How to Murder a Millionaire

by Nancy Martin

  The steps of the building were crowded with an odd mix of photographers and priests, who parted like the sea when a town car pulled up to the curb and disgorged the monsignor with his entourage. The photographers jostled as if he were Tom Cruise.

  We went into the cathedral and found ourselves in a knot of people who had not yet made their way past the temporary metal detectors and into the nave. Most of them seemed to be a security team—men and women with earpieces and cold stares.

  “Yo,” Emma muttered, taking off her sunglasses and nodding toward a sallow-faced man in a very expensive suit. “The senator.”

  “Talking to the mayor,” I murmured. The mayor happened to look over the senator’s shoulder and spotted me in the crowd. He quickly averted his head.

  Emma looked bemused. “Looks like you don’t have to worry about getting pinched.”

  We edged around the politicians and their flocks of assistants. I looked for Libby, but she was nowhere to be seen. I saw the Weymount family—all world-famous artists who painted at their old Pennsylvania family estate called Trundle.

  Emma saw the Weymounts, too, and whispered to me, “I remember a rumor that Pendergast was their patron. Must be true if they’re here today.”

  Since the Weymounts were all known for their penchant for female nudes, I understood Pendergast’s interest in their work. “I went to school with Audrey.”

  I suddenly thought that Audrey might be able to help me understand if Rory’s art collection might have anything to do with his murder. I took Emma by the arm and pulled her with me. “Come on.”

  The Weymount family wore grief well. They had practiced for years, starting when Jack Weymount ran off with a male lover, with whom he flung himself off a bridge in California. Forever the grieving daughter, Audrey looked like one of those rail-thin and huge-eyed urchins that used to be painted on greeting cards. Her brother, Connor, came off like Heathcliff, exquisite and handsome in a huge black coat and with a stormy expression on his brow. Their mother, Yedita, endeavored to be mistaken for a Jewish Yoko Ono—short-cropped hair, big glasses, grim expression. She was obviously dying for a cigarette. The tension showed in her tight mouth, rigid shoulders and the way she toyed with a silver cigarette case.

  Emma once said, “I bet Jack jumped off that bridge so he wouldn’t have to come home and face Yedita.”

  I gave Audrey a kiss on her pale cheek. I’d gone to Miss Porter’s with her, and she hadn’t altered since then. She was still petite and very shy.

  “How nice to see you, Nora,” Audrey whispered. “I’m sorry it’s under these circumstances. How dreadful about Rory, don’t you think?”

  “Just dreadful,” I agreed.

  I had stayed with Audrey a few times at Trundle and would always appreciate the glimpse she gave me into the work of an artist. I’d gone through a period of wanting to be a painter like my sister Libby, but even Audrey hadn’t been able to overcome my lack of talent.

  Audrey was considered the lowest rung on the Weymount family ladder of success, however. And the family worked at keeping her there. She clung to my hand as I turned to her mother.

  “Hello, Yedita.” Then to Audrey’s brother, “Hi, Connor. Have you met my sister Emma?”

  Emma and Connor locked glowering stares, and I realized they knew each other well indeed.

  Yedita always did the talking for the family, and she didn’t fail us.

  “I’m desolate,” she said, waving the cigarette case. “I can’t believe he’s gone. Such a dear friend. What will we do without him? Are you coming to our exhibit at the Center City gallery, Nora? Rory underwrote it. I’ll be sure you get an invitation to the opening. It’s going to be a Weymount retrospective. We’re even using some of Jack’s pieces. And Connor’s stuff is brilliant these days. Just brilliant. I love what Audrey’s doing with collage now, too, of course, but it’s not my thing at all. You must come. I’ll see that you get an invitation. And you’re writing for the newspaper now, aren’t you? You’ll appreciate the work. You have such a good eye.”

  “Thank you, Yedita. I’d love to see it. Especially Audrey’s things.” Audrey gave my hand a conspiratorial squeeze.

  “Bring your sister,” Yedita urged, watching as Emma and Connor continued to size each other up in heady silence. “I’d love to paint her. So would Connor, I’m sure. Does she pose? What wonderful bone structure. And she has beautiful breasts. Connor, dear, wouldn’t you love to paint her breasts?”

  “I already have,” said Connor without tearing his gaze from Emma.

  I heard my name being called then, and we all turned to see Eloise Tackett making her way through the crowd with Harold in tow. Harold looked kingly—tall, with his distinctive white hair under control. Eloise had him by the arm, and her pert face was as lively as ever.

  “Oh, I’m so glad we found you, Nora,” Eloise cried. “We were afraid we wouldn’t know anyone.”

  “All our friends are dead,” Harold announced. “It’s good to see some young people. And you, too, Yedita.”

  Yedita Weymount let that one pass. “Hello, Harold. I have another painting for you to see.”

  Harold’s hearing aid must have given out, because he looked confused. Eloise answered quickly. “Oh, we don’t need any more paintings, Yedita. We have far too many already.”

  Harold caught on. “There’s always room for more art, if it’s good.”

  “Well, it’s hardly art,” Eloise said tartly. “Sorry, Yedita. All those naked women get a little dull. Just once I’d like a pretty picture of a lake or something.”

  Yedita looked far from offended. “I was just about to deliver my most recent piece to Rory when he passed away. I wonder if you’d like to see it, Harold? It’s just your kind of thing.”

  Harold looked quite interested. “I’d love to see it. But I don’t get around very easily anymore. Maybe you’d bring it out to me sometime?”

  Yedita must have seen dollar signs dancing like sugarplums, because she took Harold aside and they huddled together.

  To me, Eloise said, “He’s incorrigible. But I guess it doesn’t do him any harm, collecting those pictures. It never affected our sex life, you know. He’s still frisky.”

  Faintly, I said, “How nice.”

  Eloise changed the subject cheerfully. “Have the Pendergast sisters shown up?”

  “I haven’t seen them yet.”

  “I have a bet with Harold,” Eloise confided in a conspirator’s whisper. “I say they’ll surely come to their own brother’s funeral. Harold says they’re too mean to make the effort.”

  “Maybe they plan to have a private ceremony.”

  Emma turned to us, suddenly eager to put some distance between herself and Connor, who had switched from brooding Heathcliff to something more aggressive. “Shall we go inside?”

  People had begun to move through the metal detectors into the main body of the cathedral. Our small group flowed with the crowd past the security checkpoint. We accepted printed programs from two young ushers in altar boy robes, then proceeded down the center aisle.

  We had barely traveled ten yards before a loud voice echoed in the cathedral behind us.

  “Break out the grenades,” Emma cautioned. “Miss Kitty has landed.”

  I glanced back and watched Kitty dress down one of the ushers. I couldn’t hear her words, but I gathered she wanted an escort to her seat.

  “Down front,” she demanded, voice rising. “I need to be close, dammit.”

  The young usher looked confused, but put his arm out. Kitty latched onto it like a piranha and started down the center aisle with the velocity of a guided missile. Mourners dodged out of her way.

  Emma nudged me, and we slid into a pew to avoid being run down. The Weymounts slipped into the row in front of us, with Harold and Eloise beside them. Kitty sailed by.

  Emma said, “Somebody throw a net over her.”

  Right behind Kitty came none other than Detective Bloom with his partner. Bloom saw me and came
over to shake my hand.

  “Miss Blackbird, you remember my partner, Scotty Wilson?”

  I shook Wilson’s hand, too, and introduced my sister to them. For an instant they were both struck dumb by the perfect fit of Emma’s leather pants.

  I said, “I’m surprised to see you here, Detective. Is coming to the funeral part of your job?”

  He looked solemn. “We’re here to pay our respects to Mr. Pendergast.”

  The detectives moved off and Emma said, “You’ve been holding out on me, Sis.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Since when did you make nice with young detectives?”

  “Don’t start,” I warned.

  “How old is he?”

  “No idea.”

  “Does he ever crack a smile?”

  “I haven’t seen one yet.”

  We sat down just in time. Suddenly the aisles seemed crowded with men in nearly identical black suits, all wearing transmitters in their ears. The reason for all the heightened security became clear.

  “It’s the Vice President,” Eloise murmured in front of us. “Can they spare him in Washington today?”

  Sure enough, the Vice President of the United States strode out of a side entrance and into the cathedral with an entourage of enough middle-aged white men to constitute the board of General Motors. The security team cleared the way so the Vice President could be seated with the other honored guests. Kitty Keough was unceremoniously bumped to the end of her pew.

  Next Peach Treese came in surrounded by her family. As if commanded by a signal, every head in the cathedral turned her way.

  Peach wore a small black hat with a veil that came down over her nose, concealing most of her face. Her gait was slow and shaky. Pamela Treese, the soon-to-be bride, held her grandmother’s hand.

  Peach did not weep. Not in public.

  I understood entirely, but I wondered how Detective Bloom would view her lack of public grieving.

  I couldn’t imagine Peach hurting anyone, let alone Rory.

  My brain took a totally inappropriate segue and I wondered guiltily about Peach’s sex life with Rory. Had he acquired the Viagra with her in mind? Or was Bloom correct in speculating Rory had other women, too?

  A Motown diva got up then and joined a large gospel choir in front of the cathedral. As their voices swelled with the lyrics of the gospel favorite “Deep River,” the last few dignitaries took their seats.

  I noted many of my own family friends in the crowd, too, and received a few nods—mostly from the over-sixty crowd, the people who remembered my grand-parents fondly. A few of my parents’ contemporaries, on the other hand, pretended Emma and I were invisible.

  Kitty Keough sat stiffly upright near the front. Was she thinking of Rory? She’d been angry with him the night of the party. Had she been furious enough at Rory to murder him? Had my arrival at the newspaper caused her to go crazy?

  And Libby. Where in the world was my flighty older sister? She would have attended Rory’s funeral come hell or high water. Where was she?

  An Episcopal priest approached the pulpit and began to read from the Book of Common Prayer. I remembered the lines from my grandfather’s funeral. I had gone home and looked them up afterwards, in fact, to read the words for myself.

  My heart was hot within me

  And while I was thus musing

  The fire kindled and at the last

  I spake with my tongue.

  Lord, let me know mine end

  And the number of my days;

  That I may be certified how long I have to live.

  My grandfather’s funeral had not been so well attended, perhaps, but he’d been a respected man in his day.

  The Blackbird clan had not traveled in such rarefied circles since his death fifteen years ago. Still, there were the Warringtons, my mother’s peculiar cousins. Although lunatics when it came to fox terriers, they looked completely respectable lined up together in a pew near the front. Nearby sat the O’Keefes, who partnered with my grandfather in some lumber ventures, then went their own way in building ski resorts in the Poconos. The Largent daughters, hardly as prim and proper as they looked, had invited me to their Maine house over a few summer breaks but were now both taking AA very seriously, or so I’d heard. Several rows over, I recognized the broad shoulders of the Cooper brothers, whom I had dated in my teens. Now they all worked for their family’s aircraft manufacturing corporation—even Flan, who had been a great kisser at nineteen. I’d slept in his Penn crew T-shirt for years after he’d left my turbulent waters.

  “Hmm,” murmured Emma as the priest yielded the service to the choir, yanking me out of a steamy memory. “I wonder if Pendergast knew he had this many high-powered pals when he was alive. Except that maniac woman from the newspaper. I can still hear her yakking up there.”

  I looked for Kitty, but my gaze skimmed right over her to a side door. Suddenly the rest of the crowd vaporized as I clapped eyes on the last person to slip into the cathedral.

  It was Michael Abruzzo, almost unrecognizable in a suit and tie.

  I saw Detective Bloom’s head snap around, and his stare bore into the back of Abruzzo’s head like a flaming arrow launched from a crossbow.

  Quickly, I faced the front of the cathedral. Of course, Abruzzo had a perfect right to attend Rory’s funeral. They’d been friends. Business associates. It really wasn’t the least bit strange that he’d come to pay his respects.

  But I knew Bloom had another theory.

  Coming out of one of the private chapels, Abruzzo passed through one of the secret service checkpoints and stole up the side aisle behind the row of pillars until he found an empty seat almost opposite us in the cathedral. I watched as he genuflected, crossed himself, then went into the pew. I couldn’t quite see him after that. I wondered if he was saying a rosary as the choir sang. A minute passed. At last he sat back.

  The monsignor mounted the pulpit, and the service took on a greater solemnity. Hankies came out and muffled weeping began.

  Emma leaned over and hissed, “Who’s the stud?”

  “What stud?”

  “The guy over there by the nuns. He’s looked at you twice.”

  “Never mind.” I pressed my handkerchief to my cheek.

  “Ooh,” said Emma. “It’s the Abruzzo guy, isn’t it?”

  “Emma—”

  “What’s he doing here? Is he stalking you?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Then what the hell’s he up to?”

  “Whatever it is, it’s bound to be trouble.”

  Chapter 11

  Mozart’s Requiem thundered on the cathedral’s massive organ, making conversation thankfully impossible as we inched our way up the aisle after the service. The Vice President had been efficiently whisked away after the removal of the casket, but the rest of us took nearly another half hour to vacate the cathedral. We had been told the family preferred a private interment at Laurel Hill cemetary. I used the time to gather my composure. Life seemed rife with losses. At last I tucked my handkerchief into my bag and fastened the catch, wishing I could lock up my emotions just as neatly.

  Finally we made our way outside. Dusk was gathering, and many large cars clogged the street. My ears still rang with the noble words spoken by our eloquent senator, a few industrial magnates and one weepy woman who represented a foundation Rory had funded.

  I felt dull, as if beaten into exhaustion by their words. Or maybe I was thinking of Todd again. I had known Rory Pendergast well, loved him like a grandfather, and I respected what he’d done with his life. He’d left the world a better place, whereas Todd—well, he’d left his mark in a different way. In bruises on the people who’d loved him. I let Emma drag me down the cathedral steps into the milling crowd outside.

  Michael Abruzzo was waiting for me. The other mourners gave him space, as if he were a Brahman bull in their midst, but he looked unaware of the apprehension rippling through the people who p
arted around him.

  “Hello,” he said, hands thrust into the trouser pockets of his dark suit.

  I gathered my wits. “You seem to pop up everywhere these days.”

  He shrugged. “I was going to grab an early dinner. You want to come?”

  “Hi, handsome,” said Emma, sticking out her hand. “I’m Emma Blackbird, Nora’s sister.”

  “Nice to meet you.” As he returned her handshake, he appeared not to notice her leather pants. I gave him points for self-control.

  “I’m starved,” she declared. “Did I hear something about dinner? The Swann Cafe in the Four Seasons is just across the street.”

  I didn’t know what Emma was up to, but I was sure I didn’t like her plan. She skewered Abruzzo with a smoldering look that had surely frightened lesser men.

  He didn’t panic. “Why not?”

  But we were interrupted by the arrival of Detective Bloom and his partner.

  “Abruzzo,” Bloom said, “I wonder if you’d be kind enough to join us at the station?”

  Abruzzo looked down at the detective, amused. “What for?”

  “We’d like to ask you some questions. It’s an invitation,” Bloom added. “Not an arrest.”

  Emma’s interest sharpened as both men eyed each other.

  Abruzzo shrugged. “I’m happy to help the police whenever possible, Detective. Unfortunately, I’m busy at the moment.”

  “We’ll wait,” said Bloom. He did not look at me.

  “How about this?” Abruzzo proposed when it became clear the police wanted to speak with him at once. “I come when it’s more convenient or I call my lawyer right now and turn this into something completely different.”

  There was no aggression in his voice. But his polite manner defied argument. How did he do that?

  Bloom’s partner opened his mouth and looked on the verge of making a hasty comment, but Bloom cut him off. “Okay, sounds good. Tonight?”

  “Tomorrow morning. That soon enough for you?”

  Bloom shrugged. “Sure. See you then. Good night, Miss Blackbird.”

  When they moved away, Emma said, “My, my, what was that about?”