by L. T. Vargus
Her eyes searched the room, and after a few moments, she realized that was going to prove more difficult than she’d hoped.
Charlie had seen photos of Vivien and thought she had a good grasp of what she looked like: a fit, older blonde. The kind of woman you expected to see married to a senator or anchoring the evening news. But now that Charlie was here, she realized that Vivien Marley was a type, and roughly half the women in the room were the exact same type. It was only made worse by the fact that they were all done up in a similar manner with their sensible hairstyles and modest formal attire.
Charlie pulled out her phone and tapped Vivien’s name into the search bar. She scrolled through the photo results, trying to find a good, clear shot of her face.
After comparing photos to faces for a few minutes, Charlie spotted her in the far corner, near a table with flutes of mimosas and champagne set out on it. Vivien bent over to whisper something to the woman filling the glasses.
“She’s got a great rack for an older gal,” Allie said.
Charlie couldn’t argue with the sentiment, despite the crass way Allie had put it. For someone old enough to be her mother, Vivien Marley was in fantastic shape.
“You think they’re natural?” Allie asked. “Or is that eight hundred ccs of liquid saline doing all the work?”
Charlie edged closer to the table where Vivien was, scooping up a mimosa when she got there. Vivien was now chatting with a squat gentleman with glasses and a comb-over. Charlie tried unsuccessfully to eavesdrop on their conversation, but a string quartet had started playing across the room, and all Charlie was able to catch was something about the man’s granddaughter “heading to Dartmouth this autumn.”
“God, rich people are hilarious,” Allie said, putting on an affected aristocratic accent and attempting to mimic him. “Dartmouth, you don’t say! Ahem, ahem. Autumn. Foie gras.”
Charlie bit her lip to keep from chuckling. Sometimes the worse Allie’s impression was, the funnier it seemed.
Vivien finished up her talk with Mr. Dartmouth, Esq. and moved on.
“She’s getting away,” Allie hissed.
“I’ve got my eye on her, don’t worry,” Charlie assured her.
“Why don’t you just walk up and hit her with questions? You know, use the element of surprise like a weapon and bludgeon her with it.”
“Because, if she makes a scene, I’ll get thrown out of here in a heartbeat,” Charlie said. “You think this kind of function would look kindly on some lowly peon harassing one of their esteemed guests? If I get her alone, I might have enough time to talk my way past her defenses.”
“OK. That’s smart, I guess,” Allie admitted.
Charlie shadowed Vivien Marley for a solid ten minutes, always careful to keep a discreet distance. Eventually, Vivien broke off from the group she’d joined, striding over to the tables where the silent auction was set up. She gave the items there a cursory glance before exiting the banquet hall and moving in the direction of the restrooms.
FORTY-FOUR
Charlie was waiting by the sink when Vivien came out of the stall.
She was taller than Charlie had realized now that they were up close. Towering over her, Vivien flapped a hand.
“Oh, nothing for me, dear.” She had a rich, deep voice that reminded Charlie of Kathleen Turner.
“Um… what?” was the most eloquent thing Charlie could think to say in response to this.
“Aren’t you here to offer mints, etcetera?”
Charlie frowned.
“No…”
“Oh my God, this is hilarious,” Allie said. “You’re more dressed up than you’ve ever been in your entire life, and she still sniffed you out as the servant class.”
Charlie had expected this to go much differently. She’d planned to sidle up beside Vivien and pretend to recognize her from somewhere. Get her talking. But Vivien mistaking her for a bathroom attendant had thrown her off.
“Lipstick on a pig, right?” Allie said.
Screw it, Charlie thought. I’ll just hit her with it, then.
“My name is Charlotte Winters. I’m a private detective.”
Vivien’s big blue eyes got bigger. Her ample chest rose as she inhaled deeply. And Charlie knew with certainty that she was about to scream for security.
Instead, Vivien threw back her head and cackled.
“Oh, this is just marvelous! Did you sneak in here just to talk to me?”
Momentarily stunned, it was a few seconds before Charlie could summon a response.
“Well… yeah.”
Vivien laughed again, this time reaching out and touching Charlie’s arm. It was a strangely intimate gesture, like they were old friends.
“Ask her when Bobby Flay is getting here,” Allie whispered.
Charlie ignored her sister.
“My God!” Vivien said. “I’d heard the Carmichael rugrats had hired someone to sniff around after Dutch’s money. Now I wish I would have had a moment to return your call sooner. I’ve been missing out on all the fun.”
“So… you weren’t intentionally avoiding me?”
“Of course not. That would be rude,” Vivien said, brushing this notion aside with a wave of her hand. “I’ve just been so busy with the last-minute details.”
“Last-minute details for what?” Charlie asked.
“For today. I head the committee that organizes the gala. It’s practically my event.”
“Oh.”
“Wait.” Vivien’s eyes narrowed to slits. “If you didn’t know this was my event, how did you know I’d be here?”
Charlie wondered how to proceed. Vivien had gotten a hoot out of the whole scenario up until now, but rifling through her personal refuse might cross a line. Charlie weighed it for a moment before deciding to take a gamble.
“I stole your garbage,” she admitted. “Found the invitation letter.”
“You stole my garbage?”
Reading the shock and horror on Vivien’s face, Charlie thought she’d made a mistake telling her the truth. But then Vivien let out another scream of laughter.
“That’s absolutely priceless! My garbage! Oh, you’re too much.” Vivien latched onto Charlie’s wrist with a hand bedazzled with sparkling rings and bracelets. “Come with me.”
Vivien dragged Charlie back to the banquet hall, introducing her to various people they passed as a “real-life private investigator.”
“Do you know how she found me today?” Vivien asked a woman in a chiffon gown embroidered with a flower and dragonfly motif. “She went through my trash bins! Can you imagine?”
Vivien howled again at the thought, but the woman in the dragonfly gown didn’t seem to find the notion quite so entertaining. She arched a perfectly shaped eyebrow and glanced at Charlie as if she might have some sort of communicable disease.
“Charming,” Dragonfly said, her voice high and rasping.
When Vivien tried dragging her before another unsuspecting group, Charlie wriggled free.
“I think that’s enough show-and-tell for today, don’t you?” Charlie said.
“Oh right. I suppose I got a touch carried away.” Vivien reached out and snatched two canapés from a server passing by with a tray. “Here, try one of these.”
It looked like a miniature ice cream cone studded with black sesame seeds and filled with salmon and caviar. It was small enough that Charlie could pop the entire thing into her mouth, and she did.
“Isn’t it divine?” Vivien asked. “They always suggest salmon puffs for this kind of event, but I think the cornets are so much more elegant.”
It was salty and crunchy, and there was some kind of creamy filling Charlie hadn’t seen upon her initial inspection. She had to admit it was pretty tasty.
“Do you realize that salmon cornet might have come from Bobby Flay’s blessed hands?” Allie said. “From his fingertips to your lips, Charlie. Ask her if we can meet him.”
Charlie didn’t care one way or the other about Bobb
y Flay, but if she didn’t ask Vivien about him, Allie would probably whine the rest of the night.
“So, uh… speaking of the food… is Bobby Flay actually here? I saw his name mentioned in the invitation letter.”
Vivien’s face soured for the first time since Charlie had approached her.
“He is not. He was supposed to be, but he backed out at the last minute, the weasel.” Vivien’s hands clenched into fists. “I could wring his little ginger neck. He owes me, and he knows it. But I don’t suppose you went to all the trouble getting in here just to ask me about that?”
“No, I didn’t,” Charlie said. “I wanted to talk to you about Dutch. About his murder.”
Vivien’s eyes filled with tears.
“The idea that one of those wretched brats took him from me is just too much to bear. It sickens me.”
Charlie grabbed a cloth napkin from one of the tables and handed it to Vivien.
“You think one of the Carmichaels is to blame?”
“Of course,” Vivien said, sniffling and fanning her moist face. “Who else?”
“I hate to be so brash about this, but can you tell me where you were the day Dutch died?”
“You think I killed him?” Vivien asked. “What possible reason could I have?”
“Well, there’s the money.”
Vivien sputtered out a humorless laugh.
“Darling, Dutch’s moronic progeny didn’t tell you this because I suppose they don’t know, but if one of us was to be considered the gold digger in the relationship, it wasn’t me.”
“What does that mean?” Charlie asked.
“I know everyone refers to Dutch as a billionaire—even he did himself—but he was what we in the Ten-Figure Club refer to as an ‘in name only billionaire’ or a ‘billionaire with a little b.’ His ‘b’ came from his net worth—an estimated figuring of all of his assets, including his business interests, which is practically an imaginary figure.”
“OK,” Charlie said. “So he didn’t have a billion in liquid assets… but who does?”
Vivien smiled.
“You?”
“My dear, I was born wealthier than even most of the one percent can imagine. I had no use for Dutch’s money.” Vivien wadded up the napkin and tossed it aside. “Anyway, if you still insist I provide an alibi, you can ask any number of individuals here tonight. I was right here in this room, chairing the gala committee meeting the morning Dutch died.”
Vivien put a hand to her chest as she spoke.
“We were supposed to have dinner that evening. No one told me what happened then, either. No one called. When I got to the house to meet him, the coroner was wheeling him into a refrigerated van.” She had a faraway look in her eye and sounded as if she were talking to herself more than to Charlie. “Gloria was there, and when I asked her what had happened, I saw such loathing in her eyes. I thought maybe for once she would see that we had at least one thing in common. We both loved her father dearly. I should have known better.”
The glazed-over look in her eyes faded, and she snapped her head around to face Charlie.
“Do you know that they kept me from the funeral? I couldn’t even say a final goodbye to him.” Vivien crossed to one of the tables and helped herself to a glass of champagne, tossing it back in two quick gulps. “This autumn would have been our twentieth anniversary.”
Charlie realized she had better get on with her questions before Vivien was too lit on grief and sparkling wine to be of any use.
“Speaking of Gloria, and I’m sorry I have to go down this road again, but can you tell me where you were the day she died, Thursday afternoon around four forty-five?”
Vivien’s eyelashes fluttered, and she gazed up at the ceiling.
“Thursday afternoon… I was at home.”
“Was anyone with you?”
“Yes. A few people from the committee.” Vivien pointed them out to Charlie. “Mitzi Graves and Kassandra Meroni. We were taking care of a few last-minute details. Who was picking up the flowers, had the ice sculptures been ordered yet, that kind of thing.”
She waved the one called Mitzi over.
“Mitzi, darling, can you tell this young woman where you were on Thursday from four o’clock to five thirty?”
The woman’s thick eyebrows knitted together.
“Is this a trick question?” Mitzi asked. “I was with you. Finalizing everything for the gala.”
Vivien turned to Charlie.
“Is that sufficient?”
“Yes, thank you,” Charlie said.
Mitzi was dismissed with a flick of Vivien’s wrist.
“So is that it?” Vivien scooped up another glass of champagne and crossed her arms. She seemed much less amused with Charlie than she had been a few minutes before. “Any other meddlesome questions you’d like to ask me?”
“I’m really sorry,” Charlie said. “I know this isn’t easy. And for what it’s worth, I can tell you genuinely cared about Dutch.”
Vivien’s chin quivered slightly.
“Thank you. It’s nice to hear someone acknowledge that,” she said, blinking away fresh tears. “I don’t think I realized until now just how much it’s always bothered me that his kids see me as some kind of money-grubbing bedmate.”
The term “bedmate” suddenly reminded Charlie of whatever secret Gloria had uncovered.
“I actually do have one more question,” Charlie said, biting her lip. “And I have to warn you that it’s potentially offensive and probably sensitive. I’m hoping that disclaimer will be enough that you won’t have me forcibly removed from the premises immediately.”
A small spark of Vivien’s intrigue from earlier seemed to return then.
“Oh this sounds good. If you didn’t have my full attention before, you have it now.” Vivien sipped her champagne. “Let’s hear it.”
“Were either of you ever unfaithful to the other?” Charlie said, feeling her cheeks grow hot with embarrassment at this line of questioning. “Or was Dutch maybe into anything… I don’t know… weird? In the bedroom, I mean?”
Laughter sputtered from Vivien’s lips.
“About the kinkiest thing Dutch Carmichael was into was oral sex, and I don’t think that counts for much these days.” After another chuckle, Vivien lowered her voice. “And as for infidelity, that wasn’t really possible since we had an open relationship. I met Dutch when he was still with his wife, and I’m not a big enough fool to think I’d be the one to convert him to monogamy.”
Charlie blew out a breath. She’d gone to all the trouble to get here, and it seemed Vivien Marley was going to turn into yet another dead end.
“Now I have to ask you something,” Vivien said, seeming to have recovered her original sense of curiosity.
“OK,” Charlie said. “Shoot.”
“What on earth led to that last line of questioning? I can’t imagine the ludicrous things people must be saying about Dutch if you felt compelled to ask such a thing.”
“It’s nothing like that,” Charlie said. “Just before Gloria died, she told me she’d found something. All she would say about it over the phone was that it was ‘sordid.’ Does that bring anything to mind? Anything at all?”
“My God, no.” Vivien took a drink and tittered. “Sordid? How absolutely bizarre.”
“Do you know if Dutch had a will?” Charlie asked.
She was grasping at straws at this point, but she figured she might as well milk Vivien for any information she might have while she had her attention.
“I assume so,” Vivien said. “He liked to do things his own way, but he wasn’t an idiot. Why?”
“Well, if there is a will, no one can seem to find it.”
“Have you looked on his computer? He kept his entire life on there.” Vivien emptied her glass and reached for a third.
“Also missing,” Charlie said.
“Really? And you’ve checked the safe?”
“The big bank safe in his study?” Charlie ask
ed.
“Goodness, no. That’s a collector’s item. Dutch might have kept a few things in there from time to time, but nothing he truly wanted secure,” Vivien explained. “There’s a hidden wall safe.”
“You can show me where it is?” Charlie asked, feeling a sudden thrill. Maybe this wouldn’t be a bust after all.
“Of course,” Vivien said. “Shall we go now?”
“Don’t you have to… I mean, won’t you be missed?”
Vivien waved this notion aside.
“I doubt they’ll even notice I’m gone. We’ve been doing this long enough that once we actually get to the day of the event, the whole thing runs like clockwork,” Vivien said. “That’s the secret to good event planning. It’s all in the preparation.”
“OK, great.” Charlie slid her phone from her clutch. “Now the question is, which one of Dutch’s kids do we call?”
“For what?”
Charlie stared at her.
“To let us in the house.”
Vivien clicked her tongue.
“We don’t need them for that, darling,” she said, pulling a key ring from her own purse. “I have a key.”
FORTY-FIVE
They took Charlie’s car over to the estate, as Vivien informed her on their way out of the country club that she didn’t drive. On the way, Charlie puzzled over Vivien Marley’s relationship with Dutch Carmichael. She wasn’t at all what Charlie had imagined after the descriptions she’d heard from the Carmichael children. She was so vivacious. So free-spirited and self-possessed. Why would she settle for being Dutch’s mistress and never his wife?
“I have a question,” Charlie said after several minutes of hemming and hawing about whether or not she should ask it and risk offending Vivien.
“Yes?”
“Well, I’m curious about something, though I should state upfront that it has absolutely nothing to do with my investigation. This is pure, unadulterated nosiness,” Charlie said. “You’re free to not answer.”
Vivien raised an eyebrow.
“Haven’t you figured out by now that I’m not shy about much?”
“It’s just that you said this fall would have been your twentieth anniversary, and I can’t help but wonder why…”