?"

"It's okay. What's wrong? You sound scared. Is it Emma?"

"No, it's me, believe it or not. I just received a blackmail letter. A demand for ten thousand dollars. With photographs."

"Jesus Christ. Of us?"

My throat had a big, frightened lump lodged in it. "Nothing that easy. No, pictures of me with a friend in a hotel coatroom."

"Damn. How come I can't get cozy with you in a coatroom?"

"This is serious, Michael. I'm not kidding. The pictures show him just helping me with my coat, but they're very— They make us look intimate. Like an advertisement for perfume or diamond rings. Like we're in love with each other."

More lightly than I could have imagined, he said, "So are you going to pay?"

"You know I can't. And unless the blackmailer has just returned from Mars, he has to know I'm penniless, too." I could hardly breathe. "Why is this happening?"

"Take it easy. Maybe he thinks if I hear you're snuggling in the mink stoles with another man, I'll have the guy whacked?"

"That's not it. In fact, it's not even me I'm worried about. Well, I am, but— It's my friend I have to protect. He's a respected doctor, up for a big promotion at his hospital. He's got a wonderful daughter, and he's sticking by his wife, who's been in a coma since
last January." I could feel my emotions building into the hot, awful lump just above my lungs. "He has so much to lose if something awful starts circulating, Michael. People will be shocked if they think he's having an affair while his wife is unconscious. And his daughter would be destroyed. It's horrible."

"Come on," he said. "Don't cry on the phone. I can't stand it."

"I'm not crying." Not exactly, anyway.

"You've got to get mad. And smart. Who the hell is doing this to your friend? Not to mention you?"

"I don't know. I'm too upset to think." I sat down at the table.

"Cool down and concentrate. He's counting on you panicking."

I tried to collect myself. "What should I do?"

"Just think for a while. What do you already know? What doesn't make sense?"

"None of it."

"Think."

"Well," I said slowly, "for one thing, there's a misspelled word in the note."

"A dumb crook. Now there's a surprise. What else?"

I almost smiled. "This afternoon I met someone else who's been blackmailed. She's a retired ballet dancer. But she has money, and I don't."

"Anything else?"

"I—I think the pictures came in the same kind of envelope that was found with Rush Strawcutter's body."

"Okay."

"And I found a stack of the same envelopes in Kitty Keough's desk drawer."

"I won't ask why you were digging through her
desk, but this is good stuff. Could the Keough lady be your blackmailer?"

"She's got the right personality." Hearing my tone of voice, Spike growled on the floor at my feet. I reached down and scratched his ears. The churning in my mind began to make sense. "And Kitty would love it if I suffered a misfortune."

"What's her connection to the ballet dancer?"

"I don't know. Except, well, there's a good chance she's dating Rush Strawcutter's business partner.

"Partners can be the death of anybody."

I picked up the envelope and carried it through the butler's pantry and the dining room. Spike followed in case I bumped into any dragons he could slay for me. I turned on the living room lights and curled up in my favorite chair with the phone pinned between my shoulder and my ear. Spike hopped onto my lap. "The partner, the man Kitty's dating, is in huge financial trouble right now." I started to tell Michael about Tottie Boarman's activities.

"I know about Boarman," Michael said. "I read the papers. He's one of those well-dressed felons. You know," he added, "crimes that happen at the same time tend to be connected."

"Do you think so?"

"I know so."

"Well," I said without asking how he had come by his insider knowledge, "Tottie Boarman made a big loan to Rush." I put my feet up on the arm of the chair and tried to put the puzzle pieces in place. "The common denominator in all this seems to be Rush, doesn't it?"

"Yep."

"Rush used to date the dancer, too. Did I mention that?"