Little Black Book of Murder

by Nancy Martin

  “Jesus,” Emma said. “It’s not like Rawlins is dead.”

  Whereupon Zephyr burst into tears, too, and there we were, a female group sob-­fest, observed uneasily by Michael, his crew, Max, the twins and Ralphie. They all kept a safe distance while mascara flowed.

  “C’mon, Luce,” Michael said finally. “Let’s you and me and Max go inside. I think you left your Candy Land game here last time. You wanna play?”

  Digging her fist into her eyes, Lucy hiccoughed and nodded and reached for Michael’s hand. With the baby in the other arm, he ambled both of the younger children into the house. The twins headed for the barn, whispering deviously, with an inquisitive Ralphie in hot pursuit. The security crew turned back to its duties, leaving the rest of us to bawl our hearts out. Even Emma wiped a tear from her eye.

  “This is contagious,” she grumbled. “Like yawning.”

  Perhaps the crying was a delayed reaction for Zephyr, too. In the middle of the group hug, she sobbed as if she’d lost a husband who meant more to her than she’d revealed in the truck. Libby clasped her to a heaving bosom, and they wept together, seeming ready to throw themselves onto a pyre.

  Finally Emma said, “C’mon, you guys, this is embarrassing. Pull yourselves together.”

  Libby dried her eyes with her sleeve. “You have no idea how traumatic it is, Emma, to have your child snatched from your arms. No idea at all.”

  That thoughtless remark caused Emma to tell Libby where to stick her parental advice, after which she climbed into her truck and slammed the door. She gunned the engine with a roar and spun her tires in the gravel. She departed in a cloud of dust.

  “That wasn’t very thoughtful, Lib,” I said.

  “Oh.” Libby blinked. Her nose was pink. “Well, I’ll apologize tomorrow.” She turned to Zephyr. “Do I know you? You look familiar. Are you one of Nora’s friends? Or are you with the Mafia?”

  “Hello.” Zephyr shook Libby’s hand. “Your son killed my husband.”

  “No, he didn’t,” Libby said. “But you must be Zephyr. Tell me, do you think fashion magazines are instruments of oppression?”

  “I don’t play any instruments,” Zephyr said.

  There wasn’t much I could do after that except herd the two of them ­toward the house.

  We had enough leftover bread and a chunk of cheddar to make grilled cheese sandwiches for everyone. I tended the griddle while Michael played Candy Land on the floor with Lucy, and Max crawled on his back. Lucy, intent on winning, held the cards and paid close attention to the action on the board. Max pretended Michael was a pony.

  Libby and Zephyr—­two women with no filters between their first thought and what came out of their mouths—­had a heart-­to-­heart at the kitchen table with a bottle of wine left over from poker night.

  Libby said, “I need to slim down just a little, but I can’t seem to shave off the baby weight. You must know everything about the right foods. I mean, you’re so skinny!”

  Zephyr glanced down at Max, perhaps calculating how much dieting time had elapsed since his birth. He was walking now, and he wrestled with Michael like a pro. She said, “I don’t really worry about dieting. I’m just naturally thin.”

  Libby sighed. “I was standing in the wrong line when thin was handed out. But I have an adventurous spirit. The trouble is, men are sometimes apprehensive around spirited women.”

  “Men apprehend thin women, too,” Zephyr said, slugging back wine. “In my opinion, most men are disappointments.”

  “Yes,” Libby said. “In books, men are wonderful, but in real life they spray poison to kill bugs.”

  On the floor, Michael glanced up from Candy Land. I shot him a firm look and shook my head. Moving his marker to Gum Drop Mountain, he wasn’t in the best position to defend his gender at the moment.

  “But you married your husband.” Libby refilled Zephyr’s glass. “He must have had redeeming qualities.”

  Zephyr shrugged. “He was a nice guy. And rich.”

  “Was he exciting in bed?”

  “Average.”

  “Well, I’m very sorry he’s dead,” Libby said. “I hope you understand my son had nothing to do with it.”

  “Uh-­huh.”

  “I thought he was arrested, but it turns out they’re just asking questions. The police found his car, you see,” Libby said. “Abandoned on a back road near your farm. The police want to find out why it was there the night your husband was murdered. And I’m sure they’re keeping an eye on him because he’s a flight risk.”

  “Flight risk?” I asked.

  “He has a passport,” Libby informed me. “From that vacation we had in Mexico. And the police probably think we’re loaded and could afford to send him out of the country.”

  Zephyr looked around the kitchen. “You don’t look loaded to me.”

  “This is my sister’s house,” Libby said. “She’s not much for home improvements.”

  Michael grabbed my ankle to stop me from clonking Libby over the head with a skillet.

  Zephyr got up and went to the refrigerator. She opened it and peered into the emptiness.

  “I’d like to find out who really killed your husband,” Libby said, pouring more wine. “I’d give that person a piece of my mind!”

  Zephyr found our last spears of asparagus in the vegetable drawer. “I’m betting it was his ex.”

  “Marybeth Rattigan? Oh, no, darling. She’s too nice a person to want to kill her former husband. Now, I’d believe it in a heartbeat if I heard she killed you, maybe, but not someone she shared a life with. Why, she bore his children! Surely a woman always has a bond with the father of her offspring.”

  “That bond fell apart when she went broke.” Zephyr took the asparagus to the sink and washed it.

  “Marybeth can’t be broke. That’s impossible. She inherited half of Howie’s Hotties! They sold the company for millions!”

  “She spent it all.”

  “On what?” Libby demanded. “How could any woman unload that much money? Does she have five hundred pairs of shoes?”

  “She bought pigs. She built some fancy laboratory to breed them. You know, vegetarians will eventually convince carnivores that it’s wrong to eat meat. And it costs too much to feed animals for food. So her thinking that creating a new breed of pig was a great idea just shows she isn’t so smart after all. Marybitch spent all her money on a really dumb idea.”

  Libby said, “She had money from her husband!”

  Zephyr took a crunch of raw asparagus and shook her head. “Her prenup was worse than mine. She didn’t get a nickel in the divorce. Swain paid for the house and all the kid stuff during the marriage, but she had to use all her own money to research pigs.”

  “What about you?” I asked, concerned. “Zephyr, I hope you had some legal advice before you married Swain. You’re not left high and dry now that he’s gone?” I thought of my own position after Todd’s death—­down to the last of our savings because of his drug use, then plunged into debt when my parents gave me Blackbird Farm.

  Zephyr avoided my inquiring gaze and shrugged. “I’m doing okay.”

  Confidently, Libby said, “Models are all rich.”

  “Well,” Zephyr said, “not all. There are plenty of people out there who take advantage, y’know.”

  “Let me guess,” Michael said from the floor. “Your accountant embezzled from you.”

  She sat bolt upright. “How do you know that?”

  “There’s a lot of it going around,” Michael replied. “Are you broke?”

  “I had some expenses,” she began feebly. “And then—­well, yeah, I’m kinda broke.”

  “Is that why you married Swain?” Libby asked, tactless as ever. “For his money?”

  “No! Well, not completely.”

  Libby said, “It’s easier to fall i
n love with a rich man than a poor one. Everything depends on what happens after you divorce him. I think Jane Austen said that.”

  “According to the prenup, I couldn’t divorce him for five years,” Zephyr said. “Not if I wanted to get some money when I left.”

  “Now that he’s dead, what happens?”

  “Not much,” she said glumly. “I get the farm, but that’s about it.”

  There went Zephyr’s motive for murdering her husband, I thought. If she stood to receive money upon his death, she’d have had a reason to stab him with a pitchfork. Of course, the farm was worth a pretty penny, so she wouldn’t be destitute. Now, though, I couldn’t see why Zephyr might kill Swain.

  And if she had, she obviously did it with a clear conscience. The rest of us watched while she blithely ate the last of our asparagus, raw spear by raw spear. She had kicked off her shoes and revealed ragged toenails and a spectacular bunion. Then she lounged inelegantly on the chair, lazily tracing wet circles of condensation on the table with her finger as if she didn’t have a care in the world.

  My cell phone rang in my handbag. I dug it out and looked at the screen. Gus.

  I handed the spatula to Libby and went through the butler’s pantry to the dining room to take the call.

  He said, “What have you got?”

  I had plenty more than he knew, but I wasn’t talking. “I’ll call you when I’m ready.”

  “You might be interested in what I dug up today.”

  “Don’t you have a newspaper to edit?”

  “I got out my little black book of contacts and made some calls. To Italy and Dubai. My father has newspapers in those countries, perhaps you knew?”

  Of course I knew. But I said, “Fascinating. What did you learn?”

  “I asked about Zephyr. Are you sitting down? Five years ago, rumor has it, she killed her boyfriend.”

  I sank into the chair at the head of the table. “What boyfriend?”

  “A guy she met in Rome. Another model.”

  “Was he tall?”

  “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “Never mind.” I put my hand around the phone to muffle my words. “She killed him? Are you sure?”

  “Pretty sure. The bloke was loaded with money and good looks. They had a few laughs. Then she shot him in an argument on a yacht. The police were totally on her side, said she was getting knocked around by him and had every right to blow his brains out. So they took her name out of their report.”

  “How does that happen?”

  “Hasn’t your thug taken you to Italy yet? To see the corruption firsthand?”

  I ignored the insult. I tried and failed to imagine the young woman in my kitchen holding a gun, pulling a trigger. Killing both her father and a boyfriend. I could, however, picture her convincing the police that she was as innocent as a lamb. She had told us some appalling things in the truck, but I had fallen for her charms enough to bring her into my home.

  “And to top that,” Gus went on when I didn’t respond, “there’s a rumor she also offed a bloke in Dubai, too, but my little black book doesn’t have enough good contacts there—­yet—­to check the details.”

  “Dubai?” I said, trying to grasp what he was telling me.

  “A member of the Saudi royal family mysteriously drowned in a hotel bathtub. He was last seen in her company.”

  “She got away with drowning him?”

  “Word is, she paid the police to forget she was there.”

  That might explain the “expenses” Zephyr mentioned. I asked, “How big was the Saudi?”

  “Why are you so interested in his size?”

  “I just—­how many women have the strength to drown a man?”

  “Something to check,” he acknowledged. “I can’t help wondering if maybe there are more she might have finished off.”

  “There are,” I said, and took a deep breath. “She killed her own father.”

  “Crikey!” Gus sounded truly surprised. “How did you find that out?”

  “Sources I can’t quote. She shot him back in West Virginia, before she got into modeling.”

  Gus let out a few Aussie curses of astonishment.

  “Check your little black book for contacts in West Virginia. Maybe she’s paying people to be quiet there, too. For me, though, the awkward thing is,” I said, “right now she’s here in my house.”

  “How did that happen?”

  “I bumped into her today, and she ended up coming home with me. I think she wants to stay for a while.”

  “Make sure you lock your bedroom door.”

  We both fell silent, thinking. My mind raced through everything I knew about the hillbilly supermodel, trying to decide if perhaps killing three men before she married Swain made her the most likely suspect in his murder. If she had killed two boyfriends and convinced the police she was the victim, not a cold-­blooded killer, had the sob story about her sexually abusive meth-­cooking father been a cover-­up, too?

  But most of all, I was starting to develop a gut feeling that Zephyr wasn’t exactly the lovely, thoughtful person she’d first led me to believe. The act she’d put on—­waiting on her husband hand and foot, weeping as she spoke about the inhumane treatment of animals—­it was starting to feel like an act, all right. In Emma’s truck, she had been quite blunt about her relationship with Swain. And here at the house, we’d learned even more about the fairy-­tale marriage of the fashion designer and his beautiful model. It hadn’t been as “happily ever after” as everyone thought.

  I said, “Zephyr said something peculiar about learning the score about her husband. Something happened when they were in China. Does your little black book reach that far?”

  “You want somebody in the fashion business in China? That could be about a million people. Thin the herd for me.”

  “I’ll see what I can find out.”

  Gus said, “We need to nail all this down before I print the story. I’ll work on confirming what we’ve got on Zephyr’s past. And you—”

  “I have another angle I want to pursue,” I said, thinking of the check Swain had written to his son. Zephyr said the money was paid to make Porky go away. Was that true? What exactly had Swain’s relationship with Porky been? Had Porky harbored enough hostility against his so-­called father to murder him?

  Gus said, “A promising angle?”

  “I’ll tell you when I know more. Is my deadline extended?”

  Gus let a frustrated moment of silence pass. We didn’t have enough solid information to print yet. We had a lot of rumors to confirm first. He said, “Let’s have a natter early tomorrow, see what else comes up between now and then.”

  “Here’s one more idea. I heard Marybeth Starr was broke at the time of her divorce.”

  “Last I checked, that’s not a motive for murder.”

  “Still, it keeps her on the list of suspects. We already know she was upset about the divorce and Swain’s new marriage. And she wanted the missing pig back—­probably to continue her genetic research. She has a temper. And she was, if you recall, drunkenly waving a gun in Swain’s direction when they were last together.”

  “I don’t think she’s the one to focus on. She hasn’t already killed three people.”

  I was surprised to hear him give up so easily on the person who might have had the most reason to kill Swain Starr. “So what should I do? Get Zephyr drunk and hope she confesses?”

  “She might try to kill you first.”

  I pushed my hair off my forehead and tried to think. “We’ll be all right. We have extra help at the moment.”

  “What kind of extra help?”

  I hesitated, sorry I had let this detail about my personal life slip. I admitted, “Michael has people here.”

  “People, huh? You mean guys who put bullets into skull
s and dump bodies in swamps? I’ve seen all the movies, you know. Everything from Al Capone to The Godfather.”

  “We’ll be fine,” I said again. “Meanwhile, there’s a lunch event I must attend tomorrow, and I just thought of somebody who will be there and could be helpful. I’ll see what I can find out.”

  “All right,” he said. “Just watch your step. I’d be sorry to lose you.”

  A moment stretched while I considered the best response to that sentiment. I decided to ignore it. Briskly, I said, “I’ll call in the morning if I have anything new to tell you.”

  “Call me anyway,” he replied. “I want to know if you survive the night. And, Nora?”

  “Yes?”

  “It wasn’t a bad kiss, was it?”

  I took a deep breath. And hung up.

  I sat for a moment, stewing. I had left Gus’s office thinking I had the upper hand with him. But now I was feeling at a disadvantage again.

  I toyed with my phone and tried to put Gus Hardwicke out of my mind. I needed to think about Zephyr now. Specifically how to draw more information from her. Without driving her to murder. I heard sharp voices from the kitchen, so I hurried back.

  I found Zephyr pointing a knife at Michael’s chest.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  “I can cut a sandwich,” she snapped. “You don’t have to treat me like a child.”

  With his hands in the universal I-­surrender position, Michael said, “It’s just that Lucy likes her grilled cheese cut on the diagonal. It’s the only way she’ll eat it.”

  “With catsup,” Lucy piped up from the table where she sat wearing a milk mustache. “Lots of catsup, Uncle Mick.”

  With a shrug, Zephyr relinquished the knife, and Michael cut Lucy’s sandwich to my niece’s specifications and set the plate in front of her. Max protested her special treatment, so Michael scooped up the baby and held him in one arm while preparing his sandwich, too.

  Libby looked up at me from her seat at the table. “Zephyr says you were talking to Porky at his studio. Did he say anything about the twins? About their prospects?”