How to Murder a Millionaire

by Nancy Martin

  I said, “Raphael and his friends play world-class polo, Em. The rough stuff. You could get hurt.”

  “I can ride rings around most of them, even in all this mud. What idiot chose April for a polo match, anyway? The field manager still isn’t sure we can play today. It’s too wet.”

  “I suppose Penny Devine’s family chose the date.”

  Emma shook her head. “Penny would never pick April. That crazy old bitch knew there would be too much rain this time of year.”

  Lucy, who had been slashing at invisible enemies with her weapon, piped up. “Mummy says a crazy bitch is the neighbor’s beagle that won’t stop barking. Or the lady who’s the mother of the president.”

  Emma ruffled Lucy’s blond hair. “Nice duds, Luceifer. What’s with the sword?”

  “It’s a foil,” Lucy corrected, flourishing the weapon I used on my college fencing team. She also wore her favorite Fair Isle sweater—unraveling at the elbows—and a somewhat tattered tutu. Her outfit had drawn a few smiling glances from the fashion-conscious crowd, but Lucy didn’t seem to mind. “I’m learning to fence instead of going to stinky ballet class today. But Aunt Nora won’t let me take the button off.”

  “She’s no fun.” Emma prudently tipped the foil away from her own ear. “Where’s your mom?”

  “Mummy had a date last night,” Lucy volunteered. “So we all had a sleepover at Aunt Nora’s house. The twins got to stay in the basement.”

  “Chained up like Quasimodo, I hope.” Emma sent me a raised eyebrow. “And where is Mummy today?”

  “We don’t know,” Lucy said cheerfully. “Maybe she had a sleepover, too.”

  I asked, “Have you seen Libby, Em?”

  “Nope. What’s up? Has she taken a fancy to someone new?”

  “Actually, she’s been in bed for a week. Alone,” I added, “except for her depression. The kids have been staying with me.”

  Emma frowned. “Anything serious?”

  Lucy piped up. “Mummy just likes to take naps sometimes, and read magazines and watch that food channel on television a lot.”

  I answered Emma’s inquiring glance. “Libby’s been feeling a little low. The fireman she was dating disappeared in his own puff of smoke.”

  “But she went out last night? That’s a good sign, right?”

  “It was a meeting with her accountant. But, uhm, Lucy says she wore her lucky sweater.”

  “Oh, boy.”

  “Exactly.”

  The Libby Alert System just went to Code Red. Our older sister, Libby, had been a dormant volcano in recent weeks. But it was only a matter of time before Vesuvius blew.

  Lucy poked the foil at the muddy tire of a Rolls Royce that was guarded by a uniformed chauffeur with a disapproving glower. Ignoring him, Lucy said, “I don’t think he’s a counting man. Mummy called him hot stuff and maybe her next paramour. What’s a paramour?”

  “A man who brings expensive presents for little girls,” I said.

  “I want a sword of my own,” Lucy said promptly. “A big one that’s sharp, like Captain Hook’s.”

  She executed a lunge and decapitated an imaginary pirate.

  Although I dearly loved my niece and her four brothers, I often thanked heaven they were not mine to manage more often than the occasional few days when my sister took her hormones for a stroll.

  I caught Emma scrutinizing me. She said, “So you’ve got the monsters to look after. That must be a dose of reality after your cruise. How was it? Did the Love Machine keep you belowdecks the whole time?”

  “We—It was a lovely getaway,” I said.

  It had been more than lovely, of course. Sailing the Caribbean on a borrowed yacht had been almost heaven. Fourteen days of sun, sparkling waters, azure sky, and three meals a day prepared by a private chef had been therapeutic, but endless champagne and long, passionate nights had been a real sojourn from reality. I’d hated to come home. But I told myself it was time to face the world. To get on with our lives.

  Emma raised a skeptical eyebrow. “So did you put on your party hat today to cover the social set for the Intelligencer? Or have you been fired like half the other reporters in town?”

  “I’m still on the payroll. The publisher used to be a shopping buddy of Penny Devine, so I’m here to make her memorial—well, memorable in my column.”

  A few years ago, I might have come to an event like the polo match as a guest of wealthy friends, or even hosted my own small group of pals for drinks and a picnic. But in the last couple of years I had been reduced—thanks to my parents setting out on a mission to blow every last cent of the Blackbird family fortune on a worldwide spending spree—to attending such festivities in my role as the society reporter for a Philadelphia rag.

  “So it’s officially your column?” Emma asked. “The publisher gave Kitty Keough’s job to you at last?”

  “Not officially,” I conceded. “I still have to prove myself, try not to make mistakes. I’m not a trained journalist, after all.”

  “What are you going to write about today? The whole concept is kinda tacky, don’t you think? A party instead of a suitably weepy funeral service for Philadelphia’s most famous kiddie star?”

  “Penny loved parties, almost as much as she loved polo, so I think this was a good solution. And she would have adored the clothes. Besides, there’s a charitable angle to the whole thing, so I’ll play that up.”

  The newspaper’s owner had insisted I devote serious space to the life and memory of film star and Philadelphia native Sweet Penny Devine. The world-famous actress—best known for her role as Molly, the plucky parlor maid in the Civil War blockbuster Suffer the Storm—was an American film icon. She’d been rushed to Hollywood at an early age to begin her career as a tap-dancing child star. After a short awkward period in her adolescence, she’d grown into a decent character actress—often playing the wholesome best friend or the jilted lover of a cad. But she finally received an Oscar nomination (lost to Meryl Streep the year she played Benazir Bhutto) as the maid who looked after Charlton Heston’s version of Abe Lincoln.

  As her weight grew increasingly out of control, though, Penny had played a few adorably quirky oldsters in romantic comedies. Before her death, she specialized in playing Sandra Bullock’s grandmother, and her popularity soared again.

  So today, a few hundred Philadelphia aristocrats and film lovers had come out to celebrate the life of one of their own—a local girl who made it big in the movies. My job was to make the event sound lovely despite the mud.

  Emma smirked. “Oh, yeah, the charitable angle.”

  “Yes.” I pulled my invitation from my handbag to double-check. “Proceeds from today’s tickets go to—here it is—a foundation that helps treat eating disorders.”

  Emma grinned broadly. “You know what everybody’s calling this thing, right? Chukkers for Chuckers.”

  “Emma!”

  From several yards away, a musical voice hailed us. “Darlings!”

  Out of the crowd burst a vision of excess estrogen in a leopard-print suit cut down to reveal a bountiful bosom as blatantly as imported cantaloupe in a Whole Foods display. Our older sister, Libby, waved a champagne flute overhead as she waded toward us with what were clearly a pair of her son’s hiking boots on her feet. On her head she sported a wide-brimmed yellow hat festooned with daffodils—one of which was already trying to curl around her nose.

  Emma said, “What are you doing? Getting ready for a mammogram?”

  Libby ignored her and cried, “Lucy! My stars, what have you done to your tutu? And who in the world let you have that weapon?”

  “Aunt Nora did!” Lucy nearly stabbed her mother through the heart as she flung herself into her Libby’s open arms. “She let me have ice cream for breakfast, too!”

  “Blabbermouth,” I said.

  “Nice going,” Emma muttered to me. “What’s next? Showing them how to rob banks?”

  “It was all the food I had in the house! How was I to know I’d
have to feed the horde, not to mention store lab specimens in my refrigerator?”

  Libby chose not to hear me. Bending at the waist, an act that nearly spilled her breasts like a truckload of warm marshmallow fluff, she used a lace handkerchief to wipe a smudge from her daughter’s less than pristine cheek. “Did you brush your teeth after the ice cream, sweetheart?”

  “Aunt Nora ran out of toothpaste.”

  “Heavens. Well, you won’t have to stay there ever again, Lucy.”

  “You’re welcome,” I said tartly. “No charge for the babysitting.”

  Libby straightened and adjusted her hat to dislodge the pesky flower once and for all. “Don’t apologize, Nora. I’m sure your mind is scattered after such a long vacation. We began to worry you’d run off permanently with That Man.”

  “He has a name, you know.”

  Blandly, Emma said, “You’ll notice she’s wearing the Rock of Gibraltar again.”

  Libby seized my left hand and goggled at the giant emerald-cut diamond ring that flashed on my finger. “Oh, sweet heaven, what have you done?”

  “Be careful,” Emma warned. “You could endanger the Hubble telescope with that sparkler.”

  “It’s huge!” Libby cried. “It’s not stolen, is it?”

  “No,” I said tartly. “I think he won it in Vegas.”

  Her eyes widened. “You’re kidding!

  “Of course I’m kidding.”

  She peered more closely. “A diamond that size can’t possibly be real.”

  “You actually gonna marry Mick this time, Nora?” Emma asked.

  I took a deep breath. “Yes.”

  Libby dropped my hand and cried out in anguish, “Nora, think of your family! You can’t besmirch our good name this way!”

  “Hell, think of Mick,” Emma said. “You realize this is his death sentence?”

  The Blackbird women all shared such genetic traits as auburn hair, an allergy to cats, and well-documented widowhood at a young age. Emma and I had lost our husbands before we turned thirty, and Libby’s marriages—three so far—had all ended in disaster. The joke around our social circle was that the only men interested in marrying us must be suicidal.

  I had fallen hard for Michael Abruzzo, however, and he insisted he was strong enough to withstand a little family curse—even one that dated back more than a hundred fifty years. I had refused to endanger his life, of course. But after months of holding out, I was finally weakened by too much champagne and a glorious Caribbean sunset. When he’d asked me again, I said yes.

  The fact that he was the son of New Jersey’s most notorious mob kingpin didn’t matter to me anymore. Not much, at least. But our love match was going to turn Philadelphia society upside down. The Blackbird family had been welcomed into sedate drawing rooms since the days of the Continental Congress, and a union with the Abruzzos—known for racketeering, not racquet club memberships—was going to be the scandal of the season.

  Libby groaned. “We’ll never live this down!”

  Emma patted her shoulder. “Take it easy. Maybe the mayor will get caught with a hooker or something.”

  Libby nodded. “Let’s hope there’s a catastrophe so we won’t suffer the glare of the spotlight.”

  “Let’s hope,” I agreed, only half joking.