How to Murder a Millionaire

by Nancy Martin

  “But, Ralph—”

  “They were going to give me a commemorative plaque! But with the stock market the way it is, I didn’t have the cash anymore.” He began to cry, his chubby face twisted and blotchy. His whole body drooped, and the sword trailed on the grass.

  “But Libby could have helped, surely?”

  “Libby!” he cried. “She inherited all that ugly furniture and do you think she would part with one measly stick of it? She had it hauled away to some storage barn and wouldn’t even tell me where it was! I’ve shared my life with her! I’ve been good to those monster children!”

  “Ralph, tell me where she is. Is she alive? And Emma?”

  He didn’t hear me and sobbed like a baby. “When Libby said Longnecker would give her a hundred grand for those sex pictures, I figured it was our chance. I thought we could bargain with him, get the price up. But, Libby—Oh, it would have been easy!” he bawled.

  “Ralph,” I began, taking a step toward him.

  “No,” he said, lifting the sword. “There’s still hope. If I can just shut you up, too, it could still happen.”

  I had my chance. And I only had one weapon—the bottle of champagne. I braced my thumbs against the cork and took aim just as Ralph lunged with the sword.

  I popped the cork.

  It exploded off the bottle and hit Ralph square in the eye. Then the champagne came frothing out, and I sloshed it in his face.

  My Israeli commando training came back in the next instant. I kicked the sword.

  Not hard enough. Ralph staggered down on one knee, clutching his eye with one hand. With the other, he fumbled for the sword in the grass.

  I kicked it aside again. “Ralph, stop! It’s over!”

  He didn’t listen. He abandoned the sword, clambered to his feet and set off running blindly down the polo field.

  “Ralph!” I shouted.

  He did not escape. A second pop exploded nearby. Only it wasn’t a champagne cork. Ralph jerked in midstride, missed a step, stumbled and crashed to the grass, spread-eagled flat on his face.

  “Oh, my God.” I sank down on my knees and the horizon swam. I struggled up again.

  Then Eloise Tackett was there, holding me back. “You’re okay,” she said several times. “You’re going to be fine, Nora.”

  “Eloise—”

  “It’s all right,” she said. “I got him. Damn! My aim isn’t what it used to be. I only meant to wing him. I think he’s a goner.”

  “But Libby. And Emma.” I tore free of her grasp. “He can tell us where they are. If they’re alive.”

  “Oh, they’re alive, all right,” Eloise said. “They’ve been screaming out the windows of my gatehouse since yesterday.”

  “Eloise?” I stared at her.

  “I know, dear. I should have told you. But they seemed just fine, and Ralph kept saying I could have the folio any minute and then they could go free. It all turned out rather badly, though, didn’t it?”

  Chapter 21

  Four weeks later, my sisters and I formally got together again. Except we didn’t go out for spinach salad and white wine at a genteel sort of restaurant where ladies lunch.

  “I call to order this meeting of the Blackbird Widows,” Libby said as she cut the take-out pizza.

  Because Emma’s arm was still in a cast, I opened the beer. Summer sunshine splashed the porch of Blackbird Farm, casting leafy shadows over our wicker chairs. The fragrance of pepperoni wafted around us.

  “At least I managed to keep most of this out of the newspaper.” I passed around the bottles. “The newsroom was very kind because of my help with the mayor’s story.”

  “What do you mean, they were kind?” Libby demanded. “They called me his hysterical wife!”

  “You were hysterical,” Emma said. “You were bonkers, nuts, totally bananas. Let me tell you what a delightful roommate you were for two days in that damn gatehouse. Thank heaven you lost your voice with all the screaming.”

  “Let’s not argue,” I said, although I found myself smiling. It felt ridiculously good to be squabbling with my sisters again.

  “It’s Eloise who went bananas,” Libby said, aiming the knife at Emma. “Can you believe they let her out of jail already? Those lawyers Mr. Abruzzo found must be worth their weight in gold. I mean, she killed my husband in broad daylight. And she walked!”

  “Libby,” I warned, “everyone decided it was an accident. Anyway, Ralph was probably going back to the gatehouse to kill you and Emma.”

  “Eloise helped him keep us there!”

  Emma lifted her bottle in a call for peace. “Only because he told her some cock-and-bull story and promised her the folio. And she redeemed herself, didn’t she? By explaining Ralph’s plan to sell the folio to her to pay for his battlefield?”

  Libby sighed. “Dear Ralph. He really meant well.”

  Emma rolled her eyes. “By hitting me over the head and breaking my arm? Not to mention kidnapping me? He held a paring knife to my throat while I wrote that note—and left it on that Civil War book, which was supposed to be your big tip-off, Nora.”

  “Sorry. I didn’t make the connection at the time.”

  Emma’s tirade continued. “Sure, Libby, Ralph slipped you nice, gentle sedatives. You even slept through Nora visiting your house on Sunday morning and him dragging you into the gatehouse. But Ralph had to beat me unconscious!”

  “Which surprises me. I thought you could have fought him off.”

  “He hit me with a chair, Lib. So I wasn’t exactly at the top of my game, but thanks for your concern. I think, by the way,” she said to me, “Ralph would never have surprised me in the first place if you had a dog.”

  Libby said, “You’re getting a dog?”

  I sighed.

  Libby shrugged and rearranged the pepperoni on her slice of pizza. “Well, Ralph will be happy, I’m sure, that we buried him in his uniform. The poor dear. I sometimes feel a terrible tug on my heartstrings for him. But—Never look back, right? Things happen for a reason.”

  Libby put on a brave front, but I felt sure she wasn’t so philosophical when she was alone.

  She went on blithely. “The bullet hole in his jacket is an extra bonus as far as he’s concerned, don’t you think? He’ll fit right in with all those dead soldiers he knew so much about. And it was kind of Peach Treese to give us that Civil War flag from her family, too. Ralph must be swooning in heaven.”

  I refrained from pointing out that Ralph might not be enjoying the pleasures of heaven at the moment. “Peach was relieved that it was all over. She paid Ralph’s bill with Main Events just for some closure. I mean, Rory was killed. Her granddaughter’s wedding was ruined—”

  “Not just ruined,” Emma said. “It never happened.”

  “Well, the elopement happened without any problems,” I said. “Peach just wanted it all over with. She couldn’t face another disaster.”

  “I don’t know,” said Libby. “A van Gogh might ease a lot of disasters.”

  Emma lit up a cigarette one-handed. “She bought a van Gogh?”

  “No, Rory gave it to her,” I said. “Apparently, they always argued about whether is was hanging straight, so he left it to her in his will. The Poison Gas Sisters didn’t get that, at least. Kitty Keough interviewed them for The Back Page and got the whole ugly story. The editors say it received more reader response than anything Kitty’s written in years. She’s more popular than ever.”

  Emma snorted. “The Pendergast sisters sure unloaded the porn fast, didn’t they? Harold Tackett must feel like a kid on Christmas since he got to buy most of it.”

  “It isn’t porn,” I corrected. “It’s art.”

  “Hmm.” Libby slid her eyes sideways at me. “I guess you’d know. You had it long enough. Did you practice the positions?”

  Unruffled, I said, “I needed time to decide what to do with it. You were busy with Ralph’s funeral and the children. And Emma wasn’t much help, being in the hospital.”


  “Sending the folio to the museum was the right choice,” Emma said. “Even if that Longnecker guy lost his job for his unethical business practices.”

  “Well, Rory’s sisters certainly didn’t want it. And I figured Harold has enough pieces from the auction of Rory’s collection. So the Reese-Goldman has the folio now, and they even sent me an invitation to the opening of the exhibit.”

  Emma grinned. “You’re not going, are you? To an exhibit of sexy pictures? You?”

  “I just might,” I said. “If I have enough frequent flyer miles.”

  “That’s the only way you’ll be able to afford the airfare,” Emma cracked. “With the roof practically caving in on this house—”

  Libby clanged the knife on her beer bottle. “Oh, let’s not talk financial matters. That’s so boring. Here we are, dear sisters! The Blackbird Widows again. I don’t know about you two, but I’m not planning on any more marriages.”

  “I give you six months,” I said with a grin.

  “I’ll be busy in six months.” Libby put her hand on her belly, which had already begun to show. “I’ll have Ralph’s child to look after. Do you know, I’ve been wondering if maybe Ralph went a little off the deep end when I told him we were going to have a baby.”

  Emma and I chose not to express opinions on that subject.

  I said, “Okay, then, I give you a little more time. But you’ll have another husband. Mark my words.”

  “Nope. I’m finished. We’re cursed.”

  Emma drank some beer direct from the bottle and said, “Personally, I don’t think I’m cut out for monogamy.”

  “What about you, Nora?” Libby asked. “Think you’ll get married again?”

  “I don’t know. Right now,” I said, “I just want to practice my fly-fishing.”

  Michael had been dozing in a wicker chair beside me with his feet up on the footstool and a bottle of beer balanced on his chest. I nudged his boot, and he became aware that the three of us were looking at him. He’d spent quite a bit of time at the farm lately and was beginning to look very comfortable there even when my sisters came around. He opened his eyes and looked at me. “You’re cursed?”

  “It’s a thing,” I said. “A Blackbird thing. Our husbands die.”

  “Okay.” He closed his eyes again and relaxed. “Remind me not to marry you.”

  Fun with the Blackbird Sisters continues with

  Dead Girls Don’t Wear Diamonds

  Some Like It Lethal

  Cross Your Heart and Hope to Die

  Have Your Cake and Kill Him Too

  And read on for an excerpt from the next

  Nancy Martin Blackbird Sisters Mystery

  A Crazy Little Thing Called Death

  available in bookstores now.

  Everyone ought to be forgiven at least one mistake.

  I gave my nephews Harcourt and Hilton a sum of birthday money I figured couldn’t possibly buy anything that might endanger a pair of fourteen-year-old mad scientists. Unfortunately, I hadn’t counted on them squirreling away cash for months, because as soon as they ripped open their cards and found the modest gift, they jumped on the Internet and purchased a fetal pig.

  When their gruesome investment arrived—in a large carton packed with dry ice, bubble wrap and clearly marked BIOHAZARD—they rushed over to my house to set up their laboratory in my basement, where they began the pig’s long and loving dissection.

  “They’re weird, Aunt Nora,” said their sister, Lucy, already an astute judge of character at the age of six. She had wide blue eyes that saw the world clearly.

  In complete agreement, I hugged Lucy and said, “Let’s go to a party.”

  Like all Blackbird women, Lucy had a few eccentricities of her own. She asked, “Can I take my sword?”

  I hadn’t been able to wrestle it away from her yet, and I didn’t feel up to a battle. “Why not?” I said.

  Lucy waved the foil. “If we meet any bad guys, I’ll give ’em lead poisoning.”

  When Lucy and I were suitably dressed and accessorized for an outdoorsy Saturday in April, we left the twins and their infant brother in the capable, if slightly distracted custody of seventeen-year-old Rawlins, who was trying to teach himself Texas Hold ’Em from a book. Lucy and I tiptoed outside to the waiting car and hit the road. In the car, she shared her Hello Kitty lip gloss with me.

  Life had hit me with a few body blows in the last couple of months. A day with my niece felt like good medicine. Even if we were headed to a party celebrating death.

  Eventually, we arrived at Eagle Glen, an estate owned by some elderly, eccentric cousins of ours and located in an expensively bucolic enclave outside Philadelphia where green pastures rolled from one exquisitely landscaped mansion to another. On the tallest hill, Eagle Glen commanded a river view. The neglected estate included a topiary garden with bushes as big as Macy’s parade balloons and a green swimming pool full of three-legged frogs. The grass on the tennis court where Billie Jean King once beat the stuffing out of Richard Nixon looked like a wheat field.

  But behind the tennis court lay the polo field, recently mowed for the party. The lower lawn, however, was an ocean of April mud, the result of poorly maintained drainage; though surrounded by a profusion of forsythia and waves of naturalized daffodils, it was mud nevertheless. Hundreds of luxury cars were swamped in it. A couple hundred well-dressed Philadelphians had unpacked elaborate picnics suitable for the first annual Penny Devine Memorial Polo Match. It was a pageant to behold.

  Each party had a different theme. As Lucy and I picked our way across the swampy grass in our Wellies, we saw a Chippendale table laid with fine linens and silver under one pretty striped tent. Next to it, another hostess had thrown long boards over saw-horses for a barbecue. Champagne cooled in crystal buckets that sparkled in the sunshine, while barrels of cold beer appealed to other guests. One well-known socialite was treating her guests to a circus, complete with cotton candy, a clown on stilts, and an organ grinder with a monkey that fascinated my niece. The scents of chateaubriand and expensive perfumes mingled in the air with the fragrance of freshly churned-up muck. The mud, in fact, seemed to be the only reason guests were sticking close to their vehicles. If the ground had made better footing, I was sure all the parties would have mingled into one spectacular bash.

  Lucy pointed at a hired chef in a white coat and toque as he grilled shrimp over an apple wood fire. “Look, Aunt Nora. Is that Emerald?”

  “I don’t think so, Luce.”

  At the next party, a violinist in tails entertained a party of blue bloods sitting in camp chairs beside a mud-spattered Bentley. They had wisely spread out a large blue plastic tarp on the wet ground, then laid a beautiful Persian rug on top of it. They raised their glasses to me and called my name.

  Waving back, I thought that half of the city’s so-called high society had decked themselves out in designer finery to come watch one another instead of polo.

  The competition for Best Dressed was fierce. I spotted two women in Gauthier designs worth more than fifty thousand apiece. Lucy counted six gentlemen in ascots. And there was enough extravagant millinery to give the Queen a migraine.

  My own choice received a rave review.

  “I like your hat best, Aunt Nora. The long feathers look like a fairy’s tail.”

  I simply hoped the damn thing wasn’t going to blow off and end up in a puddle. I had carefully unpacked the hat my grandmother wore in the Royal Enclosure the day Princess Diana stepped on her toe—presumably because Grandmama had outshone her.

  “Hey, sis!”

  Lucy and I turned to see my sister Emma emerge from a crowd of young men all dressed in matching bow ties—the members of the nearby university glee club. Emma, of course, wore no party dress or picture hat. Her white riding breeches clung to her like rain on pavement. In one hand, she carried a polo mallet, the shaft resting on her shoulder. In the other, she dangled a helmet by its strap, and her short, punk-style hair stood out in windblown tuf
ts. Her loose polo shirt bore a large paper number on the back, but managed to hint at a figure that would have put Lara Croft to shame. The entire glee club ogled her butt as she walked away from them.

  Tartly, I said, “Are those boys old enough to vote yet?”

  “Maybe for Homecoming Queen. Think I have a shot?” As usual, my little sister had a gleam in her eye. “That’s some chapeau you got going there, sis. How many peacocks died to make it happen?”

  “None. They were cockatoos, and all volunteers.”

  “I see you got my phone message about the mud.” She glanced at our boots, hardly a fashion statement, but definitely practical on a day like today.

  “Yes, I owe you big.”

  “Good. Then you can tell me all about your vacation. And”—she lowered her voice so Lucy couldn’t hear—“don’t skip any details, especially the sexy stuff.”

  “The vacation was very nice,” I said without rising to the bait. Indicating the mallet, I said, “I see you’ve been playing your own game.”

  Emma twirled the mallet and grinned. “One team is short a player. Apparently Homeland Security worried he might terrorize the social set, so they detained him at the airport. Which means I’m an honorary Brazilian today. Raphael Braga asked me to play.”

  “Raphael ... ?” I endeavored to keep my composure as my stomach took a high dive.

  Emma misinterpreted my expression. “Don’t worry about me, sis. I’ve got Raphael’s number.”

  “So do half the women in Europe, not to mention South America.”

  “Think I can’t handle him?”

  Emma could probably handle an African lion with one hand tied behind her back, so the male animal of her own species was no problem. With her combination of long legs, perfect figure, and eyes that glowed with the promise of a dirty mind, I wasn’t surprised that a Brazilian lady-killer like Raphael had come calling on Emma.