by Nancy Martin
Emma said, “What the hell was that all about?”
“Let’s just say that more than ever, I need the chocolate we just bought. You okay?”
“Of course I’m okay.” She had her gruff face back in place. “Let’s go back to the farm before somebody else proposes to me. Mick’s probably awake by now. Maybe he’ll make breakfast.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
On the way home, I read the newspaper aloud to Emma, and we learned another bombshell. Libby must have read the same story, because her minivan was turning into Blackbird Farm just ahead of us. She blew past Michael’s security checkpoint, and we did, too.
Michael was out in the backyard, dressed and drinking coffee while his posse of criminal misfits stood around him in a semicircle—perhaps receiving their orders for the day. I recognized most of them—a couple of hulking biker types with tattoos and shaved heads, a squirrelly little guy in grease-stained overalls, and another burly man in a tracksuit and parka big enough to conceal any number of weapons, perhaps even a bazooka. Bruno stood aside, arms folded over his chest. Today, he wore a pin-striped suit with a pink tie. Very natty. He ignored my sisters and me.
Ralphie the pig, I noticed, had escaped the pasture fence and stood at Michael’s heel, keenly observing the action. He blended right in with the rest of the motley crew.
In the middle of the semicircle hunched a skinny man I didn’t recognize. He was shivering, with his hands shoved into the pockets of his khaki pants. In a button-down shirt and Hush Puppies, he appeared to be wearing the uniform of salesmen and casual-Friday office workers—hardly the sort of person Michael usually hung out with. Except that his shirt had come untucked and was ripped down the front, and he appeared to have fallen face-first in mud. Plus his face was streaked with tears. He wiped his nose with the back of his hand.
Michael seemed unperturbed by this newcomer’s emotional state. He lifted his coffee cup to me in a cheerful greeting. He didn’t look as if he’d just shoved a man’s face into a puddle to extract mob secrets, so I calmed down.
Libby bailed out of her minivan. “Oh, my God,” she said. “Nora, why is That Man of Yours here? Did he escape from prison? Should you call the police?”
“The jail was overcrowded,” I said, “so they sent him home with an ankle monitor. He’s under house arrest.”
“You mean he can’t leave the house? Then why is he outside?”
“He can’t leave the property,” I explained. “Where’s Maximus?” Although Libby was a good mother and her children adored her with admirable devotion and loyalty in spite of her weaknesses as a sensible adult, I sometimes feared she might get carried away and leave her son in her wake. Today she looked flushed—in high gear.
“Max is with my sitter. She’s doing calisthenics with him.” Libby gave Michael a long examination. “That Man of Yours looks very . . . physically fit.”
Emma said, “Is that drool on your chin?”
“What are they doing?” Libby frowned at the meeting of the minds being conducted in my driveway.
“My bet is,” Emma said, “they’re discussing possible penalties for embezzlement.”
I made a good effort to seem spritely. “Let’s go inside, shall we?”
This morning Libby was wearing a seasonal orange velour tracksuit with the jacket unzipped just enough to reveal a low-cut T-shirt underneath. In sequins, the shirt read CARPE DAME. She carried a newspaper in her hand, but she continued to gawk at Michael and his crew of thugs.
“Come on.” I took Libby by the arm. “We’ll watch Emma eat.”
Casting curious glances over her shoulder, Libby hustled down the flagstones to the back porch. “I have an appointment later, and I want to get there early for the free erotic aromatherapy session. But I wanted to show you the newspaper. Have you seen this appalling story?”
“I was just reading it aloud to Emma in the truck.”
On the drive home from the grocery store, I had started the newspaper article about the discovery of the body at Quintain. The lurid prose made the whole family sound like escapees from a P. G. Wodehouse novel, but the insinuations about Madeleine made me see red.
The back doorknob came off in Emma’s hand. She passed it to me and shoved the door open with her shoulder. “Nora saw your Deputy Foley this morning.”
Libby forgot about appalling newspaper stories and brightened. “You did? Did he mention my name?”
Emma said, “He didn’t have a chance during the five minutes he spent rescuing Nora from being kidnapped.”
Outraged, Libby cried, “Why can’t I ever get kidnapped?”
“Next time it happens to me,” I said, “I’ll call you.”
Without missing a beat, I handed the groceries to Libby and grabbed the screwdriver off the windowsill. I reattached the doorknob. I’d gotten pretty good at it lately.
“I didn’t mean to sound insensitive.” Libby wilted under my steely glare. “Tell me what happened.”
To the sounds of his posse departing in their vehicles, Michael came inside—he pushed Ralphie back out the door when the pig tried to follow—just as I began my story about being snatched off the street by Pee Wee McBean. Libby lost interest as soon as she figured out Deputy Foley hadn’t played a vital role in the morning’s events, but Michael’s face grew increasingly stony as I told the tale.
“Who the hell is this maniac?” he demanded.
I gave him a kiss on the cheek. “Good morning. He’s not a maniac. He’s a retired police officer. Really retired—as in he looks ninety years old. His name is Pee Wee McBean.”
Emma added, “He’s the size of a hobbit.”
“McBean?” Michael pulled out his phone again. “Let me do some checking.”
He went back outside, and Libby sighed. “Nothing exciting ever happens to me. You get kidnapped. And Aunt Madeleine turns out to have had a secret life nobody knew about. Is there any pastry? I could go for a cheese Danish.”
“Nora’s turning into the vitamin Nazi,” Emma said. “She only bought healthy stuff.”
“Have a banana,” I suggested, and began putting away the groceries. “Aunt Madeleine didn’t have a secret life. The reporter I talked to yesterday was trying to dig up some dirt on her. When he didn’t find any, he obviously fabricated this whole awful story.”
“Awful, indeed!” Libby poured herself a cup of coffee and went searching in my refrigerator for cream. She launched into exclamations about the morning’s revelation in the newspaper. “I can’t believe it. Who knew all those houseguests of hers were sex workers she smuggled into the country?”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Libby, you can’t believe everything you read in the paper! There was one sex worker!” I cried. “Just one woman came forward with that story. It doesn’t mean Aunt Madeleine was some kind of . . . of . . . trafficker.”
I should have guessed something was in the wind when Joe, the Intelligencer reporter, questioned me. But I never guessed he was building a story that portrayed Madeleine as a criminal who brought women into the country to hook them up with powerful men.
“All those women upstairs at Quintain,” Emma said.
“They were her friends,” I insisted. “Not prostitutes.”
“Just wait,” Libby predicted. “By the evening news, there will be dozens more hookers crawling out of the woodwork with their stories. Our name is mud. We’ll never be able to hold our heads up in polite society.”
“We haven’t been able to do that since Mama and Daddy stole money from their friends,” Emma said.
“This is different! It’s sordid!” Libby sat down at the table with her coffee cup and pointed at the newspaper. “This woman says Madeleine helped her get into the United States from Cuba, and she went to work as a hooker in Baltimore. She even names the streets where she worked!”
“It does sound pretty bad.” Emma put her finger on the list of acquaintances quoted in the story. “Everybody who ever attended a party with her suddenly thinks she was setting
up assignations the whole time.”
“Well, she wasn’t,” I said.
“Still,” Emma said, edging toward the powder room, “it’s a wonder nobody’s called us about the story. Why aren’t reporters beating at the door?”
“They probably can’t get past Michael’s checkpoint.”
At that moment my phone rang. I groaned.
Emma crossed her legs and grabbed the receiver off the wall. “Hello? No, she can’t come to the phone right now.” After a pause, she said, “No, Miss Blackbird doesn’t want to make any statement for your viewers. And if you bring a big-ass TV truck onto her property, she’ll call the police.”
Emma hung up with a grin. “That wasn’t too hard.”
Then her cell phone rang as she headed for the powder room.
“You see?” Libby said to me while we heard Emma curtly discouraging another reporter. “This is going to be a terrible ordeal. Sometimes I’m glad my children don’t carry the Blackbird name. Can you imagine the school taunting? Nora, did you have any idea about this?”
“I spoke with Jamison Beech last night, and he hinted that Madeleine had a more colorful past than we thought.”
“Jamison Beech! Did he take your picture for his collage? It’s the first thing I flip to in the Sunday newspaper.” Libby’s eyes got round with horror. “What did he say about Madeleine? Was she doing something worse than trafficking? Heavens, she didn’t peddle drugs, did she? Oh, my God, what if she was selling weapons to some horrible international cartel?”
Michael came inside again with the doorknob in his hand. He gave it to me. “What international cartel?”
“A figment of Libby’s imagination,” I said, reaching for my trusty screwdriver. I made short work of the repair while Michael restrained Ralphie from pushing past me. I said, “What did you learn?”
“Word is, McBean was a dirty cop.”
“How did you find that out so fast?” I sat back on my heels, feeling increasingly as if I was losing control of my household. “Do you have a source in the police department? Or have you planted a listening device in city hall?”
“I Googled him,” he reported, holding up his phone. “Jeez, Nora. Sounds like McBean was the usual kind of corrupt cop—blow jobs in the cruiser from underage teenage girls who’d do anything to keep their parents from finding out they’d been caught drinking. He busted country club poker games and took bribes to forget about what he saw. And he beat up frat boys on a regular basis—that kind of thing. We need to make sure he stays away from you.”
Emma returned, adjusting her jeans. “Being harassed by Pee Wee now is sorta like being chased by a Chihuahua. He can make a lot of noise, but he’s not gonna do much damage.”
“Still,” Michael said, “I don’t like Nora getting grabbed out of a supermarket parking lot.”
“It was a little embarrassing,” I admitted as I closed the door and tested the knob. “I’ve taken self-defense classes. I should have had him flat on the pavement in ten seconds. But I was afraid to hurt him.”
“You’re too polite to use your skills,” Emma said, pouring cereal into a bowl and reaching for a banana. “That’s a handicap.”
Libby sighed. “I took a self-defense class once. The instructor wore a musky sort of cologne that drove me wild.”
To avoid hearing more about the effects of musky colognes, Michael said to me, “I saw the morning news on TV. Looks like your aunt had an interesting past.”
I filled him in with details from the newspaper story while I replaced the screwdriver. “I hate hearing this kind of thing about her. She wasn’t a madam. I’m sure of it. But I suppose we’ll have to prove it or everyone will believe the newspapers.”
“What does that mean?” Michael asked. “You want to restore her reputation?”
“Anything wrong with that?”
“There is if you put yourself in danger.”
“Pee Wee McBean is not dangerous. Mercenary, maybe, but not dangerous.”
“Mercenary?”
I said, “Here’s the other big thing I learned today. Turns out Pippi the housekeeper was married. To Pee Wee McBean.”
Michael whistled low. “Did you tell him she’s probably dead in an elevator?”
“I didn’t have the heart. But right away, he asked me if there was something in Madeleine’s will that he could claim. Which, I must admit, made me dislike him. But I felt sorry for him, too.”
“You feel sorry for the asshole who kidnapped you?”
“A little, yes.”
“Well, start feeling sorry for yourself. The state police were here earlier. They want to question you about what you saw at the crime scene.”
My heart took a dive. “Should I call them?”
He shook his head. “They’re delighted to have an excuse to pay a return visit.”
“I’m sorry, Michael. This just makes your situation more complicated.”
He reached for the coffeepot and said cheerfully, “Complicated is better than incarcerated.”
The house phone rang again, but Emma had just shoveled half a banana into her mouth, so I picked up the telephone, prepared to fend off an attack by another reporter. “Hello, dammit.”
“Nora? It’s Sutherland.”
My cousin’s voice sounded smooth and seductive in my ear.
With everybody watching me, I decided to carry the phone into the dining room. I didn’t speak until I was alone and my rapid heartbeat had steadied.
“Hello,” I said, keeping my tone friendly but cool. “How long were you stuck at Quintain yesterday?”
“Hours and hours. I thought I’d go mad with boredom. It’s too bad you left so suddenly. I could have used some good company. The police in other countries work at a much more efficient pace. Honestly, I almost asked if I could take a nap while they went over that damn elevator with their toothbrushes.”
“How much contact do you have with police in other countries?”
He laughed lightly. “That was just a figure of speech. Groatley turned into a bear, growling at everybody, so he was hardly good company. Did you know he parks in a handicapped space every day he goes to the office? One of his assistants told me that. And he keeps two mistresses in separate condos. One of them is practically a teenager. Which is good, because she doesn’t demand expensive jewelry—only fancy cell phones, which are much less expensive.”
Thinking of Emma’s interlude with Groatley at Quintain, I said, “He’s certainly a prince.”
More gravely, Sutherland said, “I see Madeleine hit the newspapers today.”
“It’s a very ugly story,” I said.
“It does make her look rather tawdry. I thought we might knock heads about this business before all our names are dragged into the sewer. Are you free for dinner tonight, Nora? We could talk about how to present a united family front during this crisis.”
“As a matter of fact, there are a few things I’d like to discuss with you, too, Sutherland.”
“First,” he said, “I should tell you the latest development. Are you sitting down?”
I didn’t want to hear any more bombshells, but I braced myself.
He said, “There’s no way to say this gently, so I’ll just put it on the table. I think the body in the elevator was Madeleine.”
“Madeleine! What?”
“Remember her rings? After you left, the police found them with the bones.”
“But . . . that’s impossible. She must have given the rings to someone else.” Even as I said the words, I doubted them. Madeleine would never have parted with her diamond rings. I felt my legs crumple beneath me, and I sank onto a chair. I put a shaking hand to my forehead, as if I could stop my brain from imploding. “How on earth—?”
“I can’t explain it. Not now on the phone.” His voice took on some urgency. “I think we should have dinner together. We can talk about Madeleine.” In a different tone he added, “And maybe we should discuss what’s to become of Quintain.”
&nbs
p; I was shocked, but not so much that my bullshit detector was completely destroyed. “Sutherland, I can’t help noticing that all our trouble began when you arrived in this country.”
“I can explain everything, I promise. Dinner? Shall I pick you up?”
“I have to work this evening,” I said. “But I can squeeze in a drink around seven if you can meet me in the city.”
“Come to my boat instead. I’m in the harbor, under a very large bridge.”
“You’re staying on a boat?” Of all the sinful extravagances in the world, I did love a yacht above everything else. Before I could check myself, I asked, “A nice one?”
“Magnificent. Come at seven. I’ll chill a bottle of wine.”
Sutherland gave me directions, and I told him I’d be prompt. We said good-bye.
I turned off the phone and sat alone in the dining room for a moment, reeling.
For one thing, why had Sutherland sent Madeleine’s obituary to the newspapers if he hadn’t learned she was dead in Fiji? I began to think Madeleine had a very good reason for cutting Sutherland out of her will. Because she didn’t like him? Or didn’t trust him?
And if Pippi wasn’t dead in the elevator, where was she now?
From behind me Michael said, “More bad news?”
I spun around. “Is it that obvious?”
“You look half sick.”
I took his hand and pulled him into the entry hall. We sat on the staircase, out of earshot of my sisters. There, I told him that Sutherland thought Madeleine was the dead body in the elevator, but that he’d been the one who earlier told the newspapers she’d died in the volcano.
“What’s his scam?” Michael asked.
“To be honest, I never thought Sutherland had enough brains to concoct a scam. He always seemed more interested in how he looked than anything else.”
“He’s got some explaining to do. You’re determined to see him tonight, aren’t you? Take Bruno with you. You’ll get your answers faster.”
I gave him a shaky smile. “Sutherland might die of fright if he saw Bruno coming at him.”
“Would that be a bad thing?”